Editor’s note: The Aug. 20 hearing was vacated and the judge is expected to provide a written ruling. The next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 27 to discuss scheduling. Lea este artículo en español aquí.
United States District Court Judge Nathanael Cousins is expected to decide on Aug. 20 whether a lawsuit against San Benito County stemming from the 2022 suicide of a county jail inmate can move forward.
The hearing is scheduled for 11 a.m. at the Northern District of California court in San Jose.
Jessie Barrientos’ suicide on Oct. 1, 2022, is the only one in the facility’s 31-year history, San Benito County Sheriff Eric Taylor said.
Read about Sheriff Eric Taylor’s February report on the jail staffing, and listen to the audio recording below this article.
The lawsuit was filed by Barrientos’s mother, Rosario Herrera, alleging that her son’s suicide was a result of the jail being understaffed.
Barrientos was booked into the jail on Sept. 19 and facing two felony charges for concealing a firearm and carrying a loaded firearm. He was also facing two misdemeanor charges for possessing methamphetamine and controlled substance paraphernalia.
Previously, the court dismissed three other claims, including that the correctional officers did not receive adequate training on suicide prevention, and that the jail did not have a suicide prevention plan.
According to the lawsuit, “The suicide of Jessie Andrew Barrientos was preventable if proper protective steps, including but not limited to timely, consistent, periodic observations, the summoning of mental health care, or intervention in the creation of instrumentalities of suicide.”
In response, the county claims the jail was appropriately staffed during Barrientos’ incarceration period. The county also claims Barrientos received competent and continuous medical and mental health care.
“The undisputed facts show that all agents and employees of the County of San Benito met their duty of care regarding Mr. Barrientos while he was in Defendant’s custody,” the county states in court filings.
The lawsuit claims the county has known of the jail’s understaffed conditions for at least a decade and that it has “failed to take reasonable steps to address the staffing shortage.”
To support its claim, the lawsuit references five San Benito County Civil Grand Jury reports that found the jail was understaffed, as well as a 2018 report by the California Board of State and Community Corrections that found the jail to be noncompliant with the number of personnel at the jail.
The grand jury is convened annually and is composed of 19 citizens who investigate the operations of various government departments and agencies.
Herrera’s attorney, Jeffery Walker, said, “I think what’s important here is the repeated warnings the civil grand jury gave the county about the staffing levels at the jail and absence of action by the county unresponsive to those repeated warnings. What happened to Mr. Barrientos was an inevitable consequence of the county’s inaction in that regard.“
According to court documents, the jail staffing plan includes one supervisor and four officers during the day shift and one supervisor and three officers during the night shift.
To counter, the county references the latest report by the Board of State and Community Corrections conducted in 2021, which determined the jail was in compliance with staffing levels, “showing a sufficient number of staff assigned to each shift to complete all necessary tasks for Jail operations.”
The county claims that the civil grand jury reports show minimum staffing levels are met through overtime.
Taylor referred BenitoLink to the county’s attorneys, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Regarding the medical care claim, the lawsuit cites a 2020 report which identified eight deficiencies in the mental health system including “scarce mental health resources for jail inmates.”
The county however, claims Barrientos was provided “extensive” medical and mental health care treatment in the first three days of his incarceration before being transferred to “D-Pod.” It adds that there were no signs of suicidal ideation after he was medically cleared and transferred.
Court documents say that, on the day of Barrientos’ suicide, jail officers conducted two safety checks before finding him hanging in his cell. The county said the three safety checks were conducted between 6:24 a.m. and 8:09 a.m. Officers were required to conduct safety checks at least hourly.
The county also said it had a suicide prevention and intervention program at the time of Barrientos’ death.
Three months before his death, BenitoLink reported on the Sheriff’s Department’s suicide early-warning system used to reduce the chances of suicides at the jail.
Sheriff warned Board of Supervisors about jail facilities in February
Eric Taylor reported on ‘dangerously low’ staffing.
By Juan Pablo Perez Burgos
In February, at a special meeting of the San Benito County Board of Supervisors along with state and federal representatives, Sheriff Eric Taylor called his jails “the biggest liability” in the county.
The sheriff said the county was currently operating two adult correctional facilities, one with a capacity of 142 inmates and another rehabilitation center that holds 72 clients. But that facility is currently unoccupied due to low staffing.
A recent state audit recommended a minimum of 40 correctional officers, yet Taylor said only 15 to 16 are actively working.
The report came as the county is facing a lawsuit from the mother of a jail inmate who died by suicide while in custody in 2022, alleging the jail has been chronically understaffed.
This problem, according to Taylor, is likely to worsen following the passage of Prop. 36 in November 2024, which increases sentences for certain drug and theft crimes. “Basically, what that means is we’re going to have more people in our custody,” he said.
Prop 36, Taylor said, will also put more stress on the overburdened jail medical care system.
He noted that inmates currently receive care for just 12 hours a day.
With insufficient mental health facilities, Taylor said jails have become the “de facto” center for mental health and substance use treatment not only in the county, but across California.
“This comes down to funding,” Taylor said. “Our behavioral health system is no longer able to support our jail.”
He also said that without sufficient staff and proper inmate care, the federal government could step in and take control of the jail.
“That has happened in Monterey County and Alameda County. It has happened all around us through lawsuits. My fear is that if we don’t get there, the federal government will take over our facility, and they will spend our county dollars for us without any local control.”
Listen to the transcript here:
Read the transcript below:
Eric Taylor: Thank you, Dulce. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Mr. Vice Chair, and board members and our colleagues for being here, especially our own treasure, who is speaker Rivas. My name’s Eric Taylor. I’m the Sheriff, coroner and sometimes Marshall. And so what I’ve been asked to talk to you today is just go over our jail and issues that we’re having in our custodial setting here.
