Sabrina Weddle is still angry and frustrated about the death of her brother, Saxon Rodriguez, inside the San Diego County Central Jail in July 2021.
Now she advocates for further oversight of jail personnel and medical staff and often broadcasts her message, in front of county jails, for all to hear. That's where we talked to her last week.
“We miss our little brother. He should have never died in jail,” Weddle said.
Rodriguez got hold of fentanyl and methamphetamine inside the facility and overdosed.
“To get a phone call that your loved one has died in jail … You know, you think this is a place they're safe. That they're getting help and cared for, and that wasn't the case for Saxon,” Weddle said.
Rodriguez’s death is part of a larger issue with high rates of in-custody deaths in the region. Last year a state audit found dire conditions in San Diego county jails.
Since then, two new bills have become state law. They provide further oversight for jail deaths as well as mental health and medical healthcare.
Paul Parker is executive director of the Citizens' Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB), which investigates jail deaths.
“The sheriff's department has implemented some changes. And so I think that's helpful. But one of the things the sheriff's department is leery to do is to implement some of the policy recommendations that we have made. Specifically about scanning its own employees entering the facilities for drugs,” he said.
It has been an ongoing point of contention for San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez. A 2023 grand jury report also recommended scanning everyone entering the jails.
“Body scanning is not something that's really practical, or we think we can do with our staff. But there's a lot of things we're doing to keep staff and everyone who's coming into our facilities from bringing contraband inside,” Martinez said.
While Martinez said body scanning may not be practical, the sheriff has introduced a wide-ranging 10-year plan to upgrade the region’s seven aging detention centers.
The oldest of those sites is the Vista Detention Center. She said a lot of the systems there are starting to fail.
“A jail built in the 70s wasn't built for the population that were serving today. The cells really aren't structured in a way that's therapeutic or helps people with mental illness or the medical needs that we need,” Martinez said.
North County Equity and Justice Coalition's Yusef Miller agrees the facilities need upgrades, but said the issues run deeper than the structures themselves.
“The families that we represent, that have lost loved ones in custody, it wasn't because the walls were cracked, it wasn't because the toilets were broken. It was because they were neglected,” Miller said.
The county is facing multiple lawsuits over conditions in the jails and in-custody deaths.
Weddle is not involved in a lawsuit, but says there were shortcomings by the department in her brother’s death.
“It's already been determined by CLERB that the sheriffs were responsible for not keeping those drugs out of jails. It was also determined by the medical examiner that the deputies checked him at 65 minutes, when they're supposed to check him every 60 minutes,” Weddle said.
Martinez said her department is working to reduce jail deaths in San Diego County, and said that goal will help to inform the modernization projects.
“We look at every death that occurs in our custody and we methodically examine ‘is there something we could have done differently?'” the sheriff said.
CLERB’s Parker said jail deaths are down so far this year compared to last.
He attributed some of the improvement to last year's policy change that distributes the anti-overdose drug, Naloxone, to all inmates. He also said medical and mental health screening is more robust than before.
Still, Parker said more needs to be done. CLERB is requesting jurisdiction over employees who provide medical service in the jails.
“We can't look at any complaints about anybody saying, ‘well, this nurse didn't do this, or this nurse gave me the wrong medication.’ There’s nothing we can do,” Parker said. “We want that authority so we get the full picture of the type of care being provided and the deaths that are occurring.”
Miller agrees that more staff oversight is needed in order to create a safe environment.
“We need accountability and transparency to what's actually going on,” he said.
The activist added that improved medical care and better mental health treatment in the jails should be prioritized in the modernization plan.
“I hope that leads to a drop in loss of life in custody," Miller said. "Most of these people dying are pre-trial, which means they died innocently in jail because they've never had their day in court.”
Parker said it's not possible to prevent all deaths as some people die of natural causes, but San Diego jails are still a ways off from that point.
The state audit and a 2022 CLERB report found the mortality rate for San Diego County is the highest among California’s largest county jail systems.
“The big elephant in the room is the drugs that are getting into the detention facilities. Fentanyl- and methamphetamine-related deaths have skyrocketed over the years,” Parker said.
Meanwhile, Weddle is still looking for justice for her brother and the many others like him who suffered a similar fate.
She said her brother died while waiting to go to court, just four days after his arrest.
“Justice would be them taking proper care of the inmates in there. They're inmates, but they're humans,” she said.
Martinez said year one of the plan has already started, and the sheriff’s department will spend the next few years identifying funding.
She hopes construction on the county’s various jail facilities can begin in four to five years.
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