Sheriff’s Officials Stand by Security at County Courthouses

The escape of a robbery suspect who used a plastic comb to break out of the Santa Monica Courthouse was a fluke, not likely to be repeated in any other county courthouse, a Sheriff’s Department official told a county commission Thursday.

After learning that George Lawrence Allen, 49, pried open the self-locking metal door on his holding cell, sheriff’s officials ordered that locks be checked in other county courthouses, Lt. Richard Moak told the Los Angeles County Judicial Procedures Commission.

None of the other doors were found to be susceptible to the same type of inventive jiggling. The Sheriff’s Department oversees security at county courthouses.

“This one particular door is the only one that allowed itself to be jimmied from the inside,” Moak said.

Allen escaped Aug. 7 during a recess in his trial on multiple robbery charges. He then entered an empty courtroom before running down a hallway filled with jurors in his own case, Moak said.

One of the jurors recognized Allen and notified bailiffs, but they could not catch him.

Allen was captured a week later as he fled from a Hollywood bank that he allegedly tried to rob. Three citizens, including an off-duty police officer, cornered Allen after an attempted robbery at the Bank of Hollywood, police said.

He is the second defendant to escape from a holding area at the courthouse in just over a year. In July 1995 a convicted carjacker facing two 25-years-to-life prison terms kicked a hole in a first-floor holding area and scurried through the building’s duct system for 28 hours before he was caught. After that incident, court officials installed supposedly escape-proof liners in the building.