Blog note: this article references six separate
grand jury reports from 2008 to 2014 that called on the Sheriff’s Department to
improve antiquated surveillance systems in county jails.
Orange County Sheriff’s officials said Tuesday
that they were “extremely troubled” that it took at least 16 hours for deputies
to realize three inmates had escaped last week, as new details emerged about
the lengths the trio went to break out of the high-security lockup in Santa
Ana.
With the inmates now at large for five days,
the jail has come under intense scrutiny for several policies that some believe
may have made the escape easier.
Jail personnel conduct only two physical head
counts of inmates per day, one at 5 a.m., the other at 8 p.m. Investigators
believe the three men vanished after the 5 a.m. check, and the escape was not
discovered until late Friday night.
Lt. Jeff Hallock, a department spokesman, said
at a news conference Tuesday that “immediate steps have been taken” to improve
the inspection process but would not provide any specifics.
Court documents made public Tuesday offered
the most detailed description of the escape scheme yet, suggesting that more
than 17 hours may have elapsed before evidence of the jail break was
discovered.
Jail staff first realized something was wrong
around 8 p.m. Friday during a nightly count of inmates that came up three
short, according to the arrest warrants filed late Monday. The warrants make no
mention of a jailhouse brawl that sheriff's officials have said delayed
completion of the bed check until about 9 p.m.
After identifying the missing men as Jonathan
Tieu, Bac Duong and Hossein Nayeri, deputies checked the inmates’ schedules to
make sure they hadn't been in court that day or been left behind in a visitor
area. They also checked whether the inmates were in classes offered at the
jail.
With no leads, deputies performed a second
head count, confirming what many of them probably were dreading — the three men
weren’t merely missing, they might have escaped.
At 8:45 p.m., deputies launched a physical
search of the entire facility. Seven inmates claimed they saw Tieu, Duong and
Nayeri during the jail’s 5 a.m. head count but did not see them the rest of the
day.
As teams swept every cell, bunk bed and dorm,
other deputies scoured the building's roof and plumbing tunnels, finding
makeshift ropes, cut-apart gates and sawed-open vents. Slowly, investigators
were able to trace the trio’s path from Module F, the fourth-floor dormitory
where they were housed, to a rope of knotted bed sheets they used to descend
from the roof.
Sheriff's Department officials have said the
escape probably began with the inmates cutting through a metal screen in their
fourth-floor cell. This gave them access to a plumbing tunnel, but according to
the warrant, deputies discovered that the tunnel would quickly lead the
escapees to a ventilation shaft.
A deputy who had been searching the plumbing
tunnel said he found the shaft's security bars had been cut away. About two
feet below the shaft's entrance was a white bed sheet tied into a sling, with
another sheet tied to more security bars, according to the affidavit.
“This was used as a way for the inmates to
pull themselves up into the vent,” one deputy wrote.
Once inside the shaft, the escapees had to
remove multiple “ventilation louvers,” or shutters, before they reached a trap
door leading to the outer edge of the roof, according to the reports.
That area is outside a security gate that
keeps inmates in a recreation area. Hallock said the fact that inmates
typically use the roof for recreation purposes is “one of many design flaws” of
the nearly 50-year-old jail.
The reports in the warrants say the escapees
“sawed” through some of the security bars but make no mention of any tools they
may have used or from where they may have gotten them.
Once atop the jail, the inmates cut barbed
wire from the rooftop's edge and used the bed sheets to rappel to the ground,
deputies wrote.
About 10:30 p.m., investigators found two
pairs of jail-issued sandals and a paper bag containing more rope that the trio
presumably left on the roof before making their way to freedom.
Since the escape, the Sheriff’s Department has
conducted a “roof-to-basement” check of the entire jail, Hallock said.
“The
preliminary investigation into the escape has caused the sheriff concern as to
some of the jail inmate count practices and how they were conducted,” he added.
“The sheriff is extremely troubled by the time it took the staff to determine
the three inmates housed in a maximum security jail were unaccounted for.”
The Orange County Grand Jury has called on the
Sheriff’s Department to improve antiquated surveillance systems in county jails
six separate times, from 2008 to 2014. An $11-million plan to revamp those
outdated camera setups was not launched until last year.
It remains unclear whether Module F is
equipped with cameras. In a report published in 2014, an Orange County Grand
Jury said surveillance equipment in the county’s adult and juvenile facilities
were extremely outdated, with some deputies left to review videotapes.
“After touring all jail facilities, the grand
jury surveyed the video systems at each jail, which range from severely
outdated VHS tape technology, to touch screen operations. Each jail has a
different system,” the report read. “This grand jury again found that all jails
were lacking adequate video monitoring equipment to protect both the inmates
and the staff. Recommendations by the previous six grand jury reports have not
changed this fact.”
While Men’s Central Jail was not among those
equipped with a VHS system, the facility’s camera setup did allow for several
blind spots, according to a member of the grand jury who requested anonymity
because grand jury members are not allowed to speak publicly about their
findings. The grand jury member wondered aloud if increased surveillance could
have done anything to prevent the escape.
“This has been a problem that has been
building for some years and now, boom, here we are,” the grand jury member
said. “Had the responses been taken seriously and the funds allocated in the
past, we wouldn’t be here.”
The Sheriff’s Department launched a project to
upgrade its camera system at all county jail facilities last year, with an
approved budget of nearly $11 million, the reports show. Between 1,500 and
2,000 cameras are to be installed as part of the plan.
Hallock said the upgrade process was ongoing
at all jails but declined to elaborate.
Questions about the surveillance systems were
among several raised Tuesday, as local leaders continued to try to understand
how the three men managed to get through several layers of metal, steel and
rebar undetected.
“We were all scratching our heads,” said
County Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who announced a $200,000 reward Tuesday for
information leading to the capture of the fugitives. “How on Earth did this
happen?”
Spitzer said he was particularly concerned
about delays of Nayeri’s trial date.
The 37-year-old was arrested in 2013 and
charged as part of a plot to kidnap and torture a wealthy marijuana dispensary
owner in hopes of forcing him to surrender $1 million. Nayeri and his
accomplices allegedly burned the man with a blowtorch and severed his penis,
then left him to die in the Mojave Desert, court records show.
Hallock would not say whether the men’s
pending trial dates helped motivate the escape, but all three were due in court
to answer charges that could carry life sentences within the next two months.
Nayeri was scheduled to face a pretrial hearing Feb. 2, 10 days after the
escape. Duong was slated for a pretrial hearing on an attempted murder charge
Feb. 8, and Tieu was to be retried in a 2011 gangland murder the following
month.
During the news briefing, Hallock defended the
sheriff’s policy of holding inmates awaiting trial for violent crimes in the
dormitory-style housing. Corrections experts have said the three men should
have been detained in individual holding cells.
Hallock, however, said at least half the men
held in Module F are violent offenders.
“Each of the three inmates were housed
appropriately in a maximum security jail,” he said.
January
26, 2016
Los
Angeles Times
By Jeremiah Dobruck,
Richard Winton, and James Quelly
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