Scofflaws Targeted for Vacant Jail Cells by New Task Force

Law enforcement officials are taking extra measures to put small-time violators behind bars and clear some of San Diego County’s estimated 670,000 outstanding misdemeanor warrants.

A new task force made up of San Diego police officers and county and federal marshals hits the streets today to jail gang members and weapons-violators with outstanding warrants.

The multi-agency program, dubbed “Gangs and Guns” by the county marshal’s office, is one of two new efforts to clear outstanding warrants while making use of empty beds at the Otay Mesa city jail.

Last month, another team of Police Department traffic investigators--working with the county marshal--began arresting San Diego drunk-driving suspects and convicts who either never showed up in court to answer their misdemeanor charges or failed to complete the terms of their sentences.

The effort mirrors a similar roundup of county drunk drivers who never showed up in court.

“Now these people will be held for arraignment,” Police Chief Bob Burgreen said, noting that if they’re booked into jail and post bail, they’re much more likely to show up for trial.

“I’m urging people to come in voluntarily, and we will certainly take that into consideration,” Presiding Municipal Judge Ronald Domnitz said. “If we have to go out and arrest them, I’m sure they’ll be sorry that they didn’t come in.”

The 200-bed Otay Mesa jail has been open since May under contract with a Florida-based private company. City officials had expected the beds to fill up right away, but on many nights half remain empty. Last week, the city began allowing county deputies to book city misdemeanor violators into the jail, paving the way for more cooperation between agencies.

“They’ve got the green light now. They’re doing about 10 to 15 people a day,” City Manager Jack McGrory said of the county deputies. “That was always one of the purposes we intended to have with our jail, that we’d go after these multiple-warrant offenders.”

City officials held off for several months because they expected the beds to fill.

“That was so the jail would not get overloaded, and frankly that’s not a concern right now,” McGrory said. On Monday, 164 of the 200 beds were full, he said, a record for the jail.

The county marshal’s office praised the new flexibility, spearheaded by Domnitz.

“We couldn’t do anything on these warrants before because there was no space for them (in County Jail). There was nothing we could do about them,” said County Marshal Field Services Lt. Sam Gonzales. On many nights, he said, the city jail fills only 70 beds.

“What’s more frustrating is not the empty beds, but for the last 10 years having no teeth in our warrants,” Domnitz said. “For the last few months, I have asked the Police Department and the city to allow misdemeanants to be booked into that facility when arrested by a marshal. The answer had been no up until now. I’m very, very pleased.”

The “Gangs and Guns” task force involves eight officers and a supervisor from the Police Department, four deputies and a supervisor from the county marshal’s office and four deputies from the U.S. marshal’s office, Burgreen said.

Each marshal’s deputy will team up with a city police officer to target San Diego gang members with outstanding warrants and city residents with warrants for weapons violations, he said. More than 3,000 San Diego gang members have 3,273 uncleared warrants among them. And 2,000 other city residents are named in 2,479 uncleared warrants for weapons violations.

While more than 90% of those warrants are for misdemeanors, about 400 felony violations of state or federal law are also among them, police spokesman Dave Cohen said.

The task force should streamline work for all agencies involved, U.S. Marshal Richard Cameron said.

“There tends to be a lot of overlap. They’re basically chasing the same people we are, especially when you talk about gang-type things,” Cameron said. “If each agency goes about doing their own thing, they tend to do it to their own end. You get a much better bang for your buck if everyone is concentrating on the same narrow field.”

The task force will be evaluated in 30 days and may continue if it is deemed effective.

Cameron isn’t worried that his deputies will spend a good part of their time booking misdemeanor violators into the city jail. “It is worth the effort,” he said, “because whenever we get to one of our cases we have all that support leveraged to us. It works very well.”

The effort to clear drunk driving warrants began July 19, Burgreen said. By Aug. 23, police from the department’s traffic division had gone looking for 87 offenders. They found 29 and booked them into Otay Mesa.

“We’re now arresting people in their homes,” Burgreen said.

Officers found one man lying in bed next to a stolen “Sobriety Checkpoint” sign. Another was in the bathtub when he got his surprise visit from officers; another was escorted to police by his grandmother after he tried to bolt out the back door in his boxer shorts.

The drunk drivers police are seeking have already received three messages by mail to appear in court, Burgreen said. Some of the outstanding warrants date back years. Several of those heard by Domnitz last week were from 1985, the chief said.

The new efforts are aimed at trimming the county’s estimated 670,000 outstanding warrants. Of those, about 30,000 are for drunk driving, Domnitz said.

While most of the offenders are city residents, the rest of the county has its share of small-time violators who have never been jailed. The Sheriff’s Department is trying its own new tactic to change that.

Deputies from the department’s Lemon Grove substation will begin booking people arrested for misdemeanor violations and putting them in County Jail starting today.

The county stopped booking routine misdemeanor arrests eight years ago after Superior Court Judge James L. Focht ruled that crowding at the downtown jail constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

People arrested for misdemeanor drunk driving infractions or domestic violence citations have always been booked into County Jail.

But under the new directive from Sheriff Jim Roache, deputies working out of Lemon Grove will no longer cite and release those arrested for all other types of misdemeanors.

“We want to see, on a limited basis, what impact these arrests will be on the (County Jail) system,” said Dan Greenblat, special assistant to Roache. “We want to see what happens in terms of crime in the community and whether it goes down.”

Getting deputies in the habit of making such arrests, he said, will prepare them for making bookings into the partially opened East Mesa jail, which is to be fully opened by the first of next year, Greenblat said. A medium-security branch of East Mesa already holds 296 inmates.

Although the county is still under a 1980 court order, implemented in 1984, that keeps inmate populations below legally imposed caps, the number of inmates in the county’s jails and honor camps fluctuates and is now well below the court-order capacity.

The county’s jail system is supposed to hold no more than 4,290 inmates. As of Monday, the eight facilities held 2,641.

Superior Court Judge James Malkus, who is overseeing the overcrowding situation and reaffirmed the court order in 1990, said Roache is within his rights to book small-time violators so long as there is room in the County Jail system.

“They are not over the cap and actually have been doing quite well,” Malkus said. “This sounds like it falls within the parameters of my court order.”