HomeMy WebLinkAboutCC AG PKT 2009-01-12 #DAGENDA STAFF REPORT
DATE: January 12, 2009
TO: Honorable Mayor and City Council
THRU: David Carmany, City Manager
FROM: Jeff Kirkpatrick, Chief of Police
SUBJECT: SEAL BEACH DETENTION CENTER OPERATIONS
UPDATE
SUMMARY OF REQUEST:
This report is designed to apprise the Seal Beach City Council of the Seal Beach
Detention Center's current-state-of-affairs.
BACKGROUND:
The police facility headquarters, designed and built in 1978 at 911 Adolpho
Lopez Drive, included athirty-bed (30) Class-1 jail on its ground floor level. Prior
to 1994, the jail space was under-utilized. For a variety of reasons, a decision
was made to use the jail space as an enterprise revenue generator by selling
'bed-space' to the local court and corrections systems to house low-risk inmates
for periods of as long as one year. The revenue generators were thought to be
"pay-to-stay" prisoners and those prisoners housed by other government
agencies for a daily fee through Intergovernmental Agreements (IGA's). The City
did not staff the enterprise. Instead, it outsourced jail management and staffing
to a private vendor.
The 1994 decision to outsource the jail and try to enterprise it was based on
several factors. The City underwent several periods of financial instability
requiring the generation of alternative revenue sources. Simultaneously, the
police department downsized as a cost cutting measure. Renting bed-space for
prisoners made sense and on paper was thought to be a legitimate use of under-
utilized City facilities and a potential revenue producer. Outsourcing jail
operations to a private company willing to staff the enterprise with its own
employees also made sense - on paper.
The vendor's Seal Beach operation received oversight from one Seal Beach
police captain. The company was charged with the responsibility of recruiting
prisoners and filling the beds - at a profit, while still complying with all laws, rules,
Agenda Item
Seal Beach .Tail Operations Update... 01-12-09 2
and regulations relative to the housing of inmates. In return for the opportunity to
do business with the City, the vendor was to provide in-kind service to the police
department in the form of receiving custody of those arrestees made by the City's
patrol and detective personnel. The vendor would take an arresting officer's
prisoner from him and book, process, and transport the prisoner if needed;
allowing the officer to nearly immediately return to other duties as required.
As time passed, the vendor's inmate recruiting efforts became less and less
effective and the beds went unfilled. The vendor turned to the police department
to assist with inmate recruiting and received much help from the police captain.
His role within the department soon became largely relegated to managing the
jail operations and doing much of the recruiting himself -taking his services
away from his primary roles within the police organization.
During the early years of the New Millennium, the City and police department
continued to find themselves in financial stress and more citywide, organizational
downsizing took place. The police captain's position was abolished after his
retirement in 2000 and the jail operation languished without strong oversight,
passing from one employee to another.
Soon, a variety of inappropriate activity began to manifest within and surrounding
jail operations. The most heinous of these activities involved the cold blooded
murders of a husband and wife by throwing them off of their boat tied alive to an
anchor and drowning them, at the hands of a supposedly low-risk burglar away
from the jail on a court approved, `work-furlough' program. The murderer's
(Skylar Deleon) intent was to steal their boat. (Deleon was just recently
convicted of multiple murders and sentenced to the California death penalty.)
Other activities by inmates and/or the vendor's jail staff itself, included but were
by no means limited to, prisoner escapes; inmate/guard social, financial, and
sexual fraternizations; illegal wagering; beatings; theft by staff of inmate property
and valuables; and inappropriate, quid-pro-quo, sexual behavior with a female
arrestee. The list of inappropriate activities is long and astounding.
Soon, the courts and the rest of the legal defense bar began to overlook the Seal
Beach Jail, so long as the vendor was affiliated with it. Fewer beds were filled
and the costs of doing business continued to climb. Contractually, the City bore
more and more of the vendor's expenses and in return continued to receive the
same in-kind services as before, but at a technically much greater cost. As there
came to be less and less contact between the Seal Beach Police Department
and the courts as it related to inmate housing, a general perception of sameness
between the vendor and the Department came to be. This continued unabated
for many years, until late 2005.
The current Chief of Police took office in October 2005 and conducted a
performance audit of the jail operation and the company running the operation. A
Seal Beach Jail Operations Update... 01-12-09 3
track record of underperformance was evident but there were no plausible
explanations as to why the underperformance was allowed to go unchecked.
The danger to the City became palpable, leading to the 'quit' notice generated by
the Chief of Police, the City Manager, and the City Attorney, and approved by the
City Council and filed with the vendor in March 2007. Legal entanglements
prevented a more expeditious severance prior to the end of the most recent
contract extension, ending June 30, 2007.
