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LOS ANGELES () — Los Angeles County announced what they call a bold new initiative, in September of last year, to streamline case resolution and create a more innovative court.
That will be a hard task unless the county improves dramatically in one basic area — getting the accused to their scheduled court appearance.
L.A. County sheriff’s deputies transport, on average, 2,000 people every day to 37 courthouses and seven custody facilities. For some inmates, their day will begin at 2 a.m. with a bus ride from Pitchess Detention Center to the Inmate Reception Center in downtown L.A., where they will wait with others from Men’s Central Jail or Twin Towers before being bused to various courts across the county. It is a logistical challenge to overcome every day that court is in session. But in the eyes of some, the county is failing.
“The miss out issue we’re having right now is just a disaster,” said Karl Fenske, the Public Defender Union Steward of Local 148.
Eyewitness News was given the custody list of a local public defender who asked to remain anonymous. Over a five-day period, on one day, 27 of his 42 clients in custody missed their court date. On another 16 of 31 missed. Then 27 of 47 — 12 of 30 on a different day and 28 of 45 on another day. And that is just one public defender’s case load; other attorneys 7 spoke to say it’s happening all over the county.
“I have never ever seen defendants not making it to court on this volume for excuses that just don’t add up,” said Lou Shapiro, a private defense attorney.
Fenske adds: “The purpose of people being detained in custody or having bail amounts so they can get out, is mainly for them to appear in court. And that’s not working right now.”
The L.A. County Sheriff’s Office estimates it needs a fleet of 80 buses to handle the daily workload of court appearances. When Sheriff Robert Luna took office in December 2022, he said that number had dwindled to about 16 working buses.
“Any time you run a large organization like the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department…you’ve gotta really look at, one, the equipment you have…things like buses, helicopters, cars,” Luna said. “You have to have a replacement plan for all those in order to be effective. Unfortunately, when I got here, there wasn’t that.”
In September 2023 the Board of Supervisors approved the purchase of 20 new buses. In February of last year, the County Department of Justice approved another 14. But when the new buses are delivered, older buses are often removed from service which makes the process of rebuilding the fleet difficult. If the buses ordered stay on schedule, it will still take until 2029 before the fleet will have 73 new buses.
“It’s just this is vicious cycle of excuses of people not making it to court and causing jams and backlogs in the system. That is already overwhelmed. We didn’t need this. It was bad enough before this problem came up. This is only compounding the issues,” Shapiro said.
The bus shortage is only one reason inmates don’t make it to court. Some simply refuse to leave their cell, which is why deputies now record that interaction and send it to the court. Sheriff Luna is also trying to create other technological advances, like remote appearances, that will streamline court appearances because everyone involved agrees, no one should be in jail, longer than necessary.
“The jail is not a place that’s safe for anybody.” Fenske said. “Every day that somebody’s still there is another day that something bad could happen for our clients, for people that don’t really have huge cases. They just don’t have the ability to get out.”
And Sheriff Luna doesn’t want anyone overstaying either.
“When somebody shouldn’t be there, they shouldn’t be there. And if we can release them, whether it’s through diversion or their court date or the judge has said ‘hey, you can go’…we want to get people out as quickly as possible,” the sheriff said.
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