ACLU Suit Alleges Guards Beat, Starved Orange County Jail, Youth Hall Inmates

Orange County jail and juvenile hall guards beat and starved adult inmates and tied two teen-agers to their beds “as on a medieval rack,” an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit filed in federal court has charged.

“Prisoners who are shackled and unresisting are beaten for no reason other than the sadistic gratification of the guards,” said ACLU attorney Harry Lerner, who filed the suit in court in Santa Ana on Thursday.

On Aug. 8, the suit alleges, seven adult inmates were beaten and denied food, toilet paper, clean clothes and bed linen for three days. When they were given food it was cold and filled with cockroaches and hair, the suit claims.

According to the document, two youths identified only as 15-year-old Matt and 16-year-old Cliff were tied spread-eagle to beds for 17 hours at juvenile hall. Guards tightened their bonds “to cut blood circulation and to stretch their limbs, as on a medieval rack,” the suit alleges.

sh Officials Had No Comment

Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Richard Olson and Probation Department spokesman Tom Hinkle said county officials had not seen the lawsuit and had no comment on it.

The suit names as defendants the county, Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates and Chief Probation Officer Michael Schumacher.

It was filed on behalf of the two juveniles, 10 prisoners in the men’s jail and one in the women’s jail. The ACLU is asking the court to appoint attorneys to represent the inmates, to appoint a special representative to ensure inmates can get lawyers and to declare the suit a class action on behalf of everyone jailed in the county.

Once attorneys were appointed, the ACLU would drop out of the case, Lerner said.

“The fact is a large number of deputies, though not all, are inclined to beat up on inmates,” he claimed.

Orange County is under a 1978 court order to prevent overcrowding at the jail and to provide inmates with pay telephones. The county was fined $50,000 last year for failing to comply with the order.