Jail overcrowding leading to repeat criminals
A robbery suspect is back behind bars after skipping out on bail then leading police on a chase while firing a gun into the air, but we found out he should have never been out of jail in the first place.
The judge Friday admitted 24-year-old Christian Cervantes was let out on the wrong amount of bail; $75,000 instead of $750,000. It was a mistake we began asking questions about earlier this week and one the judge called a clerical error during a hearing Friday.
Cervantes is now being held on $1 million bail while he faces charges from two run-ins with the law.
He’s one of several criminals we’ve found who is committing crimes while out on bail or after being released early, an alarming trend local law enforcement says there’s nothing they can do about, except continue arresting the same people over and over again.
“There has to be a way of stopping this, I’m 77 years old and it is scary for me to live in this part of the world where there is so much crime going on all of the time,” said Desert Hot Springs resident Glenna Hall.
Our cameras caught up with 24-year old Jody Noel after he allegedly robbed a Walmart and hid in a Palm Springs home. It ended with Noel under arrest after a six hour stand off with police. Noel at the time was out on bail. Just 10 days before, Noel was arrested at the Palm Springs International Airport with a loaded gun. After making bail a second time, Noel was arrested again less than two weeks later, this time for car-jacking.
24-year-old Christian Cervantes was first arrested for robbing a gardener, two ice cream vendors and leading police on a chase that ended in a crash in Palm Desert. After he made bail on a clerical error, Cervantes fled from police after he failed to show up to court.
Self-proclaimed international jewel thief Doris Payne served time in jail, admitting to stealing a 3 1/2 carat diamond ring from a Palm Desert jewelry store. It’s a crime that could have got her up to 6 years in jail but she served less than nine months because of jail overcrowding. Now she is a wanted criminal again for violating the terms of her probation.
So how do these people keep re-offending in such a short period of time? The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department says part of the problem is jail overcrowding. It was a law approved by Governor Jerry Brown in 2010 aimed at reducing overcrowding in California’s prisons. But not only did Assembly Bill 109 send thousands of state prisoners back to county jails, it has also led to the early release of thousands of convicts.
“They just arrested this person two weeks ago and here they are now having to deal with them again, it’s frustrating especially for the victims as well. There are people that are being victimized that probably wouldn’t have been otherwise because there is just no means to keep people that need a deterrent in jail a little bit longer and off the street right now,” said Riverside County Sheriff Captain Kevin Vest.
Vest says the new jail in Indio will help, but that isn’t set to open until the end of 2016.
“Right now there is not a whole lot of deterrent. If you are only spending a week in jail or two weeks in jail and just get out and go right back to the same group and same activities that you were doing before,” said Vest.
“Whenever the same guys bounce back again and again next time, I’m afraid someone will be killed,” said Hall.
