The resignation letter from San Diego County’s top civilian oversight official was short and to the point.
Paul Parker’s last day as Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board executive officer would be March 22, he wrote almost two weeks ago. He thanked all the right people, offered a nod to openness in government and wished the county his best.
“I encourage you to continue the progress we have worked so hard to achieve,” Parker said in his three-paragraph letter.
“This can only be done through continued emphasis on transparency, complete independence and faith and trust in the next executive officer.”
But in an interview last week, Parker spoke candidly about his deep-rooted frustrations across the San Diego County bureaucracy — from his volunteer board to the county Board of Supervisors and to Sheriff Kelly Martinez.
“I think I was maybe too strong for this board,” he said. “I was maybe too proactive.”
Parker said the current civilian-oversight model is not structured in a way that lets the review board monitor the Sheriff’s and Probation departments effectively. He said the Board of Supervisors should grant it auditing authority and mandate access to internal department records.
Review board staff should be able to interview deputies and probation officers and visit facilities as needed, Parker said, and policy recommendations issued by the board should not be ignored or optional.
“CLERB is advisory, and that’s the issue,” he said. “I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall, and the county doesn’t seem to want to do anything to have true oversight.”
Parker, who returned to lead the oversight body in 2020 after a previous stint between 2017 and 2018, has been at the forefront of an effort to fundamentally remake the review board’s role and to expand its authority to include the jails’ medical staff.
The healthcare workers in San Diego County jails are not under the oversight panel’s jurisdiction, even though the doctors and nurses are frequently involved in treatment decisions and practices that lead to deaths in custody.
Under both Martinez and her predecessor, former sheriff Bill Gore, the jail system has recorded one of the highest death rates in California. Four people have died in sheriff’s custody so far this year; 33 others died over the prior two years.
Parker also has repeatedly pressed Martinez to scan sheriff’s deputies on their way into county jails to prevent drug smuggling and overdoses. The sheriff has insisted the checks are not needed, despite similar recommendations from the state auditor and county grand jury.
Department records show more than 500 people have overdosed in local jails since 2021, including at least 15 this year.
“They have balked at the (proposed) scanning of employees,” Parker said. “And I have no idea why you would not do that.”
CLERB chair Eileen Delaney declined to comment on Parker’s resignation, or his views on what he considered the board’s lackluster support for his proposed reforms. She said the review board is committed to law enforcement oversight.
“We are continuing to move forward with our request to the Board of Supervisors for the expansion of medical oversight,” Delaney said. “We are also working to begin detention facility inspections.”
The CLERB chair said she hopes to have a successor in place within two or three months.
Vice chair MaryAnne Pintar said she was sorry to see Parker leave but pledged to keep moving his reform agenda forward.
“His departure is a big disappointment, and his unique skill set will be hard to replace,” Pintar said by email. “However, CLERB’s work, and our purpose, is too important for us to let it falter because of this setback.”
None of the five elected county supervisors would discuss Parker’s unexpected resignation or say whether they support an inspector general model for civilian oversight in San Diego County going forward.
Board Chair Nora Vargas and Supervisors Jim Desmond and Monica Montgomery Steppe did not respond to requests for comment.
Supervisor Joel Anderson said in a statement that he was “unavailable to comment at this time.”
Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer would not address Parker’s resignation or his plan for an inspector general. But she said the board already added to some of CLERB’s jurisdiction and she looks forward to considering other changes.
“I am aware CLERB is working on recommendations for increased authority and I am interested in closely reviewing them,” Lawson-Remer said.
Sheriff Martinez, meanwhile, said she was surprised Parker doubted her commitment to transparency, or to civilian oversight at large.
“I am unclear as to why he would make statements that he believes I am not supportive of working with my communities, transparency, accountability and improvements to our facilities or processes,” she said. “The sheriff has given unprecedented access to the CLERB regarding in-custody death incidents.”
The Sheriff’s Department continues to withhold internal records related to death investigations and other critical incidents that are investigated internally.
The county also is fighting in court to keep a host of sheriff’s documents and other evidence sealed from the public, including videotape showing deputies and medical workers failing to respond during the last minutes before a woman named Elisa Serna died in her jail cell in 2019.
Martinez told voters during her campaign for sheriff in 2022 that she would release the department’s so-called Critical Incident Review Board records, but she changed course after being sworn in early last year.
Parker remains skeptical of the sheriff’s claims.
