In summary
A coalition of civil rights groups says the offices of sheriff and coroner should be separate, so there is impartiality when investigating in-custody or jail deaths.
After her son, Richard Matus, died in a Riverside jail cell in 2022, Lisa Matus became convinced the county’s system for handling death investigations needed an overhaul.
Richard Matus, who was 29, had been in jail four years and had felt sick and dizzy. He was prescribed medication for high blood pressure and cholesterol. When his symptoms worsened he was not sent to the hospital. He died on the last day Lisa Matus spoke with him, she said.
An autopsy listed his cause of death as “fentanyl and ethanol toxicity,” but the autopsy also found severe coronary artery blockage and blunt trauma and lacerations.
Matus’ family sued the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Chad Bianco in 2023, but Lisa Matus believes it’s crucial to change the way death investigations work in Riverside County.
She’s part of the “Riverside Sheriff Accountability Coalition” which is calling for separating the sheriff and coroner’s office, for creating a community oversight board to review complaints against the department and for an inspector general to investigate them.
“When there’s grievances filed or deaths that occur, if there’s a complaint, there should be an oversight board to look over that,” she told CalMatters.
In a statement to CalMatters, Bianco said their complaints are “fabrications or misleading at best.”
The coalition consists of individuals and civil rights groups, including the ACLU of Southern California, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the League of Women Voters of Riverside and a group called Starting Over Strong, which promotes criminal justice reform.
They argue that it’s crucial to separate law enforcement and death investigations in Riverside County, where the sheriff’s department operates nearly 4,000 jail beds and has seen a spike in inmate deaths. There were 226 in-custody deaths from 2011 to 2022, according to a report by the criminal justice nonprofit Care First California.
“We advocate separating the role of coroner, public administrator and sheriff because of problems we’ve seen about how they’re handled by the sheriff, but also because it has an inherent conflict of interest,” said Chani Beeman, a League of Women Voters member involved in the coalition. “Here you have a sheriff who oversees the operations and when that death happens, he’s also the one signing off on that death.”
Bianco, who is running for governor in 2026, has disputed claims that his department is responsible for the deaths, blaming them on fentanyl use or suicide.
A year ago the Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted not to split the offices, but the coalition is urging them to reconsider.
Bianco disparaged the groups’ repeated attempts to split the departments, saying”This anti-law enforcement, pro-criminal, activist group simply can not take no for an answer.”
He said the board of supervisors agreed that “separating the two offices would be detrimental to the quality of service our residents expect and would not be in the best interest of the County of Riverside.”
Some large counties, including Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco, have medical examiner offices that are separate from their sheriff’s departments. A 2022 bill by then-Assemblymember Akilah Weber Pierson, a San Diego Democrat, and Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Gardena Democrat, would have required all counties to split the duties of sheriff and coroner, but it failed in the state Senate.
In most California counties, the offices of sheriff and coroner are combined, leaving the sheriff responsible for overseeing unexplained or violent deaths. Those duties include conducting autopsies to determine cause of death, transporting bodies, verifying the cause of death and signing death certificates.
Critics say the sheriff can’t perform that task objectively when a death occurs in custody or after an officer-involved shooting.
“Accountability is integral to any system, and most assuredly for a large and powerful department that deals with matters of life and death,” the coalition stated.
A 2019 California law authorizes counties to establish sheriff oversight boards and inspectors general. Matus believes that if Riverside County had taken those measures, her son would be alive today.
“If the county would have implemented that, I know for sure that all of these deaths wouldn’t have taken place,” she said.
