One of the terms of the settlement calls for the Sheriff’s Department to work cooperatively with the plaintiffs to better implement medical protocols when men and women being booked into jail tell deputies that they are addicted to alcohol or drugs.
Serna family attorney Eugene Iredale said that provision was critical, because deputies ignored Elisa Serna when, in the last hours of her life, she fell 18 times and vomited 64 separate times.
“Despite her request, she was never given an IV,” Iredale said. “She was left to die.”
Attorney Julia Yoo, who co-represented the Serna family in the just-settled litigation, said the county continues to withhold critical records and other information from the relatives of people who die in sheriff’s custody.
“Right now in the county of San Diego, the only way a family can find out the truth of what happened to their loved one is to file a lawsuit,” said Yoo, who helped write a bill that was signed into law last year that requires sheriffs to release details of in-custody death investigations.
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