The man resisted arrest.
After getting him into his patrol car, Van Hoose radioed the Lake County Detention Center, where he got the word: No vacancy.
When he finally did, the judge ordered him to be locked up.
“She puts him in jail,” Van Hoose said. “I call the detention center and guess what? There's no room. It's a hell of a way to do business, it really is.”
One by one, the police chiefs from St. Ignatius, Ronan and Polson related similar tales to Diane Moore and Kevin Warwick on Tuesday, one of several such meetings the two have scheduled through Wednesday.
Moore and Warwick, consultants for the National Institute of Corrections, a part of the U.S. Justice Department's Federal Bureau of Prisons, are in Polson this week to evaluate the needs of the Lake County justice system at the request of Sheriff Lucky Larson.
They're listening to judges, jailers, public defenders, county attorneys, probation and law enforcement officers, doctors, mental health specialists - anyone who deals with people who have been detained.
Thursday morning at 10 on the third floor of the Lake County Courthouse, they'll recap what they've learned and listen to the public. Within two weeks, they'll have a report to Larson assessing the needs in Lake County.
The problem, Polson Police Chief Doug Chase told Moore and Warwick, is “Growth, growth and more growth. ... Somewhere the county has to come to grips with the growth we're experiencing.”
Chase told the consultants about detaining people, who had been cited for offenses, in the back of his patrol car for three hours before letting them go during Flathead Lake Hoopfest, because there wasn't room at the detention center.
Dan Wadsworth, chief of police in Ronan, said he has authorized his officers to travel as far as Arlee - a 60-mile roundtrip that takes them away from answering calls - to escort people home if there isn't room in the detention center.
But what, he wondered, if they live farther away?
“You get an out-of-town driver who gets a DUI, they've got no one who can come pick them up, you can't hold them, they don't have money for a motel, and you turn them loose on the street. It will be one hell of a large lawsuit if the jail can't take them, we can't keep them and they end up freezing to death.”
Van Hoose said he and his officers have driven people who have been arrested but have nowhere else to go if the jail can't take them, to the Wye in Missoula and pointed them toward the city's homeless shelters.
“I don't know what else to do,” Van Hoose said. “There are no soup kitchens in Lake County.”
Moore and Warwick will hear about the county justice system's needs Thursday.
“What we do is come in and take the approach that the people who work in the county are the experts,” Moore said. “We give an outside perspective to the jurisdiction, and offer recommendations. We don't tell them what to do, we suggest where resources could best be spent.”
Moore, from Nashville, Tenn., is assistant to the deputy commissioner for the Tennessee Department of Corrections. Warwick, who worked in county jails for 20 years, is president of Alternative Solutions Associates of Chicopee, Mass.
“Every situation is different,” Warwick said. “There's not a blueprint for fixing things.”
Their services are paid for at the federal level.
“The solution is not always in a building,” Moore said. “But there is clearly overcrowding here. The jail is old, and that can create problems in and of itself.”
“The space clearly isn't meeting the needs in the long term for the county,” Warwick added.
The Lake County Detention Center has room for 42 adults and two juveniles, according to Sheriff's Capt. Ed Todd.
The jail officially turned away 132 people who would have otherwise been detained in 2006, but Todd said the actual number is much higher because only people brought in and then turned away are recorded.
Chase and Todd emphasized that the detention center always makes room for anyone arrested for domestic abuse or other violent crimes, however.
“We'll work with the judges to kick someone loose who is in for a lesser crime,” Todd said.
“Lake County has simply outgrown its current courthouse and jail,” the Lake County Justice Center Planning Committee, chaired by Doug Wold, said in a news release. “As a result, the Sheriff's Department has hundreds of unserved warrants, civil litigants must often wait more than a year for a trial date, and the offices of the County Attorney, Clerk of Court and Justice Court are seriously understaffed compared to their counterparts statewide, but current space restrictions limit the ability to address these problems.”
Justice evaluation
National Institute of Corrections consultants will present their preliminary evaluation of the Lake County justice system and hear input from the public at 10 a.m. Thursday in the large conference room on the third floor of the Lake County Courthouse.
National Institute of Corrections consultants will present their preliminary evaluation of the Lake County justice system and hear input from the public at 10 a.m. Thursday in the large conference room on the third floor of the Lake County Courthouse.
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