Hearing on Proposed Jail Turns Into Protest Forum

Despite heavy rains, nearly 200 residents, community leaders and elected officials packed an Anaheim Hills school auditorium Thursday night to oppose construction of the proposed Gypsum Canyon jail.

The hearing, organized by the Orange County Environmental Management Agency, was intended as a public forum to get suggestions and requests from citizens about what they would like to see addressed in the upcoming environmental report.

But as county officials sat in the front row of the Crescent Intermediate School auditorium and quietly took notes, most speakers took turns assailing the Board of Supervisors for choosing their northern Orange County community as the site of the jail.

“We don’t want human beings that act like animals next to people that act like human beings,” shouted Anaheim Councilman William D. Ehrle as the audience roared in applause. “The Board of Supervisors have prostituted the process and they have prostituted themselves.”

As the councilman spoke, several members of the audience raised signs demanding that the jail be built in Santa Ana, the county seat.

“Keep the Criminals Near the Court,” read one placard. “County Seat for County Jail,” read another.

A representative from the Placentia Unified School District raised the question of how the jail would affect the area’s children.

“We believe that the jail will have a negative impact on the safety of our children,” said El Camino Real High School Principal Sinclair Jones, answering his own question. “And it will have a negative psychological and socioeconomic impact on the district.”

Between speeches, some speakers asked questions. The jail is planned to be near a fault line, pointed out real estate broker Karyn Schonhatz. “What provision will be made for disruption of flood channels and the change in the natural flow?” she asked.

On July 15, the Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 to put a jail that would house more than 6,100 inmates in the Coal and Gypsum canyons, just south of the Riverside Freeway and east of the Anaheim Hills.

The site was chosen after years of studies and deliberations. In 1985, a U.S. District Court judge cited Sheriff Brad Gates and the Board of Supervisors for contempt of

court for waiting seven years to comply with a 1978 judicial order to ease overcrowding at the downtown Santa Ana central jail. Last year, Gates turned away about 350 inmates each week to stay within the 1,296 limit imposed by the judge.

Public officials, community organizations and private citizens from the canyon and nearby cities such as Anaheim and Yorba Linda have opposed the plan. They argue that the jail would increase crime in the area and lower property values and that inmate and visitor transportation would increase traffic on the Riverside Freeway.

But the main obstacle to the jail construction is financing. The total estimated cost of the two- to three-building complex is $664 million. To finance the project, a bond proposal will have to be approved by voters next November.

“They are going to have to find the money somewhere else,” said Rick Violett, who was appointed by the Yorba Linda City Council last June to organize and coordinate opposition to the jail.

The facility is planned for medium- and low-security prisoners, and it would not have an intake and release center, as nearby residents had feared.

The jail would house 2,500 inmates in its first phase, to be completed in 1992, and 6,100 by the year 2005.