San Jose fire chief in hot seat over drug oversight failures

To save money, San Jose leaders cut a critical fire department program last year that tracked the storage of addictive painkillers for cross-trained firefighter paramedics. Nine months later, the theft of opioids from nearly two dozen fire stations has raised concerns that patients in serious pain received tampered drugs.

San Jose Fire Fighters Local 230, the city’s firefighter union, warned against the oversight cuts as recently as a March San Jose City Council meeting, roughly a month before the city announced the April 16 arrest of a fire captain for stealing the fire department’s drugs. Officials said controlled substances across 17 fire stations were possibly stolen and tainted.

It ties back to a council vote in 2023, which approved Fire Chief Robert Sapien’s request to slash the emergency medical services field coordinator position, or “Med 30,” from his budget. City documents show the role’s numerous responsibilities included taking inventory of the fire stations’ controlled substances and investigating any discrepancies. Sapien at the time called it a “very difficult” but “least impactful” tradeoff in order to add an extra firefighter unit. At a budget study session last May, he argued the department would find a better approach by distributing the duties across other areas of his team. The job cut took effect last July.

The firefighter union has come out slamming department leaders after the captain’s arrest.

“Local 230 believes the department’s decision to eliminate the Med 30 program — despite formal objections from Local 230 — was a critical error that directly contributed to this breakdown in oversight,” union President Jerry May told San Jose Spotlight.

He said the Med 30 position existed as a safeguard — and its removal eliminated an essential layer of accountability.

“As a result, public safety has been jeopardized and the integrity of the fire department has been severely compromised under Chief Sapien’s leadership,” May said. “We believe the facts suggest a clear lack of leadership and accountability from the chief and key members of his administrative staff.”

Sapien denied the Med 30 cuts fueled the problem and said he’s taking measures to strengthen drug tracking.

“For example, we are looking to recommend for city council consideration the purchase of new biometric technology to improve the security of the storage of controlled substances,” Sapien told San José Spotlight. “While we do not believe that oversights have occurred in the reallocation of the Med 30 position’s duties, our focus remains squarely on implementing improvements that support our personnel and uphold the trust of the communities we serve.”

City Manager Jen Maguire’s office said the drug inventory role was reassigned to another fire captain in charge of quality control for emergency medical services.

“The process and method of accountability for the controlled substance inventory control have not changed amid the reallocation of Med 30 duties,” city spokesperson Demetria Machado told San José Spotlight, adding the reassigned captain “was the person who notified the fire department of the compromised medications on April 14, 2025.”

Machado added the reassigned captain was trained previously as a Med 30.

That captain already has a list of separate duties, May said, including auditing emergency calls for service.

“We can’t eliminate an entire position that’s been in the fire department for 20-plus years and put that work on everyone else and have the same result,” May said.

May called on the city to provide “a full accounting of how this preventable failure unfolded.”
District 7 Councilmember Bien Doan, a 27-year firefighter, echoed the same concern last year and publicly addressed the chief.

“I know that Med 30 has functioned as a safety officer providing oversight on all of our paramedics inside the fire department to comply with the county protocols and expired drugs and so on,” Doan told Sapien at a May 2024 budget study session. “I would hope you rethink and perhaps find ways to keep our Med 30 alive.”

Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X.