Faulty Locks Become Key Concern at County Jail

Iron bars do not a prison make, especially in Ventura, where inmates have figured out how to pry open worn locks and slip out of their cells. Deputies on their rounds after lock-down at night have found inmates sitting in the day room, watching television. On some occasions, inmates have slipped out and brawled in the hallway outside their cells.

“Over the past four or five years, it’s happened more times than is acceptable,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Jim Burell, who works in the detention center at 800 S. Victoria Ave. “There were times where 12 or 14 times a week we’d have doors slipped [open].”

Because inmates must penetrate several levels of security to reach the outside, there have been no escapes, officials said. Still, an inmate on the prowl poses dangers for other inmates and jail employees, authorities said.

The county hopes to solve the problems created by its aging security system when its $3-million renovation project gets underway in the next few weeks. Contractors will install new technology and new doors on the jail’s 480 cells, said Burell, who is overseeing the project.

The problem with the security system is not new. Two years ago, county officials hired a contractor to install computer software that would remotely open and close the cell doors. But the county later fired and then sued the contractor, Los Angeles-based Fire Electric, saying the company was using substandard equipment and software and was taking too long.

Fire Electric countersued, alleging county officials made unreasonable demands, but settled last year, paying $75,000 in damages, said Chief County Counsel Frank Seih.

Now, officials say, the delays are behind them.

“This is going to be a big advantage for everyone,” Burell said. “It’s going to be easier for the employees, safer for the inmates. But the biggest advantage to us and citizens is better control. We’ll have better control over the inmate population.”

In 1995, when the county hired the first contractor, officials thought all they needed to do was to replace out-of-date computer technology that opened and closed each lock from a command module surrounded by the eight jail quadrants, each of which has 48 cells. The estimated cost was $550,000.

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But while lawyers worked to settle the civil suit, deputies in the jail learned that replacing doors to each cell was also necessary because inmates had discovered that metal parts in the locking mechanism had become worn, making it easy to snap open some of the doors’ latches.

“Deputies would do a cell check and they’d find an inmate out watching TV or playing cards,” Burell said. “That’s a significant security problem.”

Replacing doors for every cell in the 18-year-old facility pushed the cost of the project to nearly $3 million.

But it is worth it, officials say, because the system has other kinks, too.

Sometimes, deputies in the jail’s control center press a button to release a lock, but it won’t budge. Other times, the wrong lock will pop open.

Also, once a door is unlatched, inmates must slide the door open and close it.

“But sometimes an inmate will slide his door so that it looks closed, but it’s not,” Burell said. “And they’ll do it simply so they can fight. We have rival gang members in here, some pretty high-profile inmates. We try to keep them separated, but because of space, sometimes we can’t. So you can open a door to one cell so an inmate can come out and shower, and boom, another door flies open and we have a fight on our hands.”

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The new system will not only unlatch the door’s lock, it will use air pressure to slide the door open and to slam it closed.

“So we’ll know that door is closed because we’ve closed it,” Burell said.

Deputies aren’t the only ones who will be happy with the new locking system. It will bring relief to maintenance workers, who spend as much as 40% of their time repairing the outdated system.

Maintenance engineer Paul Rodriguez said the system’s manufacturer, Universal Security Products, is no longer in business. And even when the company installed the system in 1980, they used old technology, Rodriguez said. “So really what we have here is a system with technology that’s over 30 years old,” he said.

It’s also difficult to find replacement parts.

Maintenance workers commonly repair breakdowns by stealing parts from the doors to empty cells. “We do that especially if we have to fix a door in a high-risk area,” Rodriguez said. “We can’t afford to just shut down the cell because we can’t move that inmate somewhere else. We have to fix the door any way we can.”

But taking parts from cells that are temporarily standing empty creates a problem on nights when the jail fills up with inmates and deputies are scrambling for every available bed.

If they didn’t have to spend so much time fixing locks, workers would be able to spend more time on things like tending to the constant sewer problems created by inmates trying to flush anything from food to underwear to shoes, Rodriguez said.

Although the jail is less than 20 years old, relatively young compared to the more than 40-year-old buildings at the Ojai facility, it has deteriorated through overuse. Built to hold about 400 inmates comfortably, the Ventura jail has at times housed as many as 1,200.

“I like to equate this system to somebody’s house,” Burell said. “If you have a house with doors opening and closing for 20 years, what do you think will happen to that locking system? Now, put three families in that house and it’s going to wear out much faster.”

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County officials haven’t yet selected a contractor to install the new security system, but they expect the work to begin before year’s end. Renovating each of the jail’s quadrants will be a slow process, authorities say. Repairs can only be done one quadrant at a time, since inmates will have to be temporarily moved to the Todd Road Jail in Santa Paula.

The work is expected to be finished by 2000.

But when it’s done, officials say it will be almost like having a new jail. “A control system is the nuts and bolts of a jail,” Burell said. “And we’re going to have all new nuts and bolts.”