Revolving-Door Jail Is an In-and-Out Affair for Suspects

Three decades ago, when San Diego was a bustling Navy town of 400,000, Ken O’Brien was a rookie police officer who, on a busy night, hauled 15 people to jail for a minimum three-day stay.

Today most people who commit misdemeanor crimes are cited and released on the street, without seeing the crowded San Diego County Jail; more than half of the misdemeanor suspects who are taken to jail get out within four hours, and two-thirds of all felons are set free within three days.

San Diego County’s crowded jails also have forced police officers to wait in line--often as long as an hour--outside the Central Jail at Front and B streets to deposit prisoners. As a result, many officers today have to work hard to put as many as half a dozen crooks in jail during an eight-hour shift, O’Brien said.

“One of the reasons we have as much crime . . . is we can’t get criminals off the street,” said O’Brien, now a San Diego deputy police chief. “We take people under the influence of narcotics, people involved in prostitution and people with (arrest) warrants to jail and they are released in a matter of minutes.

“The public is not aware of what the hell is happening,” O’Brien added. “The system is being abused. . . . In my day, it was fast, effective and efficient. The cop on the street today is absolutely, totally frustrated in trying to get his job done.”

Police administrators throughout San Diego say that overcrowded conditions at county jails hamper their efforts to investigate crimes, enforce laws and put a dent in local drug trafficking. At the same time, they complain that police resources throughout the county are stretched thin during busy nights and weekends, when patrol officers are tied up escorting prisoners to the Central Jail.

Sheriff’s administrators who run the main jail say their hands are tied. A 1980 ruling by Superior Court Judge James Focht ordered Sheriff John Duffy to keep the inmate population--which had reached 1,500--to 750. The main jail’s capacity is 730. The average daily population over the last several months has been 750.

“We think these people should be taken to court to answer charges, but we cannot afford to do so,” said Capt. C.J. Roache, commander of the main jail. “The reality is we can’t keep them here. There would be no place for them to sleep.”

Roache said that whenever the jail population exceeds 750, his deputies raise the minimum amount for accepting suspects on outstanding warrants from $500 to $1,000. Thus, someone who is picked up by police on $900 in previous warrants for failing to show up in court cannot be taken to jail.

When the jail is full, deputies also alert law enforcement agencies throughout the county to ease up on arrests. This is done nearly every weekend, Roache said.

“If we’re in a position where we’re tight . . . we’ll call the arresting agencies and say, ‘Look, this is the situation we’re in. If there’s any way you can avoid making arrests, please do so,’ ” Roache said. “If I have one bed, I’d much rather save it for a murderer than a drunk in public.”

This policy creates a conflict between deputies working inside the jail to relieve overcrowding conditions and police officers working on the streets to apprehend criminals.

San Diego Deputy Police Chief Norm Stamper said he finds it “incredible” that an officer cannot take a wanted criminal to jail because the dollar amount on the arrest warrant does not exceed $1,000.

“We stop a guy who is our local version of a fugitive . . . and we can’t take him to jail because he has $600 in warrants,” Stamper said. “It’s become a game out there, and (the criminals) know it like we do.”

County jails house two classes of inmates--those who are charged with crimes and are awaiting court hearings, and those who have been convicted and sentenced to less than a year in custody.

Municipal Court Judge H. Ronald Domnitz said current procedures that require misdemeanor suspects to appear in court are clearly not working.

“Our bail system is a joke for misdemeanors because (Sheriff Duffy) lets them out,” Domnitz said. “I could put a $2,000, $3,000 bail on drunk drivers and they’re out. They pick them up on a second or third warrant, and he lets them out.”

Domnitz acknowledged that because of the court limit on jail population, the Sheriff’s Department must release inmates. He said the solution is to build more jails.

Sheriff’s deputies at the Central Jail release 700 to 1,200 persons each month who are arrested on misdemeanor charges, including assault, theft and narcotics. In most cases, these people are let go as fast as the deputies can prepare the paper work.

In the past, suspects frequently accompanied the officers who arrested them out the jail door. To save police officers the embarrassment and keep them from getting angry at the sheriff, these persons are now held in a room equipped with telephones for several minutes, then escorted to the back door.

