This exclusive behind the scenes tour of the Nevada City Court House was led by Vince Seck, former Grass Valley police chief. He recounts the sheriff’s office evolution: a greeting counter, dispatch with teletype, and in 1961 the first designated night-patrol car funded by bringing in staff from Grass Valley Police. Jail operations are described as rudimentary: no alarms, improvised alert systems, daytime staff handling inmate care, with various inmate types (felons, misdemeanants, vagrants) and homeless sent elsewhere; a 1937 addition expanded jail/office space, and there were incidents such as a chain-gang attack. Courtroom and courthouse layout are summarized, including back rooms and storage, old court items, inmate transport through secure corridors, and a print shop routine that aided rapid case handling; an inspirational moment about observing officers influenced a career in law enforcement. A notable corruption/ethics thread centers on Harold Berliner and Rick Greenwood exposing Cascade’s deceptive sales practices, leading to reforms and donor-supported public amenities like Penn Valley park. Transportation and hearing logistics are touched on, with notes on in-person vs. TV/video hearings, and a historical crime reference to Barbara Graham and the last double execution at San Quentin. Vince also mentions confidential government contracts, police downsizing, and a near-complete bridge dedication for Bill Falconi, linking local infrastructure to law-enforcement context.

Full Transcript of the Video:

This is the office that has all the spiders that we all use, all the deputies came in
right here and there was a counter here to greet the people and keep them out of the
main part.

That's the sheriff's office there.

Wayne Brown was in there and we just came in
here and there was a desk, a big desk right here and to dispatch you would sit back here
and there was in one of those closets there probably a teletype sitting there going
they've been just kicking out paper you know everybody's sending you stuff.

I didn't know
how to operate that.

We had the girls in here that that took care of everything and then when
they went home at five or six then the dispatch that's on duty, the dispatcher that's on duty
has all this responsibility because there was no night patrols until about 1961.

They hired me
off of the Grass Valley Police Department to develop a night patrol and that's the first time
that the sheriff's office had a car designated as a night patrol and we parked it alongside the
building out there.

But anyway you sat in here and the jail, this has been changed a lot but there
was a jail door over there and we really didn't have any alarms or anything so we used to take a
Coke bottle and set it upside down a couple of them at the door so if anybody escaped got out of
their cell and opened that door that you hear the Coke bottles so if you happen to be dozing a
little bit it never did happen to me.

Yeah yeah there was an escape at one time but that was
before I came to work here.

Okay.

And I never had anything to do with that.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's what you
said this was all the daytime look here.

Pardon.

Yeah the daytime would take care of all this.

Okay.

Yep.

They would probably have to feed them and bathe them, take them to this bathroom and all that stuff.

You can see it, they had steam heat here.

Do they still have steam heat? No the boilers ripped out.

Oh steam
boilers.

That pipe looks new.

Probably.

Do you think these offices are new or do they actually have
other offices in there? No there's no offices up here.

Okay.

It was all all jail.

And so this whole
kind of area would have just been jail cells? Yes.

Okay.

Yeah because you could see the bars from
outside.

Those weren't windows like that.

Funny they would go to the all the trouble of taking all
those bars out.

How many people would you say were in here? Don't know.

I don't know what the capacity was.

Do you
remember how many cells? Would have been like four cells or? Never saw them.

Okay.

Never saw them.

Gotcha.

Does we have like a category of prisoners that would be in here? Yeah very well could be felons and
misdemeanors and guys just for the night because we used to if we found a person pick him up and he
had no no means of supporting himself he was a vagrant and we booked him for a vagrancy.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

How long could they stay? They usually stayed overnight.

Okay.

It was it was an effort to get
them off the street so they don't commit any crimes.

You know you booked them around dark.

We did the same in downtown grass valley.

We had cells there too.

That was kind of our system for
homeless people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Only we didn't have the homeless.

We had the DeWitt State Hospital
for people like that.

And Bench you you talked about the story of when you were walking the
chain gang in and one of them grabbed the telephone and hit you on the back of the head.

Uh-huh.

Where
would that have happened? Oh that that would have been in the new one.

Okay.

