Ex-Guard Gets 17 1/2 Years for Helping Prison Gang

A former officer at the California Institute for Men in Chino was sentenced Monday to 17 1/2 years in prison for helping a white supremacist prison gang known as the Nazi Low Riders assault inmates and distribute drugs.

U.S. District Court Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. found that 44-year-old Shayne Allyn Ziska, who worked at the prison from 1984 to 2000, conspired with the gang to distribute methamphetamine and heroin, and permitted a member to stab another inmate under the eye.

Ziska also was found guilty of civil rights violations.

Upon hearing his sentence, Ziska cursed at the judge and yelled at prosecutors, said Thom Mrozek, public affairs officer for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

In the indictment, authorities said the Fontana man had shared his supremacist ideology with white inmates and instructed gang members in the martial arts.

Ziska was accused of transporting drugs for members of the Nazi Low Riders, allowing them to roam the prison hallways and acting as a messenger for inmates involved in drug running.

The California Department of Corrections originally investigated Ziska, but his case became part of a broader probe by the FBI into the activities of the Nazi Low Riders, a skinhead gang formed in the 1970s that has spread into prisons in California, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, and is allied with the Aryan Brotherhood.