4th Escape Shakes the Community’s Confidence : Corrections: Civic leaders on the Lancaster prison’s advisory panel believe the incidents expose flaws. They will urge full investigation.

Civic leaders who toured the new state prison in Lancaster shortly after it opened last February were assured that prisoners could not escape via the garbage trucks driving in and out of the facility.

But on Thursday, a 25-year-old inmate, serving a life sentence for shooting a California Highway Patrol officer, did just that.

Although the man was recaptured, members of the prison’s community advisory committee said Friday that they were upset about the prison’s fourth escape in less than a year, the second involving a high-security inmate.

“Whenever someone breaks out of prison, there’s a hole in the system,” Lancaster Councilman George Root said. “It sounds like someone wasn’t doing their job again.”

Antelope Valley College President Allan Kurki, who also serves on the advisory panel, said the detention center “was clearly sold here in the community as a state-of-the-art prison that would be as escape-proof as possible. . . . This is very disturbing to me.”

The prisoner who escaped Thursday, Steven Charles Brigida, originally of Thousand Oaks, was injured when the garbage truck compressed him into a bale, then dumped him in a landfill. He was recaptured and taken to Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center, where he was being treated Friday for broken ribs, officials said.

Minutes after prison administrators learned about the escape, they notified the 15 members of the advisory panel. The committee meets regularly with Warden Otis Thurman to discuss local concerns about the prison--built despite protests by numerous residents.

James T. Lott, the committee’s chairman, said it has become tougher to convince residents that the prison, housing about 4,000 inmates, poses no danger to them.

“I still feel it is a safe prison,” said Lott, a school administrator. “But I can’t convince people it’s a safe prison when we keep having these escapes. There’s a weak link somewhere, and we need to get that repaired.”

Lott said the escape will be addressed at the panel’s next meeting Jan. 26. “Our committee will request a full investigation,” he said. “We’ll have many questions about policies and procedures. We need to tighten things up an awful lot.”

Prison spokesman Kenn I. Hicks said Friday that the staff is still trying to find out how Brigida, who worked in the kitchen, was able to hide in a waste bin that later was emptied into a garbage truck.

“The bins are in a secured area,” Hicks said. “Anytime trash is put into these bins, that’s supervised by an officer. Nobody puts anything in there without being supervised.”

Hicks said Thurman was unavailable for comment regarding the escape.

In Sacramento, Bill Gengler, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections, said that because garbage trucks have been used for prison escapes elsewhere, the department uses special security measures around the bins. He said he could not explain how the Lancaster escape occurred until the investigation is finished.

About six or seven high-security prisoners escape annually from the 27 state prisons in California, Gengler said. Some prisons have reported two high-security escapes in one year, as happened in Lancaster, he said. Most, however, report no escapes.

Gengler added: “Until we know all the details, we’re not going to take any action against the administrators of the prison.”

Authorities confirmed Friday that Brigida was arrested in October, 1987, after two CHP officers spotted him speeding on a stolen motorcycle along the Golden State Freeway north of Castaic.

After a 20-mile chase, Brigida was thrown from his motorcycle when it hit a log. When the officers ordered him to stop, he fired a handgun at Officer David Zielsch, striking him in the right cheek. Zielsch recovered and returned to active duty.

Brigida fired a second shot that missed the officers before he was wrestled to the ground and arrested.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted first-degree murder in 1988.

Escapes from Lancaster Since its opening in February, 1993, four inmates have escaped from the California State Prison in Lancaster. Here are the incidents:

July 2: Juan Isidro Maestas, 19, serving a two-year sentence for burglary, and Jesse Adame, 20, serving a four-year sentence for robbery, walk away from their minimum-security barrack. Adame is arrested two days later in the City of Industry after a carjacking. Maestas is arrested four days after the escape in El Monte, after prison officials receive information that he might be there.

Oct. 5: Convicted murderer Eric Rene Johnson, 23, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, escapes from the maximum-security unit in the evening. He is spotted about five hours later at a convenience store parking lot at 15th Street West and Avenue K, a few miles from the prison, where he was recaptured. He had climbed over an 8-foot block wall and two 12-foot chain-link fences--all topped with coiled razor wire--while two guards were distracted.

Jan. 13: Steven Charles Brigida, 25, serving a sentence of life plus eight years for attempted murder, auto theft and burglary, stows away in a garbage truck and is compacted with the trash and dumped into a local landfill. After crying out for help, Brigida is turned over to prison guards and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, who take him to the hospital. He had apparently climbed inside a prison garbage bin that was hoisted into the truck and them dumped.