Delivering the Dangerous : Sheriff’s Buses Hauled 110,000 Prisoners to Courts, Elsewhere Last Year

Five days each week, a ragged fleet of silver, black and white buses crisscrosses area freeways and streets carrying some of the most dangerous human freight in Orange County.

This bus service, in which routes change daily and passengers are carefully segregated and handcuffed to their seatmates, takes nearly 500 prisoners each day from Orange County’s five jails to a network of seven court systems spread from Fullerton to Laguna Niguel.

Starting well before dawn and running late into the night, the buses also ferry about 1,000 more inmates daily for specialized care at hospitals, to fill work crews, or to state prisons. In the past decade, with the onset of decentralized jail and court systems, this service has grown to include a large bureaucracy, with a yearly operating budget of nearly $9 million--more than the combined budgets for the sheriff’s investigations of gangs, drugs and other crimes.

Local judges, who depend on the bus service to promptly deliver defendants to their courtrooms, say the system is fraught with “a thousand things that can go wrong.”

And sometimes they do.

In some instances, one judge said, whole court proceedings have waited for the buses, which in turn have had to wait for prisoners taking advantage of their legally guaranteed right to eight hours of “uninterrupted sleep” before court appearances.

On other occasions, a simple rainstorm or freeway pileup can throw court officials into a frenzy as they wait for the prisoner buses.

“It’s like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ around here sometimes,” Superior Court Judge H. Michael Brenner said. “If somebody shanks somebody in the jail and somebody else doesn’t get his eight hours sleep before court, the whole thing stops. At the same time, you have jurors waiting and they are looking at the judge like you are some kind of flake.”

Municipal Judge James M. Brooks said the extraordinary transportation requirements, which have sheriff’s buses logging a quarter-million miles per year, have been key factors in proposals for in-jail video arraignments. Under the plan, awaiting approval by the judges, inmates could be arraigned in their jail cells by video.

Generally, Brooks said, both judges and the Sheriff’s Department do a “good job” of transporting inmates, given the resources and legal protections afforded prisoners. But, he said, the enormous possibility for error--leaving court proceedings to the mercy of bus mechanics or sleepy inmates--presents “a god-awful situation.”

“Some of these buses are making long, arduous trips every day,” the judge said. “But there is no other way to accommodate the system.”

Every weekday, a prisoner’s odyssey to court starts with a wake-up call between 5 and 6 a.m. From that moment, deputies race against the clock to deliver prisoners, only to start the race all over again in the early afternoon. The late runs are extremely critical, officials say, since those scheduled for return court appearances the following day must be fed and locked back in their cells in time to get the required sleep before court.

“For the most part, this is a hidden operation that most of the public will never see,” said Lt. Pete Gannon, who heads the transportation division. “Sometimes we’ve got guys going pillar to post, and we just don’t know how we’re going to get people back and forth to court.”

For 18-year-old Pete Talavera, Friday’s trip to Fullerton’s North Court, where he would face a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, began at 6 a.m. when roused from his bunk in Orange. Given a short time to wash and dress and 15 minutes to eat a breakfast of ham and eggs, Talavera’s long dark hair was still wet when he boarded.

Like the other inmates, the young man from Anaheim Hills was counted and segregated by sex and classification of crime. Within those travel groups, they are handcuffed to seatmates.

Since maximum security arrangements do not exist in every jail, Gannon said, it is not possible for the department to house prisoners in the jail nearest the appropriate court. It is a quirk of the system that in some cases he has inmates traveling from the James A. Musick Jail in Irvine to Fullerton’s North Court--a 24-mile one-way trip--when a run to Harbor Court in Newport Beach would be less than half that distance.

As a result, prisoners are generally taken to an inmate terminal at the county’s Intake and Release Center in Santa Ana where they are placed in holding cells and wait for larger groups going to specific courts.

“It is the decentralized system that causes this to exist,” Gannon said from his office at the terminal. “Unless basic changes are made, this doesn’t change.”

It is 12.6 miles from the terminal to North Court, and Talavera clutches his sack lunch as the bus pulls away with Deputy Sheriff Rich Chamberlin at the wheel and Deputy Sheriff Dave Bernal riding shotgun. The radio is tuned to country music, lulling some passengers back into a deep slumber.

