Officials Will Seek to Allay Fears of Residents Near Escape-Prone Jail : Security: Twenty-eight inmates have broken out of county facility in Chula Vista since December.

County Supervisor Brian Bilbray and Asst. County Sheriff Ken Wigginton will meet Monday with Chula Vista residents to explain how planned security improvements will reduce breakouts from the escape-prone county jail in Chula Vista.

Since December, 28 inmates have escaped in three separate breakouts. The most recent occurred shortly before 9 p.m. Tuesday, when eight prisoners used a hacksaw to cut through the steel bars that cover jail windows. The inmates used a string of bedsheets to lower themselves 35 feet to the ground. Seven of the eight prisoners remained at large Thursday, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.

The latest escape came just a month after 13 prisoners used similar tools to force their way out of the jail at 500 3rd Avenue. After that breakout, the county spent $103,000 to bolster security. In all, $251,000 in security-related improvements are being implemented.

Monday’s meeting is aimed at calming angry Chula Vista residents who are demanding explanations. The jail is in a mixed commercial and residential neighborhood.

The Chula Vista City Council will meet Monday night to discuss whether it should act to protect its residents from escapes, Mayor Greg Cox said Thursday.

Although two armed private security guards are now patrolling the jail’s perimeter, Cox said he would feel “more comfortable if, in fact, there were deputy sheriffs or Chula Vista police” on patrol instead.

“The county has a credibility problem,” acknowledged John Woodard, Bilbray’s chief of staff. “We definitely have a problem right now.” He said residents “have a right to hear what the county is going to do to improve the situation.”

At Monday’s 7 p.m. meeting at Chula Vista City Hall, Bilbray and Wigginton will be joined by Sheriff’s Capt. Chuck Wood, commander of the Chula Vista jail, and Robert Griego, the county’s deputy chief administrative officer.

In a memo delivered to county officials Thursday, Wood was quoted as describing the recent escape as “no one’s fault. . . . The design of the building is poor.” Griego said Thursday that Wood was referring to severe crowding at the jail.

“The problem is that there are too many inmates,” Griego said. “The facility is rated for a lower capacity, and, with the sheriff’s staffing levels, it’s difficult to keep an eye on all parts.” More than 750 inmates were being held Monday at the jail that was designed to hold fewer than 200.

“Clearly we’ve got a situation that is just deplorable,” Cox said. “We’ve got a facility with (room) for 192 inmates and, on the night of the breakout, I was told there were more than 725 people” incarcerated.

Griego, who toured the facility on Wednesday, said that the $251,000 in security improvements laid out last month by county inspectors and the Sheriff’s Department will “harden” the jail’s security.

The first of those improvements, including motion sensors and bars on some windows, have been completed, Griego said. During coming weeks, crews will build a fence at the top of a moat that surrounds the building and install more motion detectors, closed-circuit television cameras and other electronic gear designed to alert guards to escape attempts.

However, some security measures might not be completed until November “because, legally, some of them have to go out for bidding,” Woodward said. But he said other improvements are being speeded up.

Griego, who will need supervisorial approval to continue with the improvements, said his office will authorize improvements before the supervisors meet April 17.

“I’m ordering the designs, which would normally have to go to board for approval,” Griego said. “In a public emergency, we have that authority.”

In March, the county authorized the jail to hire a private security guard, who has patrolled the building’s perimeter. That guard detail was doubled after the recent escape, and both guards are now authorized to carry pistols, Griego said.

County authorities believe the inmates who escaped Tuesday used a smuggled hacksaw blade to cut through bars on the jail’s windows. But the contraband did not pass through day-room windows at the jail, as has occurred in the past, because the county has installed bars on those window, Griego said.

Motion detectors, which are now in place on first floor windows, are being added to all windows, Griego said. The electronics are supposed to sound an alarm when “there’s any movement in the window,” Griego said. “It will pick up sawing, movement, any vibration.”

The external security devices are needed because, if inmates are “going to get that kind of equipment in there, and they’re given enough time, they’re going to be able to saw through any kind of metal,” Griego said. “All we can do is get the technology outside to help fill in personnel” gaps inside.