Judges Ax Cite-Release Program for Scofflaws; Jail Overcrowding Feared

The on-again, off-again reprieve for San Diego County jailers from a state ruling tightening the screws on scofflaws is off again.

The judges of the San Diego Municipal Court announced Friday they would let expire on Monday a month-old order that allowed sheriff’s deputies to continue their longstanding practice of releasing without bail many of the people they arrest on outstanding misdemeanor warrants.

That means that scores of offenders daily--most of them people who failed to show up in court on earlier promises to appear on such charges as petty theft or drunk driving--will go to jail at least briefly when they are rearrested, rather than being cited and released on a new promise to appear.

It also means, jail and police officials said Friday, the renewal of grave concerns about dangerous jail overcrowding and interference with police duties as officers wait in long lines at County Jail downtown or drive long distances to deposit prisoners in outlying detention centers.

With the unanimous decision by the San Diego court, only judges in the South Bay are continuing the Sheriff’s Department’s authority to cite and release misdemeanor offenders--and the Chula Vista court’s OK expires next week.

“The law-abiding citizen feels that if you break the law, you should go to jail,” said Presiding Judge Frederick Link of the San Diego Municipal Court. “And that’s what we’re saying here: If you belong in jail, that’s where you are to be.”

An opinion in July by Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp inspired the crackdown. Van de Kamp held that field release practices were illegal under state law. The result has been an added population burden for the county’s already jam-packed jails. Early Friday, there were 3,078 inmates in the county’s six detention centers, which had been housing about 2,700 prisoners before Sheriff John Duffy began implementing Van de Kamp’s ruling early last month.

The Central Jail, which is under a court order to keep its population below 750, had 928 inmates Friday, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

That last statistic may contain the seed for the next development in the jail crowding drama. According to Asst. Sheriff Cliff Powell, persistent excesses in the downtown jail’s population have prompted the scheduling of a hearing Sept. 23 in the Superior Court case that monitors the jail’s operation.

Powell stopped short of predicting what Superior Court Judge James Malkus will decide that day. But he said the planned hearing made him feel comfortable softening the heated rhetoric with which the Sheriff’s Department first reacted to the legal threats to the cite-and-release program.

Initially, the department warned of dangers for inmates and guards, and of explosive situations in a system bursting at its seams. But on Friday, Powell emphasized his agreement with the sentiments behind the San Diego judges’ decision, despite the painful short-term burden it will impose on county jailers.

“There are two things here which are directly in conflict with each other,” he said. “One is the philosophical way you do things, and one is operational. If we continue to do things the way we’re doing them, then you really have no enforcement. But I’m driven primarily by the court cap.”

San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender was less sanguine about the impact on his officers of the judges’ shift.

When the cite-and-release program briefly was halted last month in San Diego, police officials said the policy change would damage police protection in the city, as officers devoted their time to booking prisoners into jail.

Kolender said the judges’ decision revives that concern anew. “It’s going to be a real problem for us,” he said. “This is just going to clog the jail.”

Judges throughout the county, though, say they are hoping the crackdown on people who ignore warrants will solve one of their biggest problems--a seeming breakdown in the public’s respect for the law.

“Releasing criminal defendants who belong in jail is irresponsible,” Link said. “It creates irresponsibility and non-accountability among those who would violate the law.”

Larrie Brainard, presiding judge of the El Cajon Municipal Court, said he has seen cases in which offenders continued to miss court dates after being picked up and released as many as four times.

“I think the judges have gotten fed up with the fact that the individual defendants don’t come in on these promises to appear,” Brainard said Friday. “We can’t cure the jail overcrowding problem by simply releasing everyone. We’re finally coming to that realization.”

The cite-and-release program is one of a broad range of efforts devised by the courts and the Sheriff’s Department to cope with the county’s inadequate supply of jail beds. Link said Friday that further steps were planned to lighten the load imposed by the judges’ decision, including the establishment of a second court to handle arraignments.

The judges, he said, also hope to get county funding for a full-time video arraignment court, which would speed prisoners’ releases by eliminating the need to transport them from the jail to the courthouse. Link said the court also would seek emergency action in the state Legislature to permit Saturday arraignments.

Meanwhile, the county is moving toward longer-term solutions to the jail crunch. The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to spend $1.3 million to build space for 268 new beds. Last month, supervisors approved construction of a $44-million jail and honor camp on East Mesa.

Also, a measure on the Nov. 4 ballot will ask county voters to approve a 1/2-cent increase in the sales tax to finance jail and court construction.

Link ridiculed the suggestion that the courts and law enforcement agencies were provoking a jail crisis to win public support for the tax hike.

“This is not an attempt to create any type of crisis,” he said. “The crisis was created when the politicians, 10 years ago or so, refused to read the writing on the wall and did not build the proper amount of jails that were needed or the proper number of courtrooms.”