Sheriff Won’t Yield to City on Jail Transfers : Courts: He says judicial ban on crowding made him break his word--’I’d violate any rule.’

If left no choice in a jail overcrowding crisis, Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates said Thursday, he would “violate any rule,” including agreements not to send maximum-security inmates to Theo Lacy Branch Jail.

While it hasn’t happened yet, Gates said, a time could come when overpopulation would push him to break a pact with the city of Orange that no dangerous inmates would be housed there in order to remain within court mandates on prisoner levels.

“If it comes to that,” the sheriff said, “I would violate any rule there is.”

The sheriff’s remarks came following his testimony in Superior Court, where the city of Orange seeks to block the transfer of maximum-security prisoners to Theo Lacy.

“It’s unrealistic for (Orange) to scream and holler about wanting to do something about gangs and wanting to do something about drug dealers,” Gates told reporters. “The public is not being served by this kind of action.”

The sheriff said his operation of the county jail system has been hamstrung for years by a federal court order which demands that he provide a bed for every inmate within 24 hours of jail check-in. The order also limits the prisoner population at the maximum-security Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana to 1,296.

“That federal court order is the law of the land, and I’m not going to violate it,” the sheriff said outside the courtroom.

To ease current overcrowding problems, Gates said, the county would need 3,000 more maximum security beds, nearly double the number of existing beds in the county’s five jails.

The county is studying plans to expand Theo Lacy from 1,326 to as many as 2,200 beds. Any plans to send maximum-security inmates to Theo Lacy as part of that expansion project would have to be approved by the County Board of Supervisors.

“I’m caught between a rock and a hard spot,” Gates said.

In his testimony Thursday, the sheriff acknowledged that he broke a promise to Orange when he made inmates charged with more dangerous crimes eligible for transfer to the lower-security Theo Lacy.

From the witness stand, Gates read from a January, 1992, letter he wrote to the Board of Supervisors in which he admitted having to change the department’s system of classifying prisoners so that more could be released from the critically overcrowded main jail.

“My promise to the city was that we wouldn’t change the classification of inmates as outlined to them,” Gates said. “I was forced to do so last November because we did not have enough jail space to properly house inmates.”

“Like most honest people, I like to keep my word,” he said, continuing to read from the letter. “It’s discouraging when circumstances over which I have no control force me to break promises.”

After his court appearance, a clearly frustrated Gates referred to the proceedings as “all this baloney.”

Although Gates and other county officials admit that prisoner classifications were changed, the sheriff has claimed repeatedly that dangerous or maximum-security inmates were never housed in Theo Lacy.

Attorneys for the city, however, have charged that the sheriff’s decision to alter the prisoner profiles violated not only the pact with Orange but environmental agreements with Orange for use of Theo Lacy.

Those agreements, attorney Geoffrey K. Willis has said, are at the heart of the city’s lawsuit against the county. The city is also seeking to prohibit an future expansion of the branch jail.

County Supervisor William G. Steiner, a former Orange city councilman, said he would be disappointed to see any further expansion of Theo Lacy and especially any future plan that would allow maximum-security prisoners there.

Steiner, who until his appointment to the county board in March served as executive director of the Orangewood Children’s Foundation, said he had told foundation directors that no maximum-security prisoners would be housed at Theo Lacy, which stands 100 feet from the Orangewood Children’s Home.

“I feel very strongly that the children’s interests should be protected,” Steiner said. “There are 200 kids there on a daily basis and the private sector has invested $13 million there.”