A LONG-AWAITED NINE-MEMBER Sheriff’s Office Civilian Oversight Commission was selected and approved by the Marin County Board of Supervisors.
The first such citizen commission in the county’s history will monitor, review and recommend improvements to the Marin County Sheriff’s Office through annual reports. It will also be a place for citizens to file complaints about misconduct by law enforcement.
In collaboration with the Sheriff’s Office, the commission will help select an Inspector General. The Inspector General, which will have subpoena power, will work with the commission to establish a process for complaints, conduct community outreach, report on officer-involved shootings and use of force within the Sheriff’s Office, among other duties.
The commission includes one representative from each of the county’s five districts and four at-large members. Nine interviews were conducted at Tuesday’s board meeting, and supervisors chose candidates to fill the final four at-large seats. All selections for the commission were confirmed through a resolution.
District representatives are Sara McEvoy, Tom McInerney, Felecia Gaston, Lynn Oldham Robinett and Gina Fromer. The four at-large members are Winston Chan, Doug Lee, Solange Echeverria and Linda Cieslak Sandoval.
Cieslak Sandoval is a former sworn federal law enforcement officer. She served as a special agent with the U.S. Department of the Treasury Office of Inspector General, which oversees the Internal Revenue Service. She currently works with law enforcement as a financial fraud investigator and leads a team of enforcement analysts for a financial tech company.
“I handled things from management abuse, management corruption, individuals who may have been doing drugs on the job, cases where law enforcement officials were leaking tax information to the press,” said Sandoval in her answers to interview questions from the board on Tuesday. “I took anonymous complaints every single day.”
Beginning her answers in Spanish, Novato resident Echeverria implied that her reasons for applying to the commission were obvious.
“I am part of the community that is directly affected by interactions with law enforcement,” Echeverria said, referencing recent immigration detentions carried out by the Trump administration. “I’m the daughter of an immigrant. I’ve been in this country for 60 years, and I’m a little concerned about what is going on. I don’t consider myself the voice of my community, but I am here to provide access for that voice to be heard.”
Echeverria said she was good at building consensus. She has served on the Marin Women’s Commission and was the former chair of the Marin County Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, as well as other state and local boards.
Rooted in overpolicing of Black lives
The idea of a Sheriff’s Office oversight commission in Marin has come up in the past but began in earnest in 2021 with the passage of California Assembly Bill 1185, which authorizes California counties to create oversight bodies that investigate and monitor the activities of sheriff’s offices.
A 2022 Civil Grand Jury Report entitled “Sheriff Oversight: The Time is Now,” documented Black residents’ disproportionate number of interactions with law enforcement, especially in Marin City.
The relationship between the Sheriff’s Office and Black residents of Marin City has not been a good one, the civil grand jury report said. Residents call their town a “training ground” for new deputies and claim that they are overpoliced as a result. Excessive stops, arrests, citations and warnings are routine, Black residents told the jury.
About 35 percent of Marin City’s residents were either Black or multiracial, according to 2019 numbers cited in the report. Marin City is also unincorporated, meaning that the county sheriff is responsible for law enforcement there. In 2006, another civil grand jury recommended to the Board of Supervisors that a sheriff’s review board be created. It was rejected by both the board and the sheriff.
A community outreach effort followed the 2022 Civil Grand Jury report. A draft ordinance to establish a Civilian Oversight Commission and Office of Inspector General was adopted in November 2024, followed by an application and recruitment process. According to public comment, the commission will immediately be facing some of the same challenges that led to its creation.
At Tuesday’s meeting, one comment from a Black resident named Morgan referenced data that he said was pulled from the Marin District Attorney’s office.
“This data for Black folk in Marin County was some of the worst data in the state,” he said, referring to the high number of Black residents being pulled over compared to other parts of the state.
“When you are at any cafe in Marin, you look at every Tesla, every Jeep, every BMW, Benz and Audi driving around with no front license plate, all the Teslas. Black men are still being pulled over for no front license plate. I’ve been pulled over in Wynwood, and I’ve been pulled over in Bolinas.”