Keep Bailing

LAPD Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC)

After long debate, the $84 million jail facility, to open in downtown Los Angeles, is scheduled to open either Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.

However, due limited staffing resources, the jail will take 83 officers off the streets and into the jail to operate it.

The new Metro Center Jail facility (apparently be referred to by LAPD as “MDC” or Metropolitian Dention Center) is taking the place of the out-dated jail known as the Parker Center. The Parker Center jail was nearly a half-century old and inmates are known to use the plumbing system as a way of sabotage, by flooding it and making it run into other floors of the jail.

Michel Moore, the LAPD Assistant Police Chief, stated in regards to the opening of the new prison and reassigning the 83 law enforcement officers they currently have as the “least unfavorable option, given the circumstances that we’re in.”

Moore also stated to the Los Angeles City Council Budget and Finance and Public Safety Committees that, “The department is not attempting to argue that this is a good thing to do. It is instead trying to argue that it is a necessary effort [because] to continue to operate within Parker Center jail in its current conditions, we do not believe is the most responsible use of our resources.”

He also assured the committees and public that as soon as financial restraints lessened, the police officers would be back on the streets.

Some councilmen were worried that the opening of the new jail would force the City’s General Services and Personnel departments to be in cahoots over the next five months with a $971,000 budget that they are unprepared for. They also said that additional janitors, custodians and technical staff would be needed to be hired since the new jail is 40 percent larger than the Parker Center.

The budget analyst of the city suggested that they borrow money from an account that had been set aside for installing digital video cameras into police patrol vehicles. However, both committees voted to use the account as stated, not for the jail.

Another rejected proposal was to suspend the hiring of new law enforcement officers, even though the “cut back” would only save the city $1.7 million this year and $7.5 million the next.

Greig Smith, a Los Angeles Councilman stated that the committees are requiring that the LAPD pay its own way. Smith said, “Go ahead (with opening the new jail), but you’re going to pay for the cost you incur on other departments.”

Moore stated that the LAPD plans to “make do with what we have,” in regards to the maintenance and medical staffing in order to keep costs at minimum.

The department is already in the hole by $11 million according to budget analysts.

Today, committees also voted on whether or not to do away with furloughs for detention officers, since they are required to take 26-days off without pay this year because of the city’s budget crisis.

If detention officers are put back to work, full-time, only 57 officers would be required to operate the new jail rather than 83.

If they do so, the city would have to spend $800,000 and for this year, they are already in the hole with a $70 million deficit, and next year they may be facing a $350 million deficit.

The new jail was completed in May of 2009 and since then, has been an unopened, unused building just sitting there. The Parker Center jail was built in 1955 and is deemed not safe for inmates or the officers working there.

It is not clear if Parker center will be immediately closed, but one would assume that to be the case due to the need to reassign staff.