Pass AB 1108 – FACTS Act: Preventing Sheriff-Coroner Conflict of Interest!
We’ve been trying to pass this act the removes the conflict of interest for any sheriff investigating officer-involved deaths for the last 7 years. (This video is for a bill from 2018!)
We had a super-majority of Democrats in the CA legislature since 2018! This should have been passed then. Or when it came up again in 2022! Now that our older and more fragile immigrant neighbors are being pulled out of our communities, we need to know that carelessness or cruelty from law enforcement isn’t causing deaths and then covering them up.
We will also be watching and calling out ALL DEMOCRATIC legislators who vote against this bill!
Action calls – Call your state senators, thank your state assemblymembers
Minimum script for state senators: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want [Senator____] to pass AB 1108 (Hart), the Forensic Accountability, Custodial Transparency, and Safety (FACTS) Act. It is bizarre that a state as large as CA is one of only three in the entire country that still allows sheriffs to also serve as coroners. It is a blatant conflict of interest when the cause of in-custody deaths may have been the result of their own department’s actions. Now that an immigrant, Jaime Garcia, has died in Ventura during a raid that involved the Sheriff’s office, this bill is more important to pass than ever.
Minimum script for state assembly members: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want to thank [Assemblymember ____] for supporting and passing AB 1108 (Hart), the Forensic Accountability, Custodial Transparency, and Safety (FACTS) Act.
(Both our local Assemblymembers Steve Bennett and Jacqui Irwin supported it.)
Contact:
- State Senator Monique Limón (SD-21): email, SAC (916) 651-4021 SB (805) 965-0862, OX (805)988-1940
- State Senator Henry Stern (SD-27):email, SAC (916) 651-4027, Calabasas (818) 876-3352
- State Assemblymember Steve Bennett: (CA-38): email, SAC (916) 319-2038, VTA (805) 485-4745
- State Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin: (CA-42): email, SAC (916) 319-2042, TO ((805) 370-0542
- Not your people? Which assemblymember/state senator is mine?: findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov.
https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials https://www.lwv.org/take-action/find-your-elected-officials
Deeper Dive
(courthousenews) “By default, [CA] state law places a county’s coroner or medical examiner’s office inside its sheriff’s department, though the law also allows a county board of supervisors to separate the two entities. Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco counties all have coroners that are independent from law enforcement. But in the vast majority of the state, including three of its five biggest counties — Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino — the office is part the sheriff’s department.”
AB 1108 (Hart), the Forensic Accountability, Custodial Transparency, and Safety (FACTS) Act, which aims to prevent conflicts of interest in death investigations in counties with combined sheriff-coroner offices has already passed the CA Assembly.
If passed, this bill will ensure that independent medical examinations are conducted for individuals who die in county jails or while in the custody of law enforcement. The bill requires the 48 counties with combined sheriff-coroner offices to contract with independent medical examiner offices or third-party pathologists to perform investigations in these specific cases. The bill also applies to any in-custody deaths involving immigration enforcement for which the sheriff-coroner is called to investigate, ensuring medical independence and transparency.
California is one of only three states that still allows elected sheriffs to also serve as coroners. The CA State Sheriff’s Association helped kill a bill in 2022 that would have forced the separation of these two very different jobs. “Their key argument is that the sheriff-coroner approach is cost-effective and “enjoys the benefit of operational and budgetary efficiency….However, advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the California Medical Association and The Miles Hall Foundation, had argued that the coroner should be independent of the sheriff because that would increase the transparency and conflicts of interest in death investigations, including those that occur at the hands of police or in jail.”
For some reason, AB 1608 didn’t pass in 2022! We ask – Why were there 13 “No votes recorded?”
In July, Robert Collins, the stepfather of Angelo Quinto, lambasted the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office death inquest process – as long as the sheriff oversees the inquest and its findings.
His stepson’s death was ruled an accident during a similar coroner’s inquest last August after Antioch police restrained him, by putting the 30-year-old’s face down on the floor in a prone position. Quinto had also suffered from mental illness and his family had called 911 for help.
In his stepson’s case, Collins pointed out that only the pathologist who conducted the autopsy and law enforcement officers were called to testify – and not family members who saw what actually happened.
The family has long contended that Quinto died as a result of restraint asphyxia as he was held down on the floor for several minutes. The technique has been criticized by use-of-force experts around California.
“It’s biased,” Collins said at the time. “The sheriff and the coroner are one. You’re asking the agency that committed this crime to investigate itself. That’s a problem.”
AB 1108 will help protect the integrity of the medical examination process and strengthen public trust in the outcomes of these investigations.
Now it’s on the agenda for the Senate’s Local Government Committee for July 16th, having passed 5-1 through the Senate Public Safety committee. (YES votes: Arreguín, Caballero, Gonzalez, Pérez, Wiener, NO votes: Kelly Seyarto (R))
INDIVISIBLE VENTURA 