During the severance period, the City and the police department produced a
Request For Proposal (RFP) and directly solicited the six (ti) private companies
accredited in California with the nationally recognized, American Corrections
Association, to provide jail management services. The RFP demanded a drastic
departure from the previous business plan, and instead requested a simple,
landlord/tenant arrangement.
Not one single vendor responded to the RFP and the desired new business plan.
Only one vendor responded with any kind of proposal and it wished to maintain
the unacceptable status-quo.
The lack of bonafide response to the RFP, and absence of prisoner intake
personnel, created a need within the police department to train personnel to do
something most had never done before: book, process, and transport their own
arrestees. All Police Officers and Community Services Officers were trained
accordingly in early June 2007 in preparation for the suspension of jail services.
Then, and currently, the police department optimally fields one Sergeant and
three officers on each twelve hour shift so long as an adequate number of
personnel are available. They alone, provide police services to our 27,000
residents within the twelve square mile city limits. During the summer months,
the ratio of public to police dramatically increases with the influx of beach visitors
and longer daylight hours. One of the measures of police productivity is the level
of 'down-time' vs. 'free patrol time' an officer has during his/her shift. (`Free
patrol time' is that time an officer has when not assigned to calls for service, self-
initiated activity, or other responsibilities other than to range freely and randomly
within a geographic area looking for law enforcement activity. `Down time' is any
other time when the officer may be otherwise occupied.) The current standard
for `free patrol time' is 35% or less, per officer.
When an arrest is made requiring actual booking, and without in-house booking
services an officer is taken away from his/her patrol duties for between one and
one-half (1~/s) to eight (8+) or more hours. This time facilitates transportation time
to the main Orange County Jail (OCJ) in Santa Ana, or to medical facilities or
other local jails, and to book the arrestee. If the arrestee has medical or mental
complications, the time away from the City can be greatly prolonged. After jail
operations were suspended on June 15, 2007, and until March 1, 2008, officer
Seal Beach .Tail Oaerations Update... 01-12-09 4
'turn-around' time was as long as five (5) hours and averaged 3.00 hours for OCJ
bookings (60%) and 2.36 for all others (40%).
Due to constant minimum staffing levels, such time away places the greater
community at increased risk. Fewer officers are available to respond to calls for
service. Exigent calls may suffer longer response times. Officers may be subject
to greater risks than normal attempting to service high-risk calls with fewer back-
up personnel available. There are a host of other issues involved, too lengthy to
discuss in this report, and all of which could surface due to a lack of personnel
availability.
Staff received permission to hire a professional consultant on the subject of jail
management. Direction given to the consultant was to review our initial 'white
paper' report, explore alternatives and make suggestions about things we may
have overlooked. The consultant reviewed our initial report and adopted it as
their own. The report they submitted affirmed our own conclusions including
seven operational alternatives.
Staff asked the City Council to entertain any one of the seven alternatives to the
jail services dilemma then facing the City and the police department:
1. Outsource to the one RFP respondent; or,
2. Operate without any jail services, impacting the police department's ability to
deliver timely services; or,
3. Offer the jail facility to the Orange County Sheriff to become a regional
booking facility, for either rent and in-kind services, or in-kind services alone;
or,
4. Regionalization of jail services among the current West Cities under a joint
powers governance, providing a full service jail and potentially profitable
correctional services with the BOP and ICE.
5. Orange County Probation Department Lease arrangement providing
rehabilitation schooling for probation violators.
6. City operated jail -only for booking, processing, and transporting arrestees;
or,
7. City operated jail -providing full booking, processing, and transportation
services; as well as sustainable, profitable, revenue generating, inmate
correctional services with Inter-Governmental Agreements (IGA's): City of
Los Alamitos, Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) inmates.
The City Council approved Alternative #7 based on staff and consultant
recommendations and authorized staff to reinvigorate and open a City operated
and staffed jail providing full services.
