Judge Warns He May Force Jails Open : Detention: Costly overtime may be ordered unless the county can find a better way to staff the nearly empty Otay Mesa facilities.

A Superior Court judge is threatening to order costly overtime duty for sheriff’s deputies as a last-ditch method of opening cells at the county’s completed but nearly vacant jails on Otay Mesa.

Judge James Malkus also suggested that the county recruit off-duty San Diego police officers to staff the jails as volunteers and put out a call for citizen volunteers to handle other tasks at the jails, deputy county counsel Nathan Northup told the Board of Supervisors on Wednesday.

Malkus told county lawyers Tuesday that “at the next hearing he will order us to start paying overtime to sheriff’s deputies already assigned to the jails, to pay for any shifts necessary to maximize the number of beds available” in the unopened facilities, Northup said.

The judge directed county lawyers to explain at the March 17 hearing what actions the financially strapped county can take instead of mandatory overtime, and to outline the fiscal ramifications of his plan, Northup said.

Malkus’ remarks came at a regularly scheduled hearing Tuesday on the county’s six overcrowded jails for men, which he monitors as the result of two lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Malkus could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The supervisors were briefed on Malkus’ remarks in closed session Tuesday and again in open session Wednesday.

Lacking the money to fully staff and operate the jails, the county has left the 1,500-bed maximum security facility vacant for the past 2 1/2 months, and has been able to transfer only 246 inmates into the 512-bed minimum security facility so far.

Meanwhile, despite court-ordered caps on inmate populations, jails in El Cajon and South Bay have been almost constantly overcrowded in recent months.

The county has been grappling with an ever-escalating budget deficit throughout the fiscal year that began July 1. As part of budget cuts in his department, Sheriff Jim Roache eliminated overtime pay and froze vacations beginning Jan. 1.

Supervisor Brian Bilbray questioned whether overtime payments would sap the remainder of jail funds before the fiscal year ends, leading to a shutdown of the jail system. Supervisor Susan Golding wondered if the county would be liable for injuries to volunteers.

“If we pay overtime, where does the money come from, and what do we do when the county money runs out at the end of the year?” asked Supervisor Brian Bilbray. “Do we go a few months with no jail capability at all?

“What is going to be the hazard to the well-being of the public and general welfare at that time?” he added.

In an interview, Golding said that county attorneys are not sure that Malkus has the authority to order specific steps such as mandatory overtime.

The directive by Malkus “is an indicator that the judge is exasperated,” Roache said Wednesday. “He feels compelled to be more forceful in saying, ‘What do you intend to do about these continuing problems and how do you intend to respond?’ ”

Harry Eastus, president of the San Diego Police Officers Assn., said that volunteer work in the jails by city police “is not a realistic thing that’s going to happen. They’re not going to do it for nothing.”

The county needs 148 more staff members to open both jails for the rest of fiscal 1992, at a cost of $3.23 million. If forced to pay overtime, the cost would rise to about $4.2 million, said Chuck Pennell, a county detention facility planner. It would take 60 days to open the facilities, he said.

The judge’s suggestions that the new jail be staffed either with volunteers or on overtime pose tremendous problems, Roache said.

Besides the cost and time it would time to train volunteers, Roache said, the liability of using them in the jail “would be horrendous. We would be very vulnerable if we brought volunteers in, and their lack of expertise resulted in death or injury.”

“Our employees cannot work six and seven days a week, week after week,” he said. “Even if they could, there’s no money to pay them.

“And to pay 300 people at eight hours a day at whatever salary at time and a half, imagine what that would cost?” Roache said.

In the next 30 days, Roache said, he and county officials will try to come up with some alternatives for Malkus.

“I’m not optimistic,” he said. “There’s always room for a new idea, but we’ve brainstormed and analyzed and critiqued every permutation of this for a long time. Our options all will have a price tag attached to them.”