Sheriff's Department Shifts Staff At SF General After Patient Death

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)—The San Francisco Sheriff's Department is reassigning staff members on the heels of the investigation into the death of Lynne Spalding—the missing woman whose body was found in a San Francisco General Hospital stairwell.

Earlier this week Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi apologized for his department's slow and incomplete search for Spalding, 57, who was a patient at the hospital and disappeared on Sept. 21.

Mirkarimi said it took his department nine days after Spalding was initially reported missing from her room to conduct a hospital-wide search. He said deputies started the search on Sept. 30, but that they only checked about half of the facility's stairwells.

A hospital engineer found Spalding's body on Oct. 8th.

Officials said that one sheriff's dispatcher, a civilian employee who was working at the hospital, was re-assigned on Thursday to a position outside of the hospital.

Meanwhile, a source at the sheriff's department told KCBS that several other staff members at the department who work at the hospital were notified that they are being reassigned to posts outside of San Francisco General. Several other sheriff's employees have been told they will replace those workers at the hospital.

No one, as of yet, at the sheriff's department has been fired stemming from the Spalding case.

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