This time, state official was called up to Iraq just before inspection, police say

LORAIN — The calendar pages flipped past November, December and January, and still the new city jail didn’t open.

Now, the city is hoping to at least get it running as a six-hour holding facility in a couple of weeks after plumbing problems pushed the opening back until April.

The latest problem, said Lorain police Capt. Bill Engle: The state’s lone jail inspector has been called up to serve in the military, and on Friday he canceled an April 14 appointment to give the Lorain facility the all-clear.

That’s putting the squeeze on local law enforcers, who want to see the cells open for 12-day holding before the warm-weather crime spike.

“As summer comes, we’re going to be dealing with more and more issues out on the streets,” Engle said. “The county jail is going to fill up, and soon they won’t be able to take any more of our misdemeanor arrests. What are we going to do with them?”

That’s a battle his department has been fighting since the city jail closed in 2004. Engle said low-level criminals know the county jail is overcrowded and there’s no room to hold them, and police are forced to back off on arrests for “little” crimes.

“They have an attitude about it. They think they can’t go to jail as long as they don’t go too far, and that’s not right,” Engle said. “Our guys have to go out there and make arrests, or we’re going to have even bigger problems in this city.”

The city has spent about $350,000 to renovate the jail on the third floor of the police station on West Erie Avenue, setting up five cell blocks with room for 34 beds. Room has been made for a new detox cell, a large holding chamber, a meeting room where attorneys can talk to their clients and a laundry facility.

While that work has been almost complete for months now, plumbing problems have kept the jail closed, Engle said.

Officials originally wanted to open the jail in November, then pushed the date back to early January because of construction delays.

Engle said seven shower units recycled from the old jail were used in the new one, but after they were installed the hot water didn’t work.

He said the showers dated to 1973, and the city spent $21,000 to have a California company replace them with working units.

Now the plan is to try to open the jail as a temporary six-hour holding facility, which can be done without the jail inspector’s go-ahead, Engle said. The plan still has to be cleared by the state fire marshal, though, and that could take another week or two, he said.

Once the jail is fully operational, police will be able to hold prisoners there for a maximum of 12 days, and not nearly as many will have to be taken to the county jail, which Engle said will save a lot of money.

At one time, plans to build a completely new jail were scrapped because it would have cost as much as $1.5 million to run it, Engle said. Under that plan, the state would have required an on-site doctor or nurse, an outdoor recreation area for prisoners, dental and psychological care, continuing education for inmates, and drug and alcohol counseling.

When the new jail opens, it will be structured in such a way that it will only take one corrections officer at a time to run, lowering the operating cost to $541,558 a year, Engle said.

Fines on prisoners are expected to generate about $129,644 a year, and a levy passed in 1995 will raise another $83,000 a year to pay corrections workers. The city will make another $10,000 a year from pay phones that the prisoners can use, Engle said.

The annual operating budget should be about $232,914, or about 15 percent of the estimated cost of the original plans, he said.

Contact Jason Hawk at 329-7148 or jhawk@chroniclet.com.

 

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