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In This Issue...
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Driving Impaired: The Costs & Consequences
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Five Hours in the County Drunk Tank
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The Mid-County Post > Driving Impaired: The Costs & Consequences
Five Hours in the County Drunk Tank
The Consequences of Getting Caught Driving Impaired, Part 2
By Mary Bryant
If you get arrested for driving under the influence, you will go to jail. In many cases, if you are drunk in public, you will also arrive in the back of a police car at the county-run intake facility on Water Street, near downtown Santa Cruz.
Better known as the "drunk tank," this 1981-built block wall structure sees thousands of suspects each year, and many not only have been consuming alcohol but also a host of other drugs. Some people are very angry, some are sleepy and others are realizing they are in a heap of trouble.
For the first-time offender, the stay is about five hours from the time of arrest. By then, a suspect will have sobered sufficiently to be released, usually in the very early morning hours. If you are lucky, you will have a ride. If not, it will be up to you to find your way home.
Tonight, Sheriff's Sgt. Shea Johnson has escorted us to the main jail. Operated by the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office, the jail staff includes deputies assigned to detention services.
It's about 9 p.m. and just busy enough – most rooms have at least one person under arrest.
One detainee is pounding loudly on his metal cell door and screaming obscenities, several women detainees look a bit dazed with the commotion and bright lights, and a television in the lobby is tuned to a cop show, but the volume is off so you can only guess at what's happening.
Most likely, the whole scene is about what you imagined it might be.
Getting In – Metal Doors and a Padded Room
Sgt. Johnson said that on occasion a suspect will try to run away. Not very smart, because by the time a suspect is at the jail the arresting officer has his or her details and a pile of charges will be added to the initial arrest. But to prevent such attempted escapes, a large metal door has been added to the drive-in entrance.
To get in, an officer must be cleared for entry. At this jail it could be CHP, Capitola, Watsonville, Scotts Valley, UCSC, Santa Cruz police or a sheriff's deputy – they all use the same jail.
"You will see all the agencies in here," Johnson said.
To the guard behind the camera, the officer must also announce how many and who is in custody. Then the large gate begins to move, slowly. Inside, there is another solid metal door blocking the exit.
Four police cars can fit at a time and before you can exit the car, the first door must close.
The exterior of the building reveals two doors to the jail: one for going in, the other for leaving.
A couple of metal benches and some computer equipment are all that decorate the area. Now is the time the officer must disarm – no tasers, guns, knives or batons are allowed in the jail. The suspect remains in the back seat.
Johnson says that the computers, for the moment, are off. However, soon the officers will be able to begin the paperwork online before entering the facility, and eventually the plan is for the officer to complete the necessary forms from the computer in his or her car.
In the interim, a thorough medical and arrest record is completed on paper, which the jail staff will verify.
"Fingerprints don't lie," Johnson said, adding that siblings will sometimes try to blame their crimes on a brother or sister while others just give a wrong name and address.
If a suspect provides an officer with a wrong name, then the fingerprint computer will know the difference instantly, and additional charges will be added to the arrest.
Finally, it's time to fetch the suspect from the car and head to the padded room. Inside the first door is a small room with padding on the walls. Like much of the facility involved in DUI arrests, the rooms have grated drains so the floor can be easily hosed down. Drunks often tend to lose bowel and bladder control.
There's an alarm near the door that blares every 13 minutes, reminding guards that a welfare check must be made.
The Drunk Tank
Inside the facility is a large room, the intake room, right off the padded small cell where the first search takes place. The main room has the guards' station on the far side. The guards don't carry guns, but do have tasers on their belts.
Technically, the suspect is brought in at the rear of the facility; however the receiving area is built around the intake room that is home to all kinds of suspects. So in a way, the jail has two entrances.
And while the main room looks large, staff says that some nights there's no room to work. This past Halloween, the room had nearly 100 detainees – too many for anyone to be very safe, one guard adds.
Until prisoners are sorted out following the first search, arrestees are kept in the intake area.
A woman brought in for being drunk in public will walk through the same door as a murderer, process through the same metal detector and see the same nurse. In jail, there is equality and Gucci purses are left in the padded room – literally.
After a patting down, all the suspect's outer clothing and belongings are put in a cardboard box.
When does the strip search happen? Actually, according to jail staff, prisoners are rarely stripped and searched, only when a suspect has been previously convicted for weapons or drug smuggling or has a history of violence. No one in jail early on this Friday night fits that category.
After the padded room, the handcuffs generally come off and the suspect is escorted through a metal detector as an extra precaution.
Sgt. Margaret Porter, tonight's watch commander, said the process is pretty good, but sometimes items slip by the field officer, like the time jail guards found a syringe in a female prisoner's bra during their search.
Sgt. Porter has been on the job for 28 years. She said that mostly detainees used to get along, but "now they fight."
Why?
"It's probably the nature of alcohol and drugs," Porter guesses.
A field test will reveal how much someone has had to drink. But if drugs are also involved — and they typically are – then that's more difficult to assess immediately.
Also, times have changed.
"It's a cultural thing as well. ... I think violence has become a social norm," she added.
Rooms Without a View
For many of tonight's impaired people, there is a row of chairs next to the guard station, with a television above. There, suspects sit through their five-hour internment. Nobody seems very happy. One gal has her head in her hands. Another is quite uncomfortable with the idea that a reporter is about, even though confidentiality was a deal made in exchange for the chance to see the inside of the jail.
