Category: Justice and the Courts

Hall of Justice: stately ruin no more

Downtown L.A.’s historic Hall of Justice, damaged in the Northridge quake, is set to reopen.

After a $231-million renovation that spanned a decade, the Hall of Justice — site of Charles Manson’s trial and Marilyn Monroe’s autopsy — will be rededicated Wednesday as the new headquarters of the sheriff and district attorney.

The Beaux Arts landmark, built in 1925 and red-tagged in 1994 because of damage from the Northridge earthquake, has been transformed into a modern-day office building that celebrates its storied past.

“I am thrilled to see this architectural gem restored,” said District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who will move in around December or January. “Although it’s no longer a courthouse, it still will be a place where justice is served.”

Located on 211 W. Temple Street, the hall has been an integral part of Los Angeles’ history and downtown skyline for almost a century.

Designed by Allied Architects in the Italian Renaissance style, it was the first building in the nation to consolidate law enforcement facilities under one roof. The sheriff, district attorney, coroner, public defender and even tax collector have all, at one time or another, maintained operations there.

The 14-story, 550,000 sq. ft. high-rise also had 17 courthouses and 750 cramped jail cells that housed as many as 2,600 inmates at a time.

Aside from Charles Manson, the hall’s most notorious occupants were Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Senator Robert “Bobby” Kennedy; mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, and “Nightstalker” serial killer Richard Ramirez.

Daredevil Evel Knievel staged a grand exit from the hall after serving time for assault. He ordered about 20 limousines to pick him up, along with every other inmate released on the same day.

One of the Hall of Justice’s original wrought iron staircases.

The famous and infamous were not relegated only to the jail cells and courtrooms. Marilyn Monroe and Robert Kennedy’s remains were once examined on slabs in the autopsy suites.

When the Northridge earthquake struck in 1994, the hall itself almost became history. With rows and rows of jail cells with steel bars on the uppermost floors, the building was top heavy, so it twisted violently during the magnitude 6.7 temblor. The foundation survived unscathed but the interior walls were rendered unstable, potentially collapsing on people.

The Sheriff’s Department moved to leased offices in Monterey Park and the hall was left to molder until 2004, when the Board of Supervisors voted to authorize its renovation—as long as it was “cost-neutral”—at the urging of then-Sheriff Lee Baca.

LASD Facilities Director Gary Tse said Baca fervently believed the hall was the department’s rightful headquarters.  Baca, Tse said, “wanted the department to ‘go home’ — that was how he phrased it.”

Baca, however, retired early this year amid scandals over brutality in the jails and the indictment of more than a dozen deputies. Now his successor, who’ll be elected Nov. 4, will be based at the hall.

County Chief Executive Officer William Fujioka calculated that the cost of issuing bonds for the renovation could be offset by savings from private leases that agencies would no longer have to pay after moving into the hall.

“The combined annual lease savings from the Sheriff, DA and CEO lease terminations total is $10 million,” he wrote in a report. “These saving will be applied toward the Hall of Justice financing payment costs.”

Contractors with AC Martin Partners and Clark Construction Group gutted the building and even sold the steel from the jail cells to a recycler for about $500,000.

They also merged a couple of floors to leave only 12 stories with 300,000 sq. ft. of usable space to be occupied by 1,600 workers from the Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office.

(AC Martin Partners’s website has architectural drawings of the hall’s interior design. Clark Construction’s website has photos of the demolition and renovation. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s website also checked in on the renovation’s progress, with this story and photo gallery. )

The seismic retrofit included reinforcing the building’s four corners with 1,000 tons of rebar, prompting Tse to say the hall is “now probably one of the safest buildings in L.A.” Workers also outfitted the building with state-of-the art mechanical, electrical, plumbing and data systems, and — for the first time — centralized heating and air-conditioning. They even built a bioswale into the landscape to collect and filter water seeping into the aquifer.

Architect Ryan Kristan, a consultant of the county Department of Public Works, was excited about using modern technology to revive an old building he remembers seeing in a black-and-white rerun of the television classic “I Love Lucy.”

“The demolition was loud and messy and very destructive, but once we started putting walls up and modern utilities in, the building felt like it was coming alive,” Kristan said. “And when we turned on the air-conditioning, it was as though the building was breathing again.”

Other new additions include a 1,000-space parking garage erected next to the hall, alongside the 101 Freeway, and a 12-foot-tall bronze statue of Lady Justice to be installed at the main plaza next month.

The county hired conservationists to make sure the renovation did not do away with “character defining” features that made the hall eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

They restored the grand lobby to its former glory, complete with marble columns and gilded ceilings from which hung ornate chandeliers, each weighing about 700 lbs. They power-washed the facade’s Sierra white granite, which had turned a dirty gray, using water infused with miniscule glass beads. The stone now gleams like those at Los Angeles City Hall, built in 1928 — after all, they came from the same quarry.  Also preserved were the terra cotta sculptures that embellished the granite. Most of the original windows, doorways with transoms and staircases with wrought iron balusters have also been retained.

“They don’t build buildings like this anymore,” Michael Samsing, who works in asset planning and strategy for the county CEO, said while admiring the antique elevator cabs, now attached to modern mechanisms with digital displays that transport occupants directly to the floor of their choice.

The cell block that once housed Manson and Sirhan has been preserved as part of an historical exhibit. It had to be taken apart piece by piece, and then painstakingly reassembled several floors below its original location.

