Heroin packaged for sale found during last week’s raid.

PREVIOUSLY

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Lost Coast Outpost readers have been understandably agog at the fact that two Fortuna men who were the subject of a months-long Eureka Police Department investigation, and who were arrested during a raid with over a pound of black tar heroin in their possession, packaged for sale, were nonetheless freely released on their own recognizance almost immediately after they were booked into the Humboldt County Jail last week.

They weren’t held for arraignment. They didn’t even have to post bail. They were simply freely released onto the street, hopefully to appear for a future court date.

How did that happen?

As it turns out, it probably shouldn’t have. The two men are free today because of a failure of communication between the Eureka Police Department (the arresting agency) and the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office (which runs the jail). If either had known what the other had intended, the suspected heroin dealers would likely still be in jail.

To understand why this is so, you have to go back a few years. Ever since jail overpopulation became an issue in Humboldt County, the Sheriff’s Office has used an intake assessment procedure to determine whether or not to hold a person in jail, or simply to tell them to show up for a court date in the future. The idea was that there was only room in the jail to hold people who posed an immediate threat to public safety, or who would be likely to skip out on court. The system for determining who to hold and who to release was worked out between the Sheriff’s Office, the courts and the Humboldt County Probation Department. These days, the Sheriff’s Office uses a tool called the Ohio Risk Assessment System – a sort of standardized test – to help determine whether to hold someone, or whether to book and release them.

According to several people familiar with it, the risk assessment system looks at factors like a suspect’s criminal record, the violence of the alleged offense, his length of his residence in a place, his ownership of weapons and others to determine whether he is a flight risk. The two heroin suspects passed these tests with no problem, and so the risk assessment system indicated that they should be released.

However, this isn’t the only factor that the Sheriff’s Office uses to determine whether or not a suspect should be held, according to Sheriff Mike Downey. In an interview last week, he told the Outpost that the jail will honor requests from police officers to hold a suspect regardless of where they fall on the risk assessment system. The idea is that police departments can keep suspects in important cases locked up to await arraignment, even if they are nonviolent and show no risk of flight.

“I’ve actually received calls from chiefs within the county to hold a person, and we’ve held that person,” Downey said. “Why it wasn’t utilized in this case — I couldn’t answer that.”

The reason seems to be that the Eureka Police Department was as astonished as the general public at the idea that the risk assessment system tool wouldn’t trap people found with such a large amount of a dangerous illegal drug. EPD officers didn’t request a special jail hold on their suspects because it never occurred to them that the suspects might be released.

“I think that if you ask the average officer what bail would be on a pound of black tar heroin, we’d think it would be in the million dollar range,” Eureka Police Chief Andy Mills told the Outpost last week.

Mills listed a couple of lessons that might be taken from this incident. For one, he said, he’d like to get access to the nuts and bolts of the Ohio Risk Assessment System, as the Sheriff’s Office uses it – just to learn, in detail, what it considers a releasable person and what it does not. Secondly, perhaps the system can be tweaked. “If the tool needs to be adjusted for people with 1.1 pounds of tar heroin, then let’s adjust the tool,” Mills said.

Whatever the case, it’s a mistake that is unlikely to be repeated. Mills – who affirmed that he has requested and received special jail holds in the past – said that he and Downey will certainly be talking about this case, and seeking a better solution, next time they talk.

Pedro Sierra Pozos (left) and Gilberto Giron Ramirez, suspects booked and released in last week’s heroin bust.