In Lockup Five Nights, Santa Monica Man Hadn't Memorized Friends' Phone Numbers

Officials in other counties, however, say they're having no such problem and have found easy ways to provide phone numbers to everybody in jail.

An Orange County jail spokeswoman, for example, says that a list of bond companies, with phone numbers, is posted in both the booking area and in the common rooms used by inmates. She says the bond agencies must contact a company that contracts with the county, and they pay to get on the list that goes inside the jail.

PHOTO BY NANETTE GONZALES

Stephen Petrick will always carry phone numbers in his pocket.

Related Content

• John Zawahri Left Letter Expressing Sorrow Before SMC Rampage
  June 13, 2013
• 3 West L.A. Gangsters Charged in Santa Monica Shooting
  June 13, 2013
• 3 West L.A. Gangsters Arrested in Santa Monica Murder Case
  June 12, 2013
• 1 Dead in Santa Monica Gang Attack Near SMC
  June 11, 2013
• Levy Ernesto Rodriguez Sought in Santa Monica Shooting
  June 11, 2013

More About

• Stephen Petrick
• Jeff Stanley
• Santa Monica
• Criminal Sentencing and Punishment
• Crime and Law

In San Diego County, the Sheriff's Department used to provide inmates with the Yellow Pages but recently replaced the bulky phone book with an alphabetical listing of bail bonds companies provided to the jail by a local association of bail agencies.

"L.A. County does not post a list," says bondsman Stanley, "and I have no idea why. L.A. County marches to its own beat."

In addition, it strikes people such as Stanley, Lim and Petrick as strange that, in this technologically advanced and cellphone-reliant age, there is no easy way to make a collect call to a cellphone, particularly as the number of people without a land line increases. According to a 2010 Centers for Disease Control report, 25 percent of U.S. households don't even have a land line.

Stanley's is one of them.

"Many families like myself don't have a land line," he says, "and I think it's about time they moved into the 21st century."

Dorothy Cukier of Global Tel Link, a company that specializes in prison phones and operates the system in L.A. County, told the Weekly via email that collect calls in general — whether they originate from a jail or not — are limited to land lines. The company is allowed to jump in when inmates call a cellphone, offering the recipient of the call a chance to sign up for a service, AdvancePay, which lets calls to cellphones go through, by using a credit card. Another option, Cukier says, is for inmates to put money into an inmate debit account, out of which they can pay to call a phone that does not ordinarily accept collect calls.

Petrick says he was never offered an inmate debit account and has no idea whether a Global Tel Link agent jumped in to ask the friend Petrick had called if he'd accept the charge. All Petrick knows is that he couldn't get through to his friend.

Two months after Petrick finally arranged bail and got out of jail, he settled his criminal case, which prosecutors apparently agreed wasn't as serious as the initial charges implied. He pled guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment. He received three years of probation and, ironically, credit for time served for his five nights missing in the jail system.

As for the future, Petrick says, "The first thing I'm going to do is carry a bail bondsman's number with me at all times and memorize it in case there's some fluke and I get in trouble again. I don't want to ever get stuck in jail like that again. It was a nightmare."