• Supporting information the City Council used in its decision included:
Seal Beach .Tail Operations Update... 01-12-09 5
o The Department would deploy two Jailers per shift, mitigating the
pitfalls created by the previous vendor's use of one jailer much of
the time.
o The Department projected a positive revenue flow and would
develop IGA's with the BOP, ICE, and Los Alamitos PD.
o The police department would implement a new Jail Services
Bureau, managed by our current Support Services Manager as an
adjunct duty, with ten new civilian CSO positions: one (1) Jail
Supervisor (CSO III classification) and nine (9) jailers (CSO II
classification). The new Jail Services Bureau operate aType-I jail.
o Additional jail upgrades were required, including equipment,
utilities, and computer technology.
o The Department had old (IGA's) with the Federal Bureau of Prisons
(BOP) and the Los Alamitos Police Department. The Department
would renegotiate these IGA's and initiate an additional, new IGA
with the Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
agency. (Recently, Leonard Desanti, Special Agent in Charge, Los
Angeles Field Office, ICE, contacted the department and asked if
beds were available for ICE inmates. At that time, Staff informed
ICE thaf the jail would be suspending operations within the month.
Subsequently, SB staff contacted ICE to determine their interest
level in the SB Jail. They were so interested that ICE would initiate
an IGA process with SBPD.
o The Los Alamitos Police Department was eager to renew its jail
services IGA with the City of Seal Beach as it faces almost identical
staffing and service delivery issues as the Seal Beach Police
Department.
Council approved a budget amendment that allowed the Department to execute
Alternative #7. The monies were used to complete a physical rehabilitation of the
jail facility, and hire up to nine Community Services Officers to staff the jail under
direct supervision of the police department. This process was completed under
budget and the newly revitalized Seal Beach Detention Center re-opened on
March 1, 2008.
During the construction process and following the re-opening, the Department
sent letters introducing the new facility to the heads of all Orange County Courts
with the expectation that the information would filter down through the courts to
trial judges who would in turn begin to sentence those convicted of crimes to
serve their time in the Seal Beach Detention Center.
Simultaneously, the Department approached various segments of the Federal
judicial system (ICE, Secret Service, U.S. Marshall, and Federal Bureau of
Prisons) to pursue intergovernmental agreements with them to rent bed-space
for their prisoner needs.
Seal Beach .Tail Oaerations Uadate... 01-12-09 6
Each of these efforts was geared to create acost-neutral operation in which to
keep our officers out in their neighborhoods serving the public as much as
possible.
TODAY
Between March 2008 jail re-opening and December 30, 2008 the following
activity took place.
Federal Partnership
We discovered that the early overtures made by ICE were premature on their
part. Their interest was genuine but their ability to follow through was
handicapped by the Federal government's reapportionment of funding dedicated
to ICE as well as an imbalance between the Federal fiscal year and the City's.
ICE was without funding and the jail could not be inspected until December 2008.
(The Federal fiscal year runs October to September.) We were pushed back
from their FY07/08 to their FY08/09 budget just to complete the inspection
process. We have found the Federal processes to be abysmally slow!
Finally, in December 2008, the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee (a branch
of the Federal General Accounting Office's inspection arm) sent afive-person
inspection team to review the actual jail facility and its processes, procedures,
and sub-contracts. Their review took three days. We await a formal
determination of their conclusions, but informal commentary from the team
indicates that the facility will meet all their requirements.
Once the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee report is accepted by its
Federal superiors, the Federal agencies named will be allowed to participate in
IGA's with the City of Seal Beach and its Detention Center. We expect to have
definitive IGA's in place and significant Federal occupancy by June 2009,
Local Partnerships
The City's of Los Alamitos and Seal Beach entered into an IGA in early 2008.
The Los Alamitos Police Department has been booking its prisoners at the SB
Detention Center since that time. Los Alamitos pays its bills on time.
As predicted in the first report, no other local police departments have expressed
any interest in using the jail.
Court, District Attorney, and Local Law Bar Partnerships
In light of the slow Federal response noted above and after many months of very
slow progress selling beds to the "pay-to-stay" industry, the Department put
together a 'team' to literally knock on the door of every stakeholder and Orange
County judge in every courthouse, beginning in September 2008.
The team called court clerks for appointments with their judge's; it went to
courtrooms, sat and waited for meetings with judges between trials; and knocked
Seal Beach Jail Operations Update... 01-12-09 7
on their doors until they gained an audience with them. The team also visited
key members of the Orange County District Attorney's Office, the Orange County
Public Defender's Office, the California DUI Attorney's Association, and other
potential stakeholders. We knew the Department's reputation had been sullied
by its previous jail vendor; and the Department's apparent support of the vendor
by condoning its activity.
The Department purchased speaking time at local DUI attorney conferences and
seminars. We sent our best ambassadors to sell our new program to them.
They in turn assured us that our facility would be used by their defendants.
