PREVIOUSLY:

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Throughout this series, we’ve made passing mention of the fact that local police agencies make an astounding number of arrests for an activity that barely seems to be a crime at all. Jail bookings cite California Penal Code §647(f) — aka “Drunk in Public” — far more often than any other single category of crime when it comes time to throw someone in the slammer.

This fact boggles the mind somewhat, because there are very few of us who have not stumbled around Old Town or the Plaza of a Friday night in various states of intoxication and with nothing but goodwill in our hearts. How is that enough to put you away?

Answer: It’s not, quite. The Penal Code places certain conditions on what constitutes schnockeredness to the point of illegality. Either the subject is so bombed as to be “unable to exercise care for his or her own safety or the safety of others,” or else he is so gone that he “interferes with or obstructs or prevents the free use of any street, sidewalk, or other public way” — passed out, essentially, or well on the way.

So combine that bit of knowledge with yesterday’s report on the jail’s “frequent flyers” — people who got put away at double-digit rates in 2012, all of whom were there most often on drunk-in-public holding charges.

Question: Who gets arrested for being drunk in public?

Hypothesis: People who have lots of other problems, besides. Addicts. Homeless people. The mentally ill. The average everyday citizen out for a night on the town? Not so much.

If this holds, then we can look at drunk-in-public arrests as part of general clean-up-the-streets programs, especially in Eureka and Arcata. The criminal justice system is always, but not always sensibly, the agency of last resort when it comes to dealing with societal problems such as this. So it’s worthwhile to consider what these programs cost us, and who pays for it. That would be useful information if we want to consider possible efficiency improvements.

Your Lost Coast Outpost doesn’t have all the answers to the questions above, but it has some … and the some we have are a just a little bit startling. Let’s take a look at some numbers.

Looking back at Part I of this series, we remember that in 2012 (minus that damned June 26) local police agencies made 10,103 arrests that resulted in the arrestee booked into jail. In 2,433 of those cases, the only charge that held the arrested person in jail was drunk in public — not drunk in public and assault, not drunk in public and vandalism, not drunk in public and an infraction from this municipal code or that. Drunk in public — 647(f) — and drunk in public alone.

That’s 24 percent of all arrests made in Humboldt County in 2012. 

Remember that pie chart we published on Wednesday that showed the total number of arrests in the county by agency? Here’s what that looks like for these 647(f)-only arrests:

And do you remember the arrests-per-population line chart that compared the five Humboldt County cities with their own police forces? Here’s what that looks like for the 647(f)-only arrests:

Eureka and Arcata are the clear leaders when it comes to drunk in public. Together, they account for almost three-quarters of all drunk-in-public-only arrests in the county. 30.7 percent of all arrests made by the EPD are for drunk in public only. A whopping 41.9 percent of all arrests made by the Arcata Police Department are for drunk in public only.

So how much does all of this cost? The Lost Coast Outpost talked with Lt. Ed Wilkinson of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office last week, and he was able to give us some figures.

According to Wilkinson, the Sheriff’s Office calculates the cost of booking someone into jail as $196.32. So these drunk-in-public-only arrests cost the public a total of $477,646 simply for the booking process. Needless to say, that’s not taking into account the costs relating to the time it took the police officer to arrest the drunk-in-public person, nor any costs relating to the time that the arrestee spends in the drunk tank, nor for the costs, if any, for public defenders, prosecutors, the courts, probation officers — the whole creaky apparatus of the criminal justice system. It would be a tough task to add up all the total costs to the public, but it’s safe to say that the half-million dollar figure for booking alone is but a tiny fraction of the actual price tag of drunk-in-public-only arrests.

And there’s a twist, too: It may cost the public $196.32 to book someone into jail, but the police agency that does the arresting only sees a tiny fraction of that cost (and none of the subsequent criminal justice costs, of course). Wilkinson told the Outpost that the state used to reimburse county jails for their booking costs, but since that program ended local agencies and the county jail have come to their own arrangement. And under that arrangement, the police agency that arrests a suspect pays the jail a booking fee of only $11.90 — about six percent of the total booking cost. The jail itself eats the remainder.

For example: We noted yesterday that one individual, David Newton, was arrested on drunk-in-public charges 40 times in 2012. The total cost to the public of booking that person into jail those 40 times was $7,852.80. However, the police agencies that made the decision to haul Newton in on those 40 occasions paid booking fees of only $476.

In other words, there seems to be little incentive for police agencies to step back and take a deep look at who they’re arresting and whether it’s worth it, in the long run. The costs associated with these arrests — and, to repeat, the booking fees are only a fraction of the total bill to the public — those costs never show up on the agencies’ balance sheets. Someone else pays.

And so the public at large pays good money in lean times for nuisance abatement strategies that don’t, in the end, seem to be accomplishing much. “Does it really solve the problem?” Wilkinson asked the Outpost. “It doesn’t appear to be. There’s a lot of situations like that, and I don’t have the answers for them. None of us do at this point, because we keep doing what we’re doing.”

One more chart. Here’s what the five cities’ per capita arrests look like for 2012 if no one were arrested for drunk-in-public alone:

Eureka is still high, but not quite as dramatically so — 2.6 times Fortuna’s per-capita rate, rather than 3 times its rate for all arrests. Arcata, meanwhile, falls into line with its neighbors.

Food for thought!