Sheriff's office unlocks new jail facility

  Instead of a normal ribbon-cutting ceremony, the new Yuma County Sheriff's Office jail annex stayed in theme Thursday when a pair of leg irons strung across the rails of the front steps were unlocked.

  Later, county officials, sheriff's office employees and several members of the public who came to the event all went to jail - for a tour of the new facility, that is.

  The gathering marked the official grand opening of the newly constructed Yuma County Sheriff's Office jail annex, about 16 months after builders broke ground for the project at the site southwest of 1st Street and 3rd Avenue.

  After remarks from county leaders, including Sheriff Ralph Ogden and County Administrator Robert Pickels, the attendees to the ceremony enjoyed refreshments and were given guided tours through the new building in small groups by deputies.

  "What is unique is we have temporary holding cells down here where we can hold about 100 inmates if the need ever arises," said Lt. David Reyes, speaking to the group he was guiding about the quarter-mile of tunnels that connect the annex to other YCSO facilities.

  An underground tunnel complex under 3rd Avenue connects the annex to the current jail, the Justice Center and the Historic Courthouse.

  The tunnels allow the sheriff's office to securely move inmates between the jail, the annex, the Justice Center and the courthouse without any interaction with the general public.

  The new two-story $11.6-million jail annex consists of an 81-bed detention facility divided into three holding chambers with 28, 28 and 25 individual cells in each. One of the holding chambers is equipped with a classroom and three negative pressure cells for housing inmates with conditions such as tuberculosis.

  Also located on the first floor is the main lobby, visitation rooms for family and attorneys, and the master control  room.

  The second floor of the annex, which was built on time and under budget, is dedicated to administrative offices, storage and communication and computer management systems.

  The basement, which was to originally be underground parking and a maintenance shop, is now going to be used for non-active evidence storage and possibly an underground shooting range at some point in the future.

  "We currently send deputies out to Adair range to do their shooting, which may not sound all that bad, but it is a 40-mile round trip," Ogden said. "An underground shooting range will save us a lot of manpower, time and money."

  Reyes explained that rising building costs forced the sheriff's office to change its plan to stay within budget, which meant getting rid of the parking and the vehicle repair shop.

  "When the economy changed, we decided to only build what we really needed, and that was the jail," Ogden said.

  Since the vehicle maintenance shop shop was dropped from the jail annex's plans, Ogden said it has been relocated to property the sheriff's office purchased on 14th Street.

  "We bought a lot with a shop already on it. It was a lot cheaper then building one."

  Ogden said no date for occupancy has been set because the sheriff's office is still waiting to receive its certification of occupancy, which could be within a few days.

  "We will be prepared to move over within a month of that. But we may not have to move inmates over there for a long time."

  Ogden explained that when the sheriff's office first started planning to build the annex in 2001, projections estimated that inmate populations would exceed the the capacity of the current 676-bed jail sometime between last year and now.

  But with 585 inmates currently incarcerated in the jail, Ogden said, the new annex now gives the sheriff's office more space when it eventually becomes needed.

  "This definitely puts us ahead of the game."

  In the meantime, Ogden said, the annex can house prisoners with special needs and be a place to conduct rehabilitative programs for inmates prior to their release.

  Once the sheriff's office begins using the new annex, Ogden said, the department will need to hire and train new detention officers, but that isn't something that will be happening anytime soon.

  "I need to balance when I'm going to hire and train those officers to when I'm going to need those beds. We want to be fiscally conscious and it would be a disservice to bring the officers online before we begin using the facility."

  Ogden added that another feature of the annex is that the master control systems are redundant with the current jail facility.

  "It is a safety feature so that if anything were to happen in either building, the controls could be switched to the other building."

  The Yuma County Board of Supervisors approved the sale of $10 million in bonds in 2007 to raise funds for construction of the annex. The extra $1.6 million was paid out of the jail district budget.

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James Gilbert can be reached at jgilbert@yumasun.com or 539-6854.