On July 15, 2024, the federal court for the Central District of California removed medical care from continued monitoring of conditions at San Bernardino County jails under a 2018 consent decree. The move comes less than three months after the most recent death of a mentally ill detainee, whose family hoped he’d get help when they called 911. Less than a year before that, the county also reached $150,000 in settlements in cases filed over deaths of two other detainees whose mental health challenges the jail was unable to meet.

County jails have been operating under a December 2018 consent decree reached in a class-­action challenge filed two years earlier to medical, dental and mental health care provided to an average of 5,000 detainees held at four lockups: the Central Detention Center in San Bernardino, West Valley Detention Center in Cucamonga, High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto and Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center in Devore. As PLN reported, a March 2018 remedial plan had also required regular reporting on detainee healthcare to attorneys at the Prison Law Office, who represented Plaintiffs in the case. [See: PLN, Apr. 2019, p.38.]

The Court’s latest order found Defendant jail officials in substantial compliance with parts of the remedial plan relating to medical care, removing those areas from continued monitoring. Another pending stipulation filed on October 2, 2024, would also remove material components of mental health care. See: Turner v. Cty. of San Bernardino, USDC (C.D. Cal.), Case No. 5:16-­cv-­0355.

Yet that was small comfort for the family of detainee Eduardo Lopez, 23, who died on April 25, 2024, less than a month after he suffered a schizophrenic episode and deputies of county Sheriff Shannon Dicus were summoned for help. After taking Lopez to a hospital for medical clearance, they booked him into jail on charges of vandalism and resisting arrest on April 1, 2024. When he was observed engaging in self-­harm on April 15, 2024, he was placed on suicide watch. The next day he was found unresponsive in his cell and taken to a hospital, where he remained in a coma until he died nine days later after suffering a heart infection and two heart attacks. “He left well, walking well,” said his mother, Adriana Borrego, “and they handed him over to me in a coma, all beaten up.”

$100,000 Settlement for
Death of Joshua Pitts

The County paid $1.9 million to settle one jail death suit in 2019 and over $1.33 million more to settle another three in 2021, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Mar. 2024, p.28.] That total rose by another $100,000 in July 2022 with settlement of a suit filed over the death of pretrial detainee Joshua Pitts.

Pitts’ parents, Tammy and Gary Shidler, sued after their son committed suicide in March 2018. Their complaint alleged Pitts had ADHD, bipolar disorder and paranoia, and had told arresting deputies that he wanted to kill himself. Staffers at the Morongo Basin Station Jail, where he was initially booked, did not adequately screen him for his mental health issues, but they recognized he was suicidal and transferred him to West Valley Detention Center, where he was put on suicide watch.

Yet Pitts was removed from suicide watch the next day; four days later he returned to the Morongo Basin jail —which was “not equipped to house inmates who require medical or mental health assistance,” according to the complaint the Shidler’s later filed. Placed in general population, Pitts began “acting delusional and expressed his desire to hurt himself,” displaying “visible, severe signs of depression and odd behaviors,” such as crying, shaking and hearing voices.

Pitts’ sister-­in-­law visited him the following day, March 27, 2018, and afterward contacted jailers to express concern over his suicidal ideations. No action was taken to protect him from self-­harm, however, and that evening he fatally hanged himself using a bedsheet. During the week he spent in custody, Pitts was not adequately screened by a psychologist or psychiatrist nor did he receive any mental health medications despite requesting them.

The Shidlers filed a federal civil rights suit against the county, jail employees and two staff members employed by Liberty Health Care, which provided medical care at the jail. Raising claims under the Fourteenth Amendment for deliberate indifference to the pretrial detainee’s serious mental health needs, they cited Defendants’ awareness of his risk of suicide when they removed Pitts from suicide watch after one day, but failed to remove the sheets or other items in his cell that he could use to harm himself. The complaint also raised claims for substantive due process violations, negligence or medical malpractice, and violations of state law, including California’s Bane Act, Cal. Civil Code§ 52.1.

“There needs to be change,” Tammy Shidler stated. “There are monsters running this place. My son mattered. He was mentally ill. They knew this.”

The district court refused to fully grant Defendants’ motions for summary judgment on March 7, 2022. See: Shidler v. Cty. of San Bernardino, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 112979 (C.D. Cal.). On July 11, 2022, Plaintiffs accepted the $100,000 settlement, which included costs and fees for their attorneys, Shannon J. Brunner and James S. Terrell, both of Victorville, along with Dale K. Galipo and his associate Renee V. Masongsong of Woodland Hills. A separate settlement for an unreported amount was reached with Liberty Health Care.  See: Shidler v. Cty. of San Bernardino, USDC (C.D. Cal.), Case No. 5:l 9-­cv-­00503.

$50,000 Settlement for
Death of Perla Alvardo

Months before that settlement, the County paid another $50,000 to settle a suit filed over the March 2019 death of detainee Perla Alvarado, 50, died at West Valley Detention Center. According to the complaint filed by her father in the same district court, she was arrested after a psychotic episode, with a history of mental illness, hypothyroidism and high blood pressure.

But instead of taking her to a hospital, she was booked into the jail, where her medical condition was not properly evaluated, and she did not receive her prescribed medication, the complaint alleged. Six days later, when Alvarado’s behavior predictably grew aberrant— jailers said she was “slow to process, paranoid, bizarre, unable to answer questions and [needed] constant redirection”—she was placed on suicide watch. Multiple jail staffers then requested a mental health evaluation for Alvarado because she was pacing and yelling naked in her cell. The next day, March 6, 2019, she was found dead, her blood sugar level extremely elevated.

The complaint noted that jail security video should confirm her declining over the course of her detention as well as jailers’ failure “to render necessary medical attention and aid … for her obvious mental and physical distress.” The day after she died, a clinical therapist finally came to evaluate Alvarado, the suit noted. It alleged that Defendants were deliberately indifferent to Alvarado’s medical and mental health care needs by ignoring her obvious symptoms of a medical emergency; no healthcare examinations were performed while she was at the jail nor were two blood draws conducted that had been ordered.

Other claims raised included substantive due process violations, negligence, failure to summon medical care, a municipal liability claim for failure to properly train staff, and a violation of California’s Bane Act (Cal. Civil Code§ 52-­.1). The complaint noted that 30 detainees had died in San Bernardino County jails from 2017 to 2020, with 60% of those deaths medically related. On February 8, 2022, the parties agreed to settle the case for $50,000, including costs and fees for attorneys Brunner and Terrell, who also represented Plaintiff in this case. See: Alvarado v. Cty. of San Bernardino, USDC (C.D. Cal.), Case No. 5:20-­cv-­00592.   

Additional sources: KABC, San Bernardino Sun, Victorville Daily Press

Subscribe today

Already a subscriber? Login