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What does the San Diego County Sheriff do?
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department provides law enforcement for all unincorporated parts of the county and the cities of Del Mar, Encinitas, Imperial Beach, Lemon Grove, Poway, San Marcos, Santee, Solana Beach and Vista.
The Sheriff's Department also runs seven local jails, including the San Diego Central Jail, Vista Detention Facility and Las Colinas, and provides security to San Diego County's seven courts.
The sheriff runs the department of more than 4,700 employees spread between jails, courts, a crime lab and 21 patrol stations and substations. The sheriff is the only elected law enforcement official in the county — police chiefs are appointed by their cities’ mayors.
What issues is the sheriff's department facing?
Jail deaths
The Sheriff’s Department is facing an epidemic of deaths in local jails. An audit found San Diego jails had a higher death rate than any of the other large counties in the state between 2006 and 2020.
So far this year, 18 people have died in local jails. Last year, there were also 18 deaths, the highest number on record. But racial justice advocates don't agree with that count. The Sheriff's Department's count does not include a man who died after being granted compassionate release to a local hospital.
The Sheriff’s Department plans to spend more than $11 million to fill vacancies in jail positions, plus $200,000 on body scanning technology to stop illegal drugs from being brought into jails.
Staff retention
The department is losing more deputies than its hiring, according to its own data.
In the last fiscal year, the Sheriff’s Department lost 340 sworn employees and hired 230. According to the data, 186 employees retired, 70 left for personal reasons, and 40 left for other jobs.
In fiscal year 2020, the department lost a net 70 employees.
Sexual harassment lawsuit
In August, two former sheriff’s deputies filed a lawsuit against the department alleging they were repeatedly sexually harassed by their supervisor, Sgt. Shawn Silva, and that the department did little to stop the harassment.
An investigation substantiated the claims against Silva, but he retired with a full pension before facing discipline. According to the former deputies’ complaint, the Sheriff’s Department has a pattern of leadership that fails to intervene when harassment occurs, while allowing the accused harasser to retire with a full pension.
A spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Department said in a statement that the agency holds “all of our employees to the highest standards and requires our staff to treat everyone with dignity, respect, and compassion.” The statement described the department’s polices as strict and noted that all employees are required to attend sexual harassment training.
Law Enforcement Reform
Since the summer of 2020, local law enforcement agencies have been pressured to make numerous reforms, including enacting de-escalation policies and training, banning chokeholds and reducing times when officers use force or shoot suspects.
The Sheriff’s Department has made some changes, including banning the use of carotid restraints and setting up its own de-escalation training. The department reported three times where deputies shot someone in 2021, down from five in 2018 and 11 in 2017.
Who are the candidates?
John Hemmerling
- Former head criminal prosecutor, San Diego City Attorney's Office
- Registered Republican (switched to no party preference in December 2019, then back to Republican in December 2021)
- Former Marine Corps officer and San Diego police officer
Hemmerling on the issues
Jail Deaths
“The senseless deaths are unacceptable, we can do better starting on day one,” Hemmerling said. “It's important, we have to implement policies and procedures that are going to make a difference. We can't just pay lip service and see if it works.”
He said the department needs to intervene early during booking, but also “the best way to keep them from dying in jail is to not put them in jail.
“We need to find ways that we can do better to ensure that these individuals get the help they need before they come into the jail,” he said. “Deputies’ jobs isn't to provide mental health and medical health and psychiatric care. They're trying to do these multiple things and then these individuals, who should be treated and should be looked at beforehand, these are things that we need a partnership with the county to do a much better job because some of these individuals shouldn't even be there to start with.”
Staff Retention and Morale
Hemmerling said the current department should be working to reduce violence in the communities so as to not exhaust and burn out staff.
“Deputies need to have confidence and that there's a light at the end of this dark tunnel,” he said. “As a Marine commander in combat and as a chief criminal prosecutor, I had to make hard choices to institute change and I did. We need to have somebody that's decisive. There have been admirable efforts by CLERB, by the board of supervisors, labor unions, advocacy groups that have all tried to jump in and fill this void of leadership to make things work.”
Sexual Harassment Lawsuit
“A lot of these things have been going on whenever my opponent was the acting sheriff and currently as the undersheriff who runs all of the operations,” he said. “There are a lot of these things that are going on right under the nose of the current leadership and it requires leadership to make change.”
Law Enforcement Reform
Hemmerling said the movement “has good points” and that he has worked on diversion programs in his past roles.
“I instituted the prosecution and law enforcement assisted diversion services between San Diego City Attorney's Office and the San Diego Police Department called PLEADS as a voluntary program where pre-booking individuals on the influence of drugs, they could avoid prosecution, they could avoid going to jail by agreeing to sit down with a warm hand off in front of somebody that would discuss drug treatment and the possibilities of getting out of this cycle of the influence of drugs and potentially going to jail, because that's not the way to solve this problem.”
