By Ryan Sabalow
Record Searchlight
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — State Sen. Doug LaMalfa has introduced a bill that would require state prison officials to notify local authorities 10 business days before an inmate is transferred into a state prison camp.
The Richvale Republican’s bill, which goes before the Senate’s Public Safety Committee on Tuesday, comes in response to a Record Searchlight investigation published this spring that found one in five inmates at the state’s 41 fire camps have been convicted of violent crimes, including attacks on officers.
The investigation revealed escapes from the camp are common and have sometimes ended with violent consequences, including a fatal shooting of a San Francisco police officer in 2006 by an inmate who walked away from a camp in Humboldt County.
And in 2010, Jeffory Shook, an inmate who had twice been shot over the years while resisting arrest and whom Placer County’s sheriff once called “one of the most violent and dangerous suspects we’ve encountered in a long time,” escaped from a prison camp in Nevada County, leading officers on a chase to Siskiyou County where he was recaptured by SWAT team members.
LaMalfa said Thursday he hopes the proposed bill will allow local sheriffs or district attorneys to be able to weigh in on whether an inmate should be placed in one of the non-fenced minimum-security camps. He said that too often inmates with violent pasts have been put in the camps without consideration of their criminal histories, something local law enforcement authorities know well.
“We’re looking for things we can do to tweak the system to make it have a little more sunshine on how the process works,” he said.
LaMalfa said the bill would be nonbinding, meaning the county officials wouldn’t be able to override decisions made by state prison guards.
He said the bill faces an uphill battle, since those on the committee are hesitant to do anything “that keeps people in prison or keeps them in for longer.”
Indeed, the state’s fire camp system is in jeopardy of seeing drastic cuts to its staffing levels, due to budget cuts and a plan that shifts thousands of inmates from state to county custody.
California prison and fire officials told lawmakers at a hearing in Sacramento last month at least a third of the state’s inmate fire crews might be disbanded by 2013 if county jailers are unable provide the state with enough prisoners to keep them full.
Inmates are the state’s only firefighting hand crews. The orange-suit clad prisoners use hand tools and chain saws to cut fire lines and mop up contained fires.
The inmates save the state about $100 million each year, since without cheap inmate labor the state would have to pay professionals to do the job.
Under the state’s inmate prisoner shift plan, which took effect in October as a budget-cutting measure, counties have been asked to provide inmates to the state’s fire camps.
There are a handful of fire camps in the north state including Sugar Pine Conservation Camp in Bella Vista.
At a hearing in December, county government lobbyists and members of the state’s sheriffs association said many cashstrapped counties are balking at the proposal since local jailers aren’t getting enough cash from the state to cover the costs of putting local inmates in the camps.
Sandy Tuvera, the mother of Bryan Tuvera, the San Francisco police officer who was shot and killed by the escaped camp inmate, said she supports LaMalfa’s bill since it would be a simple and cheap way for prison officials to get more background information about potential camp workers. But she said she doesn’t think it goes far enough.
She said too many inmates over the years have been declared as safe by prison officials even though they have violent criminal histories, something that’s only increased under the state’s prison “realignment” plan.
She notes the man who shot her son, 33-year-old Marlon Ruff, had been convicted of robbing and beating an armored car guard unconscious with a handgun, yet he still got clearance to be placed in a camp.
“Who gives them the right to do that? Who makes the decision?” she said.
The officer who arrested Ruff, Gregg Oglesby, a senior detective at the violent crimes unit of the Daly City Police Department, applauded the bill.
He said he was stunned Ruff had been placed in a camp, and was more appalled no one from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation called him after he escaped to find out where he might have gone.
“There are a number of things that were messed up with this whole scenario,” he said.
LaMalfa’s proposed bill would require notice on placement of inmates at state prison camps.
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