Video footage from a 2018 case involving a mentally ill man who was severely injured while being transported between Santa Clara County jails has been publicly released at the request of the Board of Supervisors, which has called for external probes into the custody operations of the sheriff’s office amid allegations of inmate abuse.
The footage shows how Andrew Hogan, in the throes of a psychiatric crisis, started harming himself at the Elmwood men’s jail in Milpitas and continued to injure himself while riding in a sheriff’s van to the Main Jail in San Jose. The videos illustrate how Hogan repeatedly hit his head against the van wall and was left to lie in the blood-spattered vehicle with severe head injuries, as deputies refused to intervene while he cried for help then lapsed into unconsciousness.
Details of the case were first revealed in September in a previously confidential county counsel report, also made public at the request of county supervisors. That report had been presented to the board in March 2020 in part to secure approval of a $10 million settlement to Hogan’s family on the premise “that the County will very likely be found liable for Hogan’s severe injuries.” It was the county’s largest-ever settlement involving a jail injury or death.
VIDEO: Deputies refuse to intervene as Andrew Hogan hits head against van wall. EDITOR’S NOTE: The video was blurred by the Santa Clara County Counsel’s Office. CLICK HERE if you’re viewing on a mobile device.
The videos, posted late last week and scheduled for board discussion Tuesday, are shot from the vantage point of deputies’ body cameras and stationary cameras in the Main Jail’s intake garage, as a group of deputies stood outside the van waiting for an ambulance. The county counsel’s office says it partially redacted the video, including portions of the medical response, “to protect Mr. Hogan’s privacy rights in medical and mental health information.”
“We have very clear and gut-wrenching evidence of just what happened and why the county was on the hook for a $10 million settlement. Until and unless these issues are addressed, we are at risk of a recurrence,” said Supervisor Joe Simitian, who spearheaded the footage release. “Without accountability, this sends the message that this can happen and there will be no consequences.”
Both Sheriff Laurie Smith and the Hogan family’s attorney, Paula Canny, objected to the video release on the grounds that the family had not consented.
Smith’s office did not return a request for comment Monday, but Canny was incensed by the video release and said neither she nor Hogan’s family were allowed to view what was released beforehand.
“I’m super mad because it’s so rude. But I guess that’s politics,” Canny said. “If I can find a way to sue the f—ing s— out of them, I will.”
The 36 separate videos of varying length follow deputies’ handling of Hogan on Aug. 25, 2018, starting with Hogan hitting his head repeatedly against his cell door at Elmwood. Eventually a decision was made to take him to the psychiatric wing of the Main Jail. While he was being driven there by two deputies, he stood up in the van, shackled at his hands and feet but not restrained, and started hitting his head against a van wall.
“He’s banging his head … he’s got blood everywhere in our van right now, and we’re going to need some assistance when we get there,” one deputy radioed to the jail.
In the footage, deputies can be heard having a brief discussion about taking Hogan directly to Valley Medical Center, before radioing that Hogan has “got a big gash on his forehead” prior to their arrival at the Main Jail.
When the van arrived at the below-ground sally port at the Main Jail, deputies and a watch commander stand in a semi-circle in front of the door and at multiple points they peer into the van and observe a screaming Hogan, begging to be let out, asking for medical assistance and pleading for someone to give him water, the video shows.
“My f—ing head is split open,” Hogan is recorded saying. “My f—ing head is bleeding … please … get me out of here.”
According to the county counsel report, after a nurse called for an ambulance, the commander briefly peered inside the van and advised waiting for a hazmat-suited team to help Hogan because of the blood inside.
“He can do all the damage he wants, we’re waiting for it to be safe for us,” the watch commander can be heard saying in the footage.
When a San Jose Fire Department rescue team arrived, the jail hazmat team was not assembled. By the time the team — clad in white protective suits, protective padding and helmets, with one member standing to the side holding what looked like a riot shield — carried Hogan out, a deputy described him as “unresponsive but he is breathing.”
The Hogan case was a centerpiece of an Aug. 17 referral by Simitian and Supervisor Otto Lee calling on the county to make the Hogan report from county counsel and videos public as part of a broader effort to prompt external investigations by the county Civil Grand Jury, state Attorney General’s office and the U.S Department of Justice.
The supervisors have also asked for an investigation by the state Fair Political Practices Commission, citing questions about whether political favoritism factored into a lack of discipline and an aborted internal-affairs investigation into the Hogan incident. At the time, one of the watch commanders on scene was president of the correctional officers’ union, which backed the sheriff’s 2018 re-election bid.
Simitian said Monday that the sheriff’s office’s reasons for halting the internal investigation remain unexplained and that he and the board have asked the county counsel’s office and the Office of Correction and Law Enforcement Monitoring to find out what happened.
“If there is a good explanation, the board and the public would be gratified to hear it,” he said. Smith has said she welcomes “any and all investigations” into her office’s management of county jails.
The Hogan case was also cited in the board’s unanimous no-confidence vote in Smith on Aug. 31. The sheriff has characterized the board’s actions as politically driven and said supervisors have overlooked their own role in allowing the jails to become de facto psychiatric care facilities.
Canny has echoed that argument in defending Smith and has called the scrutiny of the sheriff a distraction from the larger issue of mental-health treatment in jails. She noted that people such as Hogan are no longer transported by van but either by ambulance or in a sheriff sedan that limits movement.
“They don’t care about Andy Hogan. They don’t really care about mentally ill people,” Canny said.
Besides Hogan, Canny also represented Michael Tyree, a mentally ill man who was murdered in his jail cell by three correctional deputies in 2015.
The Tyree killing prompted a host of pledged jail reforms and the ensuing attention underpinned two federal consent decrees that resolved massive lawsuits over jail conditions and access for people with disabilities. The Hogan footage release was accompanied by a progress report compiled by the county counsel’s office on current compliance to those decrees.
Among its findings, the report states the county has modernized medical record keeping and intake screening, improved its mental-health evaluation practices, and made its suicide-prevention protocol more robust, but is lagging in keeping up with the medical and other needs of people in jail who suffer from severe mental illness.
The report states that while use of force in jail has been reduced and documentation of force has improved, there remain gaps in overall training and issues with inconsistent body-camera activation. The county also contends that people held in isolation have been reduced by 90%, it notes that a need for more out-of-cell activities and better sanitation for the roughly 40 people who are still held in this setting.