County Department of Public Works senior capital project manager Zohreh Kabiri said renovating the hall is “way more complicated than starting a building from scratch,” but a great honor.

“The most enjoyable part is to preserve history and not see this building be demolished,” she said. “This is a historic landmark and being part of the team to restore it for future generations is something to be very proud of.”

Sheriff’s facility director Gary Tse, left, and CEO analyst Michael Samsing examine a property map.

The cell block that once held killer Charles Manson has been preserved as a historical exhibit.

The grand lobby’s original elevators are now powered by hidden, modern mechanisms.

After painstaking restoration, the grand lobby now looks like it did when built in 1925.

Posted 10/2/14

From boot camp to home base

A probation official at the old central command center, where the camp’s open dorms were supervised.

When bulldozers rumble into Camp Vernon Kilpatrick in Malibu, they will not only demolish an obsolete juvenile corrections facility but make way for an innovative approach to rehabilitating delinquent youths.

The Los Angeles County Probation Department is turning away from traditional methods that focused on control and punishment. Instead, it’s gradually adopting a model that emphasizes mentoring and a sense of community.

“It’s about building relationships and trust,” said Sean Porter, a director with the department’s Residential Treatment Services Bureau.

“There’s a saying: (the youths) won’t care what we think until they think we care about them,” Porter added. “The more time we spend with the youths, and convey compassion and genuine interest in them, the more they’ll listen to us.”

On Friday, probation officials, along with Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, will hold a ceremony to kick off the demolition of Camp Kilpatrick’s aging dormitories, classrooms and gym —only the kitchen and pool will be left intact — while plans for a modern facility are finalized. The project’s completion date is still to be determined.

Originally built as a barracks in 1962, Camp Kilpatrick had an institutional configuration, with bunk beds arranged in rows against cinderblock walls, exposed showers and toilets, and spaces designated for solitary confinement.

It was essentially a boot camp, and Porter believes such an approach tends to produce only short-term benefits

“It’s temporary,” he said. “Unless you change the way the youths think, you’re not going to change the way they behave.”

The movie Gridiron Gang was based on Camp Kilpatrick’s coach and football team.

Probation Chief Jerry Powers is determined to reform the system by emulating some of the techniques used by Missouri’s Division of Youth Services.

The so-called Missouri Model puts youths in small groups with a more home-like—as opposed to jail-like—environment, supervised closely by supportive probation officers, social workers, teachers, psychologists and other professionals.

The approach has dramatically lowered juvenile recidivism rates in Missouri, and jurisdictions in New York, New Mexico, Washington D.C. and California’s Santa Clara County have created their own versions of it.

Powers’ $48-million vision for Camp Kilpatrick calls for tearing down the dilapidated dormitories and building cottages for “core groups” of 8-12 youths.

They would attend classes, eat meals, and engage in counseling sessions and other activities together. The cottages would be furnished with comfortable beds and other amenities, and have lots of natural light and fresh air.

In addition, there would be an on-site doctor’s clinic, daily nursing services and extended mental health clinician coverage—all unique to the Los Angeles Model.

Powers said the goal is to help the youths feel secure, while developing a sense of responsibility, accountability and community.

“Aligning the new facility with new treatment and educational approaches will translate to reduced recidivism, increased academic achievement, and better employment opportunities,” he wrote in a letter to the Board of Supervisors in May.

To date, the board has approved a $41-million budget for the project, about three-quarters of which has been raised through state grants.

Angela Chung, a policy associate with the nonprofit advocacy group Children’s Defense Fund, is excited about the proposed changes.

“I think this is a chance for Los Angeles to be ahead of the curve and move toward a more healing model,” she said.

Porter said if core groups are like a sports team—with their probation officer acting as their coach—Camp Kilpatrick already has a track record of success.

Its winning football team inspired the movie Gridiron Gang, with Porter portrayed by actor/wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Its basketball team almost won a regional championship, while the soccer program has produced a league MVP.

“We’ve used sports to teach self-discipline and the value of hard work, and to develop self-esteem,” Porter said.

“When the youths walked out of the camp and back into their communities, their shoulders weren’t slumped down and their head wasn’t hanging because they were able to accomplish something, and they knew they could do more.”

The vacant Camp Kilpatrick will be razed and replaced with a modern facility and a change of philosophy.

Posted 9/11/14

Capturing money for women’s jail

The board moved to protect more than $100 million in state grants for a “women’s village” in Lancaster.

For months, problems inside Los Angeles County’s jail system for men have taken center stage at Board of Supervisors meetings. This week, it was the women’s turn.

Faced with the potential of loss of more than $100 million in state grants, the supervisors on Tuesday approved an 11^th-hour plan to shift the location of a proposed “women’s village” to Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster to free-up space at the current jail for women in Lynwood.

Initially, new beds for female inmates were planned for the Pitchess Detention Center in the Antelope Valley. But the project stalled because of real estate easement issues, prompting restless state officials to warn the county that it could lose its conditionally-awarded grants to other jurisdictions without swift action on an alternative.

According to L.A. County officials, the alternative turned out to be better than the original.

Substantial space opened up at Mira Loma after the federal Immigration and Custom Enforcement Bureau terminated its contract there, leaving behind detention beds and infrastructure that, for less money, would allow for more beds than at Pitchess—1,604 versus 1,156. The additional beds, according to the county’s Chief Executive Office, would be used to help inmates with mental health and substance abuse issues as well as to prepare the women for “reentry” into society.

