Deputies Face Discipline in Burning of Crosses at Jail

Six months after launching an investigation into two cross burnings at the men’s Central Jail, Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block said Wednesday that “a number” of deputies face disciplinary action, but he declined to identify them or discuss the penalties.

Sources told The Times, however, that the department proposes to fire two deputies, demote a veteran sergeant to deputy and suspend another sergeant for 30 days. The accused, who were notified this week, have 10 days to appeal to the Civil Service Commission.

In announcing his department’s proposed action at a press conference, Block revealed for the first time investigative details of the cross-burning incidents, which were first disclosed in a Civil Service hearing for a fired probationary deputy in early January.

According to Block, the first cross, measuring from 12 to 36 inches and believed fashioned from a broken broom handle, was burned on March 3, 1987, in the hallway near a cell area that housed members of the Bloods street gang.

“The cross was placed in a stand made from either a milk crate or a plastic bucket, and was positioned in a hallway where inmates from Module 4300 were able to see it while walking in the hallway either to or from the noon meal,” Block said.

The second cross was burned between Dec. 26, 1987, and Jan. 11, 1988, in the control booth of Module 4800. Deputies who spoke anonymously said that the section then housed members of the Crips, a black street gang and rival of the Bloods.

“That cross was a paper cross,” the sheriff said. “It was tape, in fact, which was placed on the window of the control booth and set afire.”

Block noted that the first cross was set afire in a busy hallway and could have resulted “in a major disturbance” in the jail.

“I think they (the jailers) and we were very fortunate that it did not,” he said.

He said that it is difficult to suggest motives for burning the two crosses, other than to say thatthe incidents were acts of “complete stupidity.”

Burning crosses are a symbol of racial hatred and generally associated with the Ku Klux Klan.

Dismisses Suggestions

While declining to speculate on what would prompt jailers to make burning crosses, Block dismissed as “completely unfounded” suggestions by critics that the motives could spring from discrimination against blacks or from Klan-like racial attitudes among jailers.

“I don’t think these incidents relate to any of that,” Block said. “ . . . You have to remember that not only do we have black inmates in the county jail, we have many black deputies . . . and none of these people would tolerate any evidence of organized racism, particularly something like Klan activity or Neo-Nazi activity.”

The cross-burnings were first revealed publicly by a black deputy who was testifying in an attempt to corroborate another black deputy’s charges of racial discrimination within the jail.

Block, reminded by a reporter that a man who burned a cross on a couple’s lawn in Orange County had been sentenced earlier this year to a long prison term, was asked if criminal charges against the deputies can be expected. The sheriff replied by noting that other agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have been looking into the cross-burning allegations.

‘Administrative Perspective’

“Our responsibility was to look at these incidents from the administrative perspective, and we have done that,” Block said. “There are other inquiries under way. I guess that possibility exists.”

Citing a state law protecting personnel records of police officers, Block told reporters that he was prevented from disclosing how many jailers were involved in the cross-burning incidents or from describing the range of punishment, even generally.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Ferns, head of the special investigative division, said Wednesday that the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office has not received a report of the cross-burning from the Sheriff’s Department and is not now investigating the incidents.

In another county jail case, Block disclosed Wednesday that the district attorney’s office had declined to file criminal charges in the case of five deputies accused of assaulting jail inmates on three occasions between Nov. 20, 1988, and Jan. 14, 1989.

After a “very intensive” investigation, he said, the case has been closed, and the jailers returned to duty.