ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Support Your Local Sheriff

Orange County’s Sheriff Brad Gates warned this week that residents were at risk now because of the county’s severe jail overcrowding. He’s urged U.S. District Judge William P. Gray to order Special Master Lawrence G. Grossman to inspect county jails--again--as part of the court’s 12-year order that the county improve jail conditions. Grossman will inspect and report soon to Gray.

Meanwhile, the Board of Supervisors still is immobilized. A new jail site has been chosen at Gypsum Canyon in Anaheim Hills, but four votes are needed to move forward and there now are only three. The board is stymied as to how to finance the $1 billion needed to build it and the $135 million a year to operate it. Fierce community opposition to the Gypsum Canyon site has prompted Supervisors Don R. Roth and Gaddi H. Vasquez to oppose it.

Roth wants to export Orange County’s jail problem to Riverside County, a plan that seems destined to do little but divert the county from its responsibilities in solving its own jail problem.

Last year, Gates was forced to release 50,000 criminals because of overcrowding. Some were inmates sent back into the community after they had served 90% of their terms. There were also thousands of others accused of misdemeanors who were cited and released.

Roth has accused Gates of playing politics by writing to Gray. He says it’s fine and good for Gates to “jump up and down” but “what can the judge do without sending a check for $1 billion . . . ?”

Whether Gates is grandstanding some to dramatize a bad situation or not, it’s not his job to make the tough decisions on where a new jail should be located. And it’s not Gray’s job to determine how one will be financed. That’s what the Board of Supervisors has been elected to do.

It is Gates’ responsibility to continue to call attention to the seriousness of the county’s jail problem. He would be remiss if he did not. And a sheriff’s assessment that the public is at risk must be taken seriously.