“Even though the oversight body was Miley’s idea as far back as 2020, he didn’t vote for it on Tuesday because he didn’t think it was necessary for the civilian body to have its own, independent counsel – a sticking point for many, including the ACLU.”
~Anonymous – Attended Alameda County Board of Supervisor’s Meeting on 9/17/2024
On Tuesday, September 17, 2024, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted to ratify an Ordinance that would create a civilian oversight committee to oversee and possibly investigate the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO). I want to emphasize that the hearing that took place last Tuesday was the first reading of this Ordinance which would officially implement state law Assembly Bill 1185.
The controversy revolving around whether or not to appoint independent counsel for the ACSO Oversight Commission (“Oversight Board”) is referred to in the July 5, 2024 Board of Supervisors’ Public Protection Committee letter dated July 5, 2024 (second reading 7/23/2024 – top of page), page 5, Section 2.135.030 –Subpoena Power; Confidential Information, which currently reads as follows:
“The Oversight Board will work with county legal counsel to establish a process that enables the sharing of confidential information with appropriate county officials and entities in accordance with applicable law, when the Oversight Board determines that there is a need to share such information. Except as otherwise required by law, neither the Oversight Board nor any of its members shall disclose to any non-county entity or individual any confidential or privileged information.”
Nate Miley, President of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors is not supportive of independent counsel for the OIG and the Oversight Board. Many community activists and legal observers disagree with Mr. Miley. Apparently, Supervisor Miley believes that County Counsel, Donna Ziegler and her staff would be able to be objective, non-bias, and represent the interests of the community/county and the Oversight Committee members.
The oversight commission will only operate in an advisory capacity and will have no prosecutorial or disciplinary authority. Why is Nate Miley rejecting the suggestion of independent counsel? WHAT KIND OF OVERSIGHT BODY IS THIS??”
THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS SPEAK OUT
Our independent nonprofit news organization found some of the public comments noteworthy and some that are very uninformed:
Carlos Archuleta Castro Valley stated “The reason we need a civilian oversight board is obviously because Internal Affairs has not worked. And we learned that whenever you have not just cops but friends or families of the cops there’s a conflict of interest that does not allow it to work. And what we’re afraid of in the community is that the Board is going to give halos to people. So we want to make sure that this Board is conflict of interest free.”
Cathy Rodriguez, with the Sheriff Oversight Coalition stated this: “They reached out to me once they found out that I was in Santa Rita County Jail. And there needs to be oversight due to the fact…not only in the jails because if one person dies in the jail, that’s one too many. I was a counselor at Alameda County Juvenile Hall and one of my kids was Mario Martinez and he died in Santa Rita Jail. He had an asthma attack and the sheriffs just watched him die. My son was incarcerated at the time and he watched how the sheriffs just watched him die….I was appalled by what was going on. We do need oversight. We need oversight for the sheriffs that are even out on the streets making false police reports….I have a police report here that has false information on it and had me incarcerated and the person who did it was Donna Ziegler and her name is on this and then I was charged…I was charged with domestic violence because there was a protest in front of Alameda County’s Board of Supervisors’ Office. And the reason why they did that is so that I could lose my job because it has to do…because the domestic violence charge has to do with a child and there was no child. These are the kinds of things that do need to be investigated because there are people who are getting incarcerated on false charges and there’s corruption going on from the head of Alameda County all the way down. Board of Supervisors you guys really need to look into this….I’ve never been in Santa Rita County Jail but I know what it looks like now and it’s very disgusting. Once you go into receiving, oh it’s clean, but once you go into the second part, oh that place is so dang nasty and dirty…”
Chuck Moore of Castro Valley and Castro Valley MAC stated, “…opposed to this oversight for a variety of reasons (1) it shows a bias to the sheriff’s department…but you’re going to allow ex-criminals to participate on the board…the jail has more oversight than any other area of the county…we have a grand jury that can overlook it…there’s so much oversight at the jail it’s unbelievable.
OUR RESPONSE TO MR. MOORE: The reason for so much oversight of ACSO is that there are so many human and civil rights violations taking place inside the jail. The Alameda County Civil Grand Jury over the years has issued numerous recommendations but because the Grand Jury lacks the power of enforcement, it continues to be a useless tool, and the Oversight Board is headed down the same exact road.
