Instigators of Jail Riot Expected to Be Charged : Inmate Melee: When the dust settled, jail officials were left to grapple with the longstanding problems of inmate crowding and staff shortages.

The instigators of the inmate riot at the County Jail in El Cajon will be punished, the jail’s supervisor said Friday as the cellblock where the brawl took place remained in a lockdown status.

“If we can find the key players, and we think we can, we will file the appropriate charges,” said Capt. Ben McLaughlin, adding that charges could include attempted murder. “We’re not going to let it go by the wayside.”

He declined, however, to give the names of those believed to have led the riot.

An argument over a bedsheet--the details were unclear--between a Latino inmate and a black inmate erupted Thursday afternoon into a 15-minute riot, with broken mop handles, food trays and metal louvers from air-conditioning vents used as weapons. When the dust had settled in Cellblock 7A on the seventh floor, 12 inmates were injured, three of them with serious stab wounds.

Jose Flores remained in critical condition Friday at Sharp Memorial Hospital. The other two were in fair or good condition at UCSD Medical Center.

There were no reported escape attempts during Friday’s riot, and no sheriff’s deputies were injured, officials said.

McLaughlin blamed the melee on longstanding problems of crowding, staff shortages and poor jail design, and said he could offer no immediate solutions.

With completion of the new East Mesa Detention Facility not expected until next year, McLaughlin is not confident that he can solve the short-term problems that helped spark the riot, he said.

“We don’t have a whole lot of options . . . unless we come up with a magic formula,” he said.

The solution lies in more jails and more staff, McLaughlin said, but funding is slow in coming.

“I see that the county budget is stretched thin,” he said, “and we’re all vying for the same pool of people, in law enforcement, especially, and in the corrections field, so we have a hard time recruiting people, especially at the pay scale here in San Diego County.”

McLaughlin said state corrections officers “make quite a bit more” than counterparts in San Diego County.

Cellblock 7A, designed for 24 prisoners, housed 100 inmates the day of the riot. The jail housed 451 prisoners Friday, which is 376% of its rated capacity of 120 inmates.

A Sheriff’s Department spokesman said of the crowding, “We are doing everything creative that we can to deal with that. The biggest problem is, of course, money.”

Sgt. Bob Takeshta blamed litigation over Proposition A, which had cleared the way for jail funding, for delaying construction of new jails.

The El Cajon jail is the second-most crowded in the county’s jail system, next to South Bay, where the population is 410% of capacity, a Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman said.

The jail’s design also hinders interaction between inmates and deputies, McLaughlin said.

“In state prisons, the guards are with the inmates all day, walking around with them. You get a sense of people that way, you can feel it. You know when things are tightening up.

“When you’re up here in this window, in this guard tower,” said McLaughlin, describing the El Cajon jail, “you don’t know what’s going on.”

The El Cajon jail has been plagued with riots, inmate abuse and crowding, and 10 prisoners have escaped since the jail opened in 1983. Last year, there were at least five violent incidents involving 15 or more inmates.

On Nov. 5, seven inmates escaped from their seventh-floor block using bedsheets as a rope. One of the escapees is still at large, and authorities have not been able to extradite a second from Mexico, a sheriff’s spokeswoman said.

About 100 inmates fought in a Dec. 12 riot.