California requires the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office to report deaths of individuals in its custody.
That number doesn’t have to include deaths as a result of jail incidents if the person is no longer in custody when they die.
The death of 46-year-old Bobby Ray Patton, reported Monday, brought their number for this year to nine.
Advocates — including the director of Saving Lives in Custody California, Yusef Miller — argue that number should be 10.
Eric Van Tine was allegedly beaten unconscious by his cellmate last December.
The San Diego Union Tribune reported their cell was designed for two people, but held three.
The sheriff’s office released him for medical treatment. He spent months in a coma, and later died.
“Mr. Van Tine passed away while in Missouri,” the sheriff’s office’s media relations director Kimberly King said in a statement. “The Medical Examiner/Coroner of the affected county has not made a determination yet as to his cause of death.”
King said they’re still investigating his death locally and can’t comment.
They didn’t include Van Tine in their reported deaths for this year.
“With Mr. Tine, he goes unreported and we didn’t know unless we already had an inside scoop,” Miller said. “Now how many other people that we didn’t have an inside scoop died this year? We have no idea.”
The sheriff’s office doesn’t legally have to report deaths like Van Tine’s, but Miller says they should.
“So we can have a true picture of what we’re facing,” he said. “And only with this kind of transparency will we have a real solution that we can develop.”
The number of reported deaths is trending down since 2022.
Sheriff Kelly Martinez said in a statement earlier this month the decline is due to policy changes her office made. Those changes include stricter intake screening that extends to her own staff, routine wellness checks and expanded treatment for people experiencing drug withdrawals.
Miller said she shouldn’t take credit for the decline in jail deaths.
He argued most of those changes were mandated by the state, and numbers have been going down across southern California.
He believes the decrease should be attributed to public and media pressure.
The sheriff’s office did not give KPBS a response to this claim.
