> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Court costs criminal Consolidation consumes Santa Monica’s time and money - URL: https://www.smdp.com/court-costs-criminal-consolidation-consumes-santa-monicas-time-and-money/ - Published: 2006-08-02T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T19:07:15.000Z - Author: Kevin Herrera - Tags: Crime, Santa Monica Airport, #archive-import, Homeless *KATZ, from page 1 City absorbs county costs* CITY HALL — The county court system’s financial woes have partially been solved at local taxpayers’ expense. By consolidating the county court system, the state has saved millions in operating costs at the expense of local governments, including Santa Monica, which must not only deal with the inconvenience of shuttling in-house attorneys and detectives to the Airport Courthouse daily, but pay for their gas and office space too. In the two years since criminal cases were moved from Santa Monica to the Airport Courthouse, nearly $100,000 has been spent by the City Attorney’s Office and the Santa Monica Police Department to accommodate the change. And those costs don’t include the estimated tens of thousands of dollars in staff time and inefficiencies in the system. Justice has been taxed as well by the elimination of criminal proceedings in Santa Monica, according to officials at the City Attorney’s Office and the judge who oversees all misdemeanors, arraignments and pre-trial motions filed in the city. “Moving the city’s criminal proceedings to the Airport Courthouse was a very significant loss to this community for a number of reasons, the first being that it is very difficult for many defendants and others participating in those cases,such as a witness, to get to that courthouse,” said City MAKING THE TREK Instead of reporting to the Santa Monica Courthouse, located next door to City Hall, deputy city attorneys and police officers must drive the congested 405 Freeway, spending anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes stuck in traffic before reaching the Airport Courthouse. That cuts into time spent working on other cases, said Chief Deputy City Attorney Betty Haviland, who runs the criminal division. “We used to walk across the street,” Haviland said. “Now it’s like a 25-mile round trip. Our attorneys have to come in at 7 (a.m.) now instead of 7:30 (a.m.) to prepare.” Many charged with a crime, particularly homeless individuals, have trouble finding transportation to court. As a result, they fail to appear,forcing a warrant to be issued for their arrest. Witnesses and victims also are inconvenienced, officials said. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Bernard Kamins, who handles Santa Monica’s misdemeanors, said he has seen a significant drop in the number of defendants who show up for their day in court. On a good day he said he can expect to see maybe five out of dozens scheduled to appear. Kamins said he has spoken with many defendants who are homeless who said they have walked more than 10 miles and slept outside of the courthouse the night before their appearance, all so they wouldn’t be late and face even more charges. “I think the cost cutting looked great on paper, but in reality, it doesn’t save money, at least for Santa Monica,” said Kamins, who handles between 80 and 180 cases a day. The decision to consolidate county courts surfaced more than four years ago when the state was experiencing a severe budget deficit and legislators were forced to make cuts. Officials with the Los Angeles Superior Court had to lay off hundreds of employees and close 29 courtrooms county-wide. Three courthouses, including one in Malibu and Culver City, were closed completely. At that time, security costs also were closely scrutinized. During that audit, several lockups, including the one at the Santa Monica Courthouse, were found to be too small or antiquated to operate efficiently enough to justify their cost. “It simply became too expensive to run many of them and if we eliminated them, we were looking at cost savings that were pretty significant,” said Allan Parachini, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Superior Court system. In the case of Santa Monica, the county court system was spending $769,000 a year to run the lockup, where defendants in custody of the LA County Sheriff’s Department are held until their cases are heard before a judge.Parachini said the lockup was too small and required too many deputies to run it properly. At the same time, the newly-constructed Airport Courthouse, located near the Los Angeles International Airport, was up and running with a state-of-the-art security system and larger lockup. > “It’s also more difficult for the city to handle its work there.That’s a real minimal consideration compared to the impact on those participating directly in a case.” — Attorney Marsha Moutrie “The profusion of gang-related violent crime cases has made security in the courtrooms and courthouses an even more important priority than in the past,” Parachini said. With that in mind, Santa Monica’s criminal cases, along with all felonies, were moved to the Airport Courthouse, leaving only civil matters behind. At the time of the move, many judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys expressed their displeasure, saying the consolidation would prove to be expensive for Santa Monica. At the city’s expense Now, more than two years into the consolidation, the true cost is beginning to surface. To operate an office at the Airport Courthouse for one year, the City Attorney’s Office spends $24,360, according to Iris Stein, an office administrator in City Hall. Since the move, the City Attorney’s Office has spent $960 a month on rent for an office at the Airport Courthouse; $200 a month for telephone service and access to the Internet, and another $870 a month to pay for transportation of six attorneys, Stein said. That is in addition to the $6,083 in start-up costs, which included $898 to transfer files and $185 for a lock smith, Stein said. The Santa Monica Police Department also has seen an increase in expenses. Before the consolidation, the SMPD was paying the LA County Sheriff’s Department $65,820 for the transporting of those in custody. That figure jumped to $83,849 in 2005, and is expected to rise to $91,472 this year, said SMPD Lt. Frank Fabrega. That’s not including the cost of assigning two officers to the jail custody detail, something the SMPD didn’t do before the consolidation. Fabrega said the SMPD also had to pay to have a van retrofitted so officers could transport both male and female detainees at the same time, where as in the past, officers simply had to walk those in custody over to the courthouse, a trip that took minutes. THE WAITING GAME Safety also is in jeopardized by the consolidation, Fabrega said. Whereas before, when an incident occurred and backup officers needed to respond, Fabrega said the SMPD could easily deploy officers sitting in court waiting to testify. Now those officers are stuck at the Airport Courthouse. Detectives also were able to go to the Santa Monica Courthouse to file cases with the LA District Attorney’s Office before the consolidation. Now they must travel to the Airport Courthouse. “What was once a 45-minute process has turned into almost a three-hour ordeal, and that cuts into the time these detectives could be out solving other crimes,” Fabrega said. “This not only affects Santa Monica, but other law enforcement agencies.” Detectives also used to be able to work at their desks and walk just a few hundred feet to the courthouse minutes before they were scheduled to testify. Now they are relegated to sitting at the Airport Courthouse for hours waiting for the court proceedings to move forward. Parachini said judges presiding over the court consolidation understood the problems it would cause for municipalities. “We feel your pain, but we hope you feel ours,” Parachini said. “It was a very troubling process and a frustrating one because there was no decision we could make that would ease the lives of law enforcement agencies. But at the same time, we were staring in the face the need to close facilities and lay off employees. We needed every penny of those security savings to be able to continue offering full services to residents.” Since 2000, county courts are no longer controlled by the county Board of Supervisors. The courts answer to the Administrative Office of the Courts, based in San Francisco. Each court system is given a budget that it must operate within. Decisions to cut spending are made locally by presiding judges. Those judges also have the power to reverse the damage done, however, Parachini, speaking on their behalf, said that even with more money coming from the state, most lockups will not be reopened because of their age and lack of new technology to make deputies’ jobs safer. “Funding for public agencies has been in danger for a long time and what’s unfortunate, it puts agencies in a position where, if it makes a decision to cut back, that may well create a hardship for others,”Parachini said.“Unfortunately,we’re all in the same boat. There’s just too little budget money available.” *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 2, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/080206.pdf?ref=smdp.com)