Hemmerling was a San Diego police officer and in 1998 shot a Black man in City Heights during a robbery. The man pointed a gun at officers, but the gun turned out to not be loaded. Hemmerling and the other officers involved were not charged or disciplined for the shooting.
“It also demonstrates the fact that I served on the front lines of some of the most dangerous neighborhoods of the time, where dangerous and violent encounters were unfortunately common,” Hemmerling said. “However, through police and community efforts, City Heights has finally turned the corner from its high crime rate patterns of the 1990s.”
“In that incident, I was actually the first officer on scene, I was in the middle of setting up a tactical response, when the suspect exited the store with the stolen jewelry and ran down the sidewalk towards me,” he added. “What mostly lives with me is the dichotomy between the daily stresses of our law enforcement officers. Just minutes before, I had been caring for a very small child that had been left alone, who I had dropped off at Polinsky Children's Center. The daily challenges and split-second decisions that our officers face are vivid memories I carry with me to this day.”
What He Does For Fun
“Right now, my free time is doing things like this, talking about this office. I'm sure that we can provide great public safety to everybody out there and find ways that we can do it.”
Kelly Anne Martinez
- Undersheriff, San Diego Sheriff’s Department
- Registered Democrat (was registered as Republican until November 2020)
- Worked in the Sheriff’s Department since 1985
Martinez on the issues
Jail Deaths
“We need to really overhaul the way that we incarcerate people in San Diego County and the way that we look at incarceration,” Martinez said. “We can do a lot to improve people's health, improve their mental health, improve their lives, give them opportunities and support while they're in custody, so that when they go back to our communities, they have opportunities they didn't have before, and that really goes back to public safety as well.”
Martinez said the county needs to improve recidivism rates and hire more staff for the jails.
“Reducing the contraband that's coming into our facilities is a huge priority,” she said. “We're adding more and better body scanners to our facilities that will help. We have drug detection dogs. We have a dedicated investigative team that's working on this. Since I've been the undersheriff, we've centralized our mail processing so that all of the mail comes to one location. We can screen it better, but we still have people who are bringing drugs in the jail.”
Staff Retention and Morale
“During my time as undersheriff, we have conducted a top-to-bottom review of our hiring process,” Martinez said. “We have a comprehensive advertising strategy and I'm happy to say that we are currently seeing about 100 applicants per week for jobs at the Sheriff's Department.”
She said professional staff recently received pay raises and the department now has a $20,000 lateral hiring bonus and a $15,000 relocation bonus for sworn staff. She said the academies this fall are also full.
“Increased staffing will remove the need for our current employees to fill vacant shifts on overtime, and that will improve working conditions and support our employees,” she said. “The workforce shortages that every industry has been facing are turning around and we are projecting that we will be fully staffed in the next two years.”
Sexual Harassment Lawsuit
“I think we need to empower people to come forward when they are being harassed or when something's going on at work that they're not comfortable with,” Martinez said.
She said the sexual harassment case was handled correctly and that the department needs to “act immediately and do those investigations and do them thoroughly so that everybody is satisfied that the conduct like that is not tolerated.”
When asked whether anything could be done to prevent people accused of harassment from resigning before facing discipline, Martinez said it couldn’t be changed by the Sheriff’s Department, but would have to be changed by state legislation.
On whether she’d support that legislation, Martinez said “I'd have to see how it was written and ensure that it protected employees, but at the same time also protected the workplace and ensured that behavior was not being tolerated in the workplace.”
Law Enforcement Reform
“I think there's a lot of good points,” Martinez said. “The best point is the conversation with our communities. We've become much more focused on what our community needs and less about what we think the community needs.”
Martinez said the department has already been emphasizing de-escalation and working with Mobile Crisis Response Teams.
“There's been a lot of really great stuff that's come out of all of this,” she said.
What She Does For Fun
“My husband and I love to go boating,” she said. “We have a boat, and we take that out when we can. So I have one son who also grew up here in San Diego. So I'm very committed and passionate about this community, and I just love being in San Diego.”
Where do they stand on issues that matter to you?
Still don't know who you're voting for?
Scroll down to play an interactive quiz that will help you find out where local candidates stand on issues that matter to you. Answer four multiple choice questions covering topics from funding law enforcement to rent payments.
Note: Candidate John Hemmerling did not respond to KPBS' questionnaire.
Quiz: Where do local candidates stand on issues that matter to you?
Important
🗳️ Vote-by-mail ballots begin to be sent to all active California registered voters starting Oct. 8. The last day to register to vote is Oct. 24. (If voters miss this deadline they can still register and vote in person at any vote center location.) Nov. 8 is the statewide election day but many vote centers are open prior to election day. Vote center and drop-off locations close at 8 p.m. on election day.
