Grand jury suggests sheriff scan deputies for drugs in jails

As deaths and overdoses continue to plague San Diego County jails, the grand jury says in a new report that Sheriff Kelly Martinez should do more to keep illegal drugs from being smuggled into local detention centers.

The Sheriff's Department should start by adding more body scanners and creating a team of civilian experts to operate the technology, the grand jury said. Jurors also said Martinez should consider a plan to screen everyone who enters a jail, including sworn deputies.

The department should "use an in-house team as noted above and consider the feasibility, legality and cost/ benefits to scanning all persons and employees who enter the jails," the grand jury recommended.

A Sheriff's Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about the findings.

The grand jury last week issued a separate report criticizing the sheriff's handling of profits from jail commissaries. Department officials too often use the revenue for routine expenses rather than programs to benefit people in custody as state law intended, jurors found.

The recommendation this week that the sheriff expand the use of body scanners to reduce the amount of illegal drugs entering the jails is not new.

Last August, the county Board of Supervisors directed its senior staff to work with the Sheriff's Department to reduce jail deaths by investing some $11 million on staff bonuses and new scanners.

Before approving the program, two supervisors raised questions about screening employees for drugs as they enter jails.

Supervisor Nora Vargas suggested the sheriff look at employing drug-sniffing dogs at jail entrances. Supervisor Joel Anderson noted he passes through a body scanner every time he goes to an airport.

"Why don't we have the same standard in the jails?" Anderson asked.

That same month, after an independent investigation found that San Diego County had the worst jail-death rate among California's largest counties, the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board recommended screening employees entering jails.

Martinez rejected the idea months later.

Among other things, sheriff's officials said there was no evidence that deputies and other employees were responsible for the influx of illegal drugs in jail.

"This action would represent a breach of the trust we have placed in them and result in grave consequences for morale and employee retention," Lt. Edward Greenawald wrote in response to the civilian oversight board.

The Sheriff's Department also raised questions about the safety of repeated exposures to radiation-emitting equipment.

But the grand jury report cited separate research finding that the scanners posed virtually no public health threat, except to pregnant women.

"After reviewing applicable radiation safety standards pertaining to the safe scanning of people for non-medical reasons it was determined that those standards support that an individual may be scanned up to 1,000 times per year, including multiple times per day, without exceeding the limit for safe exposure to ionizing radiation," the report said.

The Sheriff's Department also should consider creating a civilian staff to conduct the body screening, rather than deputies, who are often in short supply, the grand jury said.

"Having people other than sworn staff assigned to scanning would free up sworn staff to perform other duties," the report said. "If the (sheriff) hired full-time civilian scanner operators who had no other assigned duties, it could be expected the degree of expertise would be enhanced and maintained, making the entire process more precise and faster."

Sheriff's officials also should upgrade the way the department processes mail, which is a common method of smuggling illegal drugs into county jails, the grand jury found.

"Using modern optical mail screening machines addresses the difficulties of quickly scanning a large volume of mail," jurors wrote. "They can detect illicit drugs and common cutting agents through envelopes, and paper mixed with marker, crayon, paint, and even under stamps and stickers."

In total, the grand jury issued seven recommendations aimed at preventing illegal drugs from entering the county's six different jails.

Beyond considering screenings for all jail visitors, the grand jury suggested the sheriff add body scanners to the South Bay Detention Center and East Mesa Reentry Center.

The jury also said incarcerated people should be re-screened when they return to jail from court, medical facilities and other unsecured locations.

The sheriff also should establish an in-house team to study which scanners would be the most effective and how best to staff them in order to avoid delays or backlogs, the jury said.

San Diego County jails have recorded more than 225 deaths since 2006, according to Sheriff's Department records. Last year, a record 20 people died in custody, including one man who died at a local hospital hours after he was granted a compassionate release.

Six people have died in local jails so far this year.

Many of the deaths are drug-related, the grand jury noted, so reducing the amount of illegal drugs would likely help prevent people from dying or suffering overdoses in sheriff's custody.

"Despite procedures currently in place to prevent drugs from entering the jails, IPs (incarcerated persons) are still dying of drug overdoses or needing emergency medical care for drug overdoses after they have been processed and admitted to a jail," the grand jury said.

The Sheriff's Department is required to respond to the grand jury findings by July 30.

For each recommendation, the department must say whether the suggestion will be implemented, whether it will be implemented in the future and when, whether it remains under evaluation or whether it has been rejected, and why.