Crime in San Diego Soared in ’86 : Kolender Cites Jail Crowding, Release of Suspects in Rise

San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender told the City Council on Wednesday that crime in the city shot up by a record-breaking 17.5% last year.

Kolender pointed to drugs, overcrowded jails and illegal aliens as he cited statistics showing a rise in crime in 1986 over 1985. He said the “steep increase is caused by ‘big-city’ problems” that require big-city police solutions. He told the council that he wholeheartedly supports a proposal by City Manager John Lockwood to provide “pre-detention facilities” to relieve pressure on overcrowded county jails.

Kolender said the city’s planning for detention facilities “is still in the talking stages.” Without added jail capacity, he said, crime is likely to continue to escalate because “one of the lacks of the criminal justice system is that it is not taking the criminals out of society.”

In 1986, Kolender said, San Diego police made nearly 100,000 arrests--an 18% increase over 1985--and took more than 40,000 of those apprehended to County Jail.

At the jail, 45% of the arrested suspects judged by police to be dangerous enough to require jailing “were cited and released at the jail door” because of lack of space.

“These include suspects arrested for being under the influence of drugs and (for) failure to appear warrants,” Kolender said. He predicted that local crime figures will continue to rise until repeat offenders can be taken out of circulation.

He noted that, in one week, a suspected prostitute was arrested, taken to jail and released three times. “That’s ridiculous,” Kolender said. “That’s a waste of our time.”

Sheriff’s Lt. John Tenwolde, speaking for Sheriff John Duffy who is in Sacramento, conceded that the county jail population “these days is always at maximum,” allowing many persons charged with serious misdemeanors to walk away without an hour of jail time after they agree to return to appear in court.

“I can’t claim credit for saying it first,” Tenwolde said, “but the streets have become the jails of San Diego County.”

Assistant City Manager John Fowler confirmed that city officials are attempting to aid county planning for expansion of the jails, especially a “downtown-area pre-arraignment holding facility” convenient to the courts. He said that he doubted that the city would “get into the business of building jails,” but that city-county talks were “getting fairly precise” and included the possibility of using tax-increment funding, used in downtown redevelopment projects, to build the holding cells.

In November, voters defeated a countywide proposal to impose a half-cent local sales tax to finance jail and court expansion.

Kolender said that crime increased in all major categories. Homicides increased 5.2% over 1985; robberies, 30.1%; aggravated assault, 46.8%; burglary, 7.2%; theft, 14.9%, and auto theft, 31.5%.

He blamed the increased use of drugs and drug users’ need for money, the increasing availability and use of weapons, and the mounting flow of undocumented aliens through San Diego for the rising crime rate.

New immigration regulations imposing employer sanctions for hiring aliens “is a start” at solving the alien crime problem, he said, “but it will be a long time to a solution.”

Comparable crime rates for other communities in San Diego County are being assembled by the San Diego Assn. of Governments and will be released in a few weeks, Sandag spokeswoman Susan Pennell said. Preliminary indications are that other cities also are experiencing an upswing in criminal activity, she said.