ReportWire

Tag: california state auditor

  • County burden on in-custody deaths rises sharply after record settlement

    [ad_1]

    The central jail on Front Street in downtown San Diego. (File photo by Chris Stone)

    A $16 million settlement has been reached between San Diego County and the family of a 22-year-old man who died in San Diego Central Jail three years ago.

    The family’s attorneys pointed to the county’s failure to preserve 55 hours of surveillance footage capturing the area outside William Hayden Schuck’s jail cell as a major factor in the case’s resolution.

    The agreement, believed to be the largest wrongful death settlement in San Diego County history, resolves a lawsuit filed by the family of Schuck, who died in March 2022.

    That happened to also be one month after the California State Auditor released a scathing report on the high rate of in-custody deaths at San Diego County jails. The audit examined 185 deaths within the San Diego County jail system for more than a decade through 2020, a rate that was among the highest in the state over that period.

    With the new settlement, the county will have paid out about $30 million in two years, connected to just two deaths. Other lawsuits are pending.

    Attorneys representing the Schuck family say numerous deficiencies highlighted in the state’s report, such as inadequate safety checks of jail cells and delays in providing medical treatment, played direct roles in Schuck’s death from dehydration and drug toxicity.

    During a Wednesday news conference announcing the settlement, the attorneys also said the deletion of the video footage likely played a role in the county settling the case. They had argued in court filings that the footage could have confirmed whether or not jail staff conducted safety checks of Schuck’s cell during a period when his health rapidly declined.

    Timothy Scott, one of those attorneys, said a San Diego federal judge sanctioned the county and ruled that if the case had gone to trial, jurors would be instructed that they could be allowed to assume whatever was contained in the footage would have reflected badly on the county.

    “I do think that faced with that kind of jury instruction at trial, it did make the county more willing to settle,” Scott said.

    A statement issued by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday noted that Schuck died prior to Sheriff Kelly Martinez taking office in 2023. She was elected to her first full term in November 2022.

    However, the department veteran had served as undersheriff, second in command at the office, since 2021.

    In January 2022, weeks before the release of the audit, former Sheriff Bill Gore had announced that he would leave office early, on Feb. 3, 2022. The state released the jail audit that day.

    “Since that time, significant improvements have been made to our jail system,” officials said in Wednesday’s statement. “Much more is needed, which will require significant investment from the county of San Diego.”

    But the lengthy statement also pointed out that the settlement funds will come out of the Sheriff’s Office budget and the department “had no participation or input” on the county’s decision to settle.

    Officials went on to cite results over the last year, during which San Diego County jails recorded the lowest number of in-custody deaths in more than a decade, with a 65% reduction in overdoses. There also were zero suicides in 2024, for the first time in more than 20 years.

    “The Sheriff’s Office remains committed to learning from the past,” officials said near the conclusion of the statement, “while continuing forward progress and ensuring that past deficiencies are not repeated,”

    That comes too late for Schuck, however, who was arrested on March 10, 2022 on suspicion of driving under the influence. He died less than a week later.

    Attorneys say that upon his arrest, he displayed clear signs of intoxication and withdrawal that should have resulted in medical treatment, but he was instead placed in a cell without a mattress, where he was “forgotten” for days, according to attorney Michelle Angeles.

    The day before his March 16 death, Angeles said he was found naked with sores on his body, while food and feces were strewn about his cell. During a court appearance that day, he was unable to even confirm his name, leading a judge to order that he be medically screened, according to the family’s lawsuit.

    The Schucks’ attorneys say that medical screening never occurred.

    The complaint states that despite the drugs found in his system after his death, there were no indications that he used drugs while in jail or had interactions with any other inmates prior to his death.

    Along with the monetary component, Scott said the settlement includes an agreement to institute changes to the county’s training program for detention and correctional officers, though many of those proposed changes were being finalized.

    The $16 million figure exceeds a $15 million settlement reached last year between the county and the family of Elisa Serna, who died in 2019 at the Las Colinas women’s jail in Santee.


    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • California fails to track effectiveness of billions spent on homelessness, audit finds

    California fails to track effectiveness of billions spent on homelessness, audit finds

    [ad_1]

    SACRAMENTO — 

    California has failed to adequately monitor the outcomes of its vast spending on homelessness programs, according to a state audit released Tuesday, raising questions about whether billions of dollars meant to thwart the crisis has been worth it as the number of people living unsheltered has soared.

    A new report from the California State Auditor’s Office found that a state council created to oversee the implementation of homelessness programs has not consistently tracked spending or the outcomes of those programs.