The early morning bus is unusually quiet this day. Chamberlin says it’s nothing like the loud disturbances that, on some days, have caused deputies to wade down the narrow isles to isolate troublemakers.

“Usually, they are yelling and screaming,” Chamberlin said. “If there is a mix of guys and gals (the sexes are segregated by reinforced glass), they just start roaring.”

Said Bernal: “We’re always getting hassled, maybe because some white dude doesn’t like to be chained to a black guy.” In the afternoons, especially after defendants have been sentenced, anger can flare on the bus.

Talavera only occasionally glances out the clouded window during the ride. He is unsure about his court appointment, at which he will be formally arraigned.

“Me and my friends were driving home,” he said, recalling the crime he is accused of committing. “We saw this group of guys on the street,” and he made an obscene gesture. “Now, I’m being charged with assault with a deadly weapon. My parents are upset. They are doing everything they can.

“Being in here--it’s like dying slow. I’m just dying slow. I’m hurting inside.”

In roughly 15 minutes, the trip is completed, and the inmates, including Talavera, are delivered on time and without incident.

Major incidents, such as escapes, are rare, Gannon said. Last year, when 110,000 prisoners were moved to court, medical appointments, state prison, transferred between jails or to work details, the lieutenant said, only one inmate escaped.

It happened last summer when an inmate slipped his handcuffs while boarding a bus headed for West Court in Westminster. Unnoticed, he slipped under the vehicle, clinging to its undercarriage as it rolled onto city streets.

Gannon said the inmate, described as a small, wiry fellow, dropped to the street at a Santa Ana intersection. Witnesses told authorities that they saw the man running from the bus. The lieutenant said he did not know whether the man was ever caught.

Escapes are not taken lightly, Gannon said, since they reflect badly on the division and present an added danger to deputies.

Only last year, San Diego County’s whole process of shuttling inmates was called into question when a prisoner--Johnaton George--escaped from a Sheriff’s Department van taking him to a federal prison. In the process, George injured a deputy and killed a motorist with the deputy’s service revolver. The incident sparked an internal investigation of transportation procedures and a review by the National Institute of Corrections. Like Orange County, San Diego County moves more than 100,000 inmates per year to various locations.

In a report to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors last month, Sheriff Jim Roache said the demands on the prisoner transportation detail had “stretched its capabilities to the point of creating situations of such a critical nature that officer and public safety could be jeopardized.”

However, requests for increased staffing there have been denied, sheriff’s officials said.

In Orange County, as in San Diego County, keeping prisoner court appointments is a large part, but only one, of the division’s responsibilities.

Every week, drivers shuttle one busload--or 59 inmates--to state prison. Orange County sheriff’s buses also logged 122,648 miles last year to Northern California destinations.

To accommodate overcrowding conditions or security problems, deputies also are forced to move prisoners to available beds or maximum security facilities within the local system. Inmates involved in this constant internal shuffle are referred to as “swimmers” by deputies.

For medical visits alone, an average of 23 inmates each day are delivered to local hospitals for special medical care which ranges from prenatal needs to kidney dialysis treatments. Medical transports can be especially costly, since at least two deputies from the 60-officer division must accompany inmates and remain on guard as they are treated.

“What you have here, in essence, is a small city,” Gannon said. “People are born in custody, and sometimes they die in custody.”

Said Sgt. Jim Estep: “Everybody thinks that once somebody is in jail, everything stops. That’s a big misconception. These people have medical problems, they have to be in court. It’s a never-ending stream and they all have to be moved.”

On the Bus In the frustrating world of mass transportation, there is one unlikely bus system in Orange County tht has no trouble attracting ridership. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department fleet moves about 110,000 prisoners each year. Many in that number are required to be shuttled from the county’s network of jails to court appointments in cities from Fullerton to Laguna Niguel. Courts 1. Superior Court, Santa Ana 2. Municipal Court, Santa Ana 3. Municipal Court, Newport Beach 4. Municipal Court, Fullerton 5. Municipal Court, Laguna Niguel 6. Municipal Court, Westminster 7. Juvenile Court, Orange Jails 1. Central Men’s Jail, Santa Ana 2. Central Women’s Jail, Santa Ana 3. Intake / Release Center, Santa Ana 4. Theo Lacy Branch Jail, Orange 5. James A. Musick, Irvine