Oh so that was the new
antics.

Yeah that wasn't it.

Yeah you go up through there and and there's a a little room you go into
that and when you get all your people in there like that are going to court and lock that door
and then they will unlock the other door from the dispatches.

You know you pick up the phone and tell
them.

Okay.

And you open that and then you go right into court.

Okay because you you said they
hit you on the back of the head and that's when you told everyone to get on the ground.

Yeah well
I got them out into the hall because we were already going into the hall and one of them picked up
that phone and smacked me with it.

Yeah and uh it didn't knock me out.

No no.

Just kind of hurt me.

You're too tough for that.

Yeah.

How to get something heavier than that to hit me with.

Yeah and then I had them out and so I said okay everybody hit the ground you know and
because they're all like this.

Yep.

Cup together and so they all sat down.

They didn't make any more mistakes? No.

That's good.

Yeah anything else in here?
Um.

I live up there so I can be a job cleaning this place out huh.

And I've been living with a great free instruction.

Yeah it was actually funny though when we first walked through here with the CEO she was pretty
embarrassed when she saw all this back here because she because she had no idea that all the boxes
were back here and she was like ooh this might be important.

Yeah.

Have you ever seen this stuff?
Yeah.

I'm going to say I'm going to walk over with Layla who's like oh this could have been cells too.

I just don't recall.

Pretension.

Yeah.

I'm just a lot of the stuff so it's.

So what was up on it? I'm interested maybe if
you search on it.

I have no idea.

Okay all the DA's papers.

No idea.

I think it's from point of
view.

Do we think this is like first secure documents? What's this thing called?
No so a lot of this what she was explaining to us is like temporary storage for the DA
because the DA still has an office right over there.

Okay so this it's kind of for
keeping people out of the case.

Yeah and it's it's got an open door on the other side where you can walk in here.

Yeah one color.

There we go here.

I'll bet this is how they took the inmates to court.

The old court.

Yeah.

I made a court out of there.

Yeah this is old vial and stuff.

Just storage back here? Yeah.

You said you really never come back here.

No I got fired on eight years ago.

I cut it scum of a hand.

Yeah it's just amazing how you know things just came in at once.

Oh yeah.

How we try to save money.

She goes for that one? Oh we yes so the DA's office because kind of right around the corner.

Is it still an active DA's office? Yeah they kind of use that storage basically.

Yeah.

And that's basically where it ends and goes back into the courthouse to the.

Oh like okay.

Yeah so that feeds in basically right to the courtroom.

Yeah this is probably the assessors and
and all the administration tax.

Yeah because that's how we came in originally.

Oh through the courtroom?
Yeah because it was right past the courtroom because we had to have the jury wait for us
to walk through and everything.

So Vince you've never been up here before? Never been up here.

Nothing came in from the other way you know.

They originally added this third story on this back
jail in 37 when they did the modern and everything for more office space and everything.

I think
in the board of supervisors made back here at some point.

This used to be like old offices for
DA and assessors.

Board of supervisors and county officials.

Yeah yeah.

Print office and I've seen
that guy sit on a chair and he always sat on his foot like that you know with one foot hanging
and he could type and watch everything going on in the print shop and and be talking on the
telephone at the same time boom.

It's just like he had a serval head he was so smart and his
DA secretary had an office or a desk at the print shop and when she said Harold you got a case
in five minutes you know and he would pick up the file.

This is the file yeah
and then he'd go out the the front door of the print shop down there and he takes his hand
and as he's going up the hill like that and he would memorize that file on the way up the hill
and come up and just smash the case and come on down start printing again.

Vince you talked about when you worked for him that you looked out the windows
and then he caught you looking at the windows too much.

Oh yes yeah yeah I felt like I was
incarcerated you know this was all before I got into law enforcement or anything and I'd be running
the machine into the big cutter or the folder or something like that you know and I look out the
window watching what goes on one day I came in the windows for it painted with gray paint you know
so anyway I dug a couple little holes he went around I could see outside once in a while
and that's how I got into law enforcement is I would look out the window there and I see
old Clarence Mayn or JJ Jackson or one of those guys you know and in uniform out there talking to
people like look at that he's being paid to talk to people that's the kind of job I want so anyway
that's when I got involved in law enforcement.

