In January 2016, the San Pedro community held a demonstration, dubbed the “no excuses” rally — the shot across the bow in what became a three-year crusade to open the LAPD’s long-closed Harbor Division jail.
The demonstration kicked off a grassroots campaign, with strong support by the police union, to “open our jail,” in the words of the chanting crowd.
Now — at last — the jail is set to open in early next year, after the mayor and Los Angeles City Council agreed to include funding for it in L.A.’s 2019-20 budget. The city’s $10.6 billion budget was approved May 23.
The ongoing community and political pressure was the key factor in the re-opening effort, said Mona Sutton, who heads up the Community-Police Advisory Board for LAPD’s Harbor Division. It involved several appearances at downtown budget hearings by groups of local advocates. Those appearances, Sutton said city and police officials told her, were the primary impetus behind the decision to fund the jail’s reopening.
“We had a long grooming period over those years,” Sutton said.
But behind the scenes, another powerful force was also at work: the Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury.
Earlier this year, that body undertook an investigation into the LAPD’s five shuttered jails at division stations, as well as the fallout that has resulted from forcing patrol officers to leave the field to transport arrestees to one of three regional facilities for booking.
The report — titled “Arrest & Transfer LAPD: Is Protect & Serve Being Compromised?” — recommended reopening all of the facilities that were closed due to budget constraints. The findings, released quietly in late June, reported that the so-called “Arrest and Transfer” process has had a detrimental effect on both the LAPD and the community.
“The LAPD should reopen each of the community station jails,” the report concluded, “in the interests of improving community response time, officer safety, officer morale and operational efficiency.”
The Grand Jury gave the city and the Police Department until Sept. 30 to submit responses.
The LAPD, first contacted for this story on Aug. 23, did not provide comment on the report or on how the closed jails have affected public safety.
But in a written statement, Alex Comisar, Mayor Eric Garcetti’s press secretary, said public safety is the mayor’s “top priority.” The city, Comisar added, is “carefully reviewing” the report and Garcetti’s is working with other departments on the issue.
Although the findings confirm what police and community advocates say they have known for some time, the weight of the official report may put increased pressure on the city and could move the needle on opening the four shuttered jails that still lack funding.
The 16-page report comes after the civil grand jury, which is mandated to inspect all jails within Los Angeles County and sees itself as a county watchdog, formed an investigative committee to determine if the shuttered jails — Devonshire, Foothill, Harbor, Southwest and Wilshire — were negatively impacting public and officer safety, call response times, and unplanned overtime.
The short answer to all of that was yes.
“The investigation into the Arrest & Transfer practices of the LAPD confirmed many of the concerns regarding community and officer safety,” the report stated. “From multiple interviews with LAPD Community Station staff, we learned that oftentimes there are insufficient numbers of patrol units immediately available to respond to calls.”
Long waits for processing, booking
During the investigation, committee members conducted extensive interviews with LAPD community station staff, who told investigators they want to see the jails reopened, according to the report.
Arrestees in need of non-urgent medical or mental health care, the report found, require longer times to process during booking at one of the three regional facilities — 77th Street, the Metropolitan Detention Center and Van Nuys.
Those added wait times for processing and booking ranged from 10 to 120 minutes, the report said. About 50% of all arrestees required processing through a medical facility — 40% of whom were there on an urgent-care basis.
Rank-and-file officers who were interviewed reported a negative effect on morale due to the cumbersome process and long travel and wait times that took them away from their regular duties.
Response times
The jail closures were a culmination of financial cutbacks that began in 2008 with a citywide hiring freeze on civilian employees. That impacted the recruitment of detention officers, who staff the community jails. The freeze lasted the length of the Great Recession and continued through 2013.
LAPD did not have a new class of detention officers graduate from the academy until February 2018, according to the report.
The lack of community jails lengthened call response times, the report found.
In those stations, the report said, Code 2 calls — urgent but non life-threatening — posted an overall 20% higher response time in 2018 compared to 2010.
Code 3 calls — urgent/life-threatening — did not see the same kind of spike, but the average response time for calls that lack classification — termed “non-coded” calls — shot up 60% from 2010 to 2018.
“Our analysis of the data for Code 3 calls for each of the LAPD areas did not highlight any alarming increases,” the report stated. “However, there was a significant increase in the average response time for non-coded calls.”
For the most-impacted stations — Devonshire, Foothill, Harbor, Southwest, Topanga, West Los Angeles and West Valley — Code 2 response times rose from about 17 minutes in 2010 to about 20 minutes by 2017.
Non-coded response times went from between 30 and 40 minutes in 2010 to between 40 and 60 minutes in 2018.
Reopening jails
But despite the benefits reopening the jails could bring, the report said, doing so will not be a quick or inexpensive process.
Much, after all, needs to be done.
The 16,000 square-foot Harbor Division jail, for example, was state-of-the-art when it was built — as part of the accompanying police station, on John S. Gibson Boulevard — a decade ago. But the jail never opened.
Before it can reopen in 2020, cell cameras need to be installed, and it needs mechanical repairs to sliding doors and walls.
That work is now underway.
The other jails, though, also need retrofitting and upgrades to reach a business-as-usual operating status. They need staffing as well.
But the Harbor Area jail, at a cost of $9.1 million, was the only one of the five closed jails included in this year’s city budget for reopening.
The Harbor Area community — which includes San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City and Harbor Gateway — should see a reversal in what had been increased response times.
Without the jail there, Harbor Area officers had to travel 15 miles to the 77th LAPD Division to book suspects.
The travel time during mid-afternoon hours, the report found was between 30 and 40 minutes, including about 10 minutes for loading and unloading.
Those statistics are among the reasons Harbor Area residents spent the last three years lobbying LAPD captains and Mayor Eric Garcetti to open the jail.
They also had a key ally in the fight: City Councilman Joe Buscaino, the former LAPD officer who represents the Harbor Area. The Grand Jury interviewed him for the report. The panel’s conclusions, he said, were unsurprising.
It was “amazing,” he said in a recent statement, “how accurately this LA County Civil Grand Jury report parallels the sentiment of the Harbor Area residents who demanded the opening of the Harbor Division jail.”
September 7, 2019
Daily Breeze and Los Angeles Daily News
By Donna Littlejohn
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