Orange County Deputies’ Slowdown : Burgers-and-Malts Time for Stranded Prisoners

An angry judge sent out for hamburgers, chicken wings and malts for hungry inmates Wednesday at the beginning of the second week of a work slowdown by Orange County sheriff’s deputies that so far has cost taxpayers $10,000 in overtime pay.

“We just want to make sure they get a hot meal,” said North Orange County Presiding Municipal Judge Robert B. Hutson.

The sheriff’s deputies’ eight-day job action is aimed at getting higher wages in labor talks with the county, but so far county officials have refused to budge from their offer of a 12.5% raise over three years, with just 2% coming in the first year.

Deputies involved in the slowdown have been carefully following rules governing conduct in the jails and transportation of inmates that generally are bent or ignored. That has caused major delays in getting prisoners to and from courthouses for hearings and trials.

County Marshal James C. Byham, whose deputies are in charge of inmates while they are in holding cells at the courthouses, said Wednesday that housing short-tempered inmates for long periods without food in those crowded cells jeopardizes officers’ safety. Byham also said the delays had run his overtime bill up by $10,000.

Late in the afternoon Wednesday, Hutson had his marshal order 63 hamburgers, 63 malts and chicken wings from two nearby fast-food restaurants so prisoners could eat while waiting to be taken back to jail after court.

Hutson said he and Municipal Judge Margaret R. Anderson did not think the inmates should suffer without food because of the job action. He said he paid the bill with cash from a fund to which North Court judges had contributed for retirement gifts, flowers and similar miscellaneous personal expenses.

As for the future of the slowdown, Hutson told the Sheriff’s Department that if a certain group of prisoners he identified is not at court on time today, he will ask local police departments to house them in local jails tonight.

Hutson and Anderson are not the only judges criticizing the slowdown by the sheriff’s deputies.

“It disrupts the equity and fairness in the system,” South Orange County Municipal Court Judge Pamela L. Iles said.

At some courts, where prisoners usually arrive by 9 a.m., the inmates have not been delivered until 3 p.m. And instead of being returned to the Orange County Jail for dinner at 6 p.m., some prisoners have waited in courthouse holding cells until almost midnight.

“The slowdown is definitely having an impact on the court system,” said John Sibley, county director of employee relations. “In terms of forcing us to modify our offers, it is having no effect.”

Hutson said he will ask Fullerton or La Habra police to house some inmates tonight if at least seven named prisoners are not delivered on time by the Sheriff’s Department this morning.

“I need those people in my building, and we have the power to do so,” Hutson said. “Judges can do whatever it takes to get our business done. . . . We are not a helpless giant.”

Wednesday night, in fact, Fullerton Police Sgt. David Stanko said one county prisoner was already being held in the city’s jail overnight. Stanko said he did not know what judge had referred the prisoner.

Hutson was unavailable for comment late Wednesday, and Byham said the marshal’s office had not been involved in turning a prisoner over to Fullerton.

“It’s no big deal,” Stanko said. “It’s only one prisoner.”

For the third time, Judge Iles had court papers delivered to sheriff’s deputies delivering prisoners to her court Wednesday, ordering them to remain at the courthouse until the inmates were ready to be returned to jail.

That way, she said, the prisoners can get back to the jail at a reasonable hour.

“I’m rather concerned that the county’s indifference to the intentional disruption of the justice system in this county is precipitating a crisis,” Iles said. “I know that cases are not handled in the way that they should be. . . . This shouldn’t be an assembly line.”

Judge Hutson and others said they were afraid cases might have to be dismissed as a result of the slowdown because of problems with statutory deadlines.

Hutson added that the effect of the slowdown is “snowballing”: “Eventually, if it goes on much longer, I can see some serious problems. Basically, I’m in a situation where I have to do a full day’s work in about three hours.”

Superior Court judges have also complained about having to reshuffle their schedules to accommodate late prisoner arrivals. Every day this week, however, deputy marshals have compiled a list of priority prisoners that the sheriff’s deputies have, for the most part, delivered on time.

The priority prisoners are those who are needed for ongoing trials or whose rights might be violated under speedy-trial laws if their hearings are not conducted soon.

The 1,100-member Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs started its slowdown last week after talks with the county over higher wages broke down. So far, the slowdown has been limited to the roughly 350 deputies working in the jails and those responsible for delivering the prisoners to the courts.

Union officials said they have tried to avoid a job action that would directly affect the public. They did not express sympathy for the prisoners.

“It’s not like, because of these delays, they’re not getting home to the wife and kiddies,” said Robert MacLeod, general manager of the union. “They’re incarcerated, and they’re going to sit somewhere behind bars. I don’t see there is a great difference.”

County employees represented by eight unions are working without contracts. But Sibley said Wednesday that talks are continuing with all but the sheriff’s deputies.

At least 270 welfare application clerks conducted a sickout Tuesday, but Wednesday the union was meeting with the county again and scheduled another session for next week, Sibley said.

The Board of Supervisors formally approved its $1.7-billion budget for the current fiscal year Wednesday. It is one of the tightest budget’s in the county’s history.