(Sacramento, CA)
Wednesday, January 11, 2012

1/6/12

Riverside County’s jails are on the verge of reaching maximum capacity because of the influx of low-level inmates from state prisons, sheriff’s officials said Friday.

The county’s 3,906 jail beds are 99 percent occupied, and the resulting overflow of inmates will leave the Sheriff’s Department little choice but to start releasing some offenders before their sentences are served, Chief Deputy Jerry Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez noted that the county’s five jails now house 735 prisoners whose felony convictions met the criteria set by Assembly Bill 109.

The law states individuals convicted of crimes that fall into the non-violent, non-serious, non-sexually oriented category, and whose principal offense results in a sentence of three years or less, are to be incarcerated in county jails.

AB 109 led to a 20 percent jump over the last three months in the number of convicted felons being sentenced to time in county jail, sheriff’s officials said.

The governor and various lawmakers pushed AB 109 as part of his “realignment” strategy, which involved shifting more state responsibilities onto counties. Supporters argued it would lead to greater efficiencies, but opponents countered that already burdened local resources would be stretched to the limit.

Gutierrez said a federal court order requires that every inmate in a local jail has a bed.

To avoid overcrowding, sheriff’s officials will have to exercise alternative measures, “such as electronic ankle bracelet monitoring, return parole violators to the supervision of parole, and early release of some lover-level inmates.”

The state has allocated the county $24 million in the current fiscal year to cover costs stemming from the new law.

But most public safety officials don’t believe that will be enough, and doubts linger as to whether adequate funding will be made available in the future given the state’s unending budgetary red ink.

Sacramento Bee 911

January 10, 2012

By Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times

9:16 PM PST, January 8, 2012

As California begins shifting supervision of thousands of newly released state prisoners to local probation agencies, ex-convicts are arriving with incomplete medical records and more serious mental illnesses than anticipated. And mental health officials are scrambling to provide appropriate — and often costly — treatment.

“At the start, every day … there was a crisis,” said Dr. Marvin Southard, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. “There was somebody we didn’t know what to do with.”

In some cases, he said, released inmates have had to be immediately transferred to hospitals or residential centers for psychiatric care.

A new state law designed to reduce prison crowding and cut costs requires that certain nonviolent convicts serve their time in county lockups rather than state prisons. It also makes counties — rather than the state parole agency — responsible for supervising such inmates after their release.

The transition, called “realignment” by Gov. Jerry Brown, has raised well-publicized concerns among law enforcement officers across the state, as they try to accommodate more inmates in already crowded local jails. But realignment also presents less-visible challenges for local probation and mental health officials dealing with an influx of patients with drug and alcohol addictions, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

Mental illness and drug addiction are common in California prisons, where more than half of inmates report a recent mental health problem and two-thirds report having a drug abuse problem, according to a Rand Corp. study. Many don’t receive the treatment they need while incarcerated and may skip care once released, said the study’s author, Lois Davis.

“If you have individuals struggling with depression and anxiety … they are going to have a much harder time linking to services,” she said. “It limits their ability to find a job and reunite with their family, and they will be at greater risk for recidivism.”

Roughly 3,300 people have been released to Los Angeles County so far. The probation department is expecting about 6,000 more. County mental health officials estimated that about 30% will require mental health services and about 60% will have drug addictions.

Continuing treatment after inmates are freed is essential to preventing them from relapsing, having mental breakdowns, ending up in hospitals or landing back behind bars, officials said.

“We took it very seriously from the start,” said Reaver Bingham, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Probation Department. “We knew that if we didn’t address those risk factors, people would revert to what they know, and that is committing criminal activity.”

Realignment, which began Oct. 1, has been bumpy. Many released inmates came without comprehensive medical records. It was up to the patients to pass along information about their diagnoses and medications to probation and mental health staffers. When county workers requested mental health records from the state, they often were told to get the information from individual prisons.

Communication has improved, but getting complete medical and mental health records remains difficult, officials said. One complication: Prisoners can block the transfer of records.

“A lot of it depends on the inmates’ attitude at the point of the release — do they want to be treated more or to be left alone?” said Don Kingdon, deputy director of the California Mental Health Directors Assn.

Kingdon stressed the importance of counties having complete information on prisoners before they are released to local supervision. “That can create a problem in the community if they release prisoners and they have mental health needs and you didn’t know,” he said.

California prison officials “made a whole lot of effort to make the [transition] be as smooth as possible,” said Denny Sallade, deputy director of the state’s Division of Correctional Health Care Services. But inmates may be in one mental state when they leave the prison and another when they arrive in the community, often because they stop taking their medication along the way, she noted.

The inmates also may turn down help once they arrive. In Los Angeles County, about 30% of the released state inmates seen by mental health staff refused to either meet with clinicians or be referred for treatment.

