LOS ANGELES — City and law enforcement officials in San Bernardino County say they are outraged after dozens of death row inmates were transferred from San Quentin State Prison to Chino.

In a series of press conferences and public statements over the last two weeks, San Bernardino County and Chino officials have called for Gov. Gavin Newsom's office and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to remove the condemned prisoners, arguing that Chino's 83-year-old prison cannot securely house the inmates and keep the neighboring community safe.

"To think this prison can successfully house the worst of the worst criminals in our state is wrong," said Chino Mayor Eunice Ulloa during a news conference Wednesday. "This is a prison that is in dire need of repair."

Since Feb. 26, the state has transferred 324 inmates with death sentences from San Quentin Rehabilitation Center to other state prisons, which accounts for more than half of the 639 inmates with death sentences in state custody, according to the CDCR.

Of those transfers, the California Institution for Men in Chino received 39, the third highest number of condemned inmate transfers after the California Health Care Facility in Stockton and the California State Prison in Sacramento.

The moves are part of the state's attempts to comply with Proposition 66, which was approved by voters in 2016 to speed up the execution process but also called for death row inmates to work and pay restitution to victims.

In 2020, a year after Newsom placed a moratorium on the death penalty, the state began to transfer condemned inmates out of San Quentin. Over the next two years, California moved 104 people from San Quentin and the Central California Women's Facility to other state prisons as part of a pilot program. The state announced in March it's planning to build on that program and turn the infamous San Quentin prison into a Scandinavian-style prison focused on rehabilitation.

But critics argue Prop. 66 also required California to follow through on death sentences and Newsom is ignoring that part of the law.

"Prop. 66 is the law, but Prop. 66 also calls for CDCR to maintain the death penalty chambers for these condemned inmates that were given the death penalty," said San Bernardino District Attorney Jason Anderson at a press conference Tuesday. "We should never be in a state where portions of the law are chosen and other portions of the law are discarded depending on your rhetoric and your politics."

Chino city officials said they were caught off-guard when the CDCR began transferring inmates in February.

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