The San Diego Union-Tribune and other news organizations have regularly reported on deaths in San Diego County jails.
After a death earlier this year, reporters Jeff McDonald and Kelly Davis discussed the trend and began researching historic data. Their findings: San Diego County has for years had the highest jail-mortality rate among the six largest California counties.
Data analysis by Lauryn Schroeder showed the number of deaths increased noticeably since 2009, the year Bill Gore was appointed sheriff, compared to the previous decade.
The reporters tallied the cost of these deaths in taxpayer dollars for each year over two decades to find San Diego County paid almost $8 million in awards and legal settlements over the past 10 years, four times what it spent in the prior decade.
They reviewed thousands of pages of court and other records, including internal Sheriff’s Department communications available through the legal process known as discovery. Documents show department officials were aware of deficiencies in medical and mental-health practices, even though they told the public that department practices were safe.
The reporters interviewed dozens of plaintiffs’ lawyers, surviving family and national experts on best practices. They researched in-custody deaths in other jurisdictions to compare San Diego County to other California counties.
They read hundreds of reports from the Medical Examiner’s Office, the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board and other sources to find out what investigators outside the Sheriff’s Department had to say about jail deaths.
They filed more than a dozen California Public Records Act requests for documents and data retained by the Sheriff’s Department and other government agencies.
The reporters made multiple requests to interview Gore, and the sheriff declined. Five of his command and legal staff met with the reporters to review the findings. The department provided written responses to questions submitted in advance.
McDonald is a Union-Tribune staff writer. Davis is a San Diego freelance journalist who specializes in criminal-justice issues. Schroeder is a Union-Tribune writer and data journalist. Staff writer Lyndsay Winkley contributed to the data analysis.
