Your Tax Dollars at Work: Paying for Jailers’ Mistakes

They keep telling us everything’s under control at the Los Angeles County jails, but I’m beginning to wonder if they have any idea who’s coming or going.

Last month we had the case of the guy who was supposed to be locked up, but walked out the door with a fake ID photo of Eddie Murphy in “Dr. Dolittle 2.”

And this month we have the news that since 1996, as many as 400,000 people have been kept behind bars after they were supposed to be sprung.

The latter problem will cost $27 million of your money and mine, the largest civil rights settlement in county history, if you’re scoring at home. But brace yourself. As many as half the 400,000 were illegally strip-searched, and may be calling attorneys as we speak.

This kind of bureaucratic bungling is all very disturbing, of course, but there’s one aspect in particular that I just can’t get over.

Kevin Jerome Pullum, the chunky July escapee who was on the lam for 16 days, looked nothing at all like Eddie Murphy. Chubby Checker, maybe. Fats Domino, maybe. Not Eddie Murphy.

If it’s that easy to fool the giants guarding the gates at Twin Towers jail--which is going to become known as Faulty Towers before long--you have to wonder why the 400,000 detainees in this week’s class-action settlement didn’t give it a try.

Hi, I’m Chris Rock. I’m Carrot Top. I’m Soupy Sales.

It doesn’t take a genius, judging by Pullum. This lug could have paddled to Fiji in the time he was free, and where did they finally pick him up? A few blocks from the jail. He’d been panhandling for hamburgers on skid row.

Attorneys for the folks who’d been locked up in error, or beyond their release dates, made a point of blaming Sheriff Lee Baca’s predecessor, Sherman Block. As for Baca, they tooted his horn for cleaning up much of the mess since taking office in January 1999.

Well, bravo for that, because he’s certainly begun the process of rescuing the department. But I wouldn’t say that Baca, who’s had more than 2 1/2 years as top dog, is moving at the speed of sound.

“I don’t think he knew the extent of the problem,” argues Sheriff’s Capt. Ray Leyva.

How could he not have? The place sounds absolutely prehistoric. Inmates were schlepping unguarded in a tunnel between the Inmate Reception Center and Twin Towers, which is how Dr. Dolittle flew the coop.

We’re the largest city in the nation-state that imagined the Information Age, and the system for processing L.A. County inmates is roughly as sophisticated as pinning Post-it notes on their shirts.

Don’t worry, the Sheriff’s Department tells us. A new computer system is going to link the jail to the courts, and it’s going to be online in 2003.

2003? Who in God’s name did they hire?

Take a look in the Yellow Pages and get a second opinion, at least. Techquest can “Fix It Today!” Epstein & Associates does “Fast On-Site Service.”

I know 12-year-old computer whizzes who could have this thing hooked up by Christmas.

“Part of the problem,” Leyva tells me, “is the inertia of bureaucracy.”

Valerie Ann Streit of Santa Monica can tell you about the inertia of bureaucracy, which she encountered when Block was sheriff.

Picked up on a Saturday night in 1998 for a beef with her live-in, the asthmatic begged for her medicine, telling deputies it could be a life-threatening situation. She says they got it to her about 48 hours later.

The next day in court, the judge ordered her released. But it didn’t happen for another 24 hours, and on her way back to jail, Streit, a personal trainer, says she was strip-searched in the presence of male deputies for the second time in three days.

“It was degrading and humiliating,” says Streit. “Face the wall, bend over, and grab your ankles.”

That couldn’t have happened, says Leyva, because opposite-sex officers are not allowed to be present during strip searches.

Well, sure, but inmates aren’t allowed to pretend they’re Eddie Murphy and go over the wall either, but it happens.

The most precious nugget of all, if you ask me, is this:

Illegally detained inmates are often paid not to sue the Sheriff’s Department.

Are you still with me, or did the aneurysm hit?

Deputies have actually offered cash money to inmates who were kept locked up past their release date, as long as they signed a form promising not to sue.

The average payout?

Enough to make you consider tossing a brick through a window.

Four hundred and fifty clams, my friend.

Your tax dollars at work in the City of Angels.

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Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com