When the door opens anybody can be brought inside.

““We don’t know their names or what they did, or what they’re thinking,” said Sgt. Ken Smith, the shift operations Sergeant at the Intake Release Center on a recent Friday night.  “We could have a guy who has just killed three people, and we’ve had those, sitting next to a lady who had too much to drink at a party.”

On a typical night the Deputies who process arrestees delivered to the IRC face a myriad of challenges. On a recent Friday they processed over 100 inmates. They dealt with an older man suffering a possible heart attack; a young man who had just kicked a window out of a patrol car challenged the Deputies to do something about it; a stylishly dressed woman with elegantly coiffed hair had blood drawn for her DUI case and then verbally lashed out at Deputies claiming connections in the legal community and the ability to destroy the career of anybody who displeased her.

The path of an arrestee starts outside the IRC. The cars and vans carrying the arrestees enter through a sally port. When the arrestee is cooperative, they park in the lot and the officer escorts the arrestee. If the arrestee is uncooperative, they pull up to the curb and a team of Deputies escort the arrestee.

Outside of the building there are high counters for arresting officers to complete paperwork and nearby are special phones, outfitted so the arresting officer can dial a number and the arrestee can talk on the phone while handcuffed behind the back.

Some of the arrestees are then taken by the arresting officer to a room where blood is drawn. Those arrested for Driving Under the Influence are given the choice of giving a blood sample or taking a breathalyzer test. With blood there is a sample available for a defense lawyer to have independently tested.

When the arrestee is ready for booking they come through another sally port, this time a set of glass doors operated by the Receiving Deputy.

Deputy Brian Snow was the Booking Prowler on a recent shift.  He makes sure that the identification processing goes smoothly and all arrestees are accounted for.

“Everything needs to be in alignment,” Deputy Snow said. “One trip-up and we have a bottleneck.” The most common cause of a bottleneck is an arrestee who becomes sick or troublesome. When that happens, a show of force is necessary and most often the deputies called for a show of force are from workstations along the booking process.”

The jail has a highly efficient system for classifying inmates and once classified the inmates are identified by color wristbands denoting their security level. Any Deputy can tell a good deal about the inmate just by looking at the wristband.

When the arrestees walk into the IRC there are no wristbands yet. Nobody knows who they are or why they were  brought through the door. [more]

Arrestees  must go through medical, uncuffing and search, receiving, photo, X-ray, Livescan, ink prints, classification, Immigration and Customs Enforcement screening. They then turn in their street clothes, shower, and dress in jail attire. 

By the time the inmates are ready for their shower, they have been printed and photographed and classified and their information is recorded on a Mod Card.

The staff attempts to move the arrestees through the process as quickly as possible. The deadline for moving an arrestee to a Mod is 24-hours after being received.

“We try to move them through as quickly as we can because we never know when we are going to be flooded by new arrivals,” Deputy Snow said.
A call comes to Deputy Snow just before he is to begin his 8 o’clock count.

“CHP call ahead, uncooperative female.”

Deputy Snow hears the call and heads out with a team of other deputies, one with a video camera and one with a Taser. It is the first of several calls that uncooperative arrestees are arriving.

“We’ll get her promptly to a cell where she is safe and we’re safe,” said Deputy Snow.

“She is brought from the CHP patrol car, two CHP officers hold her and walk her through the sally port door and take her directly to the medical bench.

“The medical staff needs to ask her questions the same as anybody,” said Snow.

Once cleared by medical, she is taken directly to a cell in the medical unit. Inside the cell she is searched by three female deputies. Her earrings and other jewelry are taken from her.

he lashes out in the cell, hollering, mistakenly asking Deputies and others if they are her boyfriend.  She is told not to move or endanger herself or staff or she will get a jolt from a Taser.
The woman calls out for her boyfriend again and again, kicking and screaming.  The door is closed and she sits down on the hard floor, her back to the door.  She’ll be there for eight hours, monitored by video and in person checks every 15 minutes. When she is let out, she is very cooperative.

“We have a lot of people to process and if one station slows down, the whole process slows down,” said Deputy Snow.

One thing that slows down the process for everybody is a troublesome arrestee. If the inmate is uncooperative and is believed to pose a danger to themselves or others, they are placed in a cell in the medical unit. They are monitored by video camera and checked every 15- minutes. Once every 15 minutes by med staff and once every 15 minutes by jail staff.  The jail staff can keep her there for up to eight hours and longer if the need is documented and justified.

