Longtime Monterey County Health Department employee threatens to sue employer

A longtime Monterey County behavioral health employee is threatening to sue the county over what she’s calling mismanagement and unfair treatment.

Devon Corpus, who has worked as a county crisis supervisor for seven years, said she was put on administrative leave after she blew the whistle on some things being done that put the mental illness population at risk.

During her tenure, Corpus started the hostage negotiation team, allowing crisis workers to go along with law enforcement to high-risk situations. She also revamped the crisis intervention team training academy for law enforcement to help them de-escalate potentially dangerous circumstances.

On Friday, 26 experienced officers across the Central Coast graduated from the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training at the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, the first graduation without Corpus at the helm.

“Currently, I think in Salinas we’re about 73 percent of our officers are trained and our goal is to get about 100 percent saturation because we believe the training is that important,” said Salinas Police Chief Kelly McMillin.

Dealing with the mentally ill, officers say things can get out of hand quickly, but after 40 hours of CIT training, it’s about slowing things down.

“You give the public what they deserve, right, everybody deserves to be listened to. Everybody has a voice and you work with it,” said 30-year police lieutenant Marty Hart. Hart was one of the officers who graduated from the CIT training Friday.

Corpus said her voice was silenced.

“Before being placed on leave, I would say I had a dream job,” Corpus said.

After filing a claim against Monterey County at the beginning of October, the woman who was in charge of CIT training and crisis department is prepared to sue.

“I had brought some complaints forward about patient care concerns, some of the mismanagement of funds, and I was put on administrative leave for six months and then asked to come back,” Corpus said.

She was asked to come back in a different role, supervising the AB-109 team at the probation department, while the programs she started continued without her.

“We’ve never made such a huge investment in our relationship with law enforcement,” said Amie Miller, newly-appointed director of behavioral health. “Mobile crisis is all new for us, having social workers in every region, being called out with law enforcement to do prevention.”

Mobile crisis is a program Corpus brought on board. The plan is to have three social workers stationed throughout Monterey County: one at the Gonzales Police Department, one at the Salinas Police Department and a third at the Monterey Police Department.

Corpus is among eight other potential plaintiffs in her claim and she said she’ not backing down.

“It’s pure retaliation, that’s it,” Corpus said, referring to being put on administrative leave.

“The county is aware that a claim has been filed by this employee. The county does not comment on personnel matters, which are confidential, for the protection of both the employee as well as the county,” according to a statement released by Monterey County after request for comment.

Corpus’ lawyers said their client filed a tort claim and obtained a right to sue letter from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. The county has until the beginning of November to respond to the claim or Corpus is threatening to sue.