Emergency Would Open Balboa Park as Jail Site

The city of San Diego could use a vacant Navy Hospital building in Balboa Park for a temporary jail only if the City Council concludes that the county’s jail space shortage constitutes an emergency, the city attorney’s office said Monday.

Citing an Oct. 19 memo from Deputy City Atty. Harold Valderhaug to the county grand jury, City Atty. John Witt noted that “a jail or similar facility is not a legal use of dedicated public park property,” but that courts have upheld unusual uses of parkland in “emergency situations.” Valderhaug wrote the memo when the grand jury was studying possible temporary jail sites.

Examples of such emergency situations include the use of San Francisco parks for temporary housing after the 1906 earthquake and the use of a portion of Griffith Park in Los Angeles for temporary housing during an extreme housing shortage following World War II.

County officials told the council’s Public Facilities and Recreation Committee on Jan. 27 that the jail space crunch forces them to release 2,300 arrestees each month. Backers of a ballot measure seeking a 0.5% increase in the sales tax to finance jail construction say that 100 people arrested each day for crimes including drug sales, drunk driving and assault are released because there is no room for them in county jails.

Opinion on Jail Sites

The council’s Public Services and Safety Committee requested Witt’s opinion for a discussion of temporary jail sites scheduled for Wednesday. Suggestions for possible sites have ranged from the former San Diego Police Department headquarters on Market Street to the former Sanyo factory on Ruffin Road in Kearny Mesa.

The idea of using the Navy Hospital building, one of three buildings that are being turned over to the city as the Navy occupies its new, adjacent hospital, has drawn the ire of Balboa Park advocates, who told the Public Facilities and Recreation Committee last month that they would oppose it.

In an interview, Witt said the council would have to conclude that there is “an immediate threat to the public’s health, safety and welfare,” in order to declare an emergency. But Witt said he did not know what specific facts would be needed to reach that conclusion.

Witt’s memo says emergency use of parkland would be possible only under the following conditions: if the use is temporary, if a “bona fide emergency exists” and if “the facts indicate that the only facilities available to alleviate the emergency situation are located in a dedicated park.”

But if all the facts taken together constitute only a “significant problem”--as opposed to an emergency--it would be difficult or impossible to justify using the parkland for a jail, Witt’s memo said.