ORANGE COUNTY, CA – Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes spoke out about his concerns regarding a recent court order instructing the Orange County Jail to reduce the inmate population by 50% in light of the pandemic.
“These aren’t low-lying offenders, these are people in for very serious offenses: murder, attempted murder, domestic violence,” the sheriff said. https://t.co/XeHLo3Dn9j
— WBRC FOX6 News (@WBRCnews) December 15, 2020
ORANGE COUNTY, CA – Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes spoke out about his concerns regarding a recent court order instructing the Orange County Jail to reduce the inmate population by 50% in light of the pandemic.
And what the sheriff said of the debacle is that the local public “should be in a panic.”
Apparently a California court has deemed the Orange County Jail to be overcrowded in respect to maintaining a semblance of pandemic observations.
But Sheriff Barnes says that there’s more to worry about rather than a possible caveats associated with a facility that is perceived as crowded during a pandemic:
“The public should be in a panic, and they should be concerned about this release.”
This endeavor could see more than 1,800 inmates get released, some of whom could very well be violent. Sheriff Barnes says that if the jail abides by the court order, then the public would then be at risk from something more than just the virus:
“These aren’t low-lying offenders, these are people in for very serious offenses: murder, attempted murder, domestic violence.”
The man behind the order is Orange County Civil Court Judge, Peter Wilson, who reportedly sided with the ACLU, who filed the lawsuit with concern about inmates spreading coronavirus in congregated living areas.
When Judge Wilson reviewed the case, he proclaimed that the jail isn’t poised to provide proper social distancing with the number of inmates currently being housed.
The judge ordered a 50% reduction in the inmate population, translating to a total of 1,858 inmates released. Yet, according to Sheriff Barnes, only about 700 inmates are what the CDC would consider to be high-risk for the virus:
“Of just those who are medically vulnerable based on CDC guidelines, that’s 700 inmates in our care. There are 59 of them in for murder, another 39 for attempted murder, and 90 of them in for child molestation and a litany of other violent crimes.”
The jail isn’t currently operating at full capacity either. Sheriff Barnes stated that more than 1,300 inmates have already been released since the pandemic was declared earlier this year.
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