A Man and His Dog--and 4 Days Behind Bars : Courts: A Temple City man is arrested after failing to appear to answer citation for no license and rabies inoculation for his pet. Judge says he has been forced to adopt a get-tough policy.

A Temple City pet owner who had forgotten to license his dog spent more than four days behind bars--a casualty, authorities said Monday, of a patchwork of competing seat-of-the-pants policies that have cropped up amid the struggle to balance a lack of jail space with the political mandate to get tough on crime.

Robert C. Lewis, a 52-year-old equipment courier who was cited by a dogcatcher in September after his dog, Samantha, chased a cat into the street, was scheduled to be released late Monday night from Men’s Central Jail, where he had spent the weekend, sheriff’s officials said.

Authorities confirmed that Lewis had been behind bars since Thursday, when Glendora police arrested him on a no-bail misdemeanor warrant issued by Alhambra Municipal Judge Michael Kanner after Lewis failed to answer his citation in court.

Kanner dismissed the charges Monday after Lewis produced paperwork showing that he had gotten his Labrador-shepherd mix licensed and inoculated for rabies the day after the dogcatcher had cited him. But the judge said the no-bail warrant--while regrettable--had been part of a blanket policy he has been forced to adopt in an effort to close loopholes in a system that has allowed more serious misdemeanor offenders to ditch court.

Lewis could not be reached for comment late Monday because he was being processed out of jail. But his daughter said the episode has pushed him “to the boiling point, and with good reason.”

“I mean, the humiliation,” said Jackie Lewis, 24, of San Dimas. “There he was in court, in one of those little blue jumpsuits. It was sad. He didn’t belong there. He looked at me and tried to wave, but, well, you know.”

Kanner said Lewis was an unfortunate victim of the policy he felt forced to initiate after the Sheriff’s Department began automatically releasing certain misdemeanor suspects in an effort to keep from illegally overcrowding the county’s jails.

The “citation release program,” which allows suspect to go free on a promise to appear later in court, applies only to misdemeanor offenders arrested on warrants of less than $2,500 or given bail of less than $12,499--who are, in other words, not considered risky or dangerous.

But the judge said that over time the policy had allowed so many troublesome offenders to skip court dates with him that “after being burned over and over again (I) said no bail” to everyone.

Consequently, on Sept. 20, when Lewis failed to appear on charges of failing to license his dog and to have it inoculated for rabies--both misdemeanors--he was slapped with the same treatment that all defendants can expect in Kanner’s court--a no-bail warrant was issued for his arrest.

Lewis’ daughter said her father had believed that he had taken care of the matter the day after the citation was issued, when he finally managed to corral 8-year-old Samantha and drive her to the local Humane Society for a rabies shot.

The family had known they had to get Samantha a license, she said, but had never gotten around to it. Besides, she said, the dog tunneled under the back-yard fence about twice a week to chase cats, and no one in the neighborhood had ever complained.

“I mean, you know--she’d get tired, and the cats would sit on the wall and tease her, and she’d dig her way out, the way dogs do,” Lewis said. “Well, one day the dogcatcher saw her and she saw him and he got to my father before she could get back into the back yard. And the dogcatcher said, ‘Is she licensed?’ And my dad said, ‘No.’ And he said, ‘Does she have a rabies vaccine?’ And my dad said, ‘No.’ And he said, ‘Well, I have to cite you for it.’

“And that’s how it all began.”

After her father got the dog vaccinated and licensed, Lewis said, the family forgot about the whole thing. Then on Thursday night, she said, her father’s truck was spotted in a park-and-ride lot by Glendora police who checked his license plate on a whim and saw the warrant.

“He spent the night in Glendora City Jail, and on Friday they took him to Citrus (Municipal) Court,” Lewis said. “But for some reason, they had it wrong and the case had to be transferred to Alhambra. Meanwhile, he had no idea what he was being held for.”

She said officials offered to release her father if he would sign an agreement promising to appear in court Monday, but by that time, he was so furious and confused that he refused to sign anything.

“The next thing he knew, they were taking him to the L.A. County Jail,” Lewis said.

Frantically, the family tried to get information about their father’s arrest, she said, but his phone calls from jail kept missing them and their phone calls were greeted with a report from jail officials that Lewis had been moved to the medical ward so he could be kept safe from violent inmates.

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Finally, she said, her father managed to contact lawyer Thomas Thaxter, a family friend, and Thaxter relayed the news that Lewis was angry but safe and was scheduled to appear in Kanner’s courtroom Monday morning. Even with the dismissal of the charges, his family was unable to talk to him--and had not reached him by late Monday evening because of the vagaries and delays inherent in inmate processing.

“This is terrible,” Thaxter said about 10 p.m. Monday. “This is beyond all reasonableness--and all unreasonableness.”

Kanner said it was regrettable that Lewis had gotten such a stiff punishment for a minor offense, calling the case “one of the more grotesque examples” of the criminal justice system’s problems.

“But this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Kanner said. “This situation has created an uneasy pact: Judges understand that the Sheriff’s Department has a definite problem, but a judge represents the people who elect him or her. And the people who keep me in office expect that people who violate the laws will be punished. And I can’t punish anybody who isn’t brought before me.”