Sheriff Further Cuts Jailings of Minor Offenders as Vista Closure Nears

Aiming to cut the inmate population at the downtown jail to a court-imposed ceiling, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department on Monday further restricted the list of offenses that merit booking there.

The new policy limits admission at the central jail to those accused of felonies or select misdemeanors, including domestic violence, serious assaults and public drunkenness if the suspect is still intoxicated at the time of the arrest.

All other suspects, who usually have been transported to the downtown jail, processed by sheriff’s deputies and thus removed from the streets for at least several hours, will be cited in the field by the arresting officer and released pending their court appearance.

Transfers From Vista

The change is designed to thin the population at the central jail to make room for an influx of inmates from the County Jail in Vista, which will close next month until a 296-bed expansion is completed. The construction project is expected to take about a year. In the meantime, the 500 or more inmates from Vista will be incarcerated at other county lockups until a planned temporary jail in Santee clears legal hurdles and is built.

Sheriff John Duffy’s new limits on jail admissions quickly drew criticism from police officials, who predicted that the change will hamper their efforts to maintain public order and execute misdemeanor warrants.

“In essence, what this means is almost all the field arrests we make are not going to be booked into the jail,” said Capt. Bob Slaughter of the San Diego Police Department’s field operations, administration and management division. “So that tool we routinely use to remove someone from a family disturbance or a fight situation is no longer available. . . . We just have to cite them right there and say: ‘Be a good boy, because I have to leave now.’ ”

‘Society of Scofflaws’

As for misdemeanor warrants, Slaughter said that, whereas police could previously jail those in violation, they will now be limited to taking suspects to the station and writing them another citation.

“We’ve got a whole society of scofflaws out there who really don’t respond to a ticket,” Slaughter said. “Issuing them another one is not going to have an effect.”

Police commanders also expressed concern about the effect the inability to jail some criminal suspects will have on officer morale.

“Will they look the other way, thinking, ‘It’s just a lousy misdemeanor and I can’t even put the guy in jail?’ ” Slaughter asked. “When the system isn’t supporting you, you start to think like that. . . . We plan to do everything we can to counter those tendencies.”

Duffy is on vacation this week and was unavailable for comment on the new policy.

According to sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Takeshta, only those accused of felonies and serious misdemeanors will still be accepted by the jail. The admissible misdemeanor suspects are those charged with being publicly drunk or under the influence of drugs and still intoxicated at the time of arrest, those accused of domestic violence and those suspected of serious assaults if they are still violent at the time of the arrest.

The jail’s quick-release program for suspected drunken drivers, under which those arrested are cited and released to a sober party rather than booked, will remain in effect.

While the misdemeanor offenders would generally not be in jail long, they are usually held for a short while and processed by Sheriff’s Department personnel, Takeshta said. Removing that stream of people from short-term areas of the jail will free space for more beds, he said.

Besides the need to prepare for the inmates diverted from Vista, Takeshta said, the new policy marks an effort to comply with a Superior Court order limiting the jail population to 750. (Monday morning, the population stood at 1,051--with 113 inmates sleeping on the floor--159% above the rated capacity.)

Cap Routinely Exceeded

That order was issued after the American Civil Liberties Union sued Duffy over crowding at the jail. In 1980, Superior Court Judge James L. Focht found that the 1,156 average daily population at the downtown jail represented cruel and unusual punishment and directed Duffy to limit the number of inmates to 750.

Despite the limit, the population routinely exceeds that number, Takeshta conceded. But now, with the Vista inmates due to arrive within a month, it is critical to free beds, he said.

“By applying these standards, we will get the house count down somewhat so that, when 500 people are bused down here next month, there will be some room for them,” Takeshta said.

Superior Court Judge James Malkus has expanded the allowable population to 1,050 to accommodate some of the transferees. Others will be diverted to jails in El Cajon and Chula Vista, which also have serious crowding problems and are named in a new lawsuit attacking conditions in outlying detention facilities.

One factor prompting the new policy is the legal controversy surrounding the 600-bed temporary jail planned for Santee. The project, designed specifically to accommodate the Vista inmates during the expansion of that facility, has been held up by legal challenges by the city of Santee.

A court hearing on the city’s lawsuit is scheduled for Friday, and Rich Robinson, the county’s director of special projects, said the temporary jail could be ready for occupation in three months once the legal cloud clears.

All-Time Highs

Also pressuring the Sheriff’s Department are jail populations that are at all-time highs. On Monday morning, there were 586 inmates in the Vista jail--a facility with a capacity of 246--with 72 sleeping on the floor; 500 inmates at the El Cajon jail, which is rated to hold 120 and had 137 people sleeping on the floor; 700 inmates, including 121 floor-sleepers, at the South Bay jail, which has a capacity of 192; 491 inmates at the Las Colinas jail for women in Santee, which is built to hold 246 and had 139 women sleeping on the floor; and 443 inmates in custody at Descanso, a facility rated to hold 225.

“These figures speak for themselves,” Takeshta said. “If we don’t take some steps now, the numbers aren’t going to improve at all.”

The new policy comes just weeks before a June ballot initiative that calls for a half-cent sales tax increase to generate $1.6 billion to build jails and courts over 10 years. But sheriff’s officials said the change at the jail was not designed to muster public support for the vote.

Instead, Capt. Jim Marmack, commander of the Vista jail said, the new regulation is a logical response to the ever-increasing arrests in the county.

“These numbers are higher than ever,” Marmack said. “The county supervisors tell us there are 60 new families moving to San Diego every day. A certain percentage of these people are going to need to go to jail, and we just don’t have the space for all of them.”