One Lulu of a ‘Breakdown’ : Riverside County sheriffs miss a beat, raise everyone’s temperatures

In the annals of government these days, it’s not unusual to find officials either ducking responsibility--or the tab that goes with it.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department says it was merely “a breakdown in the system” that a suspect, wanted for armed robbery and a host of other charges, hobbled out of a Mission Viejo hospital on Nov. 13, leaving behind an unpaid $37,964.49 hospital bill. Meanwhile, an Orange County dentist, on his way to a Boy Scout camp, was left behind, hospitalized with serious injuries, after being hit by the suspect, Anthony Garcia, in a head-on car accident as he fled Riverside County.

Garcia, too, was hospitalized, but skipped out of Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center that same day to a waiting automobile, despite repeated requests by doctors for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department to take him into custody.

The sheriff’s department had been unwilling to arrest Garcia until he was discharged by the hospital because it was concerned about assuming responsibility for his medical bills.

But doctors had expressed serious concerns about keeping him on; he was said to be making people nervous while stalking the corridors on crutches after recovering from the car accident.

That should have been a warning for the authorities to move in, but they missed their chance to make the arrest. Some “breakdown in the system” this botched case proved to be. It’s true that shrinking-law enforcement budgets put enormous pressure on police to cut corners to save money. For instance, says Dr. Kenneth Waxman, trauma chief at UCI Medical Center, law-enforcement officers routinely present a problem for hospitals when they drop off drunk-driving patients without issuing them citations.

That’s one problem, but cases like Mission Viejo’s, where a hospital is doubling as a holding tank for a patient wanted on serious charges, is something else. Doctors can’t carry out their medical duties while putting patients, staffs, and bottom lines at risk. Is this any way to run a hospital? Is this any way to run law enforcement? No way.