Yaroslavsky and Block Clash Over Funding for Jail

Ratcheting up the debate over Los Angeles County’s jail crisis, an angry Sheriff Sherman Block told county supervisors Tuesday that the only way he could afford to open a now-empty jail is by cutting nearly 370 street deputies--and he won’t do it.

“I absolutely would not reallocate patrol funds to open Twin Towers,” Block told the Board of Supervisors, one day after Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky proposed a new plan for opening the $373-million downtown jail to ease inmate overcrowding. The state-of-the-art facility has been empty for months because the county doesn’t have the money to run it.

But Block’s intransigence angered Yaroslavsky, who suggested that there is plenty of bureaucratic fat to trim in the sheriff’s $1.1-billion budget.

The supervisor said Block is seeking to tap into public emotions over police and crime by threatening to cut back services that most affect Los Angeles residents. “This is the oldest trick in the book,” Yaroslavsky said.

“Block is depicting this as a stark choice between patrol and jails, and it doesn’t have to be,” the supervisor said in an interview after a raucous morning debate. The sheriff’s budget numbers, he said, “are preposterous. But he can get away with it . . . because no one wants to challenge him.”

The debate came at a time of intensified scrutiny of the jails after a Times series last month. The articles detailed the racial tensions in overcrowded facilities, the rising frustrations among deputies forced to serve years in jail, and the unprecedented early releases of thousands of prisoners--many of whom later commit new crimes--who are serving just a fraction of their sentences. Block said he has circulated in Washington, Sacramento and Los Angeles a 33-page response to the series, aimed at ensuring that those policymakers appropriating law enforcement funds “have the facts.” He spent much of his appearance before the supervisors Tuesday challenging the Times series.

Among a long list of complaints, the sheriff said it is “very risky” to compare his department’s release policies to those of other counties. Nonetheless, that is what he did Tuesday, insisting that “many” other departments nationwide are releasing misdemeanor offenders who “don’t do any time in jail.”

Sheriff’s officials said later that Block was referring to jails in Honolulu and Milwaukee. But Milwaukee sheriff’s officials have said in past interviews--and reiterated Tuesday--that misdemeanor offenders there generally do 75% of their sentences.

“That’s not true,” Milwaukee Sheriff’s Sgt. Luis Gomez said when asked about Block’s statement. “Otherwise, our misdemeanors would go skyrocketing.”

As for Block’s reference to Honolulu, state Department of Corrections spokesman Gregg Takayama also said the sheriff is mistaken. In one of only two states in the country where there are no local jails, violent misdemeanor convicts still often do all or most of their custody time, while nonviolent offenders may be let out early on a case-by-case basis depending on overcrowding, he said.

And in New York City--the one jail system that Block said is worth comparing to Los Angeles because of their similar sizes--the tens of thousands of misdemeanor convicts sentenced to jail time each year complete about 67% of their sentences. In Los Angeles, the average is about 23%.

Block also faulted The Times for suggesting that requiring deputies to serve their first five years or more in the hardened atmosphere of the jails could taint their treatment of both inmates and the public. And he questioned why the newspaper sought to “extrapolate” jail trends by spotlighting certain negative incidents--such as ill treatment or abuse of inmates.

Many of these same incidents have been studied by the sheriff’s own special counsel in identifying key problems in the jails. Special counsel Merrick Bobb has complained repeatedly--including in a February report--that the long tours of duty in the jail can produce callousness and anger in deputies.

After the sheriff’s criticisms of The Times, Block and Yaroslavsky clashed over whether there is money in the sheriff’s budget to help open the new Twin Towers jail and slow the massive early release of inmates.

Block blamed the jail’s problems largely on cutbacks in funding he receives from the county. “I have insulated this board from much of the grief that you could have faced over the custody situation,” he said.

But Yaroslavsky was skeptical.

The supervisor says his proposed cutbacks in the Sheriff’s Department and elsewhere would free up $18 million to partially open Twin Towers for six months.

Block said the proposed $14.8-million cut in his budget would mean getting rid of 367 patrol positions--or 41% of all the officers in the county’s unincorporated areas.

The sheriff’s concerns were backed by Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose Eastside district encompasses far more unincorporated area than that of Yaroslavsky. “Take patrol out of my district,” she said, “and those are fighting words.”

Yaroslavsky, however, was incredulous over the sheriff’s math, saying he found it hard to believe that a reduction of just 1% or 2% in the sheriff’s county funding could result in cutbacks of nearly half the patrol deputies in unincorporated areas.

The sheriff’s contracts deserve closer scrutiny, Yaroslavsky said.