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As two cellmates were fighting in a Riverside County, Calif., jail, an inexperienced guard remotely opened the cell door, a violation of safety protocols. One of the men immediately pulled out the other, hoisted him over his shoulder and threw him over a catwalk railing. He fell 15 feet before smashing into a metal table. It was his first day in the jail and his last day of life.<\/p>\n
At another county jail, a detainee who had been mentally ill and charged with child sexual abuse should have been segregated for his own safety. Instead, he was placed in a bunk room with about 15 other men where he was strangled.<\/p>\n
When a guard started a security check more than 90 minutes late at another county site, blood was pooling under a cell door and a detainee was wiping the walls. Inside, the officer found the man\u2019s cellmate beaten, stabbed and without a pulse.<\/p>\n
Killings are relatively rare in American jails, but those in Riverside County experienced a surge in them. They had the highest homicide rate among large jails in California from 2020 through 2023, according to state data. The murders and other deaths made the county\u2019s five jails the second-deadliest in the nation during that period. In 2022, the jail system\u2019s worst year, 19 detainees would die from homicides, suicides, overdoses and natural causes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
There were clear patterns of security lapses, negligence and policy violations that contributed to the six homicides in the county jails from 2020 through last year, The New York Times and The Desert Sun found. Similar issues were factors in the other deaths from this time period, previous reporting shows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
An examination of the killings revealed that more than half the guards at one jail were performing security checks far less frequently than required, and often one to two hours late. They also failed to act during the fatal attacks or suspicious activity related to them caught on surveillance cameras, which are supposed to be constantly monitored.<\/p>\n
In four homicides, detainees were assigned to cells that put them at greater risk, contrary to standard practices of separating detainees by race, sexual orientation and other factors, including a history of violent crimes, that could stoke conflict.<\/p>\n
When deaths occurred, subsequent investigations were often flawed, The Times and The Sun found. Internal and public reports about the killings from the Sheriff\u2019s Department established inaccurate timelines, omitted relevant facts and sometimes added false information, including a security check that never happened. Such reports had the effect of concealing from the public and detainees\u2019 families consequential failures and decisions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This article draws on more than 75 department reports, photos and videos of the deaths, internal documents detailing jail staffing and interviews with current and former employees.<\/p>\n
The Riverside County sheriff, Chad Bianco, who took office in 2018 and was re-elected four years later, implemented substantial staffing changes over that period, significantly reducing training requirements for guards. He declined to comment for this article or respond to questions. The union representing guards in the county jails also did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Sheriff Bianco, a vocal Trump partisan, is now campaigning to win the Republican nomination for California governor. He has regularly bashed Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and put blame for the jail deaths on the state\u2019s left-leaning legislators.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
But as the body count has risen, so has scrutiny of his department. The California Department of Justice has been conducting a civil rights investigation, and more than a dozen lawsuits making wrongful death claims have been filed against Riverside County, which has paid more than $13.3 million in settlements.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The morning after a detainee killing in September 2022 at the county jail in Murrieta, an administrator told sergeants to audit video to ensure that security checks were adhering to state law.<\/p>\n
What was at stake, Lt. Aaron Martin wrote in an email obtained by The Times and The Sun, was the threat of civil litigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cDue to the recent overdoses and deaths, it is important for you to understand how to properly conduct and document security checks to protect yourself and the Department from liability issues,\u201d the email began. \u201cWhenever these catastrophic situations occur, security checks are heavily scrutinized.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hours before he was thrown from the Murrieta jail\u2019s second floor, Mark Spratt, 24, had been charged with fraud after he was caught with stolen debit cards. He had several convictions for vehicle theft in neighboring San Bernardino County, but his crimes involved nothing like the violence he would fall victim to.<\/p>\n
He was placed in a cell with Micky Payne, 35, who had three previous felony convictions, one for trying to take a gun from a police officer and two for domestic violence. In January 2023, he was awaiting sentencing for attacking a man with a broken bottle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Payne was an admitted gang member and had recently fought with a cellmate, said Brynna Popka, a lawyer representing Mr. Spratt\u2019s family. On the day Mr. Payne was sentenced to two years in state prison, Mr. Spratt was sent to share his cell.<\/p>\n
From the start, there was trouble. Surveillance footage shows that Mr. Payne blocked entry to the cell in a brief standoff. (The Sheriff\u2019s Department has not publicly released the video.) Mr. Payne, who is Black, later complained on a phone call that a white man had been put in his cell, according to a department report.<\/p>\n
Five current and former jail supervisors said that Mr. Payne\u2019s altercation with his previous cellmate, along with the bottle attack, should have triggered a behavioral health assessment or the more restrictive custody often used for dangerous detainees. Along with the racial issues, the disparity in the men\u2019s records \u2014 violent crimes versus small-scale fraud \u2014 should have led the jail to classify them differently and not pair them up, according to the veteran employees. (They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
At the time, there was upheaval in the Riverside jails.<\/p>\n
The department had long required deputies to start their careers in the jail system. But many objected. Sheriff Bianco promised to do away with jail assignments during his campaign in 2018. In 2022, as the nation began to emerge from the pandemic, he was eager to deliver.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
He increased the number of jail staff and leadership positions that would be filled by correctional deputies. They are paid significantly less than deputy sheriffs, can start at age 18 instead of 21 and complete training in less than three months rather than six.<\/p>\n
That change drained critical experience and training from the jails, according to the five veteran employees. The surge in violence and detainee deaths that followed, they said, was a consequence.<\/p>\n
Internal emails obtained by The Times and The Sun included spreadsheets tracking the shifts in jail staffing. The number of sworn deputies dropped from about 180 in March 2022 to 65 by the following November. The first of the 19 deaths came in April that year.<\/p>\n Michael Lujan, who had retired as a sheriff\u2019s captain before he challenged Sheriff Bianco in the 2022 election, said it was invaluable to have experienced jail workers at all levels who know how to effectively communicate with people in custody, and to make sound decisions when situations become volatile.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019m not casting blame on the hardworking young people in these difficult assignments,\u201d Mr. Lujan said in an interview. \u201cIt was a managerial error to move veteran workers out of the jails and create an experience deficiency that builds on itself.\u201d<\/p>\n While the county jails had, on average, a killing every two years during the last two decades, three homicides occurred at the Murrieta jail over just four months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Spratt\u2019s was one of them. In Cell 43, he appeared to be asleep when deputies did a security check just after midnight on Jan. 12, 2023. But about 1:30 a.m., neighboring detainees alerted deputies that a fight had broken out inside.<\/p>\n Correctional Deputy Nicolas Sevilla, who had finished training just six months earlier, did not intervene, however. When told of the conflict, he didn\u2019t leave his post in the central control room \u2014 about 50 feet away \u2014 but turned on the lights and told the two men over the intercom to stop fighting, according to a department report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Minutes later, he remotely unlocked and opened the door to the cell, the report said.<\/p>\n That was highly unusual. Several of the former supervisors said it was typical practice for deputies to alert other guards, go outside the cell where a fight was occurring, try to de-escalate verbally, then use pepper spray or another deterrent. Opening the door, they added, created a chaotic, dangerous situation.<\/p>\n Mr. Spratt was on the floor of the cell. Mr. Payne then dragged him, exited the cell and threw him over the nearby handrail, according to the report and video images from the subsequent criminal case.<\/p>\n Doctors at a nearby medical center found that Mr. Spratt had sustained facial fractures, a broken leg and spine and a torn aorta. He underwent emergency surgery but did not survive.<\/p>\n