'No Confidence' In Sheriff: Santa Clara County Supervisors

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA — Facing calls to resign amid backlash over multiple scandals, Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith also lost the confidence of the county’s Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The five supervisors unanimously approved a resolution of no confidence in Smith, who has served as sheriff since 1998.

The board doesn’t have the authority to fire Smith, 69, because the sheriff is a publicly elected official, but the board “exhorted” her to retire before the end of 2022 and submit a detailed succession plan in the next 60 days.

In their resolution, the supervisors pointed to what they called the sheriff's mismanagement of county jails, a lack of transparency and bribery and corruption scandals.

Since 2015, three inmates suffering from mental illness have either died or been seriously injured in county jails, which are overseen by the sheriff’s office.

Related: Santa Clara Co. Sheriff Defies Calls To Resign, Defends Actions

Among those calling for Smith to resign is San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who runs the county's largest city.

“This is a pattern of conduct that is years and years in its import,” Supervisor Joe Simitian said. “It is clearly conduct that is unbecoming of a public official, a law enforcement official and particularly unbecoming of a law enforcement leader.”

Simitian, who co-authored the resolution with Supervisor Susan Ellenberg, called it an “unprecedented act” but said that the board has an obligation to “simply speak up and call out this behavior as unacceptable.”

In a referral discussed at the Aug. 17 board meeting, supervisors unanimously called for investigations into the sheriff’s office by the U.S. Department of Justice, the state attorney general's office and a civil grand jury.

Smith, who is in her sixth term, supported the investigations but declined to step down. On Tuesday, she continued to defend herself in front of the supervisors, blaming them for “using the jail as a mental health facility.”

“The county jail should not be used as a mental health hospital, which is what the board has asked of me,” Smith said. “You tasked me with being your Band-Aid. Now you’re placing blame, not taking responsibility. Joe apparently needs to find a person to blame for inadequacies instead of addressing the real problem.”

Smith called for the board to spend money allotted to build a new county jail on a psychiatric hospital instead.

“I am a law enforcement officer, not a trained psychiatrist,” she said. “I will withstand your coordinated wrath, especially when impartial entities will investigate your spurious allegations.”

The sheriff, who faced her fiercest re-election challenge in 2018 but still garnered over 56 percent of the vote, also compared the board’s action to the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“This really, truly undermines the sanctity of a democratic election,” Smith said. “The people have long believed that my experience and dedication earned the trust of those that I serve.”

Smith didn’t address criminal investigations into accusations of bribery that led to indictments of her top aides or to allegations of a pay-to-play scandal involving $300,000 in union contributions for Smith's 2018 re-election.

She invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, declining to cooperate with the grand jury investigation of her own staff over bribery charges related to her re-election.

In response to Smith’s statement, Simitian said he was “disappointed and frankly somewhat offended” that she used those suffering from mental illness “in an effort to conflate and confuse the issue” and to “divert and deflect and deny responsibility.”

The supervisors’ reasoning in calling for a no confidence vote was related to the sheriff’s conduct and not mental health issues, according to Simitian.

“Let’s not misplace the center of this conversation,” he said.

Ellenberg said that she supported Smith’s opinions on treating mental health but added that she hasn’t seen “words aligned with action.”

“Sheriff Smith has had merely sole and complete responsibility for what happens in the jail,” Ellenberg said.

Simitian admitted that the board has limited options to discipline the sheriff but said he hoped the vote of no confidence resulted in a change in behavior.

“Do you really want to tell the public that the conduct not that is debated — but that is documented — is acceptable?” Simitian asked his colleagues ahead of the unanimous vote. “Do you really want to reinforce, reward, applaud this bad behavior? I have to believe the answer to those questions is no.”

Bay City News contributed to this report.