The National City Police Department last week turned over their internal investigation into their handling of Earl McNeil, a 40-year-old man who died while in custody, to the San Diego District Attorney’s Office.
Now a group of McNeil family supporters is requesting that the District Attorney’s Office not investigate the case, instead wanting the FBI to take it over.
San Diegans for Criminal Justice Reform sent a certified letter dated Aug. 14 to District Attorney Summer Stephan, urging her office to recuse itself from the investigation because of a conflict of interest.
“Given that Earl McNeil was a paid DA informant who was being ‘handled’ by a current investigator with the current District Attorney’s Office, there is an apparent conflict of interest for the office to be at the helm of the investigation into his death,” the letter reads in part.
San Diegans for Criminal Justice Reform also asks that Stephan re-open every case where McNeil was used as a law enforcement informant for the prosecution.
“It is well documented that Earl McNeil wanted to recant much of his testimony in cases that he had been a witness for the District Attorney’s Office,” said Monica Montgomery at a Wednesday news conference. “Before he went to the National City Police Department and came out brain dead, he wished to recant that testimony, we know that is well documented.”
At the news conference in front of the lower level of National City’s City Hall it was disclosed that the McNeil family met with San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore and the commander of the central jail for about an hour and 20 minutes Monday.
Although the Sheriff’s Department did not release any camera footage of their interactions with McNeil, community activist Mark Lane said they were able to fill in a timeline for them based on what happened from the 25 minutes that McNeil was in their sally port at the entrance of the jail.
“The sheriff’s exposure to Earl McNeil was very, very limited,” he said. “He never was out of National City Police Department custody while he was there and he was never booked into the central facility. Earl McNeil never left custody of the National City Police Department.”
According to Lane, who was present at the meeting with the Sheriff’s Department, the timeline of the 25 or so minutes the department had with McNeil went like this: When McNeil arrived at the booking station at the central jail in downtown, deputy sheriffs were not able to take him into custody because of his medical condition at that time.
Lane said sheriff deputies helped pull McNeil out of a police car while he still had a spit hood on his head after two hours. A nurse came out and tried to do a medical evaluation and was unable to complete the evaluation because of McNeil’s condition and told the National City Police Department to call paramedics, which Lane said was done. When paramedics arrived, McNeil was moved from the sheriff’s gurney to a paramedic’s gurney. McNeil was then placed in the back of the ambulance. Lane said within a minute or two McNeil had to be pulled out of the ambulance and placed on the floor as paramedics did chest compressions.
McNeil was then transported to UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest where he died on June 11.
