Rosen, Bien, Galvan and Grunfeld will be paid about $2.1 million in attorney fees. The consent decree sets a cap of $2.25 million to cover the work of overseeing the jail until 2028. A similar agreement placing the Oakland Police Department under the watch of a federal judge and monitoring team was supposed to be completed in five years but has gone on for nearly two decades. The consent decree will be in place for six years, but could take longer if the sheriff’s office is found out of compliance after that period.
Throughout the monitoring process, Janssen said the law firm will publish publicly-available reports on the reform progress. They will have unfettered access to jail records, including deputy logs, medical records, and videos, and can interview inmates. Janssen said she and fellow attorney Jeff Bornstein, representatives of the DOJ, and experts agreed upon during the settlement process will begin tours of Santa Rita beginning next week. Department of Justice to assist in monitoring the jail reforms. The report showed that the county’s system of mental health care violates the 8th and 14th Amendments of the Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Department of Justice Civil Rights Division in a report released last April. Some of those problems were identified by the U.S. “The Court agrees that these conditions are unconstitutional, and they demonstrate the need for the reforms mandated in the Consent Decree.” “Many spoke about inhumane conditions at the jail, citing minimal out-of-cell time, lack of access to mental health resources, an unresponsive grievance process, and unchecked uses of force,” he wrote. However, in his 10-page order released Monday, Cousins wrote the objectors’ arguments reinforced the need for reform at Santa Rita. Over the course of a five hour hearing, 37 detainees called in from inside the jail to oppose the agreement, describing inhumane conditions and abuse. Loni Hancock, Alameda County Families Advocating for the Seriously Mentally Ill, the Anti Police-Terror Project, and the National Lawyers Guild’s San Francisco Bay Area chapter.īefore approving the consent decree, Cousins last month heard testimony from those organizations and, in an unusual and perhaps unprecedented courtroom moment, from people incarcerated at Santa Rita. Several organizations, some of which were members of the class action suit, objected to the consent decree, arguing that the agreement gives millions in funding to the sheriff’s office instead of funding programs to help people before they end up incarcerated. Under the agreement, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office will be required to hire new staff at the jail and build a new “therapeutic housing unit.” Other changes included giving incarcerated people more time out of their cells, requiring the sheriff’s office to provide adequate mental health staff, making mental health screenings routine at intake, and improving the jail’s discharge system of people with mental health disabilities. “We think it’s critical to hit the ground running.”
People in that jail have been suffering and dying for years,” attorney Kara Janssen told The Oaklandside. Attorneys at Rosen, Bien, Galvan and Grunfeld in San Francisco, which filed the class action lawsuit, were pleased with the magistrate’s decision and said they are ready to get to work.
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