“I think that L.A. County has an opportunity with this facility to design a national model for the treatment of female offenders,” said Assistant Sheriff Terri McDonald, who oversees the department’s custody operations.

Currently, female inmates are packed into the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, where capacity is at 160 percent, according to sheriff’s officials, who say most inmates are being released after serving just a fraction of their sentences, if any at all.

The Mira Loma plan is part of a much broader undertaking by the county to rethink inmate housing for the nation’s largest county jail system, including razing the archaic Men’s Central Jail, where allegations of violence by sheriff’s deputies has led to scores of reforms. Among other things, the Board of Supervisors has begun exploring the possibility of constructing a stand-alone facility for the incarceration and treatment of mentally ill inmates at a potential cost of more than $1 billion. On Tuesday, the board voted only to shift the site of the proposed “women’s village” to Mira Loma, not to approve its actual renovation.

The only supervisor to speak against the plan was Mark Ridley-Thomas. Despite the danger of losing more than $100 million in state funds, he said he wanted to approach jail construction “in a comprehensive manner rather than a piecemeal manner.”  

“All money ain’t good money in terms of where we think we should be headed,” Ridley-Thomas said of the grants.

But Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky called the board’s action a “no brainer” in light of the widely agreed upon need for new beds for female inmates. Yaroslavsky said that, if the county failed to act on the grant money now, state officials might reject requests for money down the road.

“My first question would be: ‘Well, you had money on the table. You didn’t pick it up. Why are you coming to us now?’” Yaroslavsky said, adding: “The logical extension of doing nothing is to do nothing. And doing nothing is not in our best interest from any point of view.”

The board’s vote was 4-0, with Ridley-Thomas abstaining.

Posted 10/24/13

Moving to fix a “broken” AB 109 system

A fatal stabbing on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame is latest high-profile crime allegedly committed by AB 109 inmates.

Since its passage by the state legislature in 2011, AB 109’s radical reshaping of California’s criminal justice landscape has presented one challenge after another for the people and institutions of Los Angeles County.

The law, triggering the controversial process known as “realignment,” transferred responsibility for post-release supervision of state inmates to California’s counties.

Thousands of former state inmates have flooded into Los Angeles County under the program. Although the crimes that landed them in state prison prior to their release were supposed to have been so-called “non-non-nons”—non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual offenses—these inmates often have an earlier record of far more serious crimes.

The fatal stabbing of a 23-year-old woman on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, allegedly committed by AB 109 inmate Dustin James Kinnear, a panhandler with a long history of criminal offenses and mental illness, is just the latest incident to spark widespread outrage.

Led by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, the Board of Supervisors this week launched an intensive review of what happened from the time Kinnear was released by the state until the moment he encountered the victim, Christine Calderon of Lynwood, on Hollywood Boulevard on June 18. Supervisors also directed the county departments with the greatest AB 109 responsibilities—Probation, Mental Health, Public Health and Sheriff—“to determine whether current laws or procedures are adequate to protect against any of the possible gaps” in the AB 109 process.

“The system is broken. It needs to be fixed or it’s inevitable that there will be more Christine Calderons up and down the state of California,” Yaroslavsky said after the motion was adopted. “Common sense says that this man should never have been released as early as he was from prison, and should not have been released under AB 109 in the way he was.”

Calderon’s murder is the latest in a high-profile string of crimes allegedly committed in L.A. County by AB 109 inmates.

Inmates released by the state who went on to allegedly commit heinous crimes in Los Angeles County include Ka Pasasouk , the accused gunman in last year’s quadruple homicide in Northridge, and Tobias Dustin Summers, arrested and charged with the kidnapping of a 10-year-old Northridge girl in March.

An analysis of the first year of AB 109 releases in the county, reported on Supervisor Yaroslavsky’s website, found that more than 30% of the 11,000 inmates placed under county supervision during the year were rearrested for crimes including 16 murders, 23 attempted murders and 205 robberies, along with other less serious crimes.

Officials have emphasized that AB 109 is not an early release program, and say that the inmates would have been released from custody and into their home counties in any case, where they could have committed the same crimes regardless of whether they were being supervised by state or county authorities.

Yaroslavsky, who has long voiced concerns about the program, said that, like it or not, AB 109 inmates will continue to come under L.A. County’s supervision so it’s essential to find ways to improve the process going forward. Among other things, he said, detailed and meaningful mental health information must be provided to the county early enough so informed decisions can be made to protect public safety.

“Locally, we have to make sure that we’re doing everything we can and that people aren’t falling through the cracks when they do become our responsibility,” Yaroslavsky said. “We’ve got to know what went wrong in order for us to avoid this tragic outcome in the future.”

Posted 6/27/13

Hall of Justice gets the lead out

Inside the scaffolding-clad Hall of Justice, a massive lead paint clean-up is underway. Photo/Clark Construction

Los Angeles County’s legendary Hall of Justice has had its share of dangerous inhabitants over the years. Now you can add one more to the list: lead-based paint.

The 1920s-era red oxide paint, containing as much as 39% lead, was found when construction workers last summer uncovered painted steel beams that had previously been encased in concrete. Testing on the steel and surrounding concrete revealed higher-than-anticipated lead concentrations in both.

This week, the Board of Supervisors approved an ambitious, $6.45 million abatement effort that will require lead removal in more than 15,000 locations throughout the hall, which, since opening in 1925, has played host to some of Los Angeles’ most notorious figures, including Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan and Bugsy Siegel.