“Freeze all inmate movement, 8 o’clock count,” comes the word on the loudspeaker.

“We have to make sure everybody is accounted for,” Deputy Snow said.

It is his job to go cell to cell and count all of the inmates in the booking area, both male and female, anybody who has come inside the door in custody and has not yet been sent to the Mods.

He calls each arrestee by name, at least by the names he has on his list. Some of the arrestees had not given their name when the list was prepared for the 8 o’clock count. Deputy Snow must account for every name on the list and give a number of nameless arrestees on the premises.

He goes cell to cell and the routine is the same.

He bangs on the door to get the attention of those inside.

“Everybody get seated, sit up,” the Deputy orders.

He asks for names in a clockwise direction. As they are called out, he checks them off the list. If Deputy Snow cannot understand the name, the arrestee is called forward and the Deputy examines the wristband, when the arrestee has a wristband.

At the end of the count there are 101 males and 28 females on the premises. Many have been brought to the jail from the courts.

Following the 8 o’clock count the first incident of note is the arrival of 16 females who have surrendered, either to begin serving their sentences or as part of a weekend sentence. Male weekenders are booked at the Theo Lacy Facility. All street arrests are booked at IRC.

The 16-women are lined up with their faces to the wall as the female deputies search each one. The male deputies do not help in the search.  The female deputies handle the searches on their own.

It is a telling moment went the inmate first has his or her cuffs removed.

“My philosophy is to treat everybody the same until given a reason not to,” said Deputy Snow.  “When they come in they haven’t been classified yet. The repeaters know what they have to do to get a bed. They want a bed as soon as possible so they follow the rules.”

By 10 p.m. the street arrests are coming in, slowly. There are comments that it is a slow night.

One female has a huge package of medicine. The medical staff checks it over, to insure they belong to her. The medical staff will provide the dosages prescribed on the bottle. It is common to contact the prescribing physician and the dispensing pharmacy to insure the medication is correct for the arrestee.

Deputies Greg Fisher and Steve Luna are searching inmates. The last shift they worked, Fisher found 24 bags of heroin on an arrestee.

In addition to street arrests, the facility accepts self surrenders and bond agent surrenders.

Inmates must be given at least three opportunities to make a phone call. The first is generally outside,  before they enter the building. Some of the holding cells also have telephones from which collect calls can be made. There is a difficulty with collect calls because they cannot be made to a cellphone and cellphones are becoming the norm.

It appears to be almost boring in the booking area just around midnight and the call comes that they have room for 65 inmates in the Main Jail.

The 65-are already through booking, they have their showers and jail issue clothing and are ready to be moved to the Mod.

They are called out by name and told to stand on a red line that runs parallel to the wall. A blue line runs parallel to the opposite wall.

Deputies esc ort them through the maze of corridors to the reception area for the Mod that is receiving them.

Just as the 65 inmates line up at the entrance to the Mod, word comes up that there are 15 arrestees coming through the door and they need help for security and processing the new arrivals.

The bench at medical is full and although all are male, the female Deputies pitch in to help with processing.

“There isn’t enough space, what can you do?” Deputy Snow said. When the medical bench is packed, the arrestees are ordered to stand with their face to the wall.

The place is packed and the staff is hustling to keep the processing running smoothly.

Deputy DeAnne Scrivener pitches in and bags property for the male inmates, since the processing of female arrestees is up to date.

“It’s like an assembly line, it goes smoothly and people keep moving as long as we don’t have a troublemaker or somebody gets sick,” said Deputy Snow.  “These are good guys, they all work together. The female deputies pitch in when we need them.”

The line of new arrestees never seems to end. The arresting officers on this part of the shift include more Deputies and CHP officers along with officers from Anaheim, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Fullerton, Buena Park, Brea, Fountain Valley, Tustin, Orange and Irvine. More than half of the police departments in the county have brought arrestees to the booking facility.

The Receiving Deputy is asking questions of the arresting officers.

“How many phone calls has he made?”

“Just one,” is the answer.

The policy is to give each arrestee an opportunity to make at least three telephone calls.

Among the wave of new arrestees is a returnee from the hospital, he has only been gone a few hours. He is put through an abbreviated processing since he is not a new arrestee.

