THE DEATH OF Leland Staats is the latest example of a prisoner in the custody of the San Francisco Police Department or Sheriff's Office dying under suspicious circumstances. As A.C. Thompson reports on page 16, Staats was in the lockup at the Hall of Justice, awaiting trial on charges of stalking, when he became so seriously mentally disturbed that sheriff's deputies decided to transfer him to the psychiatric ward at San Francisco General Hospital. Staats was handcuffed, his legs were shackled, and he was fitted with a belly chain. And yet, somehow, he climbed out the back window of a sheriff's van – supposedly traveling down Highway 101 at 55 miles an hour – then walked to the edge of an elevated section of highway and jumped to his death.

Sheriff Mike Hennessey has a long and well-deserved reputation for caring about the well-being of inmates, and most of the problems in the past have been with the SFPD, not the Sheriff's Office. Still, there are serious questions here. Hennessey says the deputy driving the van appeared to have followed standard operating procedure. If that's the case, then the procedures his office uses to transport prisoners are dangerously problematic. Why was one deputy allowed to drive an unstable prisoner to the hospital alone? Why wasn't the prisoner better secured? Did the deputy call for backup the minute he saw Staats start to head for the back window? If not, why not?