“We’ve given her a chance,” he said. “People are still dying; there’s still no transparency.”
‘Set up to fail’
The citizens’ oversight board was created in the early 1990s, at a time when the Board of Supervisors was at odds with the elected sheriff and the department was confronting a spate of lawsuits and misconduct allegations.
The board relied on subpoena power and in-person interviews to investigate complaints against sheriff’s deputies and probation officers, then issue public findings and policy recommendations designed to prevent future law enforcement missteps.
“San Diego voters selected a strong, independent civilian oversight of the Sheriff’s and Probation departments, principally because of the brutality in county jails and lethal force in areas patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department,” said Sue Quinn, who spent decades working for CLERB and since retiring has become an expert in civilian oversight.
“For five years it was in place — only to be deliberately set up to fail by the sheriff and Board of Supervisors,” she said.
By the late 1990s, after Bill Kolender had taken over as county sheriff, supervisors began cutting the oversight panel’s budget, Quinn said. The review board also started accepting written instead of in-person testimony from deputies, copies of statements they provided to internal affairs investigators and in some cases no answers to their questions at all, she added.
Quinn said the board all but gave up its subpoena power and stopped discussing cases and findings in public.
When Parker arrived in 2017, one of his first steps was to dismiss 22 death investigations because they were more than a year old.
He lobbied for a bigger budget and bigger staff, and he found a powerful ally in Nathan Fletcher, a Democrat elected supervisor in 2018.
Parker accepted a senior position with the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office late that year. But he returned in 2020, the year Democrats took control of the Board of Supervisors and it began committing more resources to the oversight board.
“Part of the effort to improve conditions in our jails should include expanding the scope of CLERB for all employees or contractors of the Sheriff’s Department, including medical personnel,” Fletcher said in 2021. The review board budget and staffing doubled under his tenure as board chair.
Fletcher resigned last spring after being accused of sexual assault and harassment. The resulting vacancy on the Board of Supervisors led to numerous delays in San Diego County governance, including nominations to the civilian oversight board.
A longtime San Diego City Council member, Montgomery Steppe was elected to the vacant seat late last year. She has yet to nominate anyone to the two CLERB vacancies she is responsible for filling.
Asked about the delay, Montgomery-Steppe blamed the Jan. 22 flood, but she said in a statement that civilian oversight is important.
“The community must be confident that the board will serve as a bridge between the community and law enforcement, promoting trust and collaboration in the pursuit of safe and just policing practices,” Montgomery Steppe said.
She declined to answer follow-up questions.
Audit authority essential
According to the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, a nationally recognized nonprofit known as NACOLE, any board charged with reviewing police or sheriff’s practices must have specific elements in order to be effective.
The NACOLE mission is “to create a community of support for independent, civilian oversight entities that seek to make local law enforcement agencies transparent, accountable and responsible to the communities they serve,” the group’s bylaws state.
The civilian oversight nonprofit says review agencies must be independent and have clearly defined jurisdiction and authorities. They also require unfettered access to records and facilities — something the San Diego County review board has never received.
NACOLE says effective agencies also must have adequate funding and operational resources, access to law enforcement executives and internal-affairs staff, community buy-in, protection from retaliation and a commitment to public reporting.
Andrea St. Julian, a local attorney who also co-chairs an advocacy group called San Diegans for Justice, said effective community oversight of law enforcement requires access to internal records.
She also said police and sheriff’s departments can benefit from the perspectives brought forward by outside community leaders.
“Auditing and monitoring are essential to assist law enforcement in understanding how to reshape policies so as to prevent wrongdoing in the future and build a closer and more effective relationship with the community,” St. Julian said.
Pintar, the CLERB vice chair who is expected to take over as chair in July, said she hopes to include NACOLE in crafting a job description for the new executive officer and also conduct a national search for Parker’s successor.
“Families are counting on us, lives depend on it, and the taxpayers deserve the transparency and oversight we bring, because there is a steep price to pay when things go wrong,” she said. “We will absolutely continue to pursue the reforms we’ve proposed.”
Three times last year, and again in a letter to the Board of Supervisors last month, CLERB proposed changes to the administrative code that would allow it to scrutinize jail medical staff.
Supervisors have yet to act on the request.
The county review board will hold its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday, the first in almost four years without Parker at the helm.
The citizens’ panel is expected to name chief deputy Nawras Hakak the interim executive officer.
