Poodle Smells Hope and Goodwill in Santa Barbara County

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT:  For years, I have enjoyed the luxury of seeing whatever I wanted to see. No matter the belief, there was always an abundance of supportive evidence. More recently, reality has intruded. Now I can see only what I have to see. Disciplined delusion. It’s cheaper than pharmaceuticals, and no supreme beings need apply. Once people bring God into the argument, as current events attest, heads start rolling and blood doesn’t stop flowing. 

With that in mind, I found myself getting positively misty-eyed while watching last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. I pinched myself a couple of times, lest I be overwhelmed. Like Fox Mulder of X-Files fame, I want to believe. Be advised: There’s no one more dangerous than a hopeaholic looking for a fix.

Once again, the supervisors — all five of them — found themselves on all fours wrestling the greased pig of jail reform, figuring out how to respond to four Grand Jury reports. Each report demonstrated, yet again, that people were dying in County Jail because the people who work there — guards and the private Wellpath contractors paid to provide health services — were not adequately trained to deal with the exigencies of people on the edge of flipping out. In this case, I think there were four dead bodies in the past year. One more since the reports came out. 

The other problem the Grand Jury identified was significant gaps — from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. — when no mental-health professionals were on call. Because of this, the Grand Jury strongly concluded, a 300-pound suicidal inmate with meth in his system and psychosis in his soul was dead 20 minutes after checking in.

How could this be? demanded Stan Roden, a member of the Grand Jury. Santa Maria cops who initially brought the suspect in, Roden told the supervisors, had to park him in their car for about 20 minutes with a helmet on his head, lest he bash his brains out, which, apparently, is exactly what he was trying to do. 

Shouldn’t that have been a tip-off? Roden and the rest of the Grand Jury strongly urged the supervisors to refer the investigation of this death to the Attorney General; the sheriff, Roden argued, cannot be expected to objectively evaluate the causes leading to inmate deaths. There is an inherent conflict of interest, he said. 

The Grand Jury also found that the Sheriff’s Office had consistently failed to effectively monitor the quality of health care Wellpath provided. The Grand Jury cited three expert consultant reports on just this subject and all arrived at precisely this same conclusion. Health care in the County Jail, they all said, should be reassigned to the county’s Department of Public Health. 

Strong stuff, right? 

The Kabuki theater of Grand Jury presentations in front of the supervisors is typically short and sterile. “Thank you for your service,” Grand Jurors are perfunctorily told, “and don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out.” The supervisors, it turns out, are strongly constrained by law in what they can say in response. 

Here’s where I got misty. The supervisors tossed such constraints to the wind. (Okay, they tried to.) County Executive Officer Mona Miyasato and her right-hand person, Tanja Heitman, did the same. And, in his own way, so too did Sheriff Bill Brown. All engaged. Seriously. Constructively. And yes, imperfectly. 

Yes, Sheriff Brown argued that health care in the County Jail is better than anywhere in the community at large. Yes, he insisted it is his jail to run as he sees fit because that’s the authority state law gives him. And no, he will not be referring jail death cases to the Attorney General. But as someone who has sat through a billion innings of supervisorial baseball, I heard a seismic difference in tone. In past meetings, Bill and the board would have gone to the mattresses. Last Tuesday, they were offering each other seats at a table that has yet to be set. 

It wasn’t just different. It was a moment. Pregnant with possibility.

What comes from it, we’ll have to wait and see. But you don’t get moments like that every day. For the very first time, Sheriff Brown said he would be willing to engage in a broader community dialogue about what happens to mentally ill people in the jail. 

The supervisors agreed not to call the committee that eventually emerges for this public dialogue “an oversight committee,” a phrase that can make law enforcement officials break out in hives. Maybe it will be called “a quality-assurance committee” instead. 

Also for the first time, Brown agreed to allow Public Health officials to become part of his jail health-care team, just as long as they remember it’s his jail, not theirs.

This is not merely some paper improvement. The new head of Public Health, Dr. Mouhanad Hammami, comes from Wayne County, Michigan — think Detroit — where, among other things, he administered the health care provided in three county jails. Presumably, the guy’s got some serious chops to go with his signature bow tie.

The force multiplier making this moment happen, I think, was Grand Jury member Stan Roden, who behind all his progressive earnestness still packs some serious — albeit tempered — swagger. Roden, for those who never knew, was elected District Attorney of Santa Barbara County in 1975, taking out the incumbent, David Minier, Santa Barbara’s version of Nixon and Watergate all rolled into one. As a trial attorney, Roden knows how to dig. And he knows how to deliver the results in front of a crowd.

What happens next, we’ll have to see. For time being, there’s hope. I can’t see it any other way.