The unexpected discovery of the lead-painted structural steel came as workers were preparing to begin seismic reinforcement work on the imposing downtown structure, which has been closed since the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

“Absolutely, it’s a surprise,” said Greg Zinberg, project executive with Clark Construction, the contractor for the renovation. “We’ve had to re-strategize about how we’re approaching the project…We’re talking about thousands of hours of work.”

Areas within the building are being cordoned off to contain lead dust and workers must wear protective gear, including respirators and special suits, as they go about their tasks. A literal top-to-bottom scrubbing will be required to decontaminate the structure.

Even so, the project remains on schedule to finish up next year, with county departments, including the Sheriff’s Department and the District Attorney’s office, still on track to move in by early 2015. The lead abatement work itself is expected to wrap up by this October.

The funding for the lead removal comes from $16.9 million set aside in the project budget to cover unanticipated changes that crop up during the construction process. The overall budget for the project, which is being financed by long-term bonds, is $231.7 million.

This is not the building’s first brush with lead problems. When open fire escapes on two sides of the building were set to be cleaned out as part of the renovation project, workers found 4½-foot-high heaps of pigeon droppings on just about every floor, said James Kearns, the Public Works division head whose team is overseeing the project. Testing on the pigeon guano found lead as well as the more expected pathogens, resulting in an earlier $36,415 abatement effort.

The pigeons haven’t spared the surface of the building, either. Behind scaffolding, cleaning is now underway to restore the hall’s dingy grey exterior to its original white—the same color as nearby Los Angeles City Hall. But getting it done meant encountering decades-old droppings amid the colonnade of Romanesque columns along the building’s upper floors—“an interesting discovery,” as project executive Zinberg puts it.

As for the lead abatement, the latest twist in long-running efforts to bring the Hall of Justice back to life, workers are taking it all in stride. “Right now, we’re moving along and getting through it,” said Kearns, of Public Works. “It’s not an easy job but it’s all under control.”

For a look inside the building during an earlier phase in the construction process, click here.

Lead paint on structural steel beams was found under concrete coating. Photo/Clark Construction

Posted 5/15/13

Getting their just rewards

A county reward helped authorities find the Glendale driver in a fatal hit-and-run. Photo/Bryan Frank

Just hours before fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner was finally cornered in a hijacked cabin near Big Bear, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors had joined the manhunt: On Tuesday morning, it authorized a $100,000 reward for his capture, on top of the $1 million offered in private and public funds by the City of Los Angeles.

Now, with the quadruple murder suspect dead, it’s unclear exactly how—or if—the county’s bounty will be doled out to those who’ll inevitably step forward asserting that their information was crucial in Dorner’s discovery and demise. Ultimately, under county law, a recommendation will be made by representatives of the Chief Executive Office, Sheriff’s Department and Board of Supervisors, whose five members will have the final say.

The Dorner reward made news, of course, because of the international magnitude of the case, upstaging even President Obama’s State of the Union address as the drama came to a fiery conclusion Tuesday evening. But with less fanfare, the county for decades has been offering and paying rewards for information that has helped authorities obtain convictions for crimes ranging from multiple murders, to racially-inspired vandalism to animal cruelty.

During the past five years, the Board of Supervisors has authorized more than 140 reward offers—totaling $1.9 million—on behalf of law enforcement agencies throughout the county. Of those, the county has paid 25 claims worth about $225,000. The biggest payout came last April, when 10 people shared $30,000 for providing information that led to the arrest and conviction of assailants in the so-called “49^th Street Massacre.” In that 2006 tragedy, three people, including a 10-year-old boy on a bike, were gunned down in a mistaken identity gang shooting in South Los Angeles.

Over the years, questions have been raised about how crimes are selected for rewards and whether the publicity surrounding a case—or the victim’s race—might unduly tip the scales. In the late 1990s, entertainer Bill Cosby asked that several taxpayer-funded reward offers be rescinded after his son, Ennis, was murdered while changing a tire on a darkened road near Bel Air. The family did not want to make it appear they were getting preferential treatment. Although the state and City of Los Angeles declined Cosby’s request, the Board of Supervisors withdrew its $12,500 reward.

For the most part, however, law enforcement officials dismiss such concerns and criticisms, saying they only seek rewards from the supervisors or other municipal bodies when investigations of particularly heinous crimes go cold and the public remains at risk.

“They are effective, absolutely,” Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore says, although he acknowledges that the offer of money can make investigations more complicated. “A lot of the tips aren’t fruitful,” he says. “But the important thing is that a lot of them are.”

Such was the case for frustrated Glendale Police Department detectives, whose investigation into the hit-and-run death of Elizabeth Sandoval in 2007 was at a standstill. The 24-year-old woman was thrown 100 feet after she was struck by a black Mercedes-Benz as she jaywalked across Glendale Avenue in the darkness of night.

“If the driver could just look into their heart and see that things would be better for him or her if they came forward,” Sandoval’s grief-stricken father pleaded after his daughter’s death. “Just do yourself a favor and turn yourself in,” her brother urged.

But it wasn’t until the Glendale City Council and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors each offered $10,000 in reward money that police got a breakthrough that led to the arrest and conviction of Ara Grigoryan, 23, who, according to the informant, had fled to Mexico.

Without the reward, says Glendale police spokesman Sgt. Tom Lorenz, “it would never have gotten solved.” The informant, he says, “made it very clear to us that she called because there was an offer of a reward…She kept calling back until she got the money.”  

