{"id":64524,"date":"2025-11-22T00:42:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T00:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/64524\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T00:42:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T00:42:07","slug":"oc-law-enforcement-watchdog-director-leaves-office-with-mixed-reviews-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/64524\/","title":{"rendered":"OC law enforcement watchdog director leaves office with mixed reviews \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once again, Orange County\u2019s law enforcement oversight agency is in flux with the departure this month of Director Robert Faigin.<\/p>\n

County supervisors this month let expire Faigin\u2019s three-year contract at the helm of the six-member Office of Independent Review, which is tasked with monitoring the sheriff\u2019s department, district attorney\u2019s office, public defender\u2019s office, probation department and social services agency. Supervisors have launched a national search for Faigin\u2019s replacement and installed attorney Stella Lim as interim director.<\/p>\n

In an interview, Faigin said he asked for a modest \u201cbump\u201d in his annual compensation package of $422,739, but couldn\u2019t come to terms with the county.<\/p>\n

Formed in 2008, the OIR has been mired in controversy and deemed by some to be political window-dressing, was mostly ineffective and either too chummy or too antagonistic with law enforcement, depending on who held the office. At one point, supervisors let the agency sit dormant for two years while trying to decide whether to shut it down altogether.<\/p>\n

Faigin was brought aboard in 2022 to replace outgoing director Sergio Perez, a civil rights attorney who produced a bombshell report that aggressively rebuked<\/a> the sheriff\u2019s department for its use of force. Perez had been on the job for two years when he left for a watchdog position with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power<\/a>. He now heads the Santa Ana-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.<\/p>\n

Faigin, also an attorney, came from a different background. For 21 years he was the chief legal adviser to the San Diego County Sheriff\u2019s Department. Before that he was a local prosecutor, a law enforcement insider<\/a>. County officials at that time were looking for an OIR director who would be less publicly vocal than Perez. Supervisors wanted someone to quietly warn them of potential liabilities within the county\u2019s law enforcement system and to help correct them.<\/p>\n

Faigin said Thursday, Nov. 20, he thought he fit the bill. Under his management, the staff roster went from three to six and his annual budget rose to $1.6 million. He produced six public reports, including one on the use of pepper spray at juvenile hall. It found that staff generally followed protocol in using the spray on minors, but videos of the incidents sometimes didn\u2019t match the written reports.<\/p>\n

Another OIR probe, into the death of an inmate who choked on food, found that a deputy conducting a safety check had looked into the man\u2019s cell for only one second and at a distance too far to determine if he was OK. He was not.<\/p>\n

Faigin said he thought he had accomplished more than any of his predecessors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we were doing good work. I thought we were hitting our stride,\u201d he said. \u201cI visualized my role as similar to an umpire in a baseball game. I called balls and strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento described the agency\u2019s performance under Faigin\u2019s leadership as \u201cunderwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarmiento said he has tried to meet with Faigin on a monthly basis to gauge the needs and priorities of his office. The board has supported increasing staff and allowed Faigin to give presentations twice a year on the agency\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we tried to do as much as we could to help the OIR succeed,\u201d he said. \u201cUnfortunately, we\u2019re disappointed that more hasn\u2019t been done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarmiento said the silver lining is that Faigin\u2019s leadership could provide a learning opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m optimistic now that we have experience with an ineffective performance, we can have a clear directive of what the OIR should be tasked with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Supervisor Doug Chaffee said he \u201cappreciates\u201d the work Faigin has done for the county and is confident that his temporary replacement will continue the work without disruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Once again, Orange County\u2019s law enforcement oversight agency is in flux with the departure this month of Director…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,23,100,4765,608,136],"class_list":["post-64524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orange-county-board-of-supervisors","tag-orange-county-sheriffs-department","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}