Cristian Esquivel, who is deaf and struggles to read and write, has been locked up in San Diego County jail since late November.
When he was taken to the jail’s dentist for tooth pain, sheriff’s deputies did not provide a sign language interpreter — who would have told him that the only option was to pull the tooth.
“I did not understand what the dentist, the jail staff or anyone else was saying,” Esquivel later told an attorney through an interpreter, according to a new filing in a lawsuit against San Diego County and its Sheriff’s Department.
“I did not understand what was on the papers that they gave me,” he said. “I did not know that they were going to take out my tooth before they did it.”
Even worse, when Esquivel was contemplating suicide — and actively seeking help from deputies — the jail staff continued to use written notes to figure out what he was trying to say, according to the court filing. It didn’t work.
“Mr. Esquivel resorted to gestures in an attempt to communicate his thoughts of ‘hanging’ himself, yet no (interpreter) was provided,” it says.
Esquivel is one of 15 disabled plaintiffs who recently submitted sworn testimony as part of the case, which seeks to require the Sheriff’s Department to do more to protect the medical and mental health of people in custody.
The motion seeks a preliminary injunction to force Sheriff Kelly Martinez to upgrade county detention facilities so they comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“Some things could be done at no cost at all, like changing their sign language policy,” said plaintiffs’ lawyer Gay Grunfeld. “We’re asking them to come up with a plan that provides safe, accessible housing.”
The Sheriff’s Department could use video technology, for example, to provide real-time sign language services to people in custody who need interpreters, Grunfeld suggested.
Without such innovations — or a judge’s order — people detained in San Diego County jails will continue to suffer, the lawsuit alleges.
“Plaintiffs and incarcerated people with disabilities have suffered loss of dignity and physical injuries as a result of defendants’ policies and practices, and they are at ongoing risk of future harm,” plaintiffs’ attorney wrote.
The broader lawsuit also seeks to require the sheriff to implement a host of stricter practices and procedures aimed at preventing deaths and improving the level of care for mentally ill and otherwise disabled men and women in department custody.
Allegations against the Sheriff’s Department did not come out of the blue.
More than 225 people have died in San Diego County jails since 2006, and the Board of Supervisors has continued to approve multimillion-dollar payouts for deputies’ and other jail staff ’ negligence and misconduct.
The Sheriff’s Department and other county officials declined to comment on the injunction request last week, citing the ongoing litigation.
However, lawyers defending the county denied the accusations in court papers. They argued that the case should be dismissed, but that request was denied.
The 32-page motion was filed in San Diego federal court last week. A hearing on it is scheduled for early this summer.
According to the filing, none of the county’s jails complies with the ADA.
Nierobi Kuykendall, for example, is being held in a non-compliant cell, the plaintiffs’ attorneys argue, on charges of indecent exposure after being arrested by San Diego police last June.
In a declaration, Kuykendall said he relies on a wheelchair due to a back injury. In the downtown jail, he “was almost always assigned to a housing unit with triple bunk beds” that were difficult to access, he wrote.
The conditions left him with only two options, he wrote — sleeping on the floor, or trying to climb up to the third bunk.
In February, he was told he was being transferred to the George Bailey Detention Facility in Otay Mesa, the county’s largest jail — and that he could not bring his wheelchair. He was given no explanation.
“I asked if I could speak to a sergeant to explain that I need my wheelchair … but no one came to talk to me,” Kuykendall wrote. “Instead, six deputies came up and forcibly removed me from my wheelchair, lifting me out of it, and put me in a vehicle to send me to George Bailey. I have not had a wheelchair since that day.”
Sheriff’s records accessed online last week showed that Kuykendall was back at Central Jail.
Matthew Ybarra is another wheelchair who served time in a San Diego County jail. He said in his own declaration that deputies regularly placed him into cells with no clear direction on which of three bunks to sleep in — or any way to climb into one.
“I have seen a deputy wheel a mobility-impaired person into the unit and leave them,” said Ybarra, who is no longer in custody. “The lack of a set bunk assignment from the Sheriff’s Department creates lots of arguments, which sometimes escalate into fights.”
The lack of access for people with physical disabilities extends to showers and toilets, the plaintiffs said.
“As a result, people with mobility disabilities are at constant risk of falling and frequently sustain injuries,” the motion said. “People fall when trying to climb in or out of bed, trying to lower or lift themselves from the toilet and trying to shower.”
A sheriff’s captain in charge of jails told plaintiffs’ attorneys that more than 1,000 people a year who are booked into custody require wheelchairs, canes or crutches or have some other recognized mobility disability.
Sheriff’s Capt. Kyle Bibel acknowledged in pre-trial questioning that the department lacks the proper infrastructure to house mobility-challenged men and women in ADA-compliant cells, the new court filing states.
“Capt. Bibel testified that the jail has had too many people who use wheelchairs for all of them to be housed in cells identified as ‘accessible’,” Grunfeld wrote in a sworn declaration.
In court papers, county lawyers said the Sheriff’s Department is working to improve its compliance with the federal disability-rights law.
They point to Rock Mountain, the former private detention facility in Otay Mesa now being renovated to accommodate people incarcerated in the county’s jails. The “goal is to house all wheelchair s at Rock Mountain once the facility opens,” the county wrote in an earlier court filing.
But plaintiffs’ lawyers say Rock Mountain is not the solution for people with mobility disabilities who are currently being harmed in jail. They say renovations have dragged on for years, and even when completed, that jail will not meet ADA standards.
“Even if Rock Mountain were to eventually become an ADA-compliant booking facility with sufficient accessible housing, the court should not trust defendants’ representations regarding when it will open,” the injunction request says.
The judge said he was not convinced the plaintiffs submitted a winning argument on that claim but invited them to re-file the allegation in an amended complaint.
The plaintiffs say the timeline for completing the Rock Mountain renovations has been a moving target for years.
“If [Rock Mountain] is their ADA solution, they have a lot of work to do,” said Grunfeld, who toured the facility earlier this year.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2020 by Darryl Dunsmore, an incarcerated man who was representing himself in the litigation. He was later ed by the San Francisco firm Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld, the San Diego office of DLA Piper and Berkeley lawyer Aaron J. Fischer, and more plaintiffs were added.
In all, the latest legal complaint puts forth nine separate claims — including alleging that the county has failed to provide adequate health care and reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities and to ensure the safety and security of people in custody.
The county sought to dismiss the claims ahead of trial under numerous legal theories.
In a 15-page ruling Thursday, Judge Anthony Battaglia declined the majority of the county’s dismissal requests. But he agreed to throw out the plaintiffs’ claim that the Sheriff’s Department violated state and federal law by over-incarcerating people with disabilities.
The judge said he was not convinced the plaintiffs had submitted a winning argument on that claim but invited them to re-file the allegation in an amended complaint.
He directed any additional filings to be submitted no later than May 22. A hearing on the request for a preliminary injunction is scheduled for June 29.