According to Roache, 20% of the misdemeanor suspects taken to jail receive a citation ordering them to appear in court and are released immediately; 40% are booked and released within three or four hours; 25% post bail, sober up or have their charges dropped within 24 hours, and 11% are released by a judge within three days. After three days, the remaining 4% are assigned a jail cell on an upper floor.

State law permits the Sheriff’s Department to release misdemeanor suspects if they are sober and cooperative, do not require medical attention, have identification, do not demand to see a judge and are not considered a risk to flee the county. Deputies do not release violent suspects, such as wife-beaters, who are likely to repeat their crimes immediately.

Roache said the Central Jail has relied heavily on its authority to release inmates to “keep our head above water.”

The Sheriff’s Department does not have the authority to release felons. Their cases are reviewed by judges at bail hearings.

Nevertheless, about 65% of all felons arrested in San Diego County are released within three days, Roache said. The remainder are screened by the county’s Central Intake Program to determine if they pose a danger to the community or are a poor risk to show up in court. Suspects charged with murder, kidnaping, child abuse, arson, rape and sex-related crimes are not considered for release.

Counselors assigned to the five-year-old program, which has released 50,000 felons to date, interview inmates inside the jail to collect information on criminal history, work place, income, family ties and residence. The information is verified by running computer checks and contacting relatives or friends.

The counselor then calls a Municipal Court judge to review the cases and recommends release for those inmates who are considered suitable candidates, based on an intricate scoring system. A suspect can get one point for living in San Diego for more than a year; one point for having a telephone at his home; one point for attending school; one point for getting unemployment; up to four points for paying rent or mortgage, and/or four points for living in the same house for 10 years.

An inmate who scores four to five points is considered borderline, and five to seven points is usually good enough to qualify for release. Judges follow the program’s recommendations for release about 70% of the time, said Sue Engelbrecht, director of the Central Intake Program. She said that 90% of the suspects released under the program appear in court.

For example, the case of a 24-year-old woman who was arrested Dec. 14 on felony charges of possessing one-quarter gram of cocaine and four grams of heroin for sale was reviewed by a central intake counselor. A police report stated that officers also recovered 200 syringes, a sawed-off shotgun and an undetermined amount of money during the arrest. Bail was set at $3,500.

The woman has two children, listed her occupation as “housewife,” has lived in her house for three years and her only previous conviction was on a drunk-driving charge. Based on this information, a counselor recommended the woman for release, a judge agreed and she was set free 25 hours after her arrest. The process was delayed several hours because women are held at the Las Colinas jail in Santee and the Central Intake Program is at the main jail in Downtown San Diego.

About 80% of the felons released through the Central Intake Program face drug or theft charges, Engelbrecht said. She added that counselors also collect information such as out-of-state warrants that sometimes lead to raising a suspect’s bail and keeping him behind bars.

While county officials consider the intake project a huge success, some law enforcement officials have been critical of such programs on grounds that they dump criminals back into the community.

“There are managers who think they are innovative because we no longer put burglars in jail, only murderers,” O’Brien said. “That’s a cop-out.”

Some jail deputies charge that San Diego police officers bring people to jail who should be cited and released on the streets. These include suspects arrested for minor charges such as drinking in public, petty theft, shoplifting and repeated vehicle code violations.

A typical example, according to the jail staff, involved a man who was stopped Dec. 13 by a San Diego police officer in the Torrey Pines area and arrested on a traffic warrant for speeding and driving with a suspended license. His total bail came to $370. The man was taken to jail.

“It’s not like that guy represents a big danger to society,” said Lt. Ray Fisher, the jail supervisor at the time. “He’s taking up space and time. We’ve got to accept him and process him, even if it’s only for 20 minutes. It slows us down on handling other inmates.”

Fisher added that other police agencies do not bother bringing people to jail who will be released anyway.

Because of its size, the City of San Diego accounts for more than one-third of the people brought to the Central Jail. Police Department statistics show that San Diego police cited and released 33,250 adults during the first 11 months of this year, and took 25,341 others to jail.

