California’s legal professional normal has opened a civil rights investigation of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Workplace amid allegations of extreme power towards detainees and inhumane situations in county jail amenities.
“All of us profit when there’s motion to make sure the integrity of policing in our state,” Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta mentioned. “It’s time for us to shine a lightweight on the Riverside County Sheriff’s Workplace and its practices.”
Bonta mentioned he was troubled by studies that sheriff’s deputies had been utilizing extreme power and by Riverside County’s excessive charge of deaths in custody. “Too many households and communities in Riverside are hurting and on the lookout for solutions,” he mentioned.
State investigators will attempt to decide whether or not the Sheriff’s Workplace has proven a sample or follow of unconstitutional or illegal policing. The legal professional normal’s workplace has been conducting the same investigation of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division, the biggest within the nation, since January 2021.
Final 12 months, Bonta mentioned, Riverside County jails “reported their deadliest 12 months in twenty years.”
“That’s only one information level and it’s unacceptable,” he informed reporters at his workplace in downtown Los Angeles.
A spokesperson for Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The ACLU of Southern California and a coalition of group organizations urged Bonta in a September 2021 letter to research the Riverside County Sheriff’s Workplace for alleged “racist policing practices, rampant patrol and jail deaths” and different suspected misconduct.
“We’ve got misplaced family members to unbelievable violence by the hands of Sheriff’s deputies and have seen our group members endure from undeniably inhumane jail situations,” they wrote.
The teams pointed within the letter to what they claimed was a tradition of “secrecy, violence, and disrespect for the lives of incarcerated individuals” amongst Riverside deputies. Detainees have been denied cleaning soap, common showers, clear garments and face masks for cover towards the coronavirus, the teams informed Bonta.
Additionally they raised considerations about deadly shootings by Riverside County deputies. From 2013 to 2021, Riverside County deputies killed 55 individuals, one of many state’s highest charges of killings by police per arrest, they mentioned.
Bonta, a former Democratic state lawmaker who was named legal professional normal by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 and elected to his first full time period in November, has made investigating police misconduct a precedence, saying public belief in legislation enforcement enhances security.
In December, Bonta launched an investigation of the Torrance Police Division after The Occasions revealed greater than a dozen officers had despatched racist textual content messages for years and joked about violence towards suspects.
Final month, he opened one other civil rights investigation of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Workplace, citing alleged beatings of jail detainees.
If state investigators affirm the suspected sample of illegal or unconstitutional wrongdoing by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Workplace, Bonta may get court-ordered treatments to appropriate them.
Bonta mentioned he was disturbed by the excessive charge of deputies firing their weapons in Riverside County, in addition to by the variety of individuals dying in custody, with a disparate impression on Black and Latino suspects and detainees.
