The Santa Cruz County Office of Inspector General recently issued a 58-page report about the Sheriff’s Office. (Stephen Baxter — Santa Cruz Local file)

SANTA CRUZ >> Concerns about Tasers, pepper ball guns in the jail and lack of documented use-of-force reviews were outlined in the Santa Cruz County Office of the Inspector General’s first report to the Sheriff’s Office last week. Now, leaders of the law enforcement oversight group want residents’ input on where to focus their efforts in the coming year. 

The 58-page report outlined concerns about how and when officers used force and highlighted  low-quality or absent documents of the review of those incidents. It also shined a light on policies related to Taser and neck restraints that are not up to legal standards or best practices. The report suggests specific changes to policy and practice.

The report also noted examples of successful deescalation on the part of deputies. In one instance, an hours-long standoff with a man with a knife having a mental health crisis ended after “​​a deputy thought to offer the man a cigarette in exchange for his dropping the knife.” The report recommended keeping tabs on which deputies are more skilled in de-escalation so they can be called in during challenging situations.

“We’re going to take those suggestions back to our staff and come up with some ideas on how we could implement some of those recommendations,” Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart said Thursday. Hart plans to retire in December and Undersheriff Chris Clark is set to step into the role.

Mike Gennaco, who heads the Office of the Inspector General, said he plans to be “working closely on improving the use of force policies” in the coming months. “We also made a commitment to start reviewing any in-custody deaths and providing an unvarnished report on those,” he said.

Leaders from the inspector general’s office plan to present highlights of the report and answer residents’ questions at a community meeting at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 28. Santa Cruz County supervisors are expected to hear a similar report at the supervisor’s Oct. 29 meeting.

Santa Cruz County Undersheriff Chris Clark is expected to become sheriff in December. Clark answers reporters’ questions during the CZU Lightning Complex Fire in 2020. (Stephen Baxter — Santa Cruz Local file)

Role of the Office of Inspector General

The push to establish the Office of Inspector General followed the in-custody deaths of German Carrillo in 2019 and Tamario Smith in 2020 at the main jail, and a Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury report in 2021 that called for increased oversight. 

A state law adopted in 2021 allows counties to establish independent civilian oversight of their sheriff’s offices. Los Angeles-based OIR Group was hired for the job and began its work in July 2023. OIR Group owner Gennaco is also the independent auditor of Santa Cruz Police. 

The Office of Inspector General accepts complaints, questions and comments about officers, county jails and other functions of the Sheriff’s Office. 

• The office does not directly investigate allegations of misconduct or other complaints, but forwards correspondence to the Sheriff’s Office. 
• The Office of Inspector General reviews Sheriff’s Office investigations into the public’s complaints to ensure that Sheriff’s Office probes are thorough and unbiased. The Office of Inspector General also reviews complaints received directly by the Sheriff’s Office.
• The office can make recommendations for policy changes and other improvements, receive correspondence directly from people incarcerated in county jails, and communicate with the public and local organizations about priorities for its work and broader concerns. 
• Reports are expected to be published quarterly.

The bulk of last week’s report focused on use of force incidents, or situations where an officer used physical force against a person. It described several cases where deputies or correctional officers did not follow policy or where policy was vague or not up to legal standards. 

Hart said the department uses many policies from law enforcement advisory and software company Lexipol. “They do a fairly good job of staying updated, and we take their policies and then tweak them to make them work for our agency,” Hart said. The policy changes recommended in the report are “very minor in terms of the overall policy book,” he said.

The report’s authors commended Hart for his cooperation, transparency and support for their work.

Some ‘concerning’ uses of force

The Office of Inspector General requested use of force data from January to December 2023 and reviewed 34 of the 517 reported incidents. 