Bingham, of the probation department, said the state has tried to address problems. “If we can be successful in Los Angeles County, we can be successful in the rest of the state,” he said.

But county officials are warning there may not be enough resources to accommodate former inmates in need of supervision. The state allocated $18 million to Los Angeles County to pay for mental health and substance abuse treatment and other social services. But the money isn’t guaranteed to continue past June.

“Supervisor Mike Antonovich is very concerned about the inadequacy of realignment funding to effectively rehabilitate this population, which includes costly mental health services, housing and supervision,” said his justice deputy, Anna Pembedjian. “It all boils down to resources.”

Los Angeles, like most counties around the state, is already stretched thin after years of budget cuts and may not be equipped to close gaps in health and social services for the newly released inmates, said Davis, of Rand. To help defray some costs, counties across the state are working to enroll the eligible released prisoners in public programs such as Medi-Cal.

Counties are at the very early stages of understanding how to make realignment work, especially for those former inmates with mental illness, Davis said. “It is going to be a challenging time for the next couple years,” she said.

FOX40 News

2:26 PM PST, December 23, 2011

SACRAMENTO COUNTY

A Sacramento man convicted of having sex with a Chihuahua will have to register on the sex offender registry.

Robert Edward De Shields was sentenced to ten years in prison and lifetime sex offender registration.

De Shields, who is confined to a wheelchair, was renting a living space from a South Sacramento family who had an 8-month-old Chihuahua mix.

A family member came home in March to find De Shields holding the dog, who looked scared. The next day, the dog went missing and was later found with De Shields in the garage, this time in pain and shock.

A veterinary check determined the dog had severe injuries to its rectum and internal organs.

De Shields was convicted last month of strangulation and sexual assault on a Chihuahua. He was taking meth at the time of the attack.

Robert De Shields was convicted in November of sexual assault of a dog belonging to a family he was living with.

According to the DA’s Office, De Shields has not been out of custody for more than five months in the last 19 to 20 years.

The sentence of lifetime registration on the sex offender list may seem odd in an animal cruelty case, however the District Attorney says it means De Shields’ sentence will now be served at a state prison. Without the imposition of the sex offender registry, he would have served the ten year sentence at a county jail because of California’s recent realignment plan.

SF Chronicle

Friday, December 30, 2011

California courts have been too quick to second-guess decisions by the parole board and the governor that deny release to convicted murderers and other life prisoners, the state Supreme Court said Thursday.

The court was responding to a series of lower-court decisions that followed its last major ruling on parole review standards, in August 2008. In that ruling, the state’s high court said both the Board of Parole Hearings and the governor, who has veto power over the board’s decisions, could deny release of a parole-eligible prisoner only if the evidence showed the prisoner was still dangerous, and could not rely solely on the facts of the earlier crime.

Judges and appellate courts have relied on that ruling to overturn dozens of parole denials, finding no evidence that a prisoner was currently dangerous and questioning conclusions by the board and the governor that the inmate lacked “insight” into his or her past criminal conduct.

But in Thursday’s decision, in a case from San Diego County, the justices said courts must accept the board’s findings on lack of insight, or any other basis suggesting the prisoner is still dangerous, if there is any evidence in the record to support it.

“The executive decision of the board or the governor is upheld unless it is arbitrary or procedurally flawed,” said Justice Carol Corrigan in an opinion signed by four of her colleagues. “The court is not empowered to reweigh the evidence. … The scope of judicial review is limited.”

The ruling clarifies standards for hundreds of suits filed each year by life prisoners challenging parole denials. In one such case, a state appeals court ordered a new parole hearing Dec. 21 for a San Francisco man who fatally stabbed a pregnant woman in 1984, saying the parole board had not presented any evidence that he was still dangerous.

The ruling will make courts “very reluctant to overturn the governor or the board, even more reluctant than they are now,” said Michael Beckman, lawyer for a prisoner in Thursday’s case. Beckman contended it would allow the board, which approves parole in only a small fraction of the cases, “to continue breaking the law” that says parole should normally be granted.

Beckman’s client, Richard Shaputis, was 50 when he fatally shot his wife, Erma, at their El Cajon home in January 1987. He claimed it was an accident, but the court said he had beaten her many times in the past and had abused his former wife and molested one of his daughters. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 17 years to life.

Shaputis, now 75, has a spotless record in prison, has taken part in rehabilitation programs, is in ill health and was judged by private psychologists to pose a low risk of violence. The parole board denied his parole in 2009.

A state appeals court overruled the board. Thursday’s ruling blocked Shaputis’ parole.

