Far-Right Claremont Institute Awards Extremist California Sheriff
The Claremont Institute, “nerve center of the American right,” honored Sheriff Chad Bianco of California’s Riverside County on November 9, 2023, with its annual Sheriff Award for being a “longtime patriot and tireless defender of America’s founding principles.”
For $450 a plate, subscribers attending the award dinner at the Hilton Hotel in Huntington Beach kicked off Claremont’s 2023 Sheriffs Fellowship — a hush-hush program that schools law enforcement officers in far-right ideology of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), a controversial group whose member sheriffs embrace a discredited reading of the U.S. Constitution to proclaim authority superseding that of state and federal government officials.
Bianco may be a hero to the Claremont Institute and its members who long for a “Red Caesar” to ride a reactionary wave into despotic power, but to the Press-Enterprise of Riverside County, Bianco presides over a dysfunctional and chaotic jail system that spawns misconduct among its deputies and deaths among its detainees. The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights calls Bianco “one of many sheriffs who hide behind constitutional sheriff mythology to justify law enforcement abuses of power.”
Riverside County jails saw 19 in-custody deaths in 2022, the most since 2005, prompting the state Department of Justice to begin an investigation in February 2023. The county paid about $77 million in settlements between 2010 and 2020 related to sheriff's department misconduct, ranking it among the costliest to taxpayers in the nation. In comparison, neighboring Orange County, which has 50% more residents, paid just $14 million over the same period.
Jail deaths have continued to mount since. After Mark Spratt, 24, was jailed in January 2023, his cellmate Mickey Payne allegedly threw him over a railing to his death, angered that jailers had not replaced Spratt with a detainee who was Black, like Payne. In September 2022, Erik Martinez allegedly assaulted fellow detainee Ulysses Munoz Ayala, 39, who then died from his injuries because emergency call buttons were reportedly not working, and guards failed to monitor the lockup’s security system. A lawsuit was filed over Spratt’s death in October 2023 by attorneys with McCune Law Group in Ontario. See: Est. of Spratt v. Cnty. of Riverside, USDC (C.D. Calif.), Case No. 5:23-cv-02056. A suit was filed over Ayala’s death the same month by Murietta attorney Lewis George Khashan. See: Munoz v. Bianco, USDC (C.D. Calif.), Case No. 5:23-cv-02063.
They are two of over a half-dozen suits pending on behalf of people who died while incarcerated in county lockups. In September 2023, three guards were arrested and charged with serious crimes: Brent Bishop Turnwall was allegedly under the influence of drugs while on duty; Christian Heidecker allegedly extorted four women and sexually assaulted one of them; and Jorge Alberto Oceguera-Rocha was allegedly found with more than 100 pounds of fentanyl in his car, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2024, p.10.]
Reacting to Bianco’s Claremont Institute award, criminal justice writer Radley Balko noted that the sheriff being celebrated “has not only tolerated abuse [and] overseen rampant misconduct … he’s also just really shitty at his job.”
Additional sources: Desert Sun, The Guardian, Press-Enterprise
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login