Crowding, Gangs Blamed for Jail Clash : Sheriff Block Claims Conditions Set Stage for Violent Confrontation

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block blamed overcrowding and street gangs Monday for creating conditions leading to a violent confrontation between deputies and inmates at the county’s Central Jail over the weekend.

Block told reporters that jail operations--except for a module housing Crips gang members--were back to normal. Meanwhile, investigators were identifying inmates who will be charged with attacking deputies with broom handles, cups of bleach and other makeshift weapons Sunday.

Members of the sheriff’s special weapons team, wearing protective vests, helmets and carrying batons, handcuffed and removed scores of inmates, one at a time, from Module 4800 after the prisoners had refused to re-enter their cells as ordered.

By the time the struggle was over, Block said, 25 inmates had suffered injuries, none of them serious, and two deputies were taken to County-USC Medical Center for treatment of severe bruises. Ten other deputies suffered minor injuries.

The disturbance seems to have been planned, Block said, because the riotous inmates tried to block access to the module with mattresses and armed themselves with whatever was at hand.

“These were all Crips. They were all gang members,” Block said.

The sheriff described overcrowding as the “root of most of our problems.” He said the county’s prisoner count set a record of 17,853 on Saturday and 17,615 on Sunday, more than 6,000 inmates above the system’s 11,260 daily capacity.

According to Block, overcrowding reduces the flexibility of the system to deal with the great variety of prisoners, including gang members, sent to county jail facilities. Ideally, he said, it would be best to disperse gang members among the general jail population, but there is not enough space to do that.

As a consequence, he said, members of the same street gang are identified, housed together to avoid violence among the general inmate population and charged with cleaning their common cell areas.

“In fact, it’s interesting. Some of the modules that house the gang members have been the cleanest, the most orderly modules in the facility,” Block said.

But he promised that there will be some changes made in how gang modules are maintained, although he said jailers have “absolutely no alternative” but to continue the system of putting gang members together.

“We have people who are sentenced,” he said. “We have people who are unsentenced. We have to create secure housing for the gay population. We have a whole variety. That’s why we have different colored jump suits. We have virtually all the colors in the rainbow to give us a quick idea as to whether somebody is or is not where they should be.”

Block insisted that he is “amazed” that under the crowded jail conditions the staff is able “to maintain a reasonable operation of the facilities. By any objective standard, it probably should have broken down a long time ago.”

He said that the county jail was never designed to house either the number or types of inmates the system gets. He suggested that the problem will only get worse until the criminal justice system acts more swiftly.

“These people stay with us much too long,” Block said. “They are an unstable population. They require a lot of handling, a lot of movement. Some days we move as many as 2,000 people out of our jails to various courts around the county. All of these things add to the problem.”