Mickey Duxbury, ICJJ and Working Group of Stop Deaths and Harm in Santa Rita, stated “We were appalled to read about the murder of Yuri Brand in Santa Rita Jail. The deputies placed a detainee with a lengthy history of violence and sexual assault in Mr. Brand’s cell. He was subjected with deadly and lengthy attack a mere 45 minutes after that person entered his cell….The Board ratified the Babu settlement to improve treatment of those with serious mental illness but it seems that the Sheriff’s Department has not taken crucial steps that could have prevented this totally avoidable and unnecessary death. Given all the legally mandated intervention that this county sheriff’s department had by county, state, and federal agencies, how could someone with a history of violence and sexual assault been placed in a cell with a seriously mentally ill detainee? How could it be that there wasn’t increased and mandated monitoring that is called for by these legal mandates? These are not rhetorical questions. We want answers and we think the Board should want answers…Yuri Brand’s death must be heard as an urgent call to the Board. All the mandates that are in place to make a death like this not happen are not working…The Board needs to care about Yuri Brand’s suffocation with a mattress at the hands of a violent person at the jail that you are ultimately responsible for. This isn’t about blame, it’s about accountability.”
OUR RESPONSE TO MS. DUXBURY: Thank you for getting straight to the point and speaking out for Yuri Brand…and so many others that have died at the hands of some ACSO deputies or at the hands of their medical contractor, Wellpath.
Jackie Cota made these statements (approximately at 2:38:00 into the video), “I’m sorry, but these Interfaith people who are speaking, you know, God love ‘em, they have care for prisoners, but guess what, criminals kill criminals. It happens. Our sheriff’s department is professional and they work under the constraints of the law and they keep our prisoners…criminals safe as much as they can. You cannot prevent someone who has it in them to kill someone from killing them if they are absolutely adamant….”
OUR RESPONSE TO MS. COTA: Your words are shameful and clearly without knowledge. Without lowering our further response to your level of degradation to those detainees and incarcerated individuals, your comments are clearly due to your lack of knowledge of how jails and prisons operate and what goes on inside them. Just because an individual is arrested and brought to jail does not make him or her a “criminal.” Have you heard of the phrase, “innocent until proven guilty?” Well, until the arrestee has been brought before a court and a jury of their peers…THEY ARE CONSIDERED INNOCENT and should never be characterized or classified as “criminals.” There is a process called “arraignment,” and the court decides during that hearing whether or not a person should be charged with the crime(s) levied against him or her by an arresting officer. I don’t believe the law has changed to allow ANY law enforcement agent to sentence someone death through their personal inactions/actions. Any arrestee, detainee, or incarcerated person subjected to death by way of improper classification, ignoring their medical needs, by excessive force, or other action/inaction is inexcusable. This is why we have a court system. But….GUESS WHAT? No one is being put to death in California currently. So why is there no accountability for those law enforcement agents who through their position as a deputy or police officer allowed to cause the death of an individual? Their position as law enforcement is to protect and keep them safe.
WHY COUNTY COUNSEL ZIEGLER SHOULD NOT BE INVOLVED WITH THE OVERSIGHT BOARD
I can offer some fact-based historical examples of why County Counsel Donna Ziegler should not have anything to do with the oversight of ACSO.
- The botched investigation into the death of Sophia Mason. Note: This was Miley and Ziegler at their worst and the Bay Area activist community must not forget about Sophia. Sophia, an 8-year-old little Black girl, was found dead, her body decomposing in the bathtub on March 11, 2022 at a home in Merced, California. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors, lead by Nate Miley and County Counsel, Donna Ziegler, promised to investigate the parties responsible at the Alameda County Department of Children and Family Services. To date, we cannot find any mention of any investigative findings in this case.
- The murders of Maria and Benison Tran by former Alameda County Sheriff Deputy Devin Williams. Two years ago this month, former ACSO Deputy Devin Williams finished a double shift at Santa Rita Jail and allegedly murdered his estranged girlfriend, Maria Tran and her husband, Benison in front of their 14-year-old son. The murders occurred at the Trans’ home in Dublin, California. It has been alleged that Deputy Williams used his service weapon to commit the murders. As a result of the Williams’ case, the public soon learned that former Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern illegally hired deputies who had not scored satisfactorily on their initial psychological assessments prior to employment. Williams was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off and was allowed to assume the position of an ACSO deputy.
