Two dead, 100 injured in Los Angeles County jail riots
By Kevin Kearney
27 February 2006
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On Saturday, February 4, racial riots broke out in Los Angeles County
jails between black and Latino inmates. The rioting continued for more
than two weeks, involving thousands of prisoners at several different
facilities. More than a hundred have been injured, many critically, and
two inmates are dead.
The violence began at the North County Correctional Facility, part of
the Pitchess Detention Center, in Castaic. The first outbreak-which
by all accounts was instigated by leaders of the Mexican Mafia as means
of establishing dominance over rival black gangs-involved hundreds of
inmates.
Outdated plumbing had caused sheriff's deputies to move 500 extra
inmates to an already overcrowded wing of the jail, which helped ignite
the situation. By Saturday evening, well over 2,000 inmates were
embroiled in the melee, using makeshift weaponry and bunk beds hurled
from the upper stories of the jail onto brawling inmates below.
To retake control, hundreds of law enforcement officers from all over
Southern California were called into emergency service. Repeatedly
firing tear gas, pepper bombs and "sting ball grenades," the guards
were unable to contain the riot for nearly a day.
Ten inmates were sent to local hospitals for emergency treatment of
their critical injuries and one inmate, Wayne Tiznor-a 45 year old
black man-was found beaten to death. Tiznor was in jail awaiting
trial for failing to register with local police as a sex offender. He
was the ninth inmate killed by other inmates in the county jails in the
past 2 1/2 years.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca ordered a system-wide lockdown and
eliminated all visits in the county's six jails, which house over
20,000 inmates. Despite last year's Supreme Court ruling that racial
segregation of prisoners is unconstitutional, the Sheriff's
Department ordered black and Latino inmates placed in separate cells.
The emergency measures failed and more violence erupted Sunday night
and again on Monday, February 6. The fighting seemed to be ending on
February 9. Less than an hour after officials gave the media a guided
tour of the Pitchess Detention Center, however, a new conflict erupted
among 200 Latino and black inmates. This rioting continued four more
days, culminating in a second death, that of 38-year-old black inmate
Sean Anthony Thompson, who was killed at Men's Central Jail while
assisting an older inmate under attack by three Latino inmates.
Baca sought out the Catholic Cardinal of the diocese of Los Angeles,
Roger M. Mahony, for assistance in ending the riots. "The goal is to
start a dialogue with the Latino inmates in such a fashion that
they're appealing to their common good as human beings," Baca said.
When the violence continued into a second week, Baca came under
increasing criticism from both law-and-order politicians and black
officials. Right-wing County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, a reliable
supporter of police violence in minority communities, said the
department should have done more to protect black inmates.
After a further outbreak on February 18, Baca ordered more than 100
inmates to strip naked, with mattresses taken away, and left with only
blankets to cover themselves for a 24-hour period. Mark Rosenbaum,
legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern
California, told the Los Angeles Times, "We would be horrified if
these methods had taken place at Abu Ghraib. However effective or
ineffective, humiliation and degradation is not a proper procedure for
discipline."
Overcrowding and understaffing
During an interview on Pasadena radio station KPCC-FM, Baca blamed the
rioting on insufficient funds to incarcerate violent offenders. "And
so it's the almighty dollar that affects improvement when this thing
is said and done," Baca said.
Programs which once helped mitigate harsh economic conditions have been
systematically cut, and the Los Angeles County jail has the highest
inmate-to-guard ratio of any major county jail system in the United
States. For example, while New York City has a jail population of about
15,000 and a staff of 12,000, Los Angeles County has more than 20,000
inmates and a staff of only 5,000.
Despite the calls for more money, the Sheriff's Department's budget
has almost doubled from $1.1 billion to $1.9 billion, and the budget
for LA County jails has grown about 75 percent over the last 10 years.
The Los Angeles County Jail system, like the metropolitan area itself,
has a long history of racial violence. According to police, the
Pitchess Detention Center alone has been the site of more than 150
racially motivated brawls since 1990, most pitting black inmates
against Latinos.
The rioting cannot be explained as the product of an increasingly
violent jail population. The vast majority of jail and prison inmates
are nonviolent offenders. The California Attorney General's website
documents a considerable drop in violent crime in California since the
1960s. During the last decade violent crimes, excluding robbery, have
decreased from 207,000 to 141,000 per year, and the number of homicides
fell in the same period from 3,699 to 2,402 annually, despite a rapidly
growing population.
At the same time as the drop in the incidence of violent crime,
California's average daily jail population has increased from 69,000
to over 81,000. The prison population has rocketed to a record 168,000,
nearly double the capacity of the state's 33 prisons.
Anticipating even more inmates, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is
calling for a $600 million increase in state corrections spending,
raising it to $7.9 billion. To put California's incarceration rate in
some perspective, Canada, with about the same population as California,
has only about one quarter as many people behind bars.
California's massive inmate population is the fruit of three decades
of bipartisan efforts to whip up anti-crime hysteria and push through
increasingly severe and long-term punishments. Some examples include a
"Three Strikes law" authorizing life imprisonment for non-violent
felonies, draconian drug sentences and, most recently, the ominously
named California Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act, which
can add up to 10 years to a person's sentence if the crime was
committed "in furtherance of a gang"-one of the more amorphous
legal standards in criminal law.
The result has been such acute overcrowding that critical state prison
programs and services are breaking down (prison medical services were
so poor and disorganized that they have recently gone into federal
receivership) requiring local jails to house more inmates for longer
times.
A permanently criminalized population
Racially based gangs have developed increasing influence within the
prisons and jails, which has carried over to the streets. The LA county
sheriff's office claims that as much as 80 percent of the jail
population has a gang affiliation. There has been a subtle attempt in
the media coverage of the riots to conflate violent inmates with gang
membership. This false connection will doubtlessly be employed to steer
even more spending into the bottomless pit of jails, prisons and law
enforcement.
To be sure, it is gang influence that has increased, not the number of
violent criminals. But what is behind this growing influence?
Longer sentences for lesser crimes packs jails and prisons with
nonviolent youth and the revolving door parole system ensures that even
those released will be swept back into the system-parolees returning
on mostly technical violations, such as missing an appointment or
failing a drug test, make up nearly 50 percent of incoming inmates.
This system permanently criminalizes a widening swath of the poor and
working-class men. Although ostensibly free, parolees lose almost all
rights to judicial process and constitutional rights, along with voting
rights and even eligibility for urgently needed welfare programs. The
state pays an estimated $1.5 billion a year for parolees returned to
prison.
In the 30 years of bipartisan "law and order" demagogy,
California's economic crisis has sharpened and is now at the breaking
point. Today basic needs such as housing, health care and even food are
increasingly out of reach for growing numbers of people.
In June, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) released a
study reporting that millions of Californians suffer food insecurity,
and in October the California Budget Project reported that an annual
income of over $71,000 was required for a family in California to enjoy
a modest standard of living. Insecure in their basic needs, poor
children-largely black and Latino-are pushed through a
deteriorating educational system, which has failed them. The
educational priorities of the state can be seen in the fact that in the
last 20 years 22 new prisons have been built, and only one University
of California campus.
According to the Little Hoover Commission, an independent state
research body, half of all parolees are illiterate, 80 percent are
unemployed and 80 percent are drug users. In the face of the
fear-mongering media accounts of the riot, it must be recalled that
these traumatized young men are, in the first instance, products of the
crisis of American society.
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