Abuses of Jail’s Phone System Detailed in Defense of Suit

An Orange County Jail official testified in federal court Wednesday that, before the jail switched to a collect-call phone system four years ago, some inmates were using the telephones to make bomb threats to police and gain release for fellow inmates by impersonating prison officials.

The testimony from Sgt. J.D. Green came during the county defense in a class-action lawsuit filed by Phil Senteno, a convicted killer, who claims that Orange County officials violated his civil rights when he was an inmate there four years ago.

Senteno claims that jail officials failed in five areas to abide by 1978 orders by U.S. District Judge William P. Gray to improve conditions at the main men’s jail in Santa Ana.

The trial, before Judge Gray in Los Angeles, is expected to end in two more days.

In 1978, Gray ordered that the jail install 16 pay telephones in the roof recreation area for the inmates’ use. Telephones were installed, but inmates could make only local calls unless they called collect. The system was changed in 1982 so that all calls, including local calls, had to be either collect or through credit card dialing.

Senteno’s attorneys want the system switched to coin-operated telephones.

County attorneys called Sgt. Green to the witness stand to testify that the collect call system has significantly reduced security problems at the jail.

Sgt. Green, a nine-year staff veteran at the jail, told Judge Gray that before the phone system changed, inmates had been released early from custody after judges received telephone calls from prisoners claiming to be an official with the state Department of Corrections.

Green also mentioned one extortion call made to the Fullerton Police Department that demanded “millions of dollars . . . or the place would blow up.” He said the call was made from a direct-dial telephone installed in the jail’s rooftop exercise area as part of Gray’s 1978 order.

County attorneys argue that the present system does not violate the order because the phones are indeed pay telephones and because the service is not free--someone has to pay for the call or it is not accepted.

Green testified that the change to collect-only, or credit card phones, came after some inmates had figured out how to make long-distance telephone calls.

“Our phone bills were monumental,” Green told the judge.

Green said the improper use of the telephones went beyond long-distance charges and bomb threats.

“Judges were being called and the caller would say he was from the Department of Corrections and requesting the release of an inmate. People have been released from jail early,” Green related.

He said that some inmates even now have figured out a way to get around the collect-call-only system. But Deputy County Counsel Edward Duran said that the current problem is minimal and that steps are being taken to correct it.

Duran said he asked Green to testify to show that eliminating the collect-only system could jeopardize jail security.

Attorneys Stephen Buckley and William Checkley, representing Senteno and other inmates in the class-action suit, point to four other areas where they claim the defendants should collect damages: Rooftop recreation and day room recreation for men in administrative segregation, improper publishing of Gray’s 1978 order and the inmates’ access to books.

Gray has already resolved all of these issues in the American Civil Liberties Union case in which his 1978 order originated. But the plaintiffs claim that they are still entitled to damages because the corrections were not made in 1982, when Senteno was a jail inmate.

Senteno, now in the state prison system, was convicted in January, 1983, of second-degree murder in the beating death of fellow inmate Michael Bottoms. Three other inmates were also convicted of murder in that incident.

Senteno was in administration segregation during most of his stay at the Orange County Jail. Administrative segregation is an area with restricted privileges, and is reserved for inmates who are either causing trouble at the jail or have a history of causing jail problems.

Times staff writer Jerry Hicks contributed to this story from Orange County.