Slain deputy Maria Cecilia Rosa

Long Beach police officials, meanwhile, credit a $25,000 county reward with helping them crack one their biggest cases in recent years—the 2006 murder of Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Maria Cecilia Rosa. She was shot twice just after dawn by robbers while loading bags into her car before heading from Long Beach to her assignment in the county jails. “It was a coldblooded killing,” Sheriff Baca told the media. “Who is truly safe? No one.”

A little more than a month after the reward offer, an informant gave Long Beach police the name of the suspected gunman and arranged a meeting between detectives and another individual who revealed where one suspect was believed to be living. In the end, two men—both of whom were already serving state prison time—were convicted in the deputy’s murder. One was sentenced to death; the other was given 29 years to life.

“The reward prompted an otherwise unwilling witness to come forward and provide information which allowed detectives to focus on a small group of suspects,” says Long Beach police spokesman Sgt. Aaron Eaton.

Long Beach police also benefitted from another reward offered by the county—this one involving the murder of popular honors student Melody Ross, 16, who was hit by gunfire that was sprayed into a group of young people leaving the 2009 Wilson High School homecoming football game. Two witnesses shared the $20,000 reward after giving authorities information that led to the arrest and conviction of two teenaged defendants.

Financial incentives, Easton says, “sometimes mean the difference between making an arrest or the case going unsolved.”

But not always.

The largest county reward anyone can remember—$150,000—was first offered in late 2002, after the death of 15-year-old Brenda Sierra, whose body was found off a mountainous road in San Bernardino County. She died from a blow to the head. The unusually high reward was approved by the board at the request of Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose district includes East Los Angeles, where the teenager lived and was last seen alive.

For nearly a decade, the reward was repeatedly renewed for six-month stretches in the hopes that someone would come forward and bring a measure of closure to the long grieving family. “Until we find her killer, we’re not giving up,” Molina said in announcing the award’s extension in July, 2009.

The reward finally expired in mid-2010, and the case remains unsolved.

Police got a break in the “49th Street Massacre” case thanks to a $30,000 reward. Photo/Los Angeles Times

Posted 2/14/13

Supes step up sheriff scrutiny

Sheriff Lee Baca assures the Board of Supervisors of his cooperation in reforming the jail system.

Confronted with a scathing report on brutality and mismanagement in the Los Angeles County jails, Sheriff Lee Baca has repeatedly insisted that he’s committed to implementing scores of recommended reforms. But given the beating the sheriff himself took in the report, the Board of Supervisors isn’t taking any chances.

The board unanimously voted this week to hire a monitor to track implementation of more than 60 recommendations made by the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence after a year-long investigation. While some of those recommendations address narrow but important policy issues, others urge a major overhaul of the department’s structure and accountability, including creation of an independent Office of Inspector General. The supervisors also voted to require the sheriff to provide progress reports during monthly appearances before the board.

The supervisors’ stepped-up scrutiny—which Baca on Tuesday told the board he supports—reflects their determination to build on the momentum of the jail commission’s widely-praised work and avoid criticism down the road that county leaders again neglected to act.

In its final report, the jail panel accused Baca and other top department officials of failing to rein in violent deputies, despite years of warnings and recommendations from various civilian watchdogs concerned about the treatment of inmates and the county’s potential liability. One of those monitors, Special Counsel Merrick J. Bobb, has written 31 semi-annual reports since serving on the landmark Kolts Commission, which, in 1992, advocated numerous reforms to curb widespread excessive force.

The jail panel noted that many of Bobb’s roughly 100 recommendations involving use of force and personnel issues in the jails went “unheeded” or “languished for more than a decade before the department responded.” The commissioners said concerns voiced by another monitor, the Office of Independent Review, also went unaddressed for years.

“At a fundamental level, the failure to heed recommendations made—and advanced repeatedly over time—is a failure of leadership in the department,” the seven-member commission wrote. “As the sheriff has acknowledged, it was his responsibility to ensure that reforms recommended by these oversight and advocacy groups were implemented and that problems of excessive force in the county jails were addressed. Yet, his response has been insufficient.”

Passages like those prompted the Board of Supervisors this week to intensify its involvement in the implementation of the latest recommendations. The “sheriff alone cannot restore long term-integrity to the department and fidelity to its core values,” Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said in his motion to hire an “implementation monitor.”

But, as Special Counsel Bobb knows better than most, there’s actually little anyone can do to impose changes on the Sheriff’s Department unless the sheriff himself agrees to them. Unlike the Los Angeles Police Department’s chief, who is appointed by the mayor and reports to a civilian commission, the sheriff is publicly elected. As a result, he has wide legal authority over his department.

“There is no entity, person or institution who can direct the sheriff to do something,” Bobb says. “It is up to the unfettered discretion of the sheriff.”

 That’s not to say that the five members of the Board of Supervisors are without leverage; they hold the department’s purse strings, a powerful incentive for the sheriff to be accommodating. The board members also can use their high-profile positions to exert public pressure on the sheriff.

Bobb says it’s been “terribly frustrating” over the years to see his recommendations for departmental change get so little action beyond what the jail commission described in its report as “lip service.” But Bobb says he’s heartened by the department’s movement toward adopting several of his recommendations during the past year as “tremendous pressure mounted on the sheriff and the supervisors to react and respond.”

Perhaps most crucial—and challenging—for the Board of Supervisors is the jail commission’s call for the creation of an inspector general’s office, which would assume responsibilities of the three existing Sheriff’s Department monitors. Those include Bobb’s modest operation, as well as the offices of Independent Review and Ombudsman. The jail commission concluded that this multi-agency approach has been “undermined by the lack of an overarching, consolidated strategy that marshals and leverages their collective strengths.”

