Old Jail Spoof Sheet a Repeat Offender

It bills itself as jailhouse humor, but top officials in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department aren’t laughing.

“Wino News” says it’s written by deputies for deputies--a publication that pokes fun at colleagues in what one issue says is an attempt to keep “our sanity and police our own” while working in the jail.

But the underground publication has sparked outrage among administrators who consider its contents offensive to those deputies--particularly minority officers--targeted in the newsletter.

The August issue contains a mock transfer list--closely resembling the format of real department memos--that has one deputy with a Latino surname sent to “Boarder Patrol.” Another is moved from Theo Lacy Branch Jail to the NAACP.

Until this week, most deputies familiar with “Wino News” believed it died years ago under pressure from supervisors. But after reading an issue dated Aug. 21, 2000, top sheriff’s officials this week promised to find out who is behind the publication and stop it.

“If it is one of our deputies who is distributing this, we want to find out who it is,” said Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo, adding that someone other than a deputy might be responsible. Regardless, he said, “That person should not be involved in law enforcement.”

Sheriff’s officials made the announcement after The Times provided them with a copy of the newsletter. The Times received a copy from William Sargbah. Sargbah is a former employee at the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange, according to Sargbah’s attorney.

Sargbah last year filed a $1-million lawsuit against the county, alleging he was the victim of racial harassment while working as a corrections service technician in the jail. In the suit, Sargbah--who is Liberian--accuses a handful of deputies of constantly ridiculing his nationality and, on one occasion, locking him in a cell with an inmate. He stopped working in the jail in January 1999, according to the suit.

Sargbah would not comment Friday. His lawyer, Kim Nguyen, said that, while the tone of “Wino News” is more juvenile than offensive, the publication could easily be viewed as racially insensitive.

“It’s not appropriate to have this passed around,” Nguyen said. “I think it has overtones to being a racial newspaper.”

“Wino News” has surfaced intermittently for years but is scorned by most deputies, said Robert MacLeod, general manager of the Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs.

“It’s childish,” MacLeod said. “I think everybody wishes it would go away.”

The August issue of “Wino News” contains two cartoons and dozens of jokes made at the expense of other deputies. On the second of seven pages, a “Letter from the Editor” says “Wino News” has been resurrected after years of suppression and will target the administration and its “lackeys.”

The letter complains that “we the front-line deputies” suffer by working understaffed alongside “submissive deputies, cheated out of overtime and micromanaged beyond the point of being able to perform our duties safely and effectively.”

Jaramillo denounced the contents of the publication, calling it offensive. He said he had never seen a copy of “Wino News” until this week. The vast majority of deputies, he said, express contentment with their work.