Gates Again Held in Contempt Over Jail Overcrowding

For the second time in two years, Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates has been found in contempt of court because of jail overcrowding, with a Municipal judge ruling Thursday that Gates should not have refused to incarcerate six men arrested on warrants.

“I find the sheriff in contempt,” Central Orange County Presiding Municipal Judge Gary P. Ryan concluded after an hourlong hearing.

Although the county’s main men’s jail in downtown Santa Ana may have been full when the six men were turned away between March 3 and March 24, “there were sufficient beds in the remainder of the (county’s jail) facilities to house these people,” Ryan said.

Last month Ryan ordered Gates, whose department runs the county jail facilities, to explain why his officers had not booked the six men into jail. They had been arrested on warrants accusing them of failing to appear in court for trial on a variety of earlier charges, including theft and carrying a concealed weapon.

In court papers filed before the hearing, Gates explained that a federal judge had set limits on how many men he could keep in the main jail and that it was full at the time. He said that, while there might have been empty beds at lower-security branch jails, inmates in the maximum-security main jail could not have been transferred safely to those facilities.

But Ryan told Gates Thursday to “rework the classification system” under which inmates are divided into low-, medium- and maximum-security groups and to come back with the results June 1. He also ordered Gates to bring with him an explanation of what other actions have been taken to make more jail beds available.

System Reviewed

Ryan said he had reviewed the system Gates uses to classify prisoners and decide which ones go to which jail facility. But he said no information had been supplied on why some of the 400 inmates at the Theo Lacy branch jail in Orange, who had been sentenced and were serving their time, could not have been transferred to empty beds at the James A. Musick branch jail near El Toro, “thus freeing up more beds” at Lacy.

That would have allowed inmates to be sent to Lacy from the main jail and would have freed beds at the main jail for the six men who were turned away.

Gates, who spoke only once during the hearing and let his lawyer, Deputy County Counsel Edward N. Duran, answer the judge, did not reply. But in the past he has said that the classification system determines whether an inmate can be sent from Lacy to Musick. Lacy is rated an intermediate- to low-security facility, and Musick is low- to very-low-security.

Two years ago, Gates and the five members of the county Board of Supervisors were found in contempt of court by U.S. District Judge William P. Gray in Los Angeles for not heeding a 1978 order by Gray to improve jail conditions in the county.

Gray set steadily decreasing limits on the number of inmates who could be housed in the main jail and appointed a special master to monitor the county’s compliance with his orders. The limit on the number of inmates kept in housing units on the second and third floors of the main jail is now 1,296. Inclusion of inmates in medical and processing units puts the total over 1,400 on many days.

Although the county’s branch jails have been expanded and new programs begun to cut the overall jail population, last year Gates ran out of room and started turning away people brought to the jail after misdemeanor arrests, giving them citations ordering them to appear in court on a certain date.

Later he expanded the system because of overcrowding problems, issuing citations even to people who had failed to appear in court earlier and had been arrested on warrants issued by judges because of those failures to appear.

‘Facts Are Pretty Clear’

After the ruling Thursday, Gates said he was not surprised. He said that “the facts are pretty clear” that he had refused to incarcerate people judges ordered arrested.

In an interview last month, Gates said he was “breaking the law every day” by turning away potential inmates. He said then that he was in “danger” of being held in contempt.

Speaking Thursday of Ryan’s order that he rework the classification system, the sheriff said his criteria for determining which inmates should go to which facilities were “very sound, very proper, very realistic, very practical.”

“I don’t see where we can stretch the system much further,” he said. Mixing prisoners of different categories increases “the risk to the inmate and risk to my deputies.”

As it is, the jail system is “already unsafe and bordering on becoming really unsafe,” Gates said. The only way to find many more beds by June 1, he said, is to find an unused building somewhere and temporarily house inmates there.

Changing classifications can help the system “go a little further” in providing more beds, Gates said. “But there is going to be a point where I say, ‘No, I can’t go further.’ ”

‘Don’t See Viable Options’

Board of Supervisors Chairman Roger R. Stanton said county staff analysts told the supervisors “they don’t see any viable options” for coming up with an unused building, which Stanton characterized as “pulling a rabbit out of a hat.”

He said the county’s lawyers and administrators told the supervisors that Gates had “other options to follow with regard to those six cases that were the subject of this action,” but for unexplained reasons did not do so. Stanton would not elaborate, but county officials have questioned why empty beds at the county’s lower-security facilities were not filled at the time.

Supervisor Don R. Roth said he was “disappointed that Judge Ryan took that action” against Gates. But Roth said recommendations by Lawrence G. Grossman, who is both a special consultant to the county on the jail problem and the special master reporting to Gray, will be implemented soon, and “I think we are going to be in pretty good shape by June 1.”

Grossman recommended transferring inmates serving jail terms on weekends to halfway houses, considering transferring all minimum-security inmates from the main jail to the Orange facility, and allowing the El Toro branch jail to take inmates awaiting trial, rather than just the sentenced inmates it now takes.

Solution Outlined

Assistant County Administrative Officer Murry L. Cable, who was in court for the hearing Thursday, said afterward that county officials are “very confident that, with the cooperation of the sheriff, we can manage this system.”

Richard P. Herman, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the federal lawsuit that resulted in the 1978 and 1985 court orders, agreed that Gates has a problem with releasing people brought in on arrest warrants but said, “I think there is a solution.

“The solution is to have an arraignments court in the courthouse, and when you bring people in on warrants you have them arraigned,” Herman said. “The solution is real easy. If Judge Ryan is willing to work weekends and go sit in the jail and set up a seven-day-a-week court,” the problem can be solved.

“You have to put into the system as well as take from it,” Herman said. “And that is what Judge Ryan and the Municipal judges have to do now . . . though it may not be pleasant to work weekends, and they may not be happy about it.”