I was a member of the Community Outreach Working Group, established by the Marin Board of Supervisors in 2022 to advise county officials on the best option for a community oversight commission and inspector general position to provide oversight of the Marin Sheriff’s Office pursuant to Assembly Bill 1185.

I applaud the supervisors for passing the ordinance proposed by county staff. It is long past due that Marin have an inspector general and oversight committee monitoring Sheriff’s Office investigations, conducting independent investigations where necessary and investigating jail conditions, which I am concerned may have contributed to jail inmate suicides.

From my perspective in the group, I felt that members didn’t dare ask for needed, critical amendments to the ordinance because of our fear that supervisors would pull it from the agenda for additional edits. If this had happened, I suspect it would have probably resulted in “meet and confer” sessions with the two unions representing Sheriff’s Office staff. Earlier, multiple “meet and confer” sessions delayed county staff from bringing the measure to the supervisors by almost a year.

The ordinance, which was passed by supervisors on Nov. 5, differs in several important respects from the working group’s recommendations, drafted after many hours of meetings and submitted to the supervisors many months ago. The working group met twice with representatives of the Marin County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, as well as with the sheriff and undersheriff.

They made very few suggestions to us during those meetings. I think they preferred to share requests later in several closed “meet and confer” sessions with the county’s executive office staff. The unions and the sheriff were able to obtain several changes to the working group’s recommendations, which were then incorporated into the ordinance approved by the supervisors at the Nov. 5 meeting.

I think the working group’s support for the ordinance comes from its strong belief in the importance of having an independent inspector general and a civilian oversight commission, both with subpoena power, and having the right to bring on an independent investigator under certain circumstances. These provisions were strongly supported by community members most familiar with and impacted by the criminal legal system with whom working group members talked.

However, I strongly oppose several provisions added to the proposed ordinance after the “meet and confer” sessions with the two unions, the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association and the Marin Sheriff’s Staff Officers’ Association:

• The ordinance requires the county to “endeavor” to include at least one former law enforcement officer on the commission and allows up to two former officers. This means up to 22% of the nine-member commission could be former law enforcement officers.

• It has very watered-down restrictions regarding where a former law enforcement applicant to the commission worked in the past.

• It eliminates the role of Legal Aid of Marin to encourage certain clients to apply for the commission, people whose interactions with the Sheriff’s Office would make them valuable commission members. Such people with “lived experience” are otherwise extremely hard to contact.

• Language was added prohibiting anyone with a serious felony in the past 10 years from serving on the commission, thus eliminating a significant number of people with “lived experience.”

I am disappointed at these changes to the working group’s recommendations. These changes will make it much more difficult to build needed community trust in the Sheriff’s Office.

However, I know that members of the working group are committed to ensuring that the oversight ordinance is implemented in a way that will build that trust. It will require a strong oversight commission and an especially fearless inspector general. I think the working group should advocate for the ordinance to implement provisions to better reflect its recommendations, which were supported overwhelmingly by the community during the many months of community outreach and community listening sessions.

Stephen Bingham, of San Rafael, was a member of the drafting committee for the community outreach working group on oversight of the Marin Sheriff’s Office.