County supervisors approve the creation of an inspector general to oversee sheriff’s office.

Three years after members of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors first raised the potential for independent oversight over the County Sheriff, on July 7, they approved the creation of an office of the inspector general with a community advisory committee.

“It would give us the ability to ask better questions of the sheriff and provide the public with more transparency about what some of those policies and practices are,” Supervisor Wendy Root Askew says. This includes policies, overtime management, jail practices and more.

Francisco Lopez, director for District 12 of the League of United Latin American Citizens, applauds the decision. “We believe it will strengthen public trust,” he says.

Trust in the sheriff’s office was at a low when Root Askew first brought the issue forward in 2022. Then-sheriff Steve Bernal was publicly reprimanded by the board that year for neglecting to address sexual harassment within the department. In 2021, he was censured for misuse of funds.

State Assembly Bill 1185, passed in 2020, allows counties to create committees to oversee sheriffs and their departments, which led Monterey County to form an ad hoc committee comprising supervisors Root Askew and Glenn Church. They held a public meeting in 2023, then went quiet for three years.

Askew says the issue resurfaced after the sheriff’s office released its latest Truth Act report, a mandatory annual update in which local law enforcement agencies share data on inmates released to ICE, and subsequent meetings where the board discussed immigration issues. Several residents spoke up to demand the creation of an oversight committee.

Currently, the sheriff’s office is undergoing a financial audit by GGP Analytics, requested in 2025 by the board. Church says the delayed audit was a setback on formalizing an oversight process earlier. “We were hoping we were going to get information before we made a decision, but that has taken quite a bit of time,” he says.

Sheriff Tina Nieto says she will follow the board’s decision but wonders if it is fiscally responsible; County staff estimate it will cost $500,000 annually. “This is a cost to taxpayers and I don’t think this is money the county should be spending right now,” she says.

Nieto adds she’s been open. “Up to this point, whatever the supervisors have wanted to see, I’ve presented to them,” she says.

She has been under scrutiny since taking office in 2023, including recently for data showing the release of 21 individuals, out of 9,200 people booked in county jail, to ICE in 2025.

Chris Barrera, a LULAC president who supported Nieto during her campaign, argues Nieto hasn’t been transparent. “She expressed how she was going to support civilian oversight committees,” Barrera says.

Allyssa Victory, senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, says oversight benefits the community: “It increases transparency and communication.”

Victory says sheriffs in general haven’t been held accountable for misconduct. “They’re funded by public dollars. They serve the public, and so they should be accountable,” Victory says. In order to effectively oversee a Sheriff’s Office, committees and inspectors general need subpoena powers, Victory adds: “That is a critical power for them.”