The purchasing emergency declared in April by the Orange County Board of Supervisors to expedite the installation of surveillance cameras at the Theo Lacy Facility has ended after the immediate project was completed.  

The Board of Supervisors declared the emergency on the recommendation of Department officials in the wake of a Grand Jury report. The report was on the murder an inmate in a Lacy barracks area not in view of a guard station and not monitored by a surveillance camera. The new system allows deputies to continually monitor areas of the barracks that previously had only been checked by deputies patrolling inside the barracks. Those patrols continue. Privacy walls in some barracks were also removed to give deputies a better view of the inmates in the barracks.

The camera installation had previously been approved as part of a $4.4 million project to improve video surveillance throughout the jail system, said Research and Development Director Robert Beaver. County purchasing procedures are such that the project was not expected to begin until March 2009. The Grand Jury report provided the impetus for the Board to declare the emergency for the Lacy barracks camera project. It had been budgeted at $370,000 but was completed for just under $300,000.

The emergency declaration allowed the purchase and installation on an expedited basis. The system wide surveillance project is now budgeted at $8.8 million.  

Executive Director Rick Dostal said in a report to the Board that, "Conduit, electrical and camera installations are complete in Barracks F-H. Video recordings commenced on Tuesday July 22, 2008 and audio components have been ordered and will be installed and operational on or before July 29, 2008. The purchasing of material and equipment against Emergency Price Agreement N1000009933 is complete. Therefore, this Emergency Price Agreement requires no further continuance as of July 28, 2008.

To view the documents place on file for the declaration of the emergency, click here.