Block to Close Jail, Cut Drug Unit Staff : Law enforcement: Sheriff also plans to curb overhead costs to achieve a $25.5-million cutback. About 160 women will be freed, but most inmates will be transferred.

Sheriff Sherman Block announced Tuesday that he will close the 1,100-bed Mira Loma jail, cut narcotics enforcement personnel by 10% and curtail administrative expenses by$10 million to satisfy a $25.5-million cutback in his department’s annual budget ordered by the Board of Supervisors.

The money-saving moves include not filling 240 of the 400 vacancies in the ranks of uniformed deputies created by a yearlong hiring freeze, the sheriff said.

Although the medium-security Mira Loma facility in the Antelope Valley will be closed permanently in phases over the next four weeks to save the county $15 million a year, other moves will prevent the early release of masses of prisoners, Block said.

In the next two weeks, he said, about 160 women inmates--out of more than 2,100 inmates in the county system--will be released early. But by converting another facility to house women, the system’s overall space for women should eventually increase slightly, Block said.

Meanwhile, he said, all the men at Mira Loma will be accommodated at the county’s other jails.

The 10% decrease in deputies assigned to narcotics enforcement means that 18 officers will be reassigned, Block said. The administrative savings will be realized by reassigning headquarters investigators and others to field duties.

The best news, Block said, is that regular patrols will not be cut back and layoffs are being avoided.

“We have protected patrol zealously,” he told a news conference at his headquarters in Monterey Park. “We see that absolutely as our first line of defense, being able to respond to calls for assistance and having the greatest visibility possible.”

Even so, the sheriff insisted, the large part of Los Angeles County where the Sheriff’s Department is the official law enforcement agency will be less safe than it was two county budgets ago.

“We’re dealing with 800 fewer sworn personnel (deputies) than we had a little over a year ago,” he said. “We had 8,400 then, and only 7,600 or 7,500 now. . . . Our metro vice unit alone has been cut by 60%. . . . We’re barely able to pay attention to street prostitution activities, things of that nature, which are the primary source of citizen complaints.”

In May, Block briefly closed the Mira Loma facility and released a few women prisoners, only to have the Board of Supervisors quickly give him $4 million in emergency funds to keep the jail open.

This time, however, the sheriff said he expects no such dispensation, and said the $4 million that had been promised never materialized.

“This time the budget deliberations have in fact ended,” he said. “These are the available dollars.”

Reacting to Block’s announcements, Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents the Antelope Valley area, said Tuesday that he will try to divert more county money to law enforcement in an attempt to keep Mira Loma open.

“Closing jails and letting criminals loose on the street is the wrong policy to implement on law-abiding citizens,” Antonovich said.

Supervisor Ed Edelman, however, played down the significance of the closure. “While no one wants to close jails, this will not result in criminals being released,” he said. Fiscally, Edelman said, “our backs are against the wall.”

Block said he, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and other county officials will campaign aggressively for a special election measure in November to indefinitely extend a half-cent increase in the state sales tax. That would give Los Angeles County $200 million more this fiscal year and allow the Sheriff’s Department to resume hiring, he said.

“It’s absolutely essential that this half-cent sales tax be extended,” Block said. “It’s not a new tax. It’s not an additional tax. It’s merely an extension.”

The sheriff also indicated that he might be prepared to give up a 5% cost-of-living increase in his salary, to $190,000 a year, that he received July 1. One concern, he said, was that he would still have to pay taxes on the full amount even if he gave the increase to the county.

Block had some good news about his treatment for lymphatic cancer, saying that he felt well and that after his first cycle of chemotherapy “the major tumor disappeared just as quickly as it came. . . . It’s gone, (but) of course, it’s still in the system.”

The sheriff had a second chemotherapy session Thursday and he said he suffered no ill effects.

Times staff writer Hugo Martin contributed to this story.