OAKLAND — Hernan Jaramillo, Roy Nelson, James Greer, Kayla Moore, Mark Bennett and Martin Harrison all have tragedy in common: Each died since 2010 during scuffles with police in Alameda County.

But unlike similar incidents elsewhere in the Bay Area, none of the deaths was independently investigated by the district attorney. Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley does not automatically probe use-of-force deaths unless the decedent was shot by police.

Told by this news organization that her policy is at odds with peers, O’Malley expressed surprise and said she would consider a change. Currently, she said, her office simply follows an officer-involved shooting protocol agreed to by the county chiefs of police.

Critics argue that all deaths resulting from police use of force deserve oversight. They say that without an extra layer of investigation, police agencies aren’t held accountable for their actions, and communities and the families of those who die don’t receive the accountability they deserve.

“If somebody knows somebody is watching, they are less likely to do things that they might do when they know nobody is watching,” said Oakland civil rights attorney Jim Chanin.

Chanin noted that the level of transparency next door in Contra Costa County is superior.

There, the District Attorney’s Office investigates the death of anyone who dies during an interaction with police or while in custody. That includes all deaths in a jail, regardless of whether force is used — incidents that O’Malley’s office also doesn’t review.

And a similar standard is applied by district attorneys in Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties, raising questions about why Alameda County’s policy differs.

“She has the power to talk to the coroner, to convene some sort of countywide system, and in the absence of that, she needs to do it herself,” Chanin said about O’Malley.

O’Malley challenged claims by critics that her office acted indifferently toward nonshooting deaths.

“The protocol that has been established with law enforcement has been limited to shootings,” O’Malley said, while conceding that perhaps it should change. “I think what we are doing is we are re-evaluating the protocol to evaluate other circumstances in which somebody has died.”

The district attorney pointed out that her office does sometimes “review” police and autopsy reports from nonshooting in-custody deaths, such as in the case of Mario Martinez, a Santa Rita inmate who died from an asthma attack last summer.

Though reviews are far less robust than the independent investigations conducted in the aftermath of officer-involved shootings, the district attorney said her office will conduct them at the request of any community member.

O’Malley acknowledged that unless her staff reads about incidents in the media or hears about them elsewhere, her office will typically only investigate nonshooting use-of-force deaths after a request from law enforcement.

“We are really reliant upon police agencies to contact us,” O’Malley said.

That’s a problem, according to Andrea Pritchett, co-founder of Berkeley-based police oversight group Copwatch.

Pritchett said that when 41-year-old Kayla Moore died during a struggle with Berkeley police in 2013, Copwatch contacted the District Attorney’s Office to see if the case would be reviewed.

“We called up the DA, and I was shocked that they didn’t investigate nonshooting deaths,” Pritchett said.

Pritchett and her colleagues used records from the Berkeley Police Department to produce their own “People’s Investigation.”

The People’s Investigation report detailed how officers arrived at Moore’s apartment in response to a call about her mental health, then attempted to arrest her on a warrant for someone 20 years older with the same name.

Police handcuffed the 347-pound Moore and placed her in a full-body restraint called a WRAP, according to the report. She lost consciousness, and the coroner later found her cause of death to be acute drug intoxication.

The report took issue with the District Attorney’s policy: “This leaves the investigation up to the police themselves, including in cases where large numbers of officers may have been involved and which would reflect poorly on the department were the investigation to find against the officers.”

Many nonshooting use-of-force deaths are similar to Moore’s, while others are variants on the theme.

James Greer died during a 2014 traffic stop after Hayward and BART police restrained him and used a WRAP. He was later found to have PCP in his system.

Roy Nelson died in December 2015 during a scuffle with Hayward, in which a WRAP also was used.

Mark Bennett died in December 2014 after a scuffle with Oakland police. He allegedly had been cutting himself with a knife before their arrival and then was shot with a stun gun.

Martin Harrison was going through alcohol withdrawal and yelling incoherently in a Santa Rita Jail cell in 2010 when the 140-pound man was punched, beaten and stunned by 10 sheriff’s deputies.

Teresa Drenick, a spokeswoman for O’Malley, said though the District Attorney’s Office didn’t conduct an investigation, it did review incident reports and found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Alameda County and the jail’s health care provider, Corizon, eventually settled a civil lawsuit for $8.3 million.

“Why is it that civil rights lawyers are able to put together multimillion-dollar claims, and Nancy O’Malley can’t find a single one of those to consider prosecuting the officers?” said Michael Haddad, who represented Harrison’s children in the civil case.

Across the Bay Area, police brutality prosecutions for any type of force are rare, though civil rights advocates say that prosecutions and transparent investigations are far more likely than civil lawsuits to precipitate reform, even if charges aren’t filed.

Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen currently is prosecuting three jail guards in connection with the fatal beating of an inmate in September. The case is the catalyst for a new jail reform commission, which has ushered forth a slew of proposed recommendations.

In San Francisco, District Attorney George Gascón investigates all in-custody deaths, and his office also posts factual summaries and reports of its findings online.

When Gascón decided in February that officers had no criminal responsibility in the November 2012 death of a man who reportedly was on bath salts when he died after being restrained by police officers, his office posted a five-page memo outlining the legal reasoning for not pursuing criminal charges.

O’Malley pointed out that her office does make public its reports on fatal officer-involved shootings, and said she is considering putting the reports — now available only by request — on her office’s website.

Ana Biocini, the sister of Hernan Jaramillo, said that three years after her brother’s death, she’s still trying to comprehend the fact that the District Attorney’s Office never investigated the incident.

Jaramillo was handcuffed in his own home by Oakland police after Biocini called 911 complaining that she heard noises in the house.

Officers took Jaramillo to the ground with a leg sweep when he refused to sit in a police car. For minutes, Jaramillo screamed that he couldn’t breathe and that officers were killing him as they held him to the ground. Eventually, he died.

After body-camera footage of Jaramillo’s last moments were published online by this newspaper in January, 70,000 people signed a petition through the human rights organization Courage Campaign to lobby O’Malley’s office to investigate the case.

Drenick, the spokeswoman for O’Malley, initially told this newspaper that the District Attorney’s Office didn’t provide any level of oversight in the incident but later stated that police reports were examined and that there was no evidence found of criminal wrongdoing.

O’Malley said she was unaware of the petition and had not seen the video.

Contact Dan Lawton 408-921-8965. Follow him at Twitter.com/dlawton.