Baca Proposes Reducing Deputies’ Lengthy Jail Duty

The initiation rite for Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies for much of the last decade has been years and years of hell: guarding difficult inmates, many of them violent, in the country’s biggest jail system before being allowed out on patrol.

But in his most radical departure from the policies of the past, Sheriff Lee Baca proposes reducing deputies’ four to seven years of guard duty and replacing them largely with civilians.

Why?

A glimpse into the lives of some of the deputies assigned to Men’s Central Jail provides some answers.

Follow a young sheriff’s deputy, still at his first assignment after graduating from the training academy eight months ago, as he weaves his way through the dark corridors of one-man cells, pointing out the inmates he oversees.

That guy, sitting on his bed watching “Real TV,” is accused of killing Brian Brown, a Los Angeles police officer. That one, lying wrapped in a white blanket, was found guilty of killing eight people and is to be sentenced to death this week. Those guys are members of the Nazi Low Riders gang. There’s the alleged Westside Rapist. That guy, pacing back and forth in his tiny cell, was sentenced to death for killing a boy in an Oceanside restroom and was sentenced to life last month in an attempted-murder case.

“They aren’t famous, but what they did was infamous,” said the deputy, 29-year-old Jerry Wolak.

“The first time I came here, I felt sorry for these people,” he said. “It took one time reading this. . . .” The deputy doesn’t finish his thought as he flips through the roster of high-profile inmates assigned to the protective custody unit.

Like his colleagues, Wolak can expect to spend four or five more years in the jail before he is freed to patrol the streets.

Concerns About Training Grow

It wasn’t always this way.

In the last eight years or so, a combination of slow hiring and low turnover in sheriff’s stations has increased the number of years that deputies must work the jails. As the time has lengthened, so have concerns about whether the jails are really the best training ground for young deputies. After taking office last year, Baca said he would like to hire more civilians to run them, thus freeing deputies for street patrol. Some believe that the jail experience leaves deputies cynical and hardened, less likely to be compassionate on the streets.

None of that is lost on the deputies themselves.

“I ask my wife all the time: I haven’t changed, right? I haven’t changed, have I?” Wolak said.

Baca, whose son spent six years as a deputy in the county jails, says he hopes to open three new facilities over the next 18 months with far fewer deputies and far more civilians. It’s a proposal perhaps born out of budgetary concerns--sworn officers cost more than civilians--but Baca believes deputies learn enough after a couple years in the jails.

“I think two years should be the max,” Baca said recently in his office at the sheriff’s headquarters. “The remaining two, three, four years is redundant.”

Additionally, political concerns could be driving the sheriff’s motivation to more quickly transfer deputies: The department has lucrative contracts with 41 cities to provide law enforcement services and those civic leaders want to see officers patrolling their streets.

Baca’s intentions will be met with great resistance from the deputies’ union, which succeeded in winning an agreement in 1997 limiting the number of civilians in the jails. The agreement does not cover the three jails that Baca proposed to staff mostly with civilians, but union officials say they still need to negotiate over those.

“Every time we remove a deputy and replace him with a [civilian] custody assistant, we’ve broken down the safety of our numbers,” said Roy Burns, the recently elected president of the Assn. of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, who, unlike Baca, counseled his son to shun a career in law enforcement. “I worked in the county jail. I found it to be one of the most dangerous jobs I ever had . . . with relatively nothing to protect me. Money is important, but I look into the eyes of deputies . . . who say it’s unsafe for us.”

Indeed, many deputies say their experiences in such jails as Men’s Central are dangerous on a daily basis. The Sheriff’s Department has 41 classifications of inmates in the county jail system; Men’s Central has some of them all.

Capt. Dennis Wilson, who has overseen Men’s Central for the last six months, recently instituted jail searches three times a week; the deputies--armed with pepper spray instead of guns--applaud the new program. Searches routinely turn up handmade knives, called shanks, and bags and bags of “pruno,” jailhouse moonshine made from sugar, fruit juice and moldy bread. They also find drugs, lighters and matches. One recent search of 22 housing units turned up 22 homemade weapons, including a 3-foot-long spear made of tightly rolled newspaper with a sharp plastic point.

In a recent and typical month, 63 inmates were victims of inmate-on-inmate violence; eight deputies were assaulted by inmates during that time.

“You learn the same things in all the jails,” Wilson said. “It’s just more intense in here.”

Deputies last month broke up a fight in a six-man cell where an inmate was stabbed--or shanked in jail parlance--more than 50 times, Wilson said. Inmates at Men’s Central no longer eat in the mess hall because of the potential for violence, so meals are eaten in cells.

