By Jeff Proctor
Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE, NM -- Ramon Rustin is inheriting a mess at the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center.
The chronically overcrowded jail has been plagued by allegations of violence and rape involving staff and inmates; a years-long legal battle over conditions; millions of dollars in legal settlements with jail guards for unpaid overtime; a troubled house arrest program whose former boss faces a 40-count indictment for taking bribes; and nepotism allegations against Rustin’s predecessor.
But Rustin says he’s up to the task, in part because he has seen similar problems before.
When he took over six years ago as warden of the Allegheny County Detention Center in downtown Pittsburgh, Pa., a grand jury had just indicted 15 corrections officers on sexual misconduct charges.
Media scrutiny of the jail was intense. During an interview with the Journal, Rustin addressed the following issues from his old job:
Corrections officers racked up millions of dollars in overtime, a problem Rustin acknowledged and said was due in part to staffing issues.
Two officers were arrested in November on suspicion of beating an inmate.
Another lawsuit alleges that a guard locked an inmate in a cell with five other men and watched while he was beaten and sodomized.
In Rustin’s last week on the job, police launched another investigation into whether two jail guards used excessive force against an inmate, and two female inmates filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that a male nurse at the jail infirmary sexually assaulted them.
To address the beating and sexual misconduct allegations, Rustin installed a video surveillance system at his former jail.
It enabled jail officials there to “provide evidence that in fact some of these things were taking place that should be investigated,” he said. “That was a good system, and we actually addressed some issues and took our staff to another level.”
Rustin is a 30-year veteran of the corrections business. He spent 24 years climbing the ranks at the Chester County jail in eastern Pennsylvania. After making deputy warden at that facility - which had swollen to nearly 1,000 inmates by the time he left in 2004 - Rustin took the top job at the Allegheny County Detention Center in downtown Pittsburgh.
It was a big step up for the now 53-year-old Rustin. Allegheny County’s jail housed 2,700 inmates.
He now comes to a jail whose design capacity is 2,236, although population routinely tops 2,600 and has been as high as 2,900.
The massive lockup on the far West Mesa opened for business in 2003. It was intended to ease overcrowding at the old Downtown jail.
The project originally was supposed to cost taxpayers $61 million and open in 2001. In the end, it cost more than $90 million and wasn’t fully operational until nearly two years after its original target date.
Rustin, who started work at MDC on Jan. 17, said one of his first orders of business is to do a complete assessment of the facility.
“Were there cultural issues within the jail? Staff issues?” Rustin said. “Just what led to those problems that created the media attention?
“One of the things I can tell you is that this jail is crowded. It’s at 120 percent capacity, which is an issue for me.”
Part of the assessment, he said, will include evaluating which jail programs work and which don’t.
For example, MDC is run under the “direct supervision” philosophy, meaning corrections officers have direct involvement with the inmates they’re watching.
MDC’s current ratio is about 90 inmates per officer. Rustin said direct supervision doesn’t work with such out-of-whack numbers. A 50-to-1 ratio is closer to ideal.
County officials are in the process of hiring 100 more jail guards to get the ratio down, and Rustin said he hopes adding staff will help reduce violence, sexual misconduct and overtime for officers.
The county also has partnered with the 2nd Judicial District Court to bring in three “pro-tem” judges who each work one day a week to plow through a massive backlog of probation violations. The initiative is aimed in part at getting the MDC’s population under control.
Rustin emerged from a pool of 22 applicants during a national search to replace Ron Torres as boss of the MDC.
Torres was moved from the jail as its problems continued to mount and information about a number of family members working under his chain of command became public. Torres, who kept his $100,000-plus salary, is now the county’s liaison to the criminal justice system.
Rustin will make an annual salary of $110,000.
“Change is never easy; it’s always difficult,” said Deputy County Manager for Public Safety Tom Swisstack. “Finding someone who may have experienced the same kinds of problems that other facilities across the country are experiencing and how he dealt with those was very critical.”
Rustin, Swisstack said, “demonstrated leadership through difficult times” in Pennsylvania.
Stephen Perkins, president of the union that represents MDC guards, said the union looks forward to working with Rustin, who union members hope will be more hands-on than Torres was.
“Ron was never here, for one thing,” Perkins said. “But we’ve spoken to some of our union counterparts in Pittsburgh, and they had good things to say about (Rustin.) So we’re very hopeful.”
Copyright 2011 Albuquerque Journal