Twin Towers Jail Will Open Jan. 25, Block Says

After sitting empty for more than a year because of budget problems, the Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles will open Jan. 25, Sheriff Sherman Block said Friday.

Block announced the long-overdue opening of the $337-million facility, intended to ease severe jail overcrowding, at a news conference where he also revealed that he will run for a fifth term in 1998.

He said the cost of operating the jail will be offset by about $40 million per year that Los Angeles County will receive for housing Immigration and Naturalization Service and state prisoners at the facility. The income estimates are based on five-year state and federal agreements.

Both towers of the jail will be opened, with one housing county prisoners and the other being used for female inmates from the Sybil Brand Institute while that facility, built in 1961, undergoes a months-long renovation.

The Twin Towers facility, designed to hold 4,100 prisoners, will be dedicated Feb. 5, Block said.

For the past year, Block and county supervisors have said that the jail space was desperately needed but that funds to operate it were not available in the sheriff’s $1.1-billion budget. Rampant overcrowding in county jails has resulted in inmates being returned to the streets in record time.

The new jail’s opening was one of several upbeat announcements Block made at his year-end news conference.

The sheriff released data showing that crime in Los Angeles County during the first nine months of 1996 was down compared to the same period in 1995.

Homicides were down 20% and auto thefts dropped 15%. Declines were also recorded in rapes (9%), larcenies (9%), burglaries (8%) and robberies (8%). The only major crime that increased was arson, which rose 10%, Block said.

Block said the county’s lower crime rates match a national reduction in major crimes.

Block also said that a sheriff’s investigation completed this month “refuted unequivocally” allegations of CIA involvement in Los Angeles crack cocaine sales.

The alleged drug trafficking by the CIA and Nicaraguan Contra rebels was the premise of an August series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News, which reported that drug profits were used to finance Contra operations.

A 3,500-page investigation report issued by Block this month found no evidence of CIA involvement.

At the news conference, Block read a congratulatory letter from former President George Bush, once the director of the CIA, thanking him for conducting the investigation.

Block, who has been sheriff since 1982, told reporters that it has been three years since he began chemotherapy for lymphatic cancer and that his cancer is in “total remission with no signs of relapse.”

Of his plans to run for another term, Block, 72, said, “I may have a masochistic streak, but I feel there’s still work to be done.”