Judge Rips Restoration of Cite-Release Program

The presiding judge of the San Diego Municipal Court says a ruling by a Superior Court judge has eviscerated the county’s misdemeanor criminal justice system.

But Municipal Court Judge Frederic Link said Friday that he was not interested in starting a judicial donnybrook with Superior Court Judge James Malkus, who earlier this week authorized county jailers to resume the pretrial release of many misdemeanor suspects--in direct contradiction to a Municipal Court directive issued just two weeks before.

Rather, Link said that his primary objective was finding someplace to house more prisoners. And he said several existing facilities, from the Navy Hospital in Balboa Park to the empty El Cortez Hotel downtown, merit consideration.

“I’m talking about telling (Sheriff) John Duffy, ‘Go out and find 1,000 beds for three to five years,’ ” Link said. “That is a responsible solution. I think the county is starting to be geared that way.”

Link acknowledged that his law clerk is researching legal means to countermand Malkus’ ruling Tuesday that a 6-year-old Superior Court order capping the population of the County Jail downtown carried more weight than an opinion by state Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp. The attorney general’s opinion, issued in June, had prompted Duffy--and then the Municipal Court judges--to halt a cite-and-release program that helped control the jail’s inmate count.

Municipal judges said the program bred contempt for the justice system among offenders, who knew they would be released on their promise to show up in court, even when they had repeatedly failed to appear.

“He’s basically cut the guts out of any kind of deterrence in the misdemeanor criminal justice system,” Link said of Malkus’ ruling. “Basically what he’s doing is what’s been going on all along, and nothing has been accomplished.”

Malkus could not be reached Friday for comment.

Criminal justice officials want voters to approve a measure on the November ballot that would increase the sales tax by half a cent per dollar to finance a long-term jail and court construction program. For the short term, however, Link urged officials at a meeting Thursday of the county’s Criminal Justice Council to search for relatively low-cost, interim detention sites.

Link read council members a letter from a local resident urging consideration as jail space of some of the hospital buildings soon to be abandoned by the Navy in Balboa Park.

Other sites he wants explored as temporary jails include the shuttered El Cortez Hotel, a little-used Navy landing field in Imperial Beach and, perhaps, land at the old Camp Elliott near Cowles Mountain.

“We’re talking about leasing federal land or leasing a building and using it on a three- to five-year basis,” Link said. “They’re not just going to let these people off for a period of five years, are they?”

Converting hospital buildings or other facilities into jail space is feasible, jail officials say, but they figure that the search for sites is pointless without some promise that money will be available to develop and operate additional detention centers.

“Until somebody tells us how we’re going to come up with the money, I think it’s fruitless to keep coming up with ideas about how we’re going to do things,” Assistant Sheriff Cliff Powell said Friday. “Internally, we have all kinds of ideas of things we could do. But it’s fruitless to keep spinning your wheels.”

Powell said the recent flurry of court orders probably would create new pressure on county government to take further steps to address the jail crunch.

If Link and the Municipal Court judges prevail, he said, there will be a need for space to house misdemeanor suspects now being released before trial.

But if Malkus’ ruling stands, “then you’re going to see a tremendous outcry from the City of San Diego and other cities and the Highway Patrol who will say, ‘What are we going to do with these individuals that we can’t put in jail because you don’t have a place?’ ”