A sheriff who is a leading candidate for governor of California hid the causes of a mounting epidemic of jail deaths behind a culture of cover-up and retaliation, a former captain in the department said in her first interview since she filed a lawsuit outlining her claims.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco ordered Captain Victoria Flores not to answer questions from a civil grand jury investigating jail conditions, Flores alleges. Another of her bosses told her not to leave a paper trail about a detainee’s overdose. And the department didn’t discipline deputies who were captured on video knocking a man unconscious.
Those are just some of the claims Flores, a 30-year veteran of the department, made in a July lawsuit and in an exclusive interview with The Desert Sun, a member of the USA TODAY Network. Her allegations support previous reporting by The Desert Sun and The New York Times that Bianco’s cost-cutting left the jails understaffed with inexperienced guards as they became among the deadliest large jails in the nation. And they come as Bianco steps onto a wider political stage with a run for governor in the nation’s most populous state.
“The inmates in the county’s detention facilities were being abused,” Flores said, “and the abuse was covered up without proper discipline.”
