Baca Asked to Respond to Critical Report

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors said Tuesday that it would not approve Sheriff Lee Baca’s budget until he responds in writing to a report that concluded his deputies negligently allowed an inmate to die in their custody.

The board and Baca, meanwhile, agreed that the 1999 death of Kevin Evans be reviewed by the sheriff’s Office of Internal Review, a separate branch of the agency headed by civil rights attorneys.

Evans, who was mentally ill and suffered from cerebral palsy, died while being tied down by a team of deputies in a jail medical ward. A report into his death by special counsel Merrick Bobb, formally released Tuesday, found that Evans should never have been strapped to a bed and that deputies violated regulations in holding him down. Bobb, who monitors the agency for the supervisors, also questioned the legitimacy of the Sheriff’s Department’s internal investigation into the death.

Baca and Supervisor Gloria Molina had several heated exchanges during the hourlong discussion of the Evans case. The sheriff strongly defended his department, and at one point challenged the board’s power to discipline him.

The dust-up stems from the unusual relationship between the supervisors and the sheriff. As independently elected officials, county sheriffs have full control over their staffing and policies. But they need county supervisors to control their budgets and approve settlements of lawsuits.

During the meeting, Baca said that virtually all of Bobb’s recommendations have been implemented and that internal investigators had done their jobs.

“Accountability means you’re honest about your mistakes,” Baca said. “You admit there’s been some lack of training and you change your procedures.”

That did not satisfy Molina, who observed that no deputies had been disciplined for their roles in Evans’ death. If people are not held responsible for bad behavior, she said, “they’re going to do it over and over again.”

Baca replied that his deputies were following procedure at the time and that it was the department’s policies that were flawed, not the employees.

“The ultimate punishment goes to me,” Baca said. “And this board will have to work out the understanding that maybe it can’t punish the sheriff of L.A. County.”

Stressing that policies have been changed since the death, Baca added, “I think what we’ve done here is commendable.”

But Molina retorted that the department undertook reform only after the county supervisors and their special counsel got involved. “It is only commendable because Merrick Bobb did the investigation,” she said.

Baca said, “Merrick Bobb does what he does, and you only operate from the perspective that we are blind to our own issues.”

Though Molina was sharpest in her questioning, other supervisors also raised concerns about the death.

In a letter to supervisors, Baca wrote that internal investigations found the restraint of Evans “in policy.” That drew a quiet rebuke from Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who noted that the sergeant on the scene stopped a departmental videotape of the restraint when it became apparent that Evans was dying. Baca acknowledged that act was inappropriate and now forbidden by new policies.

Bobb told supervisors Tuesday that the restraint was attempted without medical staff present--another violation of policy. The nursing supervisor that evening resigned and pleaded no contest to falsifying a report.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich asked why the department was more than a year late in creating a computer system to track inmates in the jails. Such a system could have saved Evans’ life because deputies would have known he had no history of violence and therefore didn’t need to be restrained. They also would have recognized that the stiffness he exhibited while they forced him into the restraints could have been due to cerebral palsy, and was not an act of resistance.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky praised Baca as a strong advocate for the rights of prisoners and the mentally ill. But Yaroslavsky warned Baca that his values did not appear to be shared by some other sheriff’s officials.

“You need to convince the people who work for you down the chain that you mean business,” Yaroslavsky told the sheriff. “Why is it,” he asked rhetorically, “despite what you say up here, it doesn’t get translated down there?”

The Evans case came to supervisors’ attention because they had to approve a $600,000 settlement of a lawsuit filed by Evans’ family after his death. Molina recalled that the department’s initial corrective action plan--a report filed with every settlement telling supervisors how future errors will be averted--said only that it would train deputies to avoid such incidents in the future.

“That was like a corrective action plan for putting the wrong Band-Aid in place,” Molina said.

Baca said Tuesday that reforms include new policies on what parts of the body deputies can pressure while restraining someone and give supervising officers more discretion during difficult restraint procedures. He also said his agency is trying to decrease the number of mentally ill people in jails and noted that that is a broader societal problem.

The Evans case was not the only issue that brought supervisors into conflict with the Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday.

Molina stripped $15 million from a $77-million sheriff’s contract for maintenance of department vehicles. And the board moved toward requiring its approval for purchases of large vehicles or equipment, in response to last month’s discovery that the sheriff had bought a $2.4-million passenger plane while his department was pleading for more money to improve inmate health care.

After the meeting, Baca said he hoped supervisors did not hold his budget hostage on the Evans matter. “I don’t think this is something that should hold up a department’s budget,” he said.

But Molina said in an interview that she was willing to do that to force reform. “It’s the only thing I have jurisdiction over,” she said.