Memo to Sheriff Jones: Abusive deputies should be fired and charged, not protected

It brings us no pleasure to constantly drag Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones for his failures and misdeeds. Just once it would be nice to be able to write positively about the local public official charged with upholding the law in our county.

Yet basic morality requires us to once again put a harsh spotlight on the rotten way Jones conducts his department. The latest outrage: concealing the violent abuse of inmates by deputies in his jail and allowing the guilty deputies to remain in uniform.

We’re not talking about the accidental use of force in chaotic situations. We’re talking about deputies who deliberately drag helpless inmates out of the sight of surveillance cameras to assault them, or who purposely twist inmates’ arms until bones snap, according to an investigation by Sacramento Bee reporters Sam Stanton and Molly Sullivan, who obtained access to secret files detailing the horrific abuse.

For example, a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy broke Mayco Rodrique’s right arm in October 2017. The deputy had told Rodrique to take off his shoes and remove the laces. When Rodrique told the deputy the law had changed and he no longer had to remove his shoelaces, the deputy grabbed Rodrique’s head and smashed it into a wall, “twisting his right arm behind his back until it snapped.”

“Then, he was thrown to the ground, hogtied and carried to a solitary cell, where he was in such pain he asked repeatedly to see a nurse and was told to ‘shut up,’” according to The Bee.

All of it was caught on camera. Rodrique filed a lawsuit, settling with the county for $97,500. As part of the proceedings, Sacramento attorney Mark Merin – Rodrique’s lawyer – received files detailing 79 other jail-abuse cases. A court order required him to return or destroy the records after resolving Rodrique’s case, but he refused. The Bee then intervened in the federal court case, arguing that the order violated the First Amendment. In October, a judge released the documents.

“The result is the largest-ever release of internal affairs and jail abuse complaints involving deputies working inside Sacramento’s Main Jail downtown and the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove,” wrote Stanton and Sullivan. “They include allegations of beatings, misuse of pepper spray, an illegal body cavity search, efforts to avoid being caught on video surveillance and recommendations of deputy discipline and firings.”

The abuses detailed in the documents are shocking, especially since the guilty deputies kept their jobs. In one case involving an inmate named Patrick Hoyt, an internal investigation recommended firing two deputies, but Jones opted to suspend them.

One deputy smashed Hoyt’s head against a wall so hard he “ended up with a swollen black eye.” First, however, deputies took him to an area of the jail without cameras. After he complained, Hoyt received a $1,000 check in exchange for releasing the county from future legal claims and promising he would stay silent.

Six months later, one of these deputies brutalized an inmate named Roshawn Jackson, executing “a front leg sweep takedown of Jackson, who was handcuffed with his arms behind his back essentially rendering him defenseless,” according to an internal investigation.

The deputy kept his badge.

In another case, deputies forced an inmate to undergo an anal cavity search for no reason. The abuse horrified Sacramento Superior Court Judge Maryanne Gilliard so much that she threatened to testify if the county didn’t settle the claim. Deputies had searched the inmate’s rectum despite the fact that an X-ray showed he had no weapons.

Then there was the deputy who fired pepper spray under a cell door to punish an inmate who had cursed at him – but only after searching for a pepper spray container small enough to avoid detection by cameras.

Evading surveillance cameras is a common theme in the abuse cases uncovered by The Bee. Some areas of the jail lack cameras, while some of the cameras mounted in the jail simply don’t work or are “inadvertently” blocked during alleged brutalities.

Sheriff Jones, in an interview with Bee reporters, blamed the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors for not providing enough funding for cameras even though his department receives 80 percent of the county budget. But what good would more cameras do when Jones refuses to fire deputies even when their violent misdeeds are caught on camera, as in the Rodrique case? More cameras won’t address Jones’ glaring moral blindspot, which allows violent deputies to keep working after proving their lack of fitness for their jobs.

The deputies who carried out these assaults are a danger to public safety. They should be fired and charged with crimes. At the very least, Sacramento County taxpayers deserve to know the names of these violent “public servants” whose jobs Jones has protected. All of their names are redacted in the documents.

Jones should also release reports detailing all abuse incidents in our jails. Since taxpayers foot the bill for settlements, they deserve to know the full scope of the brutality unfolding in the facilities they entrusted Jones to run.

If Jones is truly interested in transparency, he need not whine about money for cameras. He can simply come clean on the facts.