Deputy William Campbell, who has worked in Men’s Central Jail for the last four years, isn’t inured to the dangers, nor is he surprised by any of them. Asked if he’s been the focus of attacks by inmates, he said simply: “Numerous times.”

Campbell is fairly typical of the deputies hired by the Sheriff’s Department: He grew up in Whittier and was hired after working in construction. He had never seen the inside of a jail before his first assignment at Men’s Central.

For those reasons, many law enforcement officials and observers say, some time in the jails helps prepare future patrol deputies. They get a firsthand education on the criminal mind, in street slang.

“If your average recruit is 21-22 years old, doesn’t have a good deal of life experience, spent his teens in the mall in San Dimas . . . then the custody experience can be a good one,” said Merrick Bobb, an attorney hired by the Board of Supervisors to oversee the Sheriff’s Department. “It gives them some experience dealing with the criminal element, without guns, where they can sharpen their verbal skills.”

But if left too long, some say, those same deputies become hardened to the inmates, tired of the constant cons and lies and threats of violence.

“The long-term effects, I think, are very corrosive,” Bobb said.

Attorneys who have filed lawsuits against the county on behalf of inmates who have been hurt or even killed behind bars go further.

“I fear that they learn certain mind-sets, certain behaviors that they can’t shake once they get out,” said attorney Carl E. Douglas, who has filed scores of lawsuits on behalf of former inmates, including a case expected to go to trial this spring in which an inmate suffocated when deputies at the Twin Towers jail tried to restrain him.

“I’m concerned that there’s a certain culture in jails among guards,” Douglas said. “The code of silence is certainly strengthened in that environment. There’s a very clear demarcation of us versus them. Black and brown [people] are always ‘them’ and always seen as the enemy.”

Kevin Wright, a criminal justice professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton, who has written extensively on prison management, said that an inherent problem exists between “the catchers and the keepers.”

“Tension exists within a lot of sheriff’s departments between the folks who want to be catchers and are brought in as keepers,” Wright said. “They don’t want the job to begin with. The whole setup is wrong, as far as I’m concerned. The jobs are really, really different.”

Wright, among others, suggests that sheriff’s departments separate the custody and law enforcement functions, making each a different career track, with promotions and specialties available.

“I want people to see their jobs as corrections officers--professional jobs with a career track . . . not people who are just doing their job until they can be released, just like the inmates,” Wright said.

However, Chief Taylor Moorehead, who oversees the department’s $385-million-a-year custody division, said, “The vast majority of our deputies--95%--have used it [the years in jail] to their best advantage. . . . They have gone to school, started a family, made some money.”

Some deputies have made $100,000 a year racking up the overtime in the jails; they have since been capped at 96 hours of overtime a month.

Learning Signs of Trouble

Take Jennifer Haller, 29, and Julia Valdes, 31. Both work a morning shift at Men’s Central while Haller works toward a bachelor’s degree in her time off and Valdes spends late afternoons and evenings taking her children to sports and helping with homework. They said the experience has been valuable, but, despite the convenient schedules, Haller and Valdes can’t wait to get out of jail. Haller figured she has about 18 months to two years left; Valdes said she has about two to 2 1/2 years.

“If you don’t take advantage of it, shame on you,” Haller said. “These are the skills and techniques you take to patrol. I know I’ve learned a lot and it may prepare me if something major goes down. You have the confidence to know you can handle it.”

Haller and Valdes said they’ve learned how to spot the signs of trouble in body language, to recognize gang tattoos, to decipher cover-ups and lies. They’ve learned the art of persuasion. They’ve also learned the sounds of a normal day in the jails: the loud clanking of the steel doors, the yells and catcalls from the inmates, the television sets turned up so the inmates can hear them from their cells, the quiet of the early morning. Wilson, the captain, says he knew when violence was imminent because inmates would sing “Happy Birthday” to cover up an assault.

Not everyone thrives on the adrenaline. According to the deputies’ union, attracting more civilians to work the jails will be tough. The department now has 2,122 deputies assigned to the jails and 815 civilian custody assistants. Officials are seeking recruits for both jobs.

The sheriff and the union agree, however, that the custody assistants will need more training in defense if their roles are to be increased.

A key problem for deputies trying to move out of the jails, meanwhile, remains the low turnover at the most popular sheriff’s stations. Deputies seeking patrol jobs in such stations as Lancaster, Crescenta Valley or Santa Clarita can expect to wait the longest; the Lennox and Century stations tend to have more openings. Both of those stations are among the busiest and have recruited deputies from the jails.

Deputy Wolak knows he faces years before a job opens up at his first choice: the East Los Angeles station. His brother is there now.

“I just hope they keep hiring,” he says. “I’m ready to go out. You learn fast in here.”