Sheriff Asks Supervisors for 101 Employees to Cope With Jail Expansion

Sheriff Brad Gates asked Orange County supervisors Friday for 101 new deputies, clerks and technicians to cope with the expansion of branch jails as inmates are moved from the main men’s jail in Santa Ana.

Gates, who estimated the cost at $2.8 million per year, said 90 of the new jobs would be permanent and 11 temporary. His requests for the main jail include six deputy sheriffs, a sergeant and six drivers to take inmates to court, medical appointments and branch jails.

Since a federal judge ordered Gates to reduce overcrowding at the Santa Ana jail, some inmates have been transferred to the Theo Lacy branch jail in Orange and James A. Musick branch jail near El Toro.

Use of Overtime

“The workload of the transportation bureau has increased dramatically with the addition of numerous trips between the jail facilities, courts and hospitals,” Dennis LaDucer, assistant sheriff for operations, said in the report submitted by Gates. “The significant workload increase is being accomplished presently by the use of overtime.”

For branch jails, Gates is asking for 20 new deputies to work at Musick and for 17 deputies to handle security and the release of inmates at Lacy. The sheriff said he also needs more people to handle the laundry, investigate inmates, handle computers, type and file records and train new recruits.

The supervisors are scheduled to consider the request May 13.

Found in Contempt

In March, 1985, U.S. District Judge William P. Gray found Gates and county supervisors in contempt of court for not heeding his 1978 order to improve conditions at the main jail.

Gray fined the county and appointed a special master to oversee improvements at the facility.

He has held hearings periodically since then, including one Tuesday when he modified an earlier order to reduce the main jail population to 1,400 by May 1. Gray said the 1,400 figure is firm for weekdays but can be increased to 1,450 on weekends and 1,500 over three-day weekends such as Memorial Day.

To ease overcrowding, Gates last weekend stopped accepting drunks off the street into the drunk tank at the main jail. And he ordered that drunk drivers brought to the jail be held only for four hours, not overnight.

County officials said the drunk tank houses up to 50 men on any given night, with most coming in on weekends.

Mattresses on the Floor

At the time of Gray’s 1985 ruling, the main jail held 2,000 inmates, many of whom slept on mattresses on floors.

Since then, the county has erected modular units at Musick and expanded the Lacy jail, adding more than 500 permanent beds in all. Temporary tents that can hold up to 320 inmates were also put up at Musick.

County officials who met with Gates on Friday said several ideas for permanent facilities were offered, all preliminarily. The officials said they wanted to see if Musick and Lacy had more room for expansion, and if juveniles could be transferred from some county institutions and adult prisoners housed there instead.

Certain to Cause Outcry

But those who met with Gates admitted that existing facilities would probably require increased security to house adult men, and that replacing youths with adults would be certain to cause a political outcry from people living near those institutions.

The county has been looking for nearly a decade for a new site for a maximum-security jail to hold up to 6,000 inmates but has yet to choose one.

As a stopgap, the supervisors in March voted to build a 1,500-inmate jail half a mile from Anaheim Stadium. However, opponents have vowed to fight that decision in the courts, and construction is years away.