At one point, seven arrestees are being searched at the same time. They are returnees, inmates from Musick and Lacy who have been sent to IRC for a variety of reasons.

“One pro per requests a Sergeant present when he is searched,” Deputy Karen Loddby  calls out.  She is the Female Uncuff Deputy but is working helping out with the search of male arrestees. 

The inmate requesting the Sergeant is held back and the others are sent forward in the process. Sergeant Smith arrives shortly and observes the arrestee being searched.

The Sergeant is still on the floor when the door opens and a man is brought in wearing only his underpants.  The arresting Deputy takes him to the Medical Window.

“This search is going to be easy,” Deputy Snow tells Deputy Fisher.

“He’s accused of assault,” said the arresting Deputy. The victim had a bad bruise on her face, he adds.

Another arrestee arrives wearing a clown costume, bright orange and blue. The clown costumed arrestee is smiling, shaking his head in apparent amusement. He has just come from a Halloween Party when he was stopped for DUI.

The Receiving Deputy keeps the others on their toes, both Deputies and the arresting officers from other agencies. At one point he advises a CHP Officer to get out of the line of sight of an arrestee the the CHP officer brought into the facility. The arrestee appears to get more agitated when he sees the CHP officer.

Another time, he reminds a Deputy to check the socks of a difficult to manage arrestee who had been put into a cell a bit too soon.

By 3 a.m. the shift has moved 80 arrestees from the street to being ready for movement up to a Mod.  That is just the males. There have  been 32 females since the shift began and there is still three hours to go.

But new arrestees keep coming.

A call comes in; Buena Park is coming in with two cooperatives and an uncooperative.

The Buena Park Officer attempts to remove the cooperative arrestees first but to no avail, the uncooperative arrestee blocks his way and has to be taken from the van first.
The uncooperative arrestee is positioned at medical and then there is a call that one of the arrestees brought in earlier may be having a heart attack.

Both the uncooperative arrestee and the potential heart attack victim are on the same bench. An examination of the potential heart attack victim indicates he needs to go to a hospital. A gurney is brought up and paramedics are called.

Meanwhile, the uncooperative arrestee from Buena Park is found medically unfit for booking. He has to be held in place until the Buena Park officer can book his two cooperative arrestees. 

“We’ll have to have a Deputy accompany the man with the heart attack to the hospital, cutting the staff more yet,” said Deputy Snow.  When the escort Deputy leaves with the paramedics, a second Deputy must write a report.

“Everything happens all at once,” explains Deputy Snow.

It’s not over yet.

The man on the gurney is shackled by his ankles. The uncooperative Buena Park arrestee headed for the hospital is watched closely and then there is a call: Deputy with one cooperative, one uncooperative.

Just like the last two times, a team of Deputies heads to the parking lot, a video camera and a Taser at the ready.

When the arresting Deputy pulls in, it is made clear that he needs to bring both in at the same time. The uncooperative arrestee has kicked out the back window of the patrol car.

The sight of a team of Deputies has the window kicker calm for now. He is taken through the doors and to the Medical window.

His cooperative sidekick is seated on the bench. 

The Buena Park officer is just now taking his uncooperative arrestee out for transport to the hospital.

The Deputy’s uncooperative arrestee is becoming cooperative as he is surrounded by other Deputies. The trouble comes from the cooperative arrestee; he urinates in his pants creating a puddle around the bench.

Once the arrestee who urinated in his pants is cleared by medical, he is taken to be uncuffed  and searched.

And then Santa Ana Police arrive with a bench-full of arrestees and there was no dry place for them to sit. They were lined up face to the wall while a Correctional Services Technician supervised an inmate worker cleaning up the mess on the bench.

The line of arrestees is passed through Medical when up comes a female DUI suspect from a fashionable neighborhood and wearing designer cocktail attire. She is seated on the just cleaned Medical bench.

While she sits down, a female Deputy checks the arrestee’s hair extensions to see if they have clips that can pose a danger to the arrestee, jail staff or other arrestees.

The arrestee yells to leave her hair alone. She tells the female Deputy that she will destroy her if she touches the hair. She claims she is a graduate of a top rated college and a prestigious law school and she will wreck the career of any deputy who annoys her.

The paramedics from the Santa Ana Fire Department arrive to take the arrestee who may have had a heart attack. They move him from the Department gurney to the Fire Department gurney. 

