The long-awaited rollout of enhanced screening for visitors and employees entering San Diego County jails will largely involve X-ray machines, drug-sniffing dogs and metal detectors, the Sheriff’s Department said this week.
In a presentation to the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board, or CLERB, Asst. Sheriff Dustin Lopez said the beefed-up security effort would begin “immediately,” although he declined to tell the panel specifically when.
The program, announced last month by Sheriff Kelly A. Martinez to help reduce drug overdoses in county jails, will be implemented on a random part-time basis until department officials evaluate the logistics of expanding it full-time.
“We are collecting all the pertinent data,” Lopez told the civilian oversight board. “A lot of times we are seeing how long it takes to get people through there.”
The stricter supervision — a policy shift that came after CLERB, the county grand jury, the state auditor and others called for years for scanning all people entering county jails — will take new personnel and equipment, Lopez told the review board.
“We may ask the Board of Supervisors for more resources in the future,” he said.
In general, the new protocol will entail a team of three community services officers — non-sworn sheriff’s personnel — operating X-ray machines and metal detectors. They will report anything suspicious to a sergeant on scene.
Up to three sergeants, meanwhile, will be assigned to checking identification from people entering the jails and searching bags and other property. They also will investigate any suspected violations.
The sheriff’s K-9 teams will manage the dogs that have been trained to alert deputies to the scent of illegal drugs, Lopez said. The dogs will search property, work areas, common areas and parking lots.
When canines alert officials to possible contraband, the potential violators will be moved to a secondary inspection site, checked more thoroughly and maybe questioned. Suspected violators also will be arrested if investigators think a smuggling attempt occurred, Lopez said.
The Sheriff’s Department prohibits from its jails a number of items that are generally legal to possess, including marijuana products, vape pens, knives and prescription medication.
In cases where prohibited items are discovered, the materials will be documented, but alleged violators will be given a chance to return the items to their cars, the assistant sheriff said.
The fuller screening process also could take up to three hours per shift and will be “scalable” in order to expand to additional facilities, Lopez said.
Review board Vice Chair Nadia Kean-Ayub asked sheriff’s officials how the program could be effective if the people trained to find drugs entering jail might also know how to avoid getting caught.
“Is it possible in your honest opinion that they may be knowledgeable in ways to be able to still sneak in drugs since they already know methods to hide this?” she asked.
Lopez acknowledged that was a possibility. “You have to rely on the process,” he said.
Drug-sniffing dogs remain the most effective tool the department has in trying to reduce smuggling into county jails, the assistant sheriff said. Lopez said they have a testing program to validate the trained dogs’ senses.
“We actually have different actors putting (drug) scents on their bodies just to make sure things are working the way they are supposed to be working,” he said.
Martinez has been under increasing pressure to do more to protect the men and women in her custody. San Diego County jails have recorded one of the highest mortality rates among California’s largest counties for years.
Many of the more than 240 people who have died in Sheriff’s Department custody since 2006 died from overdoses related to illegal drugs smuggled into the jails.
But the sheriff and her predecessor have resisted body-scanning and other measures that advocates and family members of people who died in jail have been pushing for over several years.
Yusef Miller, a cofounder of the North County Equity and Justice Coalition, told the review board that he supports the stricter screening program but would like to see it implemented beyond the interim basis now planned.
“These are the types of things that we want to see,” he said. “It’s just that we want them universal. We hope that we can find some way around the staffing shortage, around the timing shortage, so that we can save lives in custody.”
Others said the measures introduced this past week were not enough.
“Even if (deputies) went through a random search, I still think my brother would be dead,” said Sabrina Weddle, whose brother, Saxon Rodriguez, suffered a fatal fentanyl overdose in sheriff’s custody three years ago.
The monthly meeting of the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board also included an update from Chair MaryAnne Pintar on the office’s search for a new executive officer.
Pintar said the board has selected a successor to former Executive Officer Paul Parker, but the candidate has not yet made it through the county vetting process.
“We are getting close, but we don’t have that completed yet,” she said.
Pintar also announced that former Chair Eileen Delaney has quit the volunteer board.
The departure leaves three vacancies on the nine-member panel, exacerbating the oversight board’s continuing challenge in mustering a quorum of the five people needed for a legal meeting.
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