In one “concerning” incident described in the report, a supervising deputy gave no warning before he shot a stun gun at a man with a machete. The supervisor and another deputy then “went hands-on to apprehend him” as he fell over. A third deputy arrived and without communication or warning stunned the man with a second Taser on his upper thigh and in “the subject’s groin area between the buttocks” as the other two deputies held him down. These “sensitive areas” are specifically identified as places to avoid using a Taser, according to the report.

In 34 cases reviewed, officers did not regularly warn before the use of a Taser. Officers also used Tasers in “drive-stun mode” — when the Taser is placed directly against the body without the prongs deployed — for the purpose of inflicting pain. Trying to achieve so-called “pain compliance” doesn’t meet the legal threshold to use a Taser, according to the report. 

The Inspector General recommended updating Taser policy to better reflect current legal standards and more training for deputies following a policy violation.

In another incident, deputies shot a homeless man with a rubber bullet. The man was intoxicated, mumbling incoherently and hitting a fence with a rake, according to the report. The officers had “seemed eager to end the encounter” and fired the less-lethal weapon when their attempts to communicate with the man were not successful. This escalated the situation and the officers fired at the man again, who then complied.

The report recommended the Sheriff’s Office update its policies related to:

• Choke holds and neck restraints.
• Tasers.
• Body cameras.
• Pepper spray and pepper balls.
• Documentation of use of force reviews.

Lack of a paper trail

The report raised concerns with a lack of documentation of use-of-force reviews. Sheriff’s Office authorities gave several reasons for not committing the review process to writing, including the “implications for potential future litigation,” according to the report.

“Only one of the 34 cases we reviewed concluded with a documented assessment of whether the use-of-force complied with Sheriff’s Office policy, and we did not receive documentation for any chain of command review that identified issues with individual deputy performance, or addressed any deficiencies in training or policy,” the report states.

The report includes a recommendation to create a documentation process for the review of all use-of-force incidents. 

“We have a very thorough review of all use-of-force cases,” Hart said. “A lot of that is used as training, and so it’s more around a training issue and not a documentation issue. If there’s a use-of-force case that’s out of policy, then that case will get sent over to our internal affairs team, and they’ll take a look at it.”

Another concern the report raised was a lack of thoroughness and objectiveness in some investigations into use of force. In cases where an officer used physical force, supervisors tasked with investigating the incident in most cases did not follow existing policy, and sometimes did not even show up, according to the report. 

“In most cases, if supervisors responded, they did not interview the subjects on whom force was used. When they did, they sometimes conducted the interview in the presence of the deputy who had used force, and often the interviews lacked the objectivity that is necessary in this context,” the report states. 

Sometimes supervisors who were involved in the use-of-force incident, either physically or who had directed the use of force, were also tasked with investigating the incident. 

Pepper balls shot in jail cells

The report described instances where “jail personnel used chemical agents on incarcerated persons to facilitate the removal from their cells for reasons related to severe mental health issues.”

In one case, a correctional officer shot 11 rounds of pepper balls into a cell, striking an inmate several times in the hands and legs, after the inmate refused to take his court-ordered medication. Forcible removal from a cell “should always be a last resort” and in the cases reviewed by the Office of Inspector General, “the decision to move individuals appeared to be necessary and legitimate, made with the guidance of mental health professionals.”

However, as with the review of use-of-force incidents, there was a lack of thorough documentation related to these incidents, the report stated. In some cases, officers’ written statements described an effort at voluntary removal prior to forcible removal, but the provided body-camera footage did not show those efforts. In the incidents reviewed, officers did not report whether they had consulted with medical staff about an inmate’s medical vulnerabilities, such as asthma, before using pepper spray or pepper balls.

The Office of Inspector General recommended prohibiting the use of pepper balls with the intent to hit inmates when they are in their cells and not a threat. The report also questioned the use of chemical agents against severely mentally ill people and suggested the Sheriff’s Office explore less harmful and more effective strategies.

Sheriff’s Office policy does not distinguish between pepper spray and pepper balls, making it unclear when one or the other is the more appropriate response.

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