The commission stressed that, to be effective, the inspector general must report directly to the board—a point Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky made clear during Baca’s testimony at the supervisors’ Tuesday meeting. When Baca said he’d be “open to a collaborative selection process” of the inspector general, Yaroslavsky cut him short.

“Stop right there,” Yaroslavsky said. “You’re not going to select the inspector general…The Board of Supervisors is going to select the inspector general.”

“Fine with me,” the sheriff quickly responded.

Still, Yaroslavsky did acknowledge the realities of keeping tabs on an agency whose top official is elected by the public. The creation of an inspector general, the supervisor said, requires the sheriff’s cooperation. “He can’t inspect what he can’t see.”

Baca assured the board that the department has not withheld information from monitors in the past and won’t be doing so in the future. The Board of Supervisors, he said, “will decide what priorities you want this person to fulfill, and those priorities will be honored.”

Sheriff watchdogs: Special Counsel Merrick Bobb, left, and Michael Gennaco of the Office of Independent Review.

Posted 10/18/12

These jailhouse lawyers work for us

Former federal prosecutor Richard E. Drooyan is leading the investigation of deputy force in the county’s jails.

When it comes to police scandal and reform, attorney Richard E. Drooyan has found no shortage of opportunity in Los Angeles.

A former high-ranking member of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he served on the Christopher Commission after the Rodney King beating and helped lead an independent inquiry into corruption by anti-gang officers in the LAPD’s Rampart Division.

Now, he’s back, this time as general counsel to the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence, a panel created in October by the Board of Supervisors to investigate alleged brutality and management failures in the county jail system. The commission is packed with marquee names in law enforcement and legal circles. But it’s the lesser-known Drooyan who’s largely orchestrating the historic effort—with the quiet help of some of Los Angeles’ most prestigious law firms.

Drooyan is drawing on a model that dates back to the Christopher Commission, one not widely known beyond Los Angeles’ legal community. Today, as in the past, he’s drafted an army of high-powered lawyers to conduct every facet of the investigation, assigning each with responsibility for a specific area of inquiry. Those attorneys, in turn, have dipped into the ranks of their own firms.

In all, some 50 lawyers, representing ten firms, have been pressed into action—without a single billable hour among them.

“Fortunately, there’s been a history of very talented lawyers in the town’s top firms who’ve been willing to devote pro bono hours to these kinds of investigations,” Drooyan said from his office at Munger, Tolles & Olson. “The reality is, you need experienced people who can devote a lot of time and energy but you don’t have the budget to pay them. If you were to add up the final billable hours for the jail commission, it would be north of seven figures.”

The payoff, so far, has been substantial. This unsung cadre of legal firepower has identified and interviewed scores of witnesses, reviewed hundreds of documents and, in a series of public hearings, elicited dramatic testimony suggesting that the department’s second-in-command contributed to a climate in which jail deputies used unnecessary force.

Commission Chair Lourdes Baird

The Commission’s chair, retired federal judge Lourdes Baird said the legal team has become “an integral part of our commission’s efforts” and “exemplifies the best of public service in our legal community.”

One of the recruited attorneys is Nancy Sher Cohen of Proskauer Rose, who calls herself a “worker bee for the commission.” Like Drooyan, Cohen also served on the Rampart panel. “Most of us tend to work on corporate litigation,” she explained. “Of course, you love your clients but this has a social justice piece that makes it very special.”

Bert Deixler, who served with Drooyan on the Christopher Commission and has been tapped for the jail study, says the unique investigative approach also provides newer attorneys with the experience of having societal impact while serving with seasoned law veterans across the city, a rare opportunity in a highly structured business.

“You take some young stars in your firm and say, ‘Here’s a chance to pay it forward.’ There’s a sense for all of us that this is part of what lawyers are supposed to do. It’s not just about collecting money,” says Deixler, a former member of the U.S. Attorney’s Office who’s now a partner with Kendall Brill & Klieger.

To get a feel for the job at hand, the recruited lawyers toured the troubled Men’s Central Jail on the edge of downtown, built mostly during the early 1960s. With more than 4,000 inmates packed into dark cells, it’s become the primary focus of the commission’s inquiry.

“For those who hadn’t seen it before, they came away from the experience feeling speechless,” said the commission’s executive director, Miriam Krinsky, who went on five of the trips. “It can’t help but hang with you.”

The attorneys assembled by Drooyan are a formidable group. Many are former federal prosecutors—skilled investigators with experience in analyzing data and coaxing reluctant witnesses to come forward. Already, their effectiveness has been on display during a series of headline-generating hearings during the past several months.

This was particularly true on May 14, when Drooyan presented as witnesses three retired jail supervisors. Their testimony went beyond the more familiar allegations of brutality and suggested that a series of moves by a top Sheriff’s Department manager undermined jail supervisors and led to higher levels of excessive force.

They described a culture in which longtime jail deputies—who, like some behind the bars, dub themselves OG’s, short for “Original Gangsters”—seemed to carry more clout than their bosses. Retired Sergeant Daniel Pollaro told of insubordinate deputies changing work assignments that their supervisors had created to break up “cliques” on floors throughout Men’s Central Jail. Retired Lt. Alfred Gonzales, meanwhile, recounted, among other things, the resistance he met while patrolling those floors in an effort to keep deputies in line and out of trouble, a practice not embraced by his predecessors.