O’Brien said that jail deputies are quick to criticize arrest decisions by his officers even though they are not aware of the circumstances.

“Their concern is space,” O’Brien said. “They’re not concerned with what’s going on in the streets. . . . Our officers should not be concerned with whether a bed or a cell is available.

“The fact is the state and county ought to provide us with adequate jail facilities and they’re not doing it. The (argument) that we ought to not fulfill our responsibilities because they are not fulfilling theirs is baloney.”

Roache responded: “The thing most law enforcement agencies don’t understand is that, unlike a hotel, I can’t put up a ‘No Vacancy’ sign. I am required by law to take that person, but what I choose to do with that person is my business.”

Regardless of the space available, the act of arresting people and taking them to jail has some value even if they will be released, said Sgt. Ray Root, who supervises patrol deputies at the sheriff’s Santee station. He said that the charges are not as easily forgotten by suspects if they are put in the back of a squad car and driven to jail.

To prevent jail deputies from issuing quick releases, some police officers resort to unethical practices to keep people in jail, according to interviews with jail supervisors and prosecutors.

Police know that a suspect will spend more time in jail if his bail is high. Thus, some officers write up additional, and questionable, felony charges that will not hold up in court to raise the bail amount. Another common tactic used by some officers, according to jail supervisors, is to declare that a drunk is under the influence of the drug PCP, a diagnosis that will cause deputies to observe a suspect for several hours before releasing him.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Hewicker II said that few law enforcement agencies are willing to admit that their officers pad their arrests with phony charges.

“For years we in the prosecution end have felt that some people are actually in jail for the three days prior to arraignment because they’ve been booked for a felony, when the arresting officer knows full well that the factual situation . . . is not going to result in a felony issuance,” Hewicker said. “It’s going to result in, if anything, a misdemeanor issuance.”

To reduce the number of “bad arrests,” the county Board of Supervisors has discussed ways to make police agencies pay boarding expenses for inmates who should not have been taken to jail. But, according to Roache, the idea was recently dropped because the task of establishing criteria to define a bad arrest became too cumbersome.

However, counselors at the Central Intake Program frequently recommend the release of suspects who have been booked on felony charges that the D.A. routinely prosecutes as misdemeanors. These charges include writing bad checks for under $600, growing marijuana for personal use and possessing a dangerous weapon other than a sawed-off shotgun.

Padding of charges is not a problem in some police departments in San Diego County where officers are encouraged to release suspects in the field.

“We do anything we can do to avoid having to take a car out of service for an hour and to avoid contributing to jail overcrowding,” said Capt. Bob Standring of the El Cajon Police Department. “We believed in the quick-release program as a normal procedure long before it became popular.”

One reason officers issue tickets to misdemeanor suspects in El Cajon and other outlying areas of the county is to avoid the long trip to the Central Jail in downtown San Diego. Standring said his officers can spend two or three hours transporting suspects to the Central Jail during busy periods.

“When our cars are out of the city, we have citizens thinking they are getting full protection but they’re not,” Standring said. “We don’t suddenly with a puff of smoke have a replacement car with an officer in it. It’s an unfortunate situation all the way around.”

Officers cannot take suspects to the jails in El Cajon and Chula Vista because county supervisors have refused to pay the cost of staffing those jails with booking deputies. Thus, suspects who are arrested in the eastern and southern portions of the county are booked at the main jail, then bused to the jails near their homes.

Earlier this month, supervisors indicated that they would be willing to pay an estimated $1.2 million to staff the Chula Vista and El Cajon jails with booking deputies sometime next year. But they did not decide where the money would come from.

Roache said the additional booking services would reduce the number of people processed at the main jail by 40% and relieve the long waits for police officers. But he said it would not relieve overcrowding at the county’s six jails.

So until there are more cells and more beds, there will continue to be pressure on the police to release suspects on the street.

“Cops want to put crooks in jail. It’s as simple as that,” O’Brien said. “Our officers get frustrated to the point that they are not making the kinds of arrests they could and should make because they know people won’t go to jail.”