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I’m not just talking about the most recent problem — the arrest Wednesday of a corrections officer on charges he assaulted an inmate. Or even the many other times sheriff’s department employees have landed in their own department’s jail as inmates during the last couple of years of Sheriff Chris Nanos’ term.

I’m also talking about big, non-criminal screw-ups like the one involving Crist Defrenchi.

Defrenchi, you may have heard, was arrested by ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ police Aug. 27 and accused of first-degree murder in the Aug. 21 shooting of Santiago Jimenez Herrera. What you may not have heard, but was soon after the arrest, is that Defrenchi had been in Pima County Jail a few weeks before the killing.

He gave a false name and was released in hours, even though he had an arrest warrant on a weapons-related charge. The officers on duty should have booked him as a “John Doe,� meaning his identity was unknown, and they also failed to fingerprint him through a system that would have detected his real identity — and his background — before being released.

“Booker is one of the tough jobs,� Nanos told me Thursday. “They’re young kids and they made a mistake.�

If the judge who dealt with Defrenchi had known who he was and the background he has, the judge may not have released him, Nanos said.

So this seems like a good reason to hold the Democratic incumbent Nanos responsible for the jail’s flaws and vote against him, right? It could be, except you also have to consider that the Republican challenger is in the direct line of responsibility. Lt. Heather Lappin works in the jail and is in charge of the chaotic area where arrestees come in — the intake center.

Asked about the incident, Lappin acknowledged the failure to book Defrenchi as “John Doe,â€� noting that it was also the fault of the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ police officers who brought him in, and said using the “digiscanâ€� fingerprint technology must happen before every release.

“To avoid erroneous releases we do a digiscan. The digiscan was not done,� she said.

Would Jimenez Herrera be alive today if that had been done? We can’t know, but maybe.

Not a great look for department

That isn’t even the latest big problem at the jail’s intake center. That honor belongs to Ayden Escarrega, a 20-year-old corrections officer arrested Wednesday for beating an inmate who was being booked into jail.

Escarrega himself was booked into the jail Wednesday and spent the night in the place where he had worked, Nanos said.

So, it’s another case in intake: Do we hold the Democrat Nanos responsible or the Republican Lappin?

It can be helpful to look back. And honestly, that’s not such a great look for the department. In the last two years, at least four other arrests of sheriff’s department officers on felony charges have occurred.

In January 2023, Sgt. Ricardo Garcia was arrested on a charge of sexually assaulting a fellow deputy during a party at Garcia’s house. The prosecution is being handled by the Santa Cruz County Attorney’s Office, and a civil case by the deputy is ongoing.

Corrections Sgt. Stephen Perko was arrested in March 2023 on charges of fraudulent schemes and theft related to charging the department for time he said he was on duty with the Army reserves when he wasn’t actually on duty. The charges were dropped in October 2023 by the Pima County Attorney’s Office.

Corrections officer Jose Monreal was arrested in September 2023 on shoplifting charges that were elevated to felonies before being dropped by the Pima County Attorney’s Office.

Sgt. Ricardo Lozano-Sotelo, a school resource officer assigned to the Ajo district, was arrested in March 2024 on felony domestic violence charges. He pleaded guilty in May to one count of unlawful imprisonment and was sentenced to three years of probation.

It’s been a troubling run. With that background, no wonder it came as a relief to Nanos that the state Attorney General’s Office recently said it found no criminal wrongdoing by the department. The Pima County Board of Supervisors had asked for the review.

“They found zero criminal wrongdoing by this agency in the case that she speaks of, Ricky Garcia,� a pugnacious Nanos said, waving a paper in the air during the online debate with Lappin.

Of course, the letter, from the attorney general’s chief criminal counsel, Nicholas Klingerman, also said the department may have violated its own policies in troubling ways during the incident. The worst: “command staff who were notified of the situation and/or responded to the scene, but provided limited or no assistance to department members dispatched to the scene.�

‘We’re hiring 18-year-olds’

As the incidents and arrests have added up, the question that has struck me is why? When I asked them, both Lappin and Nanos pointed to the youth of the corrections officer corps as factors.

“We’re hiring 18-year-olds. Their background is going to be somewhat limited,� Nanos said. “They’re human beings, they’re going to have mistakes, particularly the younger that you are.�

He noted that Escarrega is 20 now and has been on the force for a year and 7 months. That age range is a reason to ramp up training, Lappin said.

“These kids are 19 years old, 18 years old, and they are in high liability situations in this jail,� she said. “If we don’t train them correctly, we fail.�

Lappin said Nanos reduced by two weeks the time that corrections officers spend in the academy “because they needed corrections staff fast.�

“One of my points that I campaign on over and over is raising our standards and providing the quality training we need,� Lappin said.

Nanos acknowledged temporarily reducing the training time but pointed out that allowed the jail to become fully staffed and that he’s resumed full training.

“We had to get deputies hired and hired quickly,� he said.

The full staffing has helped in one area of high concern, Nanos said. Inmate deaths, which numbered 10 in 2021, 10 in 2022 and eight in 2023, have so far been zero this year. Nanos credited changes of some policies, such as making Narcan widely available, but emphasized the importance of having enough corrections officers to respond to inmates.

But of course three of the recent cases involved sergeants with more experience than a green 19-year-old corrections officer. And they didn’t take place in intake.