Santa Ana Police May Rent Space in Anaheim City Jail

With the number of arrestees in Santa Ana exceeding the capacity to house them and the cost of using the County Jail rising, police officials are looking to the roomy, new Anaheim City Jail for help.

Santa Ana officials initially sought a rental agreement with Anaheim for up to 50 beds but may only get 10, Anaheim police said. The rental plan comes after Santa Ana moved earlier this year to build a temporary, 48-unit holding facility until a permanent city jail is built.

“We’re doing what we can to provide them any relief,” Anaheim Police Chief Joseph T. Molloy said. Santa Ana “has been hardest hit because of the booking fees charged by the County Jail.”

Under the plan being negotiated by the two cities, Santa Ana Lt. Robert Helton said, his city would pay $92 per day for each prisoner, compared to the $154 per day it now pays the county to house prisoners at the central County Jail.

Officials also hope that the rental agreement would keep offenders of what are considered serious misdemeanors in custody longer. Those include police assaults, weapons violations and resisting arrest, Helton said.

Since 1985, suspects of crimes such as drunk driving, vagrancy, prostitution and weapons violations have been cited and released, because the County Jail is overcrowded, Helton said.

“This takes the person off the street so that he cannot re-initiate further problems for our police department,” Helton said.

The county system is so choked that Orange County officials recently traveled to San Diego to explore the possibility of renting an unused jail there.

The same reasons have driven Garden Grove officials to consider two locations as possible sites for a jail, which would be built as a joint public-private partnership.

The rental plan proposed by Santa Ana “is in no way shape or form” an attempt to secure more jail space so that police could plan future arrests of homeless people on misdemeanor loitering and littering charges, Helton said.

Successful lawsuits brought by homeless people arrested in previous sweeps have cost the city thousands of dollars. Many homeless remain in makeshift shelters in the Civic Center area.

“This is not something written to focus on the homeless,” Helton said. “We’re looking at the bigger picture.”

Helton said the rental proposal is being discussed as only a tempovrary arrangement until the city installs the modular units, which is expected to happen by this summer. Neither Mayor Daniel H. Young nor a representative of City Manager David N. Ream were familiar with the rental proposal.

Both the modular units and the rental plan are stopgap measures aimed at reducing costs, at least until a planned police headquarters and adjoining 240-bed jail is built in Santa Ana.

Times staff writer Gebe Martinez contributed to this story.