The arrestee with the hair extensions clears medical and is taken to the women’s section to be searched. Following the search, she is taken to a holding cell, as she threatens all of the staff she sees. She even hurls a racial slur at a female Deputy and makes obscene hand gestures to the other Deputies.

At 4:40 a.m. 11 more arrestees arrive from Orange and Fullerton.

“We’re going to be turning a lot of these over to the day shift,” Deputy Snow said. “We don’t like to do that but what else can we do when the police departments bring arrestees to us at this hour?”

For Sergeant Smith the shift has been a successful one. It was lighter than usual before midnight but it got busier than usual in the morning.

“We had a couple of calls for uncooperative arrestees but nobody started an outright fight,” he said thankfully. Nobody had to be jolted with a Taser.  No staff or arrestees were injured. The man with the possible heart attack appeared to be recovering.
  
Some of the steps that arrestees go through when booked at the Intake Release Center.

Medical
The first stage is medical , there is a bench with room for about a dozen inmates, a window where inmates can talk to medical staff, three at a time.  The medical staff asks questions to determine if the arrestee is healthy enough to be booked into the jail. If not they are taken to a local hospital to be cleared or treated.

Med staff comes out and takes heart and blood pressure readings, vital sign readings from each new inmate.

There are cells across from medical, where inmates are kept if they are to be cited and released or if they are troublesome and need a cell separated from the general population. DUI suspects are allowed to sleep until they are considered suitable for release. Usually it takes about eight hours before they are released.

Uncuff
Next is the Uncuff area.  Males and females are separated at this point. Custody is physically transferred from the arresting agency to the sheriff’s department. The jail staff as the arrestee take off shoes and socks, turn the socks inside out. They are patted down and checked for contraband. They must open their mouths side, pull their cheeks apart and wiggle their tongues up and down.  When he is satisfied that the arrestee has no contraband, he orders the arrestee to pick up his or her shoes, socks and coat, hold the items behind the back and walk along a blue line until directed to a holding cell.

Receiving window
While the arrestee is searched, the arresting officer takes paperwork to the Receiving Deputy.  Custody will not officially transfer to the Sheriff’s Department until the Receiving Deputy is certain that the paperwork is in order and that the jail has the authority to hold the arrestee.

The receiving staff must also account for the personal property taken from the arrestee. Anything over $500 in cash must to checked by a sergeant. Whatever is logged in, the jail staff is responsible for returning. Property is placed in a clear plastic bag and sealed with a heat sealer. The deputies are hoping a new heat sealer will arrive before the one they have is totally unusable.

The paperwork is handled by the deputy and put into the computer by a CST.

The Receiving Deputy must take the medical information, also the information from the arresting officer and the property information to insure that the arrestee can move along the booking process line.

When satisfied that the paperwork is complete, the Receiving deputy calls out the name of the arresting agency. He hands the paperwork to the arresting officer, who is then free to leave the building.

Without the paperwork, the arresting officer has no documentation that the arrestee has been turned over to the OCSD.

Photo
Photograph is taken, with thumbprint to insure the identity of the arrestee photographed.

X-ray
A chest X-ray is taken of each person held in the jail in insure against introduction of TB. Technician can read the X-ray and will call for assistance if there is reason to believe TB is present.  There is only one X-ray machine and the female arrestees are marched out in a group at a time when the male inmates are out of sight of the X-ray office.

Detention Release Officer
After the X-ray, arrestees held on suspicion of a felony are taken to the Detention Release Officer. The DTO works for the courts and can change the bail status up or down on the arrestee.

Livescan
Electronic images of prints are taken for check against state database. Considered essential in determining the identity of the arrestee and whether there are other charges or warrants not known previously.

Ink prints
Backup for Livescan.

Classification
Classification questions the arrestee about their background, checks answers against what is already known to gauge whether the arrestee is attempting to lie their way through the process.  Each time an arrestee is brought to the jail they are given a booking number.  They also receive an OCN, and Orange County Number that stays with them and is referred to each time they are  brought into the jail.

ICE
Anybody suspected of being in the country illegally is questioned by ICE designated deputies. Those believed to be in the country illegally are turned over to ICE when they are released.
Shower and jail issue clothing
The inmates must surrender their street clothes, shower and take jail issue clothing. Now they are placed in holding cell to await assignment of Mod Housing.