So the jail is one of my five mandates that I’m given through the Constitution is maintaining our jail, our jail commander commander Tom Corral is here. And trust me, he loses a lot of sleep over this. So when I went to, and I’ve also been warned by Chair Kosmicki to keep it short, because I know speaker has some, some <inaudible>. So I’m gonna rattle through this stuff really quickly, the best I can.
But when I went to new sheriff’s school after my election, they said, “If you think that your jail is running smoothly, be terrified.” And I sat in that room and I was like, “Well, I thought that the smoothest part of our operation was our jail.” But the biggest liability that this county has is the county jail. And so what had happened in boards past and with, and administrations past, is that the community and our elected officials believed that we were building a jail expansion. So we were just making our, taking our jail and making it a little bit bigger. Then there was some rhetoric out there that it was the new jail to which our public works directors asked us already what we placed in the old jail. And the answer is never.
So here’s, here’s the truth of the matter. We actually have two adult correctional facilities in this county. Two separate level-two correctional facilities. They’re not conjoined in any way. Two completely different things. We recently had an audit from the state. I’m not gonna go through all of this here, but we recently had an audit through the state to stack these two separate buildings that have two completely separate functions. They recommend that we have 40, a minimum of 40 correctional officers. We have right now allotted, and the county has worked really hard to get us to this number, 29. However, right now I think we only have 14. We have 18. We have some out on leave. So we have like maybe 15, 16 that are actually working in a facility that needs 40 minimum. So that’s a struggle that we’re having. Title 15 and Title 24 are state law. Those are regulations that talk about the physical plant and things that we have to have in the building. And Title 15 is care that we have to provide to the people in our custody. These are laws that we cannot sidestep. So the issue that we’re having is if we don’t do this right, then the federal government will come in, they will take over our facility and they will spend our county dollars for us without any local control.
That’s through a consent decree. And that’s happened in Monterey County, that’s happened in Alameda County, it’s happened all around us through lawsuits. So that’s my fear is that we don’t get there. One of the biggest issues that we have I’m not sure what’s on the next slide, which go ahead and go to the next slide. Yeah, so one of the biggest issues that we’re facing right now is our medical care in our jail and our behavioral health response in our jail. And then, and then the implications of Proposition 36. So just so you know, when I first started here in 2014 we had five day a week coverage for medical in our jail, eight hours a day. Imagine how many hours a week our incarcerated population did not receive care. We had staff that are correctional officers passing and dosing medication, which is extremely dangerous.
But it’s because we were going on the cheap, right? We were tryin, to get through and just be below minimum. Soon after sheriff Thompson was here, we went to seven day. And where we are currently is seven day a week. 12 hour day coverage. Correct?
Unknown Speaker: Just went 12.
Eric Taylor: Well, we’re trying, yeah, we, we were approved for 24 through (inaudible), but so we were at seven day a week, 12 hour day coverage. So here’s where we are today. And this all has to come down to funding. We no longer, our behavioral health system is no longer able to support our jail. And, and, and I made comments. I just went through the Senate confirmation hearing. And I, I spoke a little bit, I probably misspoke a little bit. I told Dana that I didn’t say something that I did say.
And I said that our local behavioral health system does not support our jail. And in some ways that’s true. We do have a doctor that does not want to service the jail because of the liability. However, we have another doctor that’s coming on that does want to service our jail. And that’s due to our behavioral, our partnership with behavioral health that really, really hunted down someone that was gonna help us and bridge a gap for us. We have a medical provider that’s going through bankruptcy and is not providing a level of service that we need. We’re out to RFP right now. I’m, I’m telling the board right now, it’s gonna be expensive, what they come back with. And so we need to prepare for that. So I think what for, for our, our legislators and for our speaker and I and I, and as I, I’m now going to speak in front of the Senate on Tuesday about Proposition 36.
‘Cause I don’t know how to say no to people, so I’m going to do that. And but I, so I, I just had a meeting with Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes yesterday, and, and we’re not seeing that as much. And I met with our district attorney has helped me with some numbers here locally with the impacts of Prop 36. Just so for of you that don’t know what Prop 36 is, it is it, it was overwhelmingly passed by the, by the voters of California by nearly 70%. It makes certain drug crimes treatment mandated and increases penalties for certain drug crimes and increases penalties for theft. So basically what that means is we’re gonna have more people in our custody locally. It’s way too early for us to see anything here. Orange County right now is seeing about a 5% increase in custodys, 5% increase in bookings and a 4% increase in transportation.
So it is going to affect us here, but for our leaders here, your county jails have become the defacto step down medical facilities for the state of California. At the same time, we’re the defacto mental health services in the state of California. And we’re also the defacto substance use disorder and treatment facilities in the state of California. We do not have a secure behavioral health facility here in San Benito County. So the San Benito County Jail ends up being our behavioral health facility. Behavioral health, though they want to, is not able to recruit, retain, and keep enough staff to service the jail, the model that they’re going to now, they don’t respond to the jail. So we are left flailing. And it’s not because the sheriff’s office doesn’t want to support the people in our custody. We don’t have the ability to support the people in our custody or the funding to support the people in our custody. And when we do have people that get injured or or die in our custody, it’s gonna be a huge lift for this county to to, to defend themselves against that. So I said I wasn’t gonna go very long and no longer than I expected, but I’ll leave it at that unless there’s anything else, Mr. Chairman, you want me to talk about? Thank you.
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