San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore Discusses Hate Incidents, Jail Deaths

Speaker 1: 00:00 In a year in review interview, but San Diego sheriff, bill Gore, mid day edition cohost Jade Heineman spoke with him about what law enforcement is doing to address a rise in hate incidents. He spoke about that and touched on the high number of deaths inside local jails. He was part of that interview. This past year. We had the Havato Poway shooting. How are you all, all of the law enforcement agencies? State, local, federal working together to uh, monitor and, and surveillance websites. Um, especially some of these, uh, more radical websites Speaker 2: 00:33 we worked through. Um, we have a joint terrorism task force in San Diego, one of the first in the country. Uh, and also we have a law enforcement coordination center that's an all crimes all threats, uh, intelligence center co located with the joint terrorism task force between those two entities. That's how we track international terrorism, how we track domestic terrorism, hate groups. Uh, and we're aggressively going after with our federal partners if appropriate, these, uh, these different hate groups and where we're appropriate monitoring their internet communications. Uh, the different sites that, uh, that foster that type of thinking, which is I think a big concern of all of us. Say we, you know, we see how this country's being divided now. Uh, unfortunately, because you can find a website, a blog or some TV or cable station that's gonna support your preconceived prejudices or our notions. Speaker 2: 01:28 And so there's, there's no, there's not much opportunity to, to have a, a common denominator. We all start off like we used to 30 or 40 years, not talk about the good old days, but most of our news came from the three major networks, the CBS, ABC, and NBC. And so we all kind of started on the same base here. We're in 23, 43 different, 53 different places. And I'm not sure were the viewers, the readers of news are really broadening their horizons. They, we all like to read stuff that reinforces what we already think. And I think that's a big challenge for this country going forward. Speaker 1: 02:07 And since that's the case, have you all adjusted or change the way that you monitor these websites, particularly after the amount of Poway? Speaker 2: 02:14 Yeah, we're constantly looking for, uh, websites where it will have, uh, uh, concerned citizens come in and, and tell us about a website where there's what they consider to be a hate speech, bigoted speech, uh, uh, antisemitic speech that we will then look at. And, and we're always walking that fine line between people's first amendment rights to read and talk about what they want and where that crosses that line to where they might be acting out and committing some violent act against a group or a religion or, so it's, it's a challenge, but it's something that I think in San Diego, we're, we're, we're ahead of the game just because of that sharing of information that we have. We do. So here I want to move to a different subject. Now. One of the ongoing issues has been deaths at the San Diego County jail. The union Tribune reported that over the last decade, the County has had the highest jail mortality rate among California's six largest counties with an average of one death at the jail per month. Speaker 2: 03:17 What's your response to that? Well, is w w w I think the UT and I have agreed to disagree. I don't accept the methodology they used of an average daily population. Uh, we came to San Diego state university. As a matter of fact, doc dr Colleen Kelly is testation here. Uh, and we believe the more appropriate way to, uh, look at jail death rates is looking at the total at risk population. That means a total number of inmates you put through your jail in a year, not how many are there on one given day. When you look at those Stitt, uh, statistics, we are just like every other major jail system in, in California or better than some, and we're worse than other ones. A great example of that is a Los Angeles County Sheriff's department has an average daily population three times bigger than the Sheriff's department. So you would expect that they would take in three more, three times as many inmates during the year, during the 10 year period that they like to refer to. Speaker 2: 04:14 We took in 960,000 inmates in the San Diego County jail system, LA County, three times bigger. Average daily population only took in 1.2 million. You would think they take in like 2.7 million. So that's some more, I, we believe the more appropriate way to look at as the average daily population that not the average daily population, but the at risk population, the total number of people you're putting through your facilities. Um, I, I've reached a point where I'm just agreed to disagree with the, with the San Diego union Tribune. We've given him these facts, but they choose to go with the average daily population. Well, and I wanted to ask because the newspapers said that they were unable to replicate some of the consultants. I can give you the statistics, come right down. Download them from the state of California, uh, with the average, with, with the total population going through your jails every, every year in every County in San Diego. Speaker 2: 05:04 And pardon me, in California and the number of jail deaths. It's not rocket science, but, uh, there was other things that Dr. Kelly put into her report, like, uh, the demographic makeup of your jails. But putting that aside, just looking at the total population going through your jails in one year were comparable to all the other jails. Now, if the has done some fine reporting on reporting the issues that jails all over the state of California really all over the United States are dealing with, with, with mental health and medical issues and trying to meet the, the, the, uh, the standards that we need to, to provide those first-class medical services. But to point us to, uh, to highlight us as the worst in California, I still think is unfair. And when you look at it, uh, another way with other methodology, I think that proves my point. Speaker 2: 05:53 And what I was saying in the newspaper was unable to replicate some of the consultant's findings in particular, the claim that the suicide rate in the general public is higher than in the County jail after adjusting for demographic factors. What's your response for that to Dr. Kelly? That was her report. She did. She's the professional statistician, not me. That's why we went outside to professionals to have them do that. Uh, I, I always go back to the, the statistic of the number of total number of at-risk people you put through your jail in a year. That to me is a much more accurate, uh, representation that takes into account other counties that have city jails, which that we've told the UT about, uh, other cities, other counties that have County hospitals, uh, where people that are die of natural causes might die in a natural hospital. Speaker 2: 06:39 Uh, it just getting very tiresome to keep debating the same issue over and over. Uh, I'd rather talk about the positive things we're doing in our jails. Like, uh, hopefully by the end of next year, we'll will be the second only the second County in the state of California to have a accreditation from the national commission on correctional healthcare for our jails. Uh, the only other one that out there is Riverside. Uh, the fact that we've doubled the number of mental health clinicians in our facilities, the fact that we spend $90 million a year just in our jails on mental health and, and healthcare. So there's a lot of positive things going on, a lot of positive change. That was San Diego sheriff bill Gore speaking with mid day edition cohost Jade Hindman Speaker 3: 07:22 [inaudible].