But the testimony that raised the most eyebrows was Gonzales’ account of a meeting that then-Asst. Sheriff Paul Tanaka convened with jail supervisors in 2006, which followed an unusual closed-door session he’d held with complaining deputies.

“You guys are a bunch of dinosaurs,” Gonzales quoted Tanaka as saying. “Your supervisorial skills are antiquated.” According to Gonzales, Tanaka instructed the supervisors to “coddle” the deputies and to “stay off those floors and let those deputies do what they have to do.”

“The chain of command was totally broken,” Gonzales testified.

Tanaka, now the department’s undersheriff, is scheduled to appear before the commission in late July, along with Sheriff Leroy Baca. Neither has commented on last month’s testimony.

By all accounts, one of the biggest challenges for this commission—like others before it—is not only to identify witnesses but also to get them to testify publicly.

Drooyan said that Gonzales and Pollaro agreed to testify because after spending much of their working lives in the Sheriff’s Department, “they genuinely wanted to see issues addressed that were of deep concern to them.”

Sometimes, though, it can be tougher, especially in eliciting cooperation from current members of the department.

“They feel their careers are on the line,” said Fernando Aenlle-Rocha, a former federal prosecutor who’s now with the firm of  White & Case. “We don’t have subpoena power and we can’t immunize people—the kind of tools that are given to prosecutors. You can just use your persuasive skills.”  

So far, according to a recent commission status report, more than 150 potential witnesses have been identified between the five investigative teams created to examine the jail system’s management and oversight, use of force, culture, discipline and personnel. Each team will write a chapter for the commission’s final report, which is expected to be issued in early fall after more hearings. The full commission has met nine times to date. A committee held its first community forum on May 30.

Executive Director Krinsky stressed that the Sheriff’s Department and the commission have been extremely cooperative with each other. “It’s not a ‘gotcha,’ ” she said.

Drooyan agreed, adding that Baca himself has personally assisted in the commission’s requests for information.

“Everybody,” Drooyan said, “wants to improve the jail.”

Updated: At the Decemember, 4, 2012, meeting of the Board of  Supervisors, Drooyan was appointed to oversee implementation of more than 60 reforms recommended by the jail commmision in its final report, which was released in September. Click here to read it.

Sheriff Leroy Baca, earlier this year, walking the floors of Men’s Central Jail in downtown L.A.

Posted 6/13/12

A true escape route for women in jail

Female inmates in the county’s jail system can take part in a new and potentially transformative program.

Inside Dorm 3500 of the county’s Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, an experiment in personal reinvention is about to unfold.

The dorm’s 124 residents—all of them female inmates of the Los Angeles County jail system—will be embarking on a new program dedicated to the proposition that women and men take very different paths to jail and need very different kinds of help to address the underlying causes that landed them there.

“Women come into the incarcerated life differently than men do. The majority of women have some kind of abuse in their background—physical or sexual. I hate to use the term ‘victim,’ but in many cases they are,” said Sgt. Christina Baker of the sheriff’s inmate programs unit. Those physical, sexual and emotional traumas often lead women to substance abuse, which in turn brings a host of criminal and other behavioral problems.

The Sheriff’s Department’s new “gender-responsive” program aims to give women—often for the first time in their lives—a chance to recognize and change those destructive patterns. “It’s basically a chance to reinvent themselves,” Baker said.

Although women inmates make up just 10% or so of the county’s jail population of around 20,000, they tend to be avid consumers of self-help and other programs, Baker said. Women “want that education, that life-changing element,” she said, noting that male inmates, by contrast, are often “wrapped up in jail politics” and afraid that taking part in programs will mark them as weak.

Karen Dalton, director of the sheriff’s Inmate Services Bureau, said she participated in a trial session of the program and found the hands-on, small group activities eye-opening, such as a session that used photos in magazines to connect with women’s feelings about themselves. “It’s a very interactive way of getting people to think differently about themselves, and not use the trauma as a crutch,” she said. “We’ve wanted this for a very, very long time.”

The women’s program, the first of its kind in the Los Angeles County jail system, will include one-on-one assessments, life skills training, domestic violence education, substance abuse recovery, behavioral therapy and other elements—all aimed at having an impact that goes well beyond individual inmates.

“It’s not just about the women,” said Renee Smith, who directs women’s services for Haight Ashbury Free Clinics-Walden House. “Women have babies, and families. It’s also about stopping the cycles for generations.”

Smith’s organization this week was awarded a contract to run the program for three years, with an option to continue for an additional 2½ years, at a total cost of up to $3.5 million.

Smith said similar programs have been run in the California prison system, and on a smaller basis in the San Francisco jail. The L.A. County program, to be offered first to female inmates who already have completed all available courses in the jail educational curriculum, is notable for the “constellation” of services it will offer.

“This is really a full program. This is what you’d get if you walked into residential treatment in the community,” Smith said. She said the women will be learning everything from “mindfulness” skills to how to write a letter to an estranged family member to the basics of navigating bureaucratic systems—“when to keep your mouth shut and when to speak up when you have a need.”

Unlike state prisoners serving lengthy sentences, county jail inmates tend to come and go more quickly. The average jail stay currently is about 44 days, although that’s likely to increase as prisoners who previously would have been sent to state prison instead do their time in county jail under the process known as realignment. And, at least as far as rehabilitation programs are concerned, that may not be a bad thing.

“The longer they’re here, the more treatment they receive,” Sgt. Baker said.

