Two San Francisco County jails had been locked down over the weekend due to rising assaults of deputies and different workers by inmates on the services, officers mentioned.
Since late March, seven jail staffers have been injured in altercations with the incarcerated folks they had been employed to supervise, mentioned Tara Moriarty, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Workplace.
“A few of these assaults have resulted in critical accidents,” Moriarty mentioned in a information launch on Saturday. “The lockdown went into impact for the safety of all who work or reside in, or go to our jails.”
The lockdown, which is anticipated to finish subsequent week, means any visits and applications are canceled, preserving the greater than 1,100 incarcerated folks on the two Bay Space jails sequestered to their cells.
Affected jails embody the county’s solely girls’s facility and its San Bruno location.
“We’re actively investigating these incidents to determine their root causes and any potential correlation,” Moriarty mentioned. “It’s crucial that we establish and deal with the elements contributing to those assaults to forestall future occurrences.”
The San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs Assn., the union that represents affected employees, urged native leaders to deploy the California Nationwide Guard to make up for understaffing at county jails and to bolster safety.
“Current incidents, together with an alarming improve in prisoner fights, assaults on prisoners by different prisoners, and accidents to civilian staff and deputy sheriffs, spotlight the urgent want for added staffing and assets throughout the Sheriff’s Workplace,” union President Ken Lomba mentioned in a letter to officers together with Mayor London Breed and San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.
Assaults on deputies rose from 121 in 2022 to 216 in 2023, in response to Lomba.
Within the letter, Lomba factors to a current research by Washington State College that confirmed excessive charges of psychological well being issues and fatigue amongst San Francisco Sheriff’s Workplace employees, an issue the union mentioned is exacerbated by extra time to fight understaffing.
Nationwide, a scarcity of correction officers has escalated considerations about high quality of life for each prisoners and employees because the incarcerated inhabitants at some services will increase whereas workers decreases.
Final yr, Gov. Gavin Newsom accredited greater than $1 billion in raises and advantages for California jail guards in response to comparable considerations.
In current weeks, some San Francisco County jails have failed to fulfill staffing minimums, down as many as eight deputies for some shifts, in response to the union.
Moriarty mentioned the affiliation’s request to name within the Nationwide Guard is “untimely” and pointless however mentioned the company shares considerations about questions of safety and can deal with them internally.
“We perceive that the DSA additionally ties the current incidents into low staffing ranges and has known as for instant staffing,” she mentioned in an electronic mail Sunday. “The Nationwide Guard just isn’t the reply to the staffing scarcity. The Sheriff continues to be dedicated to filling vacancies, recruiting, and hiring.”
