Sacramento County Jail Death Leads to Accusations of Neglect

A Sacramento man suffering from a drug overdose was neglected by a police officer, medical workers and sheriff’s deputies over the course of more than two hours before he died at a county jail last May, according to reports from court-appointed monitors.

That man, David Kent Barefield Sr., 55, was among seven detainees the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office reported dying at its facilities last year — and one of three who died at its main jail in the span of about a month.

Jail staff members claimed he was faking illness, and the Sheriff’s Office told the California Department of Justice that his death was from natural causes. But an autopsy by the county Coroner’s Office found he had overdosed on methamphetamine and fentanyl.

Like many jails and prisons across the country, those in Sacramento County have been faulted for inadequate medical care in recent years. Details of Mr. Barefield’s last hours were captured on jail video footage, which has not been publicly released but was viewed by lawyers appointed to monitor conditions at the county jails as part of a 2020 consent decree in a federal lawsuit.

The lawyers’ report described a culture of neglect for detainees in the jail system. Two medical experts, also assigned to track compliance with court-ordered reforms, asserted that there was misconduct by police officers, sheriff’s deputies and jail medical personnel in handling Mr. Barefield and others who died.

“Review of these deaths showed serious system and individual performance issues, including inadequate emergency response, inadequate medical care prior to death, and in one case, callous deliberate indifference to a man who was so obviously gravely ill that even a lay person would see that the patient needed emergent care,” the medical experts wrote.