200 National Guard Troops Deployed In San Diego County To Protect Buildings

Speaker 1: 00:00 200 national guard troops have been sent to San Diego at the request of the San Diego County Sheriff's department. With 100 of them deployed to Lamesa Lamesa officials say the troops were deployed to quote, assist with security in the region due to the recent civil unrest where the other hundred or so national guard troops will be stationed in San Diego. And what they'll be doing here is not clear San Diego County, sheriff bill Gore is here to talk about the national guard deployment, and also about his turnaround on the use of carotid restraints by Sheriff's deputies, sheriff Gore says his deputies will no longer use that restraint tactic and sheriff Gore. Welcome to the program. Thank you, Maureen. Why did you request the national guard troops come to San Diego? Speaker 2: 00:48 Well, um, for a couple of reasons we found, excuse me, last weekend in, in Lamesa, uh, it didn't really, we didn't anticipate the size of crowd that we got or the, the, uh, violence. It was directed at the, uh, Lamesa police department or Lamesa city hall and what, unfortunately, we had to have our deputies and police officers that were there assisting Lamesa, uh, just into a, in a mode of force protection, protecting, protecting the infrastructure. And as we know, as the evening went on, there became, uh, some criminal acts being committed, uh, whether it was vandalism, uh, and stores, uh, setting fires to banks are burned to the ground. And sadly for the citizens of Lamesa, uh, we were unable to really react to that because we were in a, in a mode of just protecting the physical property there, uh, around city hall and around the police department, we don't want to be placed in that mode again. Speaker 2: 01:52 So what we would do and what we would use the national guard for is, is for that, that protection around, uh, physical structures around, uh, buildings. Uh, they could also if necessary, use the use to a company and provide protection to fire, to fire trucks and ambulances. But what this does is allows us to, to free up, uh, police officers and deputy sheriffs, local law enforcement to go out and be of assistance to, to address any, uh, acts of vandalism or any criminal activity that we might witness. Like we saw in downtown San Diego on occasion, like we saw in Lamesa on Saturday, like we've seen at the County administrative center. And I think it's important to stress that we were well aware that the overwhelming majority of people are, that are protesting, are angry and frustrated and are peaceful. And we want to facilitate those peaceful demonstrations or expressions, their first amendment rights. We understand that we, we feel it. Law enforcement trust me is up, is upset. There's a lot of citizens are about, we saw in Minneapolis it's there there's no excuse for it, but by using the national guard to protect infrastructure that frees up our deputies to keep those, uh, demonstrations peaceful and allow us to address any, uh, detractors in the group that would create criminal activity. Speaker 1: 03:18 Now, besides Lamesa, where will the troops be deployed in San Diego Speaker 2: 03:23 in anticipation of maybe some activity this weekend, we would probably have some national guard just stationed in the perimeter around the County administrator center. But I don't know, there might not be any demonstrations down there. Yeah. I would love it if they never had to be deployed. I truly believe it's better to have the resources to protect our communities and protect the peaceful demonstrators and have those resource available, uh, in case we need them. Speaker 1: 03:51 Are you concerned though that the presence of the national guard could escalate tensions? Speaker 2: 03:57 No, I, I, I don't see that happen. And we've had the national guard here in the 2003 and 2007 fires. These are the, these are your neighbors. These are doctors, lawyers, the citizen soldiers, if you, as you will, that are part of the national guard that they're coming to to help us in our community, to keep these demonstrations peaceful and protect life and property. Speaker 1: 04:20 You reversed your stand on the use of the carotid restraint shortly after defending that use. What caused the change Speaker 2: 04:28 in 24 hours to be quite a, uh, rank, uh, Maureen, uh, basically I still believe that the carotid restraint when officers and deputies are properly trained and that's properly administered is a safe technique. And NT can deescalate a situation as has been the case in San Diego. For five, 10 years, you look at all the statistics there's been no serious injuries from the use of that technique. The San Diego police department, the Sheriff's department, we've worked together, we've done studies and we trained together on that technique starting in our regional Academy, but it became apparent to me that my, uh, attempt to explain this in and, and show my, uh, real contempt in and anger with what happened in Minneapolis. And try to explain that what happened in Minneapolis in no way is a carotid restraint. And, and, and, but I I'm, I was losing that argument in that it's hard to try to have a discussion and talk about a technique when you're overcome with the video of that horrendous murder that we saw in Minneapolis. Uh, and, and by keeping that technique, it was preventing in my opinion, uh, all the, the discussion and the, the forward movement we need to do working with our communities to address things that need to be changed. It prevented us from talking about things that we had done, not saying that that's enough, but we've done a lot of changes, and we need to be able to talk about that and