Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Files: Scream Therapy, Then a Shooting

In June, following the death of George Floyd and amid renewed scrutiny over how and when law enforcement officers use physical force against civilians, the Independent filed a California Public Records Act request with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office for information on all of its serious use-of-force incidents dating back to 2010. The Sheriff’s Office is in the process of releasing the records on a rolling basis, and these reports will be published as the information is made available.

The week before Kerry Flood was shot and killed by Santa Barbara Sheriff’s deputies on April 23, 2011, he’d cried a lot. He was out of work. His girlfriend left him. Both his father and his dog had recently died.

Flood, a former employee of the Bureau of Land Management for 14 years and “always a strong advocate for the environment,” his obituary says, was living in San Juan Capistrano and visiting his mother, Barbara Flood, for Easter at her home in a Santa Maria mobile home park. At around noon that day, according to Barbara’s interview with detectives, part of 511 pages of investigative notes on the incident, Kerry decided to take a dip in the park’s hot tub.