Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones tests positive for coronavirus, is isolating
Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones has tested positive for the coronavirus.
Jones received the positive test for the disease known as COVID-19 on Tuesday after first experiencing symptoms late last week, the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
“Sheriff Jones’ symptoms started last Friday and were mild, including a fever, congestion, light-headedness, and a headache,” the statement reads. He began feeling better Sunday and had “almost no remaining symptoms” as of Wednesday, the statement said.
Jones tested positive shortly after “a workplace exposure to an employee that later tested positive.” That employee’s role in the Sheriff’s Office and the status of their illness was not immediately clear.
The sheriff is in isolation in accordance with health officials’ recommendations. According to the statement, his entire family has been tested and are also quarantining as they await results.
“The sheriff is only one of dozens of Sacramento Sheriff’s Office employees who, despite rigorous institutional safety practices and following all recommended personal safety protocols, have contracted the virus while performing their essential duties protecting and serving their community or, as in the sheriff’s case, supporting and interacting with those dedicated women and men,” the agency’s statement concluded.
Last month, just after Gov. Gavin Newsom and state health leaders announced a one-month 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for counties like Sacramento that are classified within the strict “purple” tier of the state’s reopening framework, Jones in a statement said the Sheriff’s Office “will not be determining — including entering any home or business — compliance with, or enforcing compliance of, any health or emergency orders related to curfews, staying at home, Thanksgiving or other social gatherings inside or outside the home, maximum occupancy or mask mandates.”
Most other capital region law enforcement agencies, along with the California Highway Patrol, issued statements that they would not dispatch officers or deputies to enforce the curfew order, though some additionally emphasized that they would continue an education-based approach to the public health crisis.
Earlier, when the state announced a mandatory mask mandate on June 18, Jones’ office also quickly issued a statement saying it would be “inappropriate” to criminally enforce that order, due to “the minor nature of the offense, the potential for negative outcomes during enforcement encounters, and anticipating the various ways in which the order may be violated.”
The virus is spreading in Sacramento, a county of 1.5 million where nearly 40,000 residents have tested positive and 591 have died of the virus to date. Cases are pouring in faster than ever, with the local health office reporting a new daily record of 1,115 cases Tuesday. State data updated Wednesday showed 366 patients in Sacramento County hospitals with confirmed coronavirus, another record and a total that now exceeds the peak of the summer’s surge by nearly 100.
Newsom on Monday shared a grim outlook from his administration’s health office, which projects that the greater Sacramento area and California as a whole are on track to run out of intensive care unit beds before Christmas.
Jones’ office has butted heads with the state on COVID-19 in other ways aside from non-enforcement of Newsom’s stay-at-home order. During the summer, the Sheriff’s Office refused to provide information about COVID-19 cases and testing for inmates and staff at Sacramento County jails to a state oversight board. Sacramento was one of two counties, the other being Tehama, that didn’t share this weekly data with the Board of State and Community Corrections.
It appears Sacramento County now reports this information indirectly: the Sheriff’s Office on the BSCC’s COVID-19 dashboard, instead of showing numbers for cases or tests performed, now includes a URL linking to a page on the law enforcement agency’s own website that provides information on COVID-19 in inmates.
But the Sheriff’s Office website does not provide specific information on COVID-19 activity in jail staff. Though Jones’ written statement from Wednesday says he is among “dozens” of employees in his office who have tested positive for the disease, it’s unknown how many deputies, higher-ranking officers or other staff may have contracted the virus after working at either of the two county jails.
Jails and prisons are known to be coronavirus hot spots, of particular concern due to challenges associated with socially distancing the incarcerated.
This story was originally published December 2, 2020 at 1:10 PM.
