The new head of Orange County law enforcement oversight agency is former attorney for the San Diego Sheriff

The Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday appointed Robert Faigin, an attorney who spent the past two decades representing the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, as the new head of the Office of Independent Review, an agency that investigates potential abuse or misconduct by law enforcement.

Fagin was a prosecutor in Solano and Lassen counties before he became the San Diego Sheriff’s director of legal affairs. He had worked as a lawyer for that department since 2001.

“In the weeks and months to come, I look forward to meeting with the sheriff, district attorney and county department leaders to learn their processes and procedures in an effort to help the Office of Independent Review provide factual, unbiased, independent reviews of issues affecting their departments and of concern to the Board of Supervisors,” Faigin wrote in a statement Tuesday.

Served as San Diego jail system’s attorney amid soaring cases of in-custody deaths

In 2005, Faigin represented former San Diego Sheriff William Kolendar in a case involving Timothy Berry, a deputy who was fired after admitting he lied to cover up the 2002 beating of an inmate at the George Bailey Detention Center. Berry served as a lookout for another deputy who repeatedly slammed a prisoner’s head against a wall.

“A ‘code of silence’ existed in the department,” Fourth District Court of Appeals Judge Terry O’Rourke wrote in the panel’s decision on the matter. “And Berry was assigned to a so-called, ‘angry team’ of ‘rogue’ deputies who told him to forget everything he learned at the Academy and ‘to go along to get along.’”

The former deputy filed a petition contesting his firing with the San Diego Civil Service Commission and got his job back. Kolender, represented by Faigin, successfully appealed Berry’s reinstatement, blocking his return to the Sheriff’s Department.

“I am proud of the fact that the Court of Appeal agreed that truthfulness goes to the heart of being a public servant,” Faigin said in his statement.

Faigin also sat on the San Diego Sheriff’s Critical Incident Review Board, a body tasked with examining all uses of force by that county’s deputies. The review board was criticized for invoking attorney-client privilege to prevent its findings from being disclosed in court by lawyers for the family of Paul Silva, an incarcerated man who was killed in the San Diego Men’s Central Jail in 2018.

“The focus of the CIRB is to assess the department’s civil exposure because of a given incident,” Faigin wrote in an email Friday. “Similar to confidential doctor peer reviews, incidents are reviewed from multiple perspectives, including training, tactics, policies and procedures to identify problem areas and recommend remedial actions so that potential liability can also be avoided in the future. This process also promotes improved public safety for the residents of the county as a whole and has been in place since approximately 2007.”

Silva had suffered a mental health emergency and was taken to the San Diego Men’s Central Jail instead of a treatment facility.

Video of events leading up to Silva’s death recorded him saying, “Stop, sir, I didn’t do anything,” to the six deputies attempting to move him out of a holding cell he had been kept in for 36 hours. The deputies were seen in the footage using stun guns to repeatedly shock him and a tactical body shield to press their weight down on him.

The then-39-year-old Silva, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, died as a result of injuries suffered during his struggle with deputies. He was one of 185 people killed while in law enforcement custody in San Diego County between 2006 and 2020.

“I don’t know Mr. Faigin, and I don’t have anything personal against him,” Gene Iredale, one of the lawyers who represented the Silva family, said. “But he was the attorney for the jail system, basically, under [Sheriff William] Gore. Gore just resigned in February, on the heels of an audit looking at the conditions in our jails, which were atrocious.”

San Diego County paid $3.5 million to settle a lawsuit with the Silva family in April 2021. On Feb. 3, California State Auditor Michael Tilden released a report that stated the San Diego Sheriff’s Department’s “failure to consistently provide adequate medical and mental health care likely contributed to its high number of in-custody deaths.”

Appointed amid doubts about the autonomy of the Office of Independent Review

Faigin’s first day on the job will be Nov. 4, Orange County spokeswoman Mechell Perez said. His appointment comes about three months after the release of an O.C. grand jury Report titled “How Independent is the Office of Independent Review?”

The document claimed the Orange County Sheriff’s Department lobbied the Board of Supervisors and succeeded in placing a hiring freeze on the Office of Independent Review after it released findings that were critical of the law enforcement agency’s policies regarding deputies’ use of force.

The Board of Supervisors disagreed with the grand jury’s conclusions in a response submitted in August. County officials said they paused the recruitment of two positions at the OIR to hold discussions with the office about “general work practices,” and the hiring process resumed after those conversations took place. They deny any freeze was implemented.

The grand jury’s report noted the OIR was either planning or actively engaged in nine different investigations on topics including the increased rate of suicide in Orange County’s jails, reports of harassment and evidence-booking errors at the district attorney’s office, psychological evaluations and hiring practices at police departments and a review of shootings by deputies.

Their report also recommended increasing the oversight agency’s roster to 20 personnel, including staff attorneys, investigators and people specifically assigned to monitor conditions inside jails and juvenile halls in order to meet those tasks.

The county’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year includes funding for a total of four staff at the OIR: the executive director role filled by Faigin, two attorneys and an investigations manager, Perez said. The latter position was vacant as of Wednesday.

In their response to the grand jury’s report, county officials said they believe current staffing levels at the OIR are sufficient, but they are open to reviewing the matter if the office’s workload changes.

“People are a very important part of the staffing equation, but to adequately assess staffing needs, things such as having the right technology and appropriate processes and procedures in place are also important to work efficiently and effectively,” Faigin stated Tuesday. “Without having had the opportunity to review these factors and the overall goals and objectives of the Board of Supervisors, I cannot speak to the current staffing of the Office of Independent Review.”

Office created in 2008 to win back public’s trust

The Office of Independent review was formed in response to the 2006 killing of John Chamberlain. He was held at the Theo Lacy Jail on suspicion of possessing child pornography and beaten to death by at least six other inmates, apparently unnoticed by guards who said they didn’t learn about the attack until 30 minutes after it started.

High-profile cases of Orange County law enforcement have resulted in the retrial of numerous criminal defendants in the years since OIR began operation in 2008, and the office has been criticized for being ineffective in the past.

Its first director, Stephen Connolly, resigned in 2016, in the wake of a scandal involving the use of jailhouse informants.

The office’s most recent leader was Sergio Perez, a former director of enforcement for the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission with an extensive background in investigating allegations of abuse. He left the OIR earlier this year to serve as the inspector general for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, an agency recently mired by the revelations of widespread corruption.

Now, command of the body tasked with oversight over the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, district attorney’s office, public defenders office, probation department and the social services agency falls into the hands of Faigin, a seasoned attorney who has spent the past 20 years in a position representing law enforcement.

“As a former prosecutor and current legal advisor, I have learned that objective facts are the key to accurately analyzing every incident,” Faigan wrote when asked to respond to potential doubts regarding his objectivity.

“During my legal career, I have become good at finding and presenting those facts in a clear, unbiased and precise manner,” he continued. “I intend to continue to do the same as the executive director for OIR.”

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