then discuss what more we need to do Speaker 1: 06:05 as part of your defense though, of the carotid restraint before your reverse. All you said that it was a non-lethal tool help that help to diffuse dangerous situations. And without it, deputies might have to resort to more lethal controls. So do you see the possibility of more police shootings in the absence of this restraint technique? Speaker 2: 06:25 Well, I I'd say it's a less lethal, uh, techniques that was employed safely for, for, you know, decades here in San Diego. There's no serious injury. What my comments were is that when you take away that less lethal force, that they had to control a situation, they'll go to other less lethal, uh, tasers, uh, impact weapons in all those have consequences. Also, I'm just saying, that's what I was saying. If you're not going to use this technique, there's other techniques that officers and deputies will have to use, and they have consequences to every time somebody talked about the carotid restraint, it was called a choke hold. It was called strangulation. And I couldn't, I don't think anybody in law enforcement you'd get around that. And especially that graphic, terrible video we saw in Minneapolis. So it's my decision for the amount of times we use it. Speaker 2: 07:20 And I think you have to understand too. We used it in our jails. Those 66 times is law enforcement and jails. And, uh, one of my concerns in jail jails is that they don't have a lot of, uh, options. Uh, a deputy sheriff working in a jails up they're attacked by an inmate. They don't walk around with a lot of different weapons on their gun belt. So a carotid restraint was, uh, was important to them to, uh, to control the situation. And now we're going to look at other options we can provide to our deputies to make up for that void. Speaker 1: 07:55 Now this week on this program, sheriff, we spoke about a report that found the Sheriff's department was costing the County millions of dollars because of use of force and other complaints. I wonder how you're addressing that problem. Speaker 2: 08:08 Well, you can go to our website and you can see, and I, you know, UT and mr. McDonald, I've talked about this extensively, all the things we've done in our jails, in our detention facilities to address, uh, mental health care and healthcare, how we've increased our budget by tens of millions of dollars to address these issues. And, uh, uh, I, I really can't go in and explain all of it now. Uh, literally it's been a ongoing process since I became sheriff in, in 2009, it's ongoing and we continue to address it. We, we look at our training, our policies, our procedures, uh, we critically review any time there's a, a use of force or a shooting. Uh, I find it interesting now, the, that the big push that they're doing in the city of San Diego now, the next one is an independent citizens review board, uh, with subpoena powers and their own investigators. Speaker 2: 09:06 We've had that in the County for decades. Uh, it's called the citizens law enforcement review board. I value their input and their independent oversight. I think that's healthy. We work with them. We have the grand jury that oversees us. I I've created a, a division of inspectional services that looks at every major use of force. It looks at every, uh, uh, in custody deaths that we have in reviews that, and, and from a standpoint of do we need to look at our, uh, change, our policies, procedures, our training, all these things, uh, contribute, I think to making us more efficient and effective as a department and more in line with the best practices in both detentions and law enforcement. Um, unfortunately law enforcement is the nature of our work. Uh, sometimes you have to use force. It's always a last resort. Uh, tactical communications is our first choice. Speaker 2: 10:00 He always liked to talk somebody into custody if you can. And I think when you look at a half a million contacts a year, we have, and the number of times we use force, I think we do a good job with that of, of deescalating situations, but sometimes force is necessary. And we try to minimize that and use the least amount of force we is necessary to, to control the situation. Um, I understand that, you know, nobody likes to pay out money in lawsuits. Um, but I think sadly, when you look at a lot of the cases and when I see the reporting, they, they rely on, uh, the verbiage that comes out of, uh, uh, lawyers, uh, uh, plaintiff's lawyers complaint, uh, and, uh, those aren't always facts, but, you know, we paid out money, police departments do that every year. I don't to be quite honest. And I don't think the UT did a comparison of how do we compare with the other major departments in the country? I don't know. I, I think I tend to think we're probably average maybe, or a little bit better shape, but I have not done all the research on that. Speaker 1: 11:06 Sheriff, how long do you expect the national guard to be in San Diego? Speaker 2: 11:10 I would love to have him be gone, uh, after this weekend. I just don't know if, if they're not needed, uh, trust me, I'm sure they want to get back to their homes as soon as I'd like to, uh, to, to have them be able to go back to their homes. But I have a responsibility to, I think, all the citizens of this County to prevent the types of things we saw in downtown San Diego, the types of things we saw at the County administrative center, and especially what we saw with looting and burning in, in Lamesa last weekend. Hopefully, uh, it will be there. Stay here in San Diego. We'll be short. Speaker 1: 11:46 I've been speaking with San Diego County, sheriff, bill Gore and sheriff Gore. Thank you. Thank you, Maureen. [inaudible].