60 Prisoners, 7 Deputies Hurt in Jail Disturbance

Seven sheriff’s deputies and about 60 inmates were injured Wednesday in a disturbance at Los Angeles County’s Central Jail that ended when sheriff’s marksmen forced scores of prisoners back into their cells by firing heavy, non-lethal rubber projectiles.

The shooting ended a two-hour standoff between deputies and approximately 100 inmates--all of them identified by jail officials as members of a South-Central Los Angeles street gang--who had refused to return to their cells.

The standoff was triggered by a struggle between one of the inmates and a deputy, authorities said. In response, inmates barricaded themselves outside their three- and four-man cells and armed themselves with pieces of pipe taken from cell equipment and heavy drain grates. They cut bed mattresses up into protective vests.

Sheriff’s negotiators, speaking to the prisoners from the other side of a gate, eventually called in a special weapons team, whose members fired “a half-dozen rounds or less” of hard rubber ammunition, Assistant Sheriff Robert A. Edmonds said, and the inmates “crawled over each other trying to get back in their cells.”

It was the first time the department has used the six-inch-long, .37-millimeter-wide non-lethal projectiles, he said.

Jail officials said that at about 2:45 p.m., about 250 inmates were being taken back to their cells in a second-floor jail module that houses only members of a single street gang. The jail’s policy of segregation is intended to head off violence between rival gangs.

As the inmates were filing through the module’s entry gate, an unidentified high-security prisoner threw a punch at the head of a deputy, after the deputy had taken off his handcuffs.

Other deputies attempted to force the rest of the prisoners into their cells quickly, and while those housed in one side of the module complied, about 100 others who are housed in the other side refused.

(The Central Jail has for years been heavily overcrowded, and currently houses 8,400 prisoners, about 2,400 more than its capacity. However, authorities said overcrowding did not appear to be a cause of the disturbance.)

Authorities said the deputy who was struck by the inmate suffered the most serious injury, a possible fractured jaw, and was admitted to White Memorial Medical Center. Six other deputies were treated for minor injuries. At least 60 inmates were hurt, but only four required hospitalization in the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center.

Fire Hoses

Edmonds said the Sheriff’s Department recently acquired the projectile weapons. The weaponry was not available last June, when at least 40 inmates and 12 deputies were injured in a similar Central Jail disturbance. Deputies used fire hoses, night sticks and flash grenades to control prisoners.

On Sunday, 22 inmates at a County Jail facility in Castaic were injured after a fight broke out among 45 maximum-security prisoners. Two-dozen of the participants were moved to the Central Jail, but deputies said none was involved in Wednesday’s disturbance.