The ruling can be viewed at links.sfgate.com/ZLFT.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

One Dead in Oroville Apartment Shooting (now 2 dead)
Published: 12/22 12:01 am
Updated: 12/22 5:17 pm

Oroville Police are searching for Derrik Blanton, who they say shot and killed one man and injured at least two others following a home invasion in Oroville.

It happened just before 8pm Wednesday night at an apartment complex on Mitchell Avenue. Authorities say Blanton went to the apartment, where he apparently knew the residents. An altercation erupted, and then Blanton fired six to ten shots.

A 48-year-old man was shot and killed. A woman was shot in the leg, and 58-year-old Charles Oberholtzer was shot in the chest and underwent surgery at Enloe Medical Center Wednesday night.

There may have been another woman, a fourth victim, who ran away but officers have not located her yet.

If you have any information on Derrik Blanton’s whereabouts, call Oroville Police.

http://www.khsltv.com/content/localnews/story/One-Dead-in-Oroville-Apartment-Shooting-Police/LWF6C77WdUCuxpg_hzSCwg.cspx

By Michael J. Mishak, Los Angeles Times

8:22 PM PST, December 24, 2011
Reporting from Sacramento

When Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature shifted responsibility for thousands of state prisoners to county jails, some authorities said it would mean more offenders on the streets breaking the law.

Few saw another possible peril: the loss of more than 1,500 inmate firefighters.

Since World War II, the state has relied on nonviolent offenders serving time for such crimes as burglary, drug possession and welfare fraud to help clear brush, cut fire lines and stop infernos from spreading.

Fire officials say the prisoners, selected from a pool of those who exhibit ideal behavior in custody, can be as much as half the manpower assigned to a large fire.

“When things get busy, it’s the first thing we run out of,” said Andy McMurry, deputy director of fire protection for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Now, the realignment of inmate custody, developed to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court decision that overcrowding must be reduced in state lockups, is expected to keep thousands of those low-level offenders in county jails, where many could be released early because space is scarce.

Fire officials say they can sustain the number of inmate crews for now, but their forces will begin to shrink in 2013. The reduction, if fully implemented, would cut the inmate firefighting ranks by nearly 40%, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which operates the program jointly with Cal Fire.

State corrections and fire officials are working with local governments to head off that scenario with a separate training program for county inmates. But at a legislative hearing this month, county and local law enforcement representatives balked at the price tag — $46 per inmate per day.

Rather than stockpiling nonviolent offenders in county jails, some sheriff’s departments are considering cheaper alternatives, such as releasing them with electronic monitoring.

“Some sheriffs feel they can get a better bang for their buck,” Curtis Hill, a lobbyist for the California State Sheriffs’ Assn., said at the hearing.

In addition, he said, some jurisdictions would rather have offenders doing manual labor than waiting around for a fire. Losing county inmates to fire crews would hurt “the capability of local communities to use that population for their own projects.”

The issue is of particular concern to the Republican lawmakers who represent some of the state’s most rural areas, which are more prone to wildfires.

State Sen. Doug La Malfa (R-Richvale) wondered whether there would even be enough eligible inmates left in county prisons to volunteer for fire crews.

“If our lowest-level offenders have been ankle-braceleted and are out, how do we get them to come back?” he said at the hearing.

State officials countered that nonviolent offenders would continue to receive two days off their sentences for each day spent in a fire camp.

Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries (R-Riverside) said in an interview that maintaining inmate firefighting ranks is critical to public safety. Without them, he said, large fires would be likely to burn longer, causing more damage and increasing personnel costs.

“There really are no other resources,” said Jeffries, a former volunteer fire captain in Riverside County for nearly three decades. “It’s boots on the ground that put fires out. If you go beyond the utilization of inmates, the price tag goes up dramatically.”

Fire officials pledged to find a solution, arguing that the program’s benefit is significant to both the state and the prisoners.

“For a lot of them, it’s the first time they’ve done anything real positive in their lives,” said McMurry, the Cal Fire deputy. “It’s hard to put a dollar-and-cents figure on that.”

michael.mishak@latimes.com

Published Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2011

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — A California parolee hiding from a SWAT team has fallen through the ceiling and into the arms of officers who lobbed tear gas into the attic.

The San Bernardino County Sun ( http://bit.ly/sdZZ3d) says 22-year-old Tommy Nelson barricaded himself inside a stranger’s apartment for more than five hours on Monday.

San Bernardino police Lt. David Harp says Nelson ran from gang squad officers and dropped a handgun before invading the apartment and ordering the family to leave at about 4:15 p.m.

A SWAT team was called in and officers tried to contact him for hours. Tear gas was eventually lobbed into the attic and a police dog was sent in to find him.

The lieutenant says Nelson began moving around and he fell through the ceiling at about 10 p.m.

He was arrested and booked for investigation of burglary, violating parole and being a felon with a handgun.