San Francisco’s troubled Sheriff’s Department watchdog can’t get a break. It just lost a board member and may soon lose its most important employee.
The Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board was established by ballot initiative in 2020 after a series of scandals involving allegations of inmate abuse and evidence mishandling. Four years later, infighting among its members and limited funding have prevented it from completely meeting its voter-approved mandate of investigating misconduct committed by sheriff’s deputies.
“It’s been a frustrating experience for me, but I just didn’t feel it was a worthwhile use of my time and energies,” said Jayson Wechter, who was appointed to the body by the Board of Supervisors in 2022. “I’m disturbed by the fact that it looks like the Office of the Inspector General might not become operational for at least two more years.”
Wechter quit the board Thursday over half a dozen issues detailed in a five-page resignation letter. A law enforcement oversight expert who helped create the board and the predecessor of the Department of Police Accountability, he said his sole goal was seeing the board succeed.
The resignation is the latest setback in San Francisco’s bid to build an agency dedicated to accountability, transparency, and ensuring good government.
Some of Wechter’s complaints were over fellow board members sniping at him during meetings (he was often the lone dissenter when voting), quarterly reports containing inaccuracies, and the board’s reluctance to adopt the principles of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, where Wechter serves on the board of directors.
He also leveled criticisms at the board’s inspector general, Terry Wiley.
Wechter wrote that Wiley performed interviews of inmates in front of deputies — which was against best practices, since the inmates may have pending complaints against the deputies — and that Wiley did not prepare written reports after interviewing inmates.
Wiley, a well-regarded former prosecutor who won an uncontested Alameda County judgeship in March, said he could not comment on Wechter’s allegations. He did not say whether he would resign to assume elected office in January. There’s also a chance he may be tapped to fill recalled DA Pamela Price’s seat.
Ken Lomba, head of the sheriff’s deputy union, said Wechter was always fair and reasonable, but there’s a “power struggle and people wanting to position themselves, unfortunately.”
Julie Soo, the board’s president, said the agency’s work speaks for itself and had a critique of Wechter’s time as the board’s president.
“What could have happened under his leadership was that we actually hired some administrative people in the office,” Soo said. “We lost funding because we didn’t fill positions. And I personally wish that, as a board member, I would have pushed harder to do that, but he was president at the time.”
(The mayor’s office said “the DPA has been leveraging its resources and expertise to conduct investigations in the Sheriff’s Department. The Mayor’s budget continues funding this work through DPA.”)
The agency has no investigators of its own. The only staff is a secretary and Wiley.
Tracy Gallardo, a legislative aide to Supervisor Shamann Walton, who led the charge to create the board, said the office will start looking for Wechter’s replacement.
“These are volunteers trying to put this together in their spare time, not always agreeing on how to do it and probably not even really knowing how to do it,” Gallardo said. “This is an example of a commission that probably just needs a little bit more resources to get it together.”