Around the perimeter of the main room are smaller cells. Down a long hallway is the main prisoner population – typically filled with suspects awaiting trial at the nearby court house.
If a detainee isn't spending a day or more, they are kept in one of the rooms off the main intake area. Women prisoners have Room 4, with a television and a phone. Room 3 has a bench and a toilet. This is generally used for people arrested for drunk in public or Penal Code 647(f), and many are transients from the downtown Santa Cruz area.
Under this arrest designation of 647(f), the suspect is often incarcerated as much for his or her own good as for being a danger to the public. A woman found near a bar too drunk to drive home and without a ride would find herself in jail, alongside a homeless transient found on a sidewalk taking a nap after a binge. Neither detainee can be trusted to look out for his or her own needs, at least until the five hours are up.
Some of these drunks or addicts are frequent visitors and know the routine.
A CHP officer escorts one man in his 40s into the padded cell for search. He's been stopped by a sheriff's deputy on Branciforte Drive, who then called a CHP officer to conduct the field sobriety test and, if necessary, make the arrest.
The process is speedy; the suspect is very pleasant, cooperates and takes a seat to wait out his time until he is released.
His last arrest was more than 10 years before, which means this arrest will count like a first time. However, for those who have been arrested before, which jail staff say is probably 60 percent of the intake population, the terms change.
For a third DUI arrest, bail is $10,000. The fourth arrest is considered a felony and there is $50,000 in bail required before release.
"We are hoping the learning curve [kicks in] and they would stop drinking," Porter said.
Sgt. Porter said she's surprised by the number of people who arrive with cash to make bail.
The Room with No Benches
One of the rooms off of intake is large. Tonight, there are two men lying on the bare floor. Why no furniture?
It turns out this room, the sobering cell, is for the very impaired arrestee. The room's lack of furniture is intentional so that the floor may be cleaned regularly with a hose.
Sgt. Porter said that some arrestees are incensed by the arrangements. One recent UCSC freshman explained to her that he needed to be let out so he could "leave to do his homework." When he was refused immediate release, he became angry and accused guards of violating his rights.
"You just can't reason with them," Porter said.
However, not all the stories are unhappy. Porter recalled a female arrested for driving under the influence who was quite drunk and reasonably happy. The problem: she only spoke a language that sounded Slavic.
Translators are available, except that no one knew exactly what language she spoke. Before you request the help of a translator, you need to know the language the person is speaking, Porter said.
Guards held up maps to get the women to identify her birth country. No luck. They tried to get her to tell them her name. Still, no luck.
Porter said that they had to wait until the woman sobered and her English returned to solve the mystery.
The metal doors to the cells are heavy. They can be damaged, but no one has successfully kicked open a door to date. But one guy arrested earlier in the evening outside the Veterans Hall for public drunkenness is certainly trying to break the door now.
The pounding gets louder. He's made a neck-warmer out of toilet paper. He is angry and when guards approach to talk to him, he just screams. Nothing pleasant and nothing repeatable. He seems pleased to be making a ruckus. He's looking out the small window in the door to see if people are watching him. They are.
There are detention chairs for detainees this angry. A modified wheel chair with straps for the hands and feet – think "Silence of the Lambs."
Will he be put in the detention chair?
Porter said not for right now. Instead, two guards approach the cell. Instantly, the man appears with a guard on either side – each detaining the prisoner with a wrist hold. Now, he's screaming as if he were in pain. A short trip to yet one more cell, this one padded. The guards release him into the padded cell. The detainee is now kicking at that door but hardly making a sound. Now, no one is looking.
Has Porter ever been hurt by an inmate?
Yes, twice. In both cases, the prisoner was mentally ill.
"Mentally ill people tend to be really strong and very out of their minds," she added.
Porter remembers a woman who was threatening to commit suicide by jumping off a toilet. She had stripped and was naked.
"A couple of days later she was on her bipolar meds and said that she was 'sorry.'"
Does the jail get many people wanting to commit suicide?
"If they are really drunk, they will say they are suicidal," she said.
A nurse is on hand for those instances.
Filling Up Most Nights
Most nights, by the time the regulars arrive, the first-timers are booked and the criminals are logged, the jail is full.
The county spends some $16.5 million on the salaries of the guards, staff and workers at this facility and other county-run detention centers. There's also about $450,000 in medical costs and $210,000 in pharmaceuticals, not including hospital bills. Local cities pay some $775,000 for booking fees. But still the jail fills up.
Does Porter ever get tired of seeing the same people in custody?
She answers the question by telling a story about a man who was often arrested for drunk in public.
"Some people are really cool. ... He loved us. He was just a drunk," she said.
A few months back, the man had pitched his tent on a seaside cliff. He was reportedly drunk at the time. He rolled over in his sleep and off the cliff. He was found dead the next morning.
She said that one of the other things that has changed in the past couple of decades is the attitude towards drunk drivers.
"Enforcement has really changed," Porter said. "I think what happened when cops [used to drive home drunks instead of arresting them], they weren't doing any favors for that person."
While that makes the jail fuller every night, it also keeps drunks off the roads.
In 2007, the jail housed an average of 347 inmates each day. With a total capacity of 311 prisoners, the jail is considered crowded.
By the time the interview is over, the jail is still under capacity. But the night is young, Porter says. More will arrive and the jail, like most nights, will be full.
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