In abstract
A coalition of civil rights teams says the workplaces of sheriff and coroner must be separate, so there may be impartiality when investigating in-custody or jail deaths.
After her son, Richard Matus, died in a Riverside jail cell in 2022, Lisa Matus grew to become satisfied the county’s system for dealing with demise investigations wanted an overhaul.
Richard Matus, who was 29, had been in jail 4 years and had felt sick and dizzy. He was prescribed treatment for hypertension and ldl cholesterol. When his signs worsened he was not despatched to the hospital. He died on the final day Lisa Matus spoke with him, she stated.
An post-mortem listed his reason for demise as “fentanyl and ethanol toxicity,” however the post-mortem additionally discovered extreme coronary artery blockage and blunt trauma and lacerations.
Matus’ household sued the Riverside County Sheriff’s Division and Sheriff Chad Bianco in 2023, however Lisa Matus believes it’s essential to vary the best way demise investigations work in Riverside County.
She’s a part of the “Riverside Sheriff Accountability Coalition” which is asking for separating the sheriff and coroner’s workplace, for making a group oversight board to overview complaints towards the division and for an inspector basic to research them.
“When there’s grievances filed or deaths that occur, if there’s a complaint, there should be an oversight board to look over that,” she instructed CalMatters.
In a press release to CalMatters, Bianco stated their complaints are “fabrications or misleading at best.”
The coalition consists of people and civil rights teams, together with the ACLU of Southern California, the League of United Latin American Residents, the League of Girls Voters of Riverside and a gaggle known as Beginning Over Robust, which promotes legal justice reform.
They argue that it’s essential to separate regulation enforcement and demise investigations in Riverside County, the place the sheriff’s division operates almost 4,000 jail beds and has seen a spike in inmate deaths. There have been 226 in-custody deaths from 2011 to 2022in response to a report by the legal justice nonprofit Care First California.
“We advocate separating the role of coroner, public administrator and sheriff because of problems we’ve seen about how they’re handled by the sheriff, but also because it has an inherent conflict of interest,” stated Chani Beeman, a League of Girls Voters member concerned within the coalition. “Here you have a sheriff who oversees the operations and when that death happens, he’s also the one signing off on that death.”
Bianco, who’s working for governor in 2026, has disputed claims that his division is chargeable for the deathsblaming them on fentanyl use or suicide.
A yr in the past the Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted to not break up the workplaceshowever the coalition is urging them to rethink.
Bianco disparaged the teams’ repeated makes an attempt to separate the departments, saying”This anti-law enforcement, pro-criminal, activist group merely can’t take no for a solution.”
He stated the board of supervisors agreed that “separating the two offices would be detrimental to the quality of service our residents expect and would not be in the best interest of the County of Riverside.”
Some massive counties, together with Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco, have health worker workplaces which might be separate from their sheriff’s departments. A 2022 invoice by then-Assemblymember Akilah Weber Piersona San Diego Democrat, and Assemblymember Mike Gipsona Gardena Democrat, would have required all counties to separate the duties of sheriff and coroner, nevertheless it failed within the state Senate.
In most California counties, the workplaces of sheriff and coroner are mixed, leaving the sheriff chargeable for overseeing unexplained or violent deaths. These duties embrace conducting autopsies to find out reason for demise, transporting our bodies, verifying the reason for demise and signing demise certificates.
Critics say the sheriff can’t carry out that job objectively when a demise happens in custody or after an officer-involved capturing.
“Accountability is integral to any system, and most assuredly for a large and powerful department that deals with matters of life and death,” the coalition said.
A 2019 California regulation authorizes counties to set up sheriff oversight boards and inspectors basic. Matus believes that if Riverside County had taken these measures, her son could be alive in the present day.
“If the county would have implemented that, I know for sure that all of these deaths wouldn’t have taken place,” she stated.
