Monterey County Sheriff's Office Responds to Jury Recommendations – Monterey Herald

Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto said she and her team identified several areas in need of improvement that were incorporated into a document called the Annual Training Plan. (Monterey Herald file photo).

SALINAS — A Monterey County civil grand jury report citing often critical findings about how the county sheriff's office engages or prepares to engage with people experiencing a mental health crisis has been returned to the jury along with responses from sheriff's leadership.

In a June 14 memo to Monterey County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Hulsey, a civil grand jury advisor, Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto cited five specific grand jury findings and the resulting recommendations. Nieto agreed with four of the five findings and most, but not all, of the resulting recommendations.

According to Nieto, the grand jury report sometimes contains errors.

“While the report is informative and identifies some areas for improvement, I believe it fails to identify the true scope of the problem facing law enforcement in Monterey County, nor the steps that are actually being taken to support members of our community who are suffering from mental health issues, while protecting the communities we serve,” Nieto wrote to Hulsey.

But she also found inaccuracies in the report that misrepresented the mental health training of sheriff's deputies, according to her response. The first of the jury's four findings was that too few deputies were receiving 40 hours of Crisis Intervention Team, or CIT, training. The jury's next recommendation was that the Monterey County Health Department develop “short-form” training in addition to formal CIT courses.

“While the (Office of Behavioral Health) is a valuable partner in helping provide training and can help develop law enforcement-focused courses, I believe the (Sheriff’s Office) is better positioned to develop, update, and maintain these courses,” Nieto wrote in his response.

The sheriff's office is developing an eight-hour crisis intervention course that will likely be ready to roll out by the end of this year. Those courses could provide the “short-form” training the jury recommended. The sheriff's office is waiting for the Peace Officer Standards and Training Organization, or POST, to certify the course. POST is the state commission that oversees law enforcement training.

Nieto acknowledged that the percentage of sworn personnel who have completed crisis intervention training is “far too low,” but suggested that the grand jury's statement that “only 35 to 40 participants are accepted into crisis intervention training once or twice a year” may be incorrect.

“It would be more accurate if the (behavioral health) course was the only course offered that law enforcement could attend to obtain this training, but that is not the case,” Nieto wrote in a footnote to his response.

She cited numerous POST-approved trainings offered in Santa Clara, Fresno, San Luis Obispo and Kern counties, in addition to online courses, all focused on de-escalating volatile situations.

Another finding accused the Salinas Police Department and Sheriff's Office of “failing to prepare annual training and evaluation requirements.”

“As a result, their training plans are outdated, leaving officers and deputies less equipped or prepared to respond to calls for service in a crisis and putting themselves and the public at risk,” the jury's April report reads.

Nieto strongly disagreed with the decision. She said that when she took office in January 2023, she and her team identified several areas for improvement that were incorporated into a document called the Annual Training Plan. The jury recommended that the Salinas police and sheriff’s office conduct training evaluations by the end of this month. But the sheriff’s office had already completed the evaluation in the summer before the jury released its report.

Nieto also noted that too often, law enforcement is tasked with caring for the mentally ill, at the expense of taxpayers, due to a lack of other resources.

“On any given day, the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office has 894 inmates in custody who have been convicted of felonies or are awaiting trial,” Nieto wrote. “On average, 488 (inmates) are being treated for chronic mental health issues while in custody, 292 of whom are taking psychiatric medications, which costs an average of $16,300 per month in psychiatric medications alone.”

Easing the burden on law enforcement will require multiple agencies, including the Office of Behavioral Health, nonprofits and social services, to coordinate their efforts to treat people with mental illness and divert them from incarceration. In 2019, the county Board of Supervisors passed what’s called a “Stepping Up” resolution that aims to reduce bookings, shorten lengths of stay, increase connections to care and treatment and reduce recidivism for people with mental health issues.

All of these efforts come against a backdrop of shrinking funding and, in the case of behavioral health, reduced financial aid following the narrow passage of Proposition 1 in March, which effectively redirects some county funding to build more beds for the mentally ill and homeless.