Was it the Maranda rights? Yeah Berler's one
the author of the Maranda rights.

Yes yeah he uh did you know that? He made that up yeah that's in
our film.

You filmed okay yeah okay.

Oh yeah yeah he was well known you know these big realtors like
Cascade you know some of our property like Lake Wildwood and things like that and they would have
big meetings oh come to the meeting it'll give you lunch and all that and they'd have a bunch of
people and they talked to him and they'd shuck and jive him you know and so Harold investigated
that he had a investigator and his wife that he would go to these meetings and listened to all this
crap excuse me whoa and and then he would did write a beautiful report up the guy was really good
and so anyway he cured Cascade of doing that and as a matter of fact they hired
Harold Berliner to keep the whole whole darn business in in in the right you know.

So you're
saying they cured them meaning they didn't build those neighborhoods anywhere else? Oh yeah they
were doing that because they would fly this investigator Rick Greenwood to wherever these
places were going on because you know you lose control of the sales money you know and so they
kept them on the straight and narrow and I mean they got to the point where they they were looking
around I wonder if he's here today you know and this was all over the states so these were the
property developers yeah yes well likely Wildwood and as a matter of fact you know and he wasn't
Harold was very fair he wasn't he wasn't going to put him in jail he would say
gee you know this this area sure needs a nice park down here in Penn Valley a little more open space
and the park is down in Penn Valley to this day yeah yes yes yes they have that that company gave it
to the the county yeah and that was from Lake Wildwood Lake Wildwood yeah that's a good park
yes it is and that they they're always progressing when they get money you know they do some
they're always doing something new
so this is they must have brought the prisoners up the stairs I think so straight through here
straight in the judge Anderson's court yeah it's just it's just like the same setup over there yeah
they took them out of the cells and they go through that doorway I'm telling you about and into the
courts they drive them into the you know into the secure parking area oh now they do huh bring it
yeah bring them over from the other jail yeah well now they have all the criminal courtrooms are over
in the annex uh-huh well I mean yeah now from Wayne Brown I don't know how they do it yeah this
from Wayne Brown they had to drive them no into the no from oh you mean the Wayne Brown hotel now
yeah they have to drive them all unless they went to that they were talking about doing a tv
you know you run them into they're in person yeah they bring them over okay they drive them into the
parking area and yeah yeah our access today because he's tried to get in certain parts
previously the old exist they still use some of the old they still use that same system yeah yeah
yeah we still have to continue to use with the new quarter house too
yeah that's the Wayne yeah the new yeah they'll still have to have something like that sort of
transport yeah that's it a built improvement let's take a picture so I can break it up
from the mines but they also went on murder spree up and down the state
and they were accomplices of Barbara Graham which there's a movie producing like the fifties about
her a call to await a way to live on his tour yeah some of all the murders and they were the two were
the last double execution at San Quentin prison they were brutal people yeah yeah they just didn't
shoot people I beat them to death bastard yeah so one of them lived on the neck literally the
neighbor to my great-grandparents house I mean and so again he heard about all the stories what he's
doing to his kids and everything that's when he threatened them and my aunt told me she remembers
going to his trial and as they were walking out if you saw her and then her friend and then
he's giving them a big old wink and everything yeah I wonder if they chase you don't see anything
this channel these look much newer from the 2000s because I'll say a call to the court so we
shouldn't be going to we shouldn't be looking too much into those if they're confidential
please tell us
under me and it's all government contracts all government contracts and they took that 50 when
they said they were going to downsize you know well I'm not worried about that you know well
they took that 50 and me and the next 50 and the next 50 I mean the the whole police department
went down the hill didn't need them anymore
so they're going to do the bridge dedication for bill falconi oh there that's yeah this afternoon
that's afternoon yeah five o'clock even though they're not done they're I guess they're close
enough that they feel they can do with you know yeah it looks pretty neat huh it's nice bridge
yeah I saw those bridges went over the place where they built them you know I looked in there
great big long bridge it's okay how you're gonna move those