    That dearth of information means the state lacks pertinent data and that policymakers “are likely to struggle to understand homelessness programs’ ongoing costs and achieved outcomes,” the audit says.

    “The state must do more to assess the cost-effectiveness of its homelessness programs,” California State Auditor Grant Parks said in a letter sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers Tuesday accompanying the audit.

    California has spent $20 billion over the past five years dedicated to the state’s homelessness crisis, including funneling money toward supporting shelters and subsidizing rent. Still, homelessness grew 6% in 2023 from the year prior, to more than 180,000 people, according to federal “point in time” data. Since 2013, homelessness has grown in California by 53%.

    The California Interagency Council on Homelessness — created in 2016 to oversee the state’s implementation of programs dedicated to the worsening crisis — has not ensured the accuracy of the information in a state data system and has not evaluated homelessness programs’ success, according to the state auditor.

    The audit recommends that the state Legislature require that the council report spending plans and outcomes of state funded homelessness programs annually and to make that information public. It recommends a type of “scorecard” to track the success of programs.

    The council consists of state officials including Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Jeff Macomber.

    In a response to the audit’s findings, Meghan Marshall, executive officer for the council, said it has already “established a consistent method for gathering information on homelessness” but agreed with the state auditor’s recommendations and plans to pursue them “where possible.”

    Out of five programs analyzed, auditors found that two were likely cost effective: Project Homekey — Newsom’s COVID driven project to convert hotels into housing — and the CalWORKs Housing Support Program, which offers financial assistance and other services to low income residents. The others analyzed, including a state rental assistance program, could not be reviewed because “the state has not collected sufficient data on the outcomes of these programs,” according to auditors.

    “Collecting and reporting all state homelessness programs’ financial data allows for more complete and timely information about the state’s overall spending on homelessness. It also makes possible greater coordination of homelessness programs’ funding and may enable cost‑effectiveness comparisons,” the audit stated.

    Based on the data available, the audit also revealed that most people involved in state programs are placed into interim housing such as shelters and do not end up in permanent housing.

    A bipartisan group of lawmakers including state Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose) and Assemblyman Josh Hoover (R-Folsom) requested that the Joint Legislative Audit Committee authorize a state audit of the efficacy of state homeless funding last year as California’s unhoused population — the nation’s largest — has continued to grow despite record state funding invested to combat it.

    “The biggest conclusion that the auditors came back with is there’s just inadequate transparency and data and information available,” Cortese told reporters in Sacramento on Tuesday.

    Cortese said the audit will act as a blueprint for the Legislature to consider stricter reporting on homelessness spending in the future and said it should not deter the state from funding homelessness responses.

    “I think our constituents want us to continue to invest, and I think our constituents are going to want us to continue to audit the effectiveness of our efforts,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a time to stop.”

    State Republicans chastised the Newsom administration for the lack of data and said it’s proof that Democrat-backed strategies are not working as the state grapples with a multibillion-dollar budget deficit.

    “California is facing a concerning paradox: despite an exorbitant amount of dollars spent, the state’s homeless population is not slowing down,” Sen. Roger Niello (R-Roseville) said in a statement. “These audit results are a wake-up call for a shift toward solutions that prioritize self-sufficiency and cost effectiveness.”

    Tuesday’s audit comes just weeks after voters approved Proposition 1, Newsom’s $6.4-billion bond measure that aims to address one aspect of homelessness by building more treatment facilities for people who have problems with drug addiction or mental illness.

    Another part of the audit examined spending by the cities of San José and San Diego, which have both struggled to help unhoused residents. The audit found that neither of those cities have “evaluated the effectiveness” of their programs despite millions in funding to respond to homelessness.

    “San José and San Diego identified hundreds of millions of dollars in spending of federal, state, and local funding in recent years to respond to the homelessness crisis. However, neither city could definitively identify all its revenues and expenditures related to its homelessness efforts because neither has an established mechanism, such as a spending plan, to track and report its spending,” the audit states. “The absence of such a mechanism limits the transparency and accountability of the cities’ uses of funding to address homelessness.”

    Cortese — whose Silicon Valley district has long been home to some of the nation’s largest homelessness encampments, a stark juxtaposition against the backdrop of stunning wealth — said the findings regarding the two major cities could be a harbinger for future data discoveries.

    “If those two cities are experiencing issues or if there’s symptoms of challenges that we need to correct, that probably exists in many, many other cities in the state of California,” he said.

    [ad_2]

    Mackenzie Mays

    Source link