However, we had no idea just how seriously tarnished and injured our reputation
really was until we gained audiences with the judges. They informed us that due
to the actions and behaviors of the jail's previous vendor, our reputation had
been so sorely sullied that there was absolutely no way they would support a
convicted defendant's request to serve his time in the SB Detention Center. One
judge alone signed 63 search warrants investigating the Deleon/Hawkes murder
case and was adamant that he would never send a defendant to us and because
of the heinous nature of those crimes would damn the facility to his peers.
We mounted a fresh campaign with fresh advertising and a fresh round of
conversations with the judges. We invited them to conduct drop-in,
unannounced inspections of the jail. Several took us up on our invitation. They
were universally impressed with the revamped facility and its processes and
record keeping, its staff and their training, and the new levels of supervision and
accountability. They vowed to return to their peers and push the SB Detention
Center as a viable and useful facility. We are pleased to state that they are
indeed true to their word and are sending `clients' our way. In fact, the judge
mentioned above (who signed the 63 search warrants in the Deleon/Hawkes
murder case) has reversed his opinion of the Seal Beach Police Department and
the Seal Beach Detention Center and has sent us a number of pay-to-stay and
work-furlough clients.
We are beginning to enjoy greater occupancy and expect further occupancy as
time -intensive, individual adjudication processes run their courses and
defendants are sentenced to complete jail time. We currently have reservations
for up to fifteen (15) long-term beds and await the client's arrivals during January
2009.
All of this has taken a greater than anticipated length of time to accomplish and
has prevented the Chief of Police from making good on his promise to render a
cost-neutral operation by year's end 2008. However, we expect to have regularly
full occupancy no later than June 2009, helping us to truly achieve and maintain
the cost-neutral jail facility promised.
Seal Beach Jail Operations Update... 01-12-09 g
FISCAL IMPACT:
The Police Department FY07-08 budget for jail operations was $527,600.
$418,097 of that budget was spent as follows:
FY07-08 JAIL BUDGET ACTUALS
Personnel expenses: $192,940
Office supplies: $561
Public/Legal notices: $3,497
Training & meetings: $321
Office & technology resources: $20,100
EquipmenUmaterials: $49,550
Special departmental: $5,885
Telephone $qgg
Rental/leased equipment: $2,700
Contract professional services $142,055
TOTAL $418,097
The Police Department FY08-09 budget for jail operations was $744,000.
$203,994 of that budget was spent through November 13, 2008 as follows:
FY08-09 JAIL BUDGET ACTUALS
Personnel expenses: 168633
Office supplies: $841
Public/Legal notices:
Training & meetings: $725
Office & technology resources:
EquipmenUmaterials: $2,404
Special departmental: $1,039
Telephone $485
RentaVleased equipment: $580
Contract professional services $28,287
TOTAL $202,994
The Seal Beach Detention Center is currently operating well within its budgeted
allocations, but at asub-cost-neutral level pending completion of outstanding
Federal IGA's and expanded use by the local courts. The local courts have
reversed their opinion of us and are now sending us pay-to-stay and work-
furlough inmates who are bringing in revenue ($25,000 to date), but not yet to the
level of making the overall operation cost-neutral.
Several pay-to-stay clients served time in the Detention Center during the last
two fiscal quarters. Eight pay-to-stay clients served time during December 2008
and will continue to do so well into 2009. We expect the arrival of six more
clients in January 2009 boosting the occupancy to fourteen (14), with more to
cycle through the facility thereafter. Fourteen clients represent a 50% occupancy
rate.
Seal Beach Jail Operations Update... 01-12-09 9
Our projected jail operations revenue is calculated based on the following
information:
JAIL REVENUE BASIS INFORMATION
The SB Detention Center has 30 beds available for use. The SBPD
holds 2 beds back for transient prisoner use daily, leaving 28 beds
for rent.
Local Pay-to-Stay (PTS) beds are let for $100/day.
Local Pay-to-Stay/Work Furlough (PTSWF) beds are let for
$120/day.
Federal IGA beds are let for $85/day
Ten PTS x $100/day = $1000/day x 365 days = $365,000/year
Ten PTSWF x $120/day = $1200/day x 365 days = $438,000/year
Eighteen IGA x $85/day = $1530/day x 365 days = $558,450/year
Given nearly maximum occupancy, the figures would indicate that after
expenses, the Detention Center can indeed operate on acost-neutral or better
basis.
RECOMMENDATION:
Staff recommends that the City Council receive and file this Staff report and
provide Staff direction regarding future Seal Beach Detention Center operations,
to include staying the course through June 2009 whereupon it will again review
jail operations assessing its cost effectiveness, and make further
recommendations.
SUBMITTED BY:
ff r attic ,Chief of Police
NOTED AND APPROVED:
~+.,/
David Carman ,City Manager