County, Lynwood Settle Lawsuit
Los Angeles County and the city of Lynwood have settled a lawsuit that had threatened to delay construction of the $161-million Lynwood Regional Justice Center and jeopardized $86 million in state funding for the project.
The county Board of Supervisors, in a move to relieve crowding in county jails, agreed Tuesday to pay $6.5 million to Lynwood over the next six years in exchange for a guarantee from the city to drop a suit that challenged the legality of the project.
Construction of the 560,000-square-foot facility--which includes the largest sheriff’s station in the county, three municipal courts and a crime laboratory--is scheduled to begin in February. It must start no later than September, 1990, or the $86 million in state bond money will be lost.
The Sheriff’s Department, whose jails can lawfully hold only about 22,000 inmates, has released more than 100,000 prisoners early since May, 1988, to comply with a federal judge’s order to control the size of the jail population.
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