translation:

Sorry people I was smoking the Crack we took off the inmates yesterday...

DoubleFeed, what's the big deal?  Something like this seems to happen some time or the other in just about every city or county.  This often happens after the feds make demands for less crowded conditions or some other hard or expensive to meed demand.  Also, it's a great way to get a budget increase for the department.  Here, the city didn't budget enough money to man the city jail.  So, you're the police chief, what are you going to do?  You go to the media to get the problem known so the people will put pressure on the city council.  I don't know how often it's just rheteric or just a way to demand more money, but if you don't have the money, you don't have it.  What's the Sheriff supposed to do, pay the bills out of his pocket?z

DoubleFeed, pay attention to local politics.  It happens.  I wouldn't call it routine, but I've seen it mentioned locally (as in about a 100 radius that the local paper usually covers) more times that I can remember.  Just think about it.  It's a very effective way for the Sheriff to get his budget increased.  I don't know in this case if it's for a good reason or not, but I've seen in many cases where it was.  It's like the Army complaining about not having ammo to train, or the Air Force complaining about not having enough manpower to mow the greens on their golf courses (the last one was a joke...).  I can even remember the Sheriff here letting people go in the late 1930's, because he couldn't afford to feed them.  It's an old trick to get the voter's attention.  Do you really think the Sheriff wanted to take the risk of letting that many criminals out?  If one of them hurt someone or commited a different high-profile crime, he would take some serious heat in the media and from the voters.z

I forgot to add a few things.  DoubleFeed, threatening to do it and doing it are two very different things.  Also, this Sheriff was threatening to only let-out people who were innocent, but awaiting trial.  Also, I just did a search for "Los Angeles County sheriff release budget" and turned-up a more than a few matches.  Not just threats, but actual releases have happened before in LA county.z