Thousands of criminal cases in this Southern California megalopolis of more than 3.2 million people are now potentially tainted after a week of back-to-back bombshells: internal reports revealing that hundreds of sheriffs deputies sat on evidence and dozens of others lied about filing it.
Now Orange County Sheriffs officials are blasting assertions by the countys assistant public defender, Scott Sanders, that deputies failed to book evidence in as many as 9,000 cases and are fielding terse demands from the countys district attorney for more information in the wake of the audits that showed two years of nearly department-wide evidence mishandling.
The Orange County Sheriffs Department in 2018 undertook a pair of evidence audits. The first one looked at almost 99,000 police reports over a two-year period. It showed evidence in 30 percent of the reports was mishandled in some way, and the department did not retain evidence in nearly 72,000 cases.
The Sacramento Bee on Wednesday obtained a copy of the departments secondary audit handed to sheriffs brass in February but not disclosed to district attorneys officials until last week.
The internal audit randomly sampled 450 reports out of the nearly 72,000 cases flagged in the first report. Of those, deputies filed 121 reports stating they collected and booked evidence.
The auditors findings: no evidence was booked in nearly half of the sampled reports 57 in which deputies said they had, or about 13 percent of the 450 cases reviewed, according to the audit.
Sanders projection that 9,000 cases were mishandled over two years stems from the numbers in the second audit. The Sheriffs Department argues Sanders is exaggerating.
To take that (data) and extrapolate that out is incredibly disingenuous, Carrie Braun, Orange County Sheriffs spokeswoman, said Friday.
Sanders last week stood by his offices projections of potentially mishandled cases.
The department should forever be prohibited from using the word disingenuous. Their exact figures are the figures to use. Were looking at 450 cases out of 72,000. Were going to stand by their numbers: its more likely to be 9,000 than 57, Sanders said on Nov. 22. We do the calibrations and they call us disingenuous. Thats absurd.
Sanders, who has loudly criticized sheriffs officials for failing to disclose the internal reports with their implications for criminal defendants, calls the developments disastrous.
Weve been ripped off on thousands of cases. We had no idea, Sanders said. This is the sixth-largest county in the nation. Theres an enormous amount of cases they touch here.
But a week after the uncovering of a sweeping audit that exposed evidence mishandling rampant throughout one of the nations largest sheriffs offices, the disclosure of the February audit and the scathing letter District Attorney Todd Spitzer fired off demanding answers, Sheriff Don Barnes has been largely silent.
That changed little on Wednesday.
In a four-paragraph statement, Barnes said his offices corrective measures have addressed any continuing evidence booking issues and said lead staff from both offices should work together to identify reports that resulted in criminal filings. Barnes said sheriffs officials would contact the DAs office to set dates. Braun, the sheriffs spokeswoman, said it was not clear when meetings to sort out the cases would occur.
Why do we keep finding story after story of police departments failing to hold themselves accountable to the taxpayers who pay their salaries and fund their militaristic abuses of human rights? ---
