Another scathing report paints the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office in a bad light once again.
An auditor hired by the board of supervisors detailed alleged corruption and cover-up in an internal investigation regarding the treatment of a former inmate. The monitor said he tried to talk with Sheriff Laurie Smith and other top brass but kept hitting roadblocks in his investigation.
The report focuses on former inmate Andrew Hogan. Hogan suffered from mental illness and was in custody when deputies transported him to the main jail. He started banging his head against the van in transit and, according to the report, deputies did nothing.
"This is a case that left one inmate brain damaged for life and cost $10 million in tax payer funds," Supervisor Joe Simitian said.
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The department opened an internal affairs investigation into the matter, but the report said the undersheriff at the time, Rick Sung, abruptly closed the investigation after the jail supervisor got the union to spend $300,000 on the sheriff's re-election campaign.
"What we've got here is a case of the number two person in the sheriff’s office who has shut down an internal affairs investigation for no good reason, no plausible explanation," Simitian said.
Both Sung and the sheriff refused to speak with the investigator.
The former union president did not immediately return NBC Bay Area's messages. The sheriff's office said it would not comment. NBC Bay Area also reached out to Sung for comment through his criminal lawyer but did not immediately hear back.
"What it shows is that if you’re in good favor with Laurie Smith, she was going to protect you," legal analyst Jaime Leanos said. "However, if you weren’t in her circle or you weren't in good favor of Laurie Smith, there might be some consequences for these types of actions."
Supervisors on Tuesday also heard there might be another internal investigation that was mysteriously shut down. They now want to go back and look at every internal investigation that Sung was involved in.
Sung has been on paid administrative leave for almost two years, earning nearly $1 million in pay and benefits during that time.