Stephanie Covington, who co-directs the Center for Gender and Justice and is a nationally-recognized leader in the field, said the criminal justice system has not always been so open to the notion of giving women inmates treatment geared to their backgrounds and needs.

“In the last 10 years, there’s been a growing understanding of the need for women to have different kinds of services,” she said. “It makes no sense to warehouse people.”

And, she said, even relatively short-term programs can make a difference.

“It’s time you can plant seeds,” she said. “You can help people see there are other options.”

Posted 3/7/12

Touring Hall of Justice, by flashlight

The temperature outside was pushing 90, but when the padlock came off the chained doors of the Hall of Justice, the air rushed out like a chilly blast from the crypt.

Inside, though, the legendary 1925 building looks like it’s starting to wake up from its big sleep.

The Hall of Justice—where Charles Manson, Bugsy Siegel, Sirhan Sirhan and a host of other big- and small-time criminals once cooled their heels, where Marilyn Monroe’s body ended up after her suicide and where Robert Mitchum once did time for marijuana possession—is one of downtown’s Los Angeles’ most striking landmarks.

Red-tagged and vacant since the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the Hall not so long ago was rat-infested, debris-ridden and home to the occasional transient.

Now its interior has been cleaned out and virtually gutted.

Later this month, the county Board of Supervisors will be asked to approve the selection of a firm to undertake the historic rehabilitation and retrofitting that will turn the site into the new headquarters for the Sheriff’s Department. Staff from the District Attorney, Public Defender and Alternate Public Defender also will be stationed in the building, located at Spring and Temple, across from the criminal courts building.

Work on the three-year project is expected to begin early next year. The approximately $244 million Hall of Justice rehabilitation, along with other capital projects, will be funded in part by “Build America” bonds whose issuance was approved by supervisors on Wednesday. The project’s cost is expected to be partly offset by lease savings for the departments that will be relocating to the building.

Alicia Ramos, who has been overseeing the Hall of Justice project for the county Department of Public Works since 2004, said that years of advance work have been devoted to “trying to create the cleanest slate we can” for the new office space interior.

On Tuesday, Ramos led a writer for Supervisor Yaroslavsky’s website and a county photographer on a flashlight-illuminated tour that started in the building’s basement and ended on its rooftop. A gallery of photos from the tour, below, offers an unusual glimpse inside the building as it awaits its transformation.

To get to this point, tons of debris—including about a half million dollars’ worth of recycled jail cell bars—have been hauled away and reams of once-confidential documents have been incinerated and sent to that great repository in the sky. (See update below.) Elevator shafts now stand empty, their vintage wood-and-brass cabs sidelined until they can be pressed back into service with a modern operating system.

All of the building’s jail cells have been ripped out. One cell block, said to have housed Manson, has been preserved and relocated to the first floor, where it eventually will be opened to the public as part of a new museum/interactive center focused on the history of the building and the sheriff’s department.

The building’s courtrooms, once the site of trials that included the Sleepy Lagoon murder case, have all been demolished except for one, which is being preserved right down to its embellished plaster corbels and will be restored and used as a sheriff’s conference room. The same goes for a wood-paneled law library nearby. Both are located on the building’s 8^th floor, where the sheriff will have his office.

The plan to bring the Hall of Justice back to life includes seismic reinforcement; new electrical, plumbing and mechanical systems; a 1^st floor cafeteria that will be open to the public; and a nine-level, 1,000-vehicle parking structure, half of it underground.

The building’s open lobby, or loggia—which Ramos calls “the crowning glory of the Hall of Justice’—also is awaiting restoration. Even in its current state, the loggia exudes glamour and gravitas, from its marble columns to its elaborate ceiling and chandeliers. Covered up for the moment are its terrazzo floors and historic iron-and-brass stairs.

“It’s dramatic. It’s the scale, it’s the materials,” said Ramos, 37, an architect and Cal Poly Pomona grad. “It really can take you back to a period.”

Even in its current state, the Hall—whose architectural style is variously described as Beaux Arts, Italian Renaissance or Federalist—holds no terrors for Ramos, despite its sometimes macabre past.

“I haven’t gotten any ghost stories out of this building,” she said. Those she’s heard from others can be logically explained. (Voices in the basement, for instance, are more likely coming via a closed-up tunnel from an adjoining county building, not from the spirit world beyond.)

“They’re all stories to me. I’ve never seen anything wicked or sinister,” Ramos said.

She even ventured inside the Hall alone occasionally, like the time she came inside to photograph a judicial seal inside the law library.

Later, she was there when a transient who’d been caught living in the building was escorted away by police.

The man looked at Ramos. “He said, ‘I know you. I’ve seen you walking through here.’ The hair went up on my neck.”

Nowadays, she said, “I don’t go through the building by myself.”

Up on the building’s roof—once a prison yard-style exercise area for inmates that may be turned into a jogging track for employees—Ramos reflected on everyone and everything these walls have seen.

“Between Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Manson,” she said, “it’s kind of the good and the bad that come through these kinds of facilities.”

Photos by Scott Harms/Los Angeles County

Posted 11/3/10

Updated 11/4: Regarding questions about the destruction of documents, sheriff’s officials said Thursday that they removed all records from the Hall of Justice and left behind only trash or outdated forms. Department of Public Works officials said they exercised an abundance of caution and treated all papers left behind as confidential because they were not in a position to evaluate them. They said all documents were destroyed in accordance with the county’s policy.