Clark Opposes Any Urban Area for Jail

Orange County Supervisor Ralph B. Clark, an opponent of the proposal to put a new jail in Anaheim, expanded his opposition Friday and urged that the new jail not be built in any urban area, including Santa Ana.

“Today, I would like to announce my complete and total opposition to any urban jail site,” Clark said. “I will oppose jails in Anaheim, Santa Ana or anywhere in our urban core.”

Clark, who is retiring at the end of this year, represents a district that includes Anaheim. He was the only one of five supervisors last March to vote against Anaheim as the proposed site for a 1,500-bed jail.

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, whose district includes Santa Ana, has long opposed building a new jail in Santa Ana, which is the site of the main men’s jail.

A year ago, U.S. District Judge William P. Gray found the supervisors in contempt for not heeding his 1978 order to end overcrowding at the men’s jail.

Faced with continuing pressure from Gray, the supervisors picked the Anaheim site for an “interim” jail to relieve overcrowding while the county continues its decade-long search for a site in a remote area where a 5,000-bed jail can be built.

Clark said the longer the county waits to pick a remote site, the fewer of those sites are left as they get “snapped up by eager developers.”

Clark spoke at a ceremony of the Jail Action Committee, a group that opposes construction of a jail in Anaheim. The group presented him with more than 800 postcards expressing opposition to the location of the new facility near Anaheim Stadium.

Floyd L. Farano, an attorney and member of the Jail Action Committee, said the group had spent $80,000 so far in its opposition to the Anaheim jail site, including approximately $35,000 for a consultant’s report due later this month comparing costs and benefits of urban and remote jails.

The committee includes representatives from Disneyland, the California Angels, the Los Angeles Rams and the cities of Anaheim and Orange.