Three years after deputies killed Mikel McIntyre, Sacramento sheriff hasn’t released records
Three years after Sacramento sheriff’s deputies fatally shot Mikel McIntyre, an unarmed black man suffering a mental health crisis, the department has not released public records of its investigation into the controversial shooting.
Those reports are among other public records The Sacramento Bee and Los Angeles Times have sought for 16 months under Senate Bill 1421, a police transparency law, that the Sacramento sheriff has not released. On Friday, attorneys representing The Bee sent a letter to Sacramento County attorneys threatening to sue if the records are not provided.
SB 1421, which went into effect last year, requires law enforcement agencies to release records involving cases of dishonesty, sexual assault or uses of force that killed or seriously injured citizens. Sacramento County has already been ordered to pay more than $165,000 in legal fees and costs to The Bee’s attorneys for failure to comply with the law.
The letter, written by Karl Olson, one of the attorneys representing the news organizations, says Sheriff Scott Jones and his office have had 16 months to provide records of incidents between 2014 and 2018.
But Olson says the Sheriff’s Office, as of Thursday, has only provided 41 files, and only six files are from incidents within the time period requested. The attorney wrote that the Sheriff’s Office response to these requests “can only be characterized as deliberate stonewalling.”
He says the news organizations would prefer not to further litigate, but they have done it before successfully and will sue again if necessary.
“This slow-walking is not inadvertent, it is intentional,” Olson wrote in the letter.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Sgt. Tess Deterding said Friday that the Sheriff’s Office defers questions about past litigation or threats of further litigation to the county’s attorneys.
“The Sheriff’s Office continues to work on redacting and releasing records in our possession,” Deterding told The Bee.
County counsel Lisa Travis declined to comment on the letter Friday.
On Jan. 1, 2019, the Times submitted two California Public Records Act requests to the Sheriff’s Office seeking records related to officer-involved shootings and uses of force resulting in great bodily injury, according to Olson’s letter. On Sept. 4, 2019, The Bee submitted a California Public Records Act request seeking the same records. The requests from the news organizations was not limited to cases that resulted in discipline for the officer involved.
But Olson says the Sheriff’s Office has produced several dozen older and less newsworthy files that did not occur from 2014 through 2018. The attorney wrote in his letter that the Sheriff’s Office ignored requests for files which are more timely.
Those files that have not been provided include the records surrounding the May 18, 2017, fatal shooting of McIntyre. The 32-year-old black man, in the midst of a mental health crisis, was shot to death along Highway 50 after assaulting deputies with large river rocks while trying to run away from them.
Deputies fired 28 rounds at McIntyre, striking him seven times, six in the back. In late January, Sacramento County agreed to pay out more than $1.7 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit.
“At the time he was killed, he was actually running away and did not pose a danger to the officers,” John Burris, a civil rights attorney representing McIntyre’s mother and son, told The Bee when the lawsuit was settled.
The county’s then-inspector general, Rick Braziel, reviewed the shooting and concluded in an August 2018 report that deputies used an “excessive, unnecessary” number of rounds that put citizen safety at risk. He also concluded that deputies had options other than deadly force that could have been employed.
Jones responded to the report by locking Braziel, a former Sacramento police chief, out of all offices in the agency and the jail, sparking anti-Jones protests aimed at the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors.
“The straw that broke the camel’s back, the thing that made me take the extraordinary step of cutting it off immediately, was that report,” Jones said at the time.
The sheriff also has said that he likely would never publicly release video footage of the deadly shooting.
The letter from Olson on Friday demanded that the Sheriff’s Office provide by May 29 the records related to the shooting death of McIntyre. The attorney said that a primary purpose of these requests is to obtain records on “the controversial McIntyre shooting.”
Olson says a filed sworn declaration indicates that the Sheriff’s Office has nine people working on SB 1421 records request. The attorney wrote in the letter that surely in nearly a year and half “they can produce the one file which members of the public are most interested in.”
The Bee and the Times are demanding that the Sheriff’s Office provide by June 15 all the other requested records of incidents involving the discharge of firearms by its officers. They also are demanding that the agency provide by Aug. 1 all other records of incidents of uses of force that resulted in death or great bodily injury.
“If the Sheriff’s (Office) fails to comply with any of these deadlines, my clients intend to file a lawsuit to enforce their long-delayed requests,” Olson wrote in the letter. “Needless to say, this is not an idle threat.”