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
Taxpayers expect public servants like Supervisor Miley and County Counsel Ziegler to make smart decisions when spending their hard-earned dollars. Here are a couple more reasons why my confidence in the Alameda County Counsel’s office is low:
- The ill-conceived $81 million dollar Santa Rita Jail expansion project. Last year the ACSO under the leadership of Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez attempted to obtain a grand total of $81 million dollars from the State of California and the County of Alameda in order to establish what was said to be a mental health treatment unit for prisoners at Santa Rita Jail. Upon closer inspection by community activists, legal observers, and journalists such as myself, we discovered some serious problems with the project.
- After studying the Babu Consent Decree and reports created by the so-called “expert monitors,” I discovered that Santa Rita Jail was grossly understaffed in the realm of qualified mental health employees;
- A large portion of the expansion project was going to be devoted to office space for employees yet to be hired; and
- A constant question kept presenting itself: If ACSO was having trouble staffing the existing Santa Rita Jail facility, why should taxpayers be forced to pay for an $81 million expansion project of the jail? Furthermore, why wasn’t Nate Miley, Donna Ziegler, and County Administrator, Susan Muranishi not pushing back on the proposal?
There is a troubling nexus between the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and ACSO when it comes to the misallocation of taxpayer dollars. Oversight is most certainly needed.
- What happened to the $10 million dollars allocated for private/confidential treatment spaces for those suffering with mental illness at SRJ?
Last year with the help of John Lindsay-Poland of the American Friends Service Committee and colleague/partner, Gale Washington, our independent nonprofit news organization came across documentation that awarded a $10 million contract for the construction of the confidential treatment spaces at SRJ. Below is a copy of the July 5, 2022 and December 4, 2023 letters from Kimberly Gasaway, Interim Director of the County of Alameda General Services Agency regarding the construction of these confidential treatment booths. The GSA was given the responsibility of managing this contract.
Through our research of the civil grand jury report, we discovered that the GSA has a horrible track record of managing special projects at Santa Rita Jail and ensuring their successful completion. These treatment spaces were part of the Babu Consent Decree. We decided to contact the lawyers for the Babu plaintiffs at the San Francisco based law firm of Rosen, Bien, Galvan & Grunfeld, LLP. In our email, we inquired about the status of the treatment space project and there has been no response from the firm.
At the end of the day, the community is being ripped off. Independent counsel that is not beholden to Nate Miley, Donna Ziegler, or the ACSO is desperately needed on the Oversight Board.
I believe I’ve made my point. For the past two years, my plea for oversight of the ACSO has been directly related to the loss of life at SRJ. However, these lost lives have been extremely costly to taxpayers.
Here’s a quote from a 2021 article in the Davis Vanguard entitled: “Guest Commentary: Another Suicide at Santa Rita Jail Sparks Cry for Sheriff Oversight in Alameda County
“Alameda County has good reason to hide the number of in-custody deaths. A report by television station KTVU shows taxpayers paid more in settlements and jury awards for wrongful deaths and excessive force, $27.6 million since 2015 through the end of last year, than any other police agency in the Bay Area. The County paid out nearly five times as much as San Francisco ($2.6 million) and Oakland ($3 million) combined in the same period.”
In our opinion, these figures are unacceptable, unconscionable, and fiscally irresponsible. Once our readers begin to study the data, they will comprehend the enormity of the problem and the need for oversight of ACSO. One may ask “Where is the Department of Justice in all of this?” or “Will the new D.A. of Alameda County that replaces Pamela Price have our backs?” Sadley, the answer to this question is “NO!” Pamela Price represents the end of the progressive prosecutor era in the Bay Area. We should’ve cherished Pamela Price while we had her. I admire Pamela because she gave her best, but in the snake pit that is Bay Area politics sometimes your best just ain’t good enough. Could that mean that the fight for justice is over? Of course not; the fight has just begun.
Malik Washington is a freelance journalist and Director at Destination: Freedom and Destination Freedom Media Group.
