Suit Accuses Deputies of Racial Attack : Prisons: An injured inmate says jailers beat him at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho, which he says is run by a white supremacist group.

A black former inmate of a Saugus jail filed a civil rights lawsuit Thursday against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department contending that he was beaten by deputies who are members of a white supremacist group known as the Wayside Whities.

Clydell Crawford said he was beaten and his leg was broken on Dec. 2 while he was an inmate at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho. He said that six to eight deputies beat him after removing him from a medium security dormitory, and that the deputies were members of a large group of jailers who take their name from the jail’s former name, Wayside Honor Rancho.

The suit alleges that deputies in the group are involved in racially motivated intimidation and attacks on black inmates. The deputies exchange hand signals in which their fingers form the letter W, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

The civil rights lawsuit against Sheriff Sherman Block and 12 deputies assigned to the jail seeks more than $1 million in damages.

At a press conference Thursday, Crawford and his attorney, George V. Denny, released witness statements from three other inmates who said they saw the beating, which followed a fight between Crawford and a white inmate.

A spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department said the incident was under investigation but declined to comment on specific allegations made by Crawford and other inmates.

“A complete and thorough investigation is being conducted into the incident,” Deputy Hal Grant said. “This investigation started the day of the incident. Employees of the Sheriff’s Department found to have violated policy or criminal law will be dealt with accordingly.”

Crawford, 26, of West Covina said he served six weeks at the Pitchess Honor Rancho for violating his probation for an earlier cocaine sales conviction.

On Dec. 2, he said, he got into a fight with a white inmate and knocked him down. Later, several deputies came into the dormitory and questioned the white inmate. Crawford said he was taken behind the dormitory by the deputies and beaten with flashlights and knocked to the ground.

“When I was down they just kept beating on me,” he said. “Then one of them stomped on my leg and that’s when it broke. I could tell he did it on purpose.”

Tyrone Robinson, a 19-year-old former inmate at the jail, appeared with Crawford at Thursday’s press conference and said he saw the beating by looking through the rear windows of the dormitory. He said such beatings of black inmates were routine by the deputies who called themselves the Wayside Whities.

“I saw seven or eight deputies beating up on him,” Robinson said. “It was like they had to beat up on somebody every day.”

The suit names Block and deputies Frank La Flame, Ernesto De Armas and John Bones. Nine other deputies identified by their last names only are Gill, Johnson, Thrail, Berk, Wolf, Perez, Winston, Bemsick and Libel.

The suit says the defendants other than Block are “members of the ‘Wayside Whities,’ a Ku Klux Klan-type organization espousing white supremacy and having as one of its objectives the subjugation, intimidation and terrorization” of black inmates.

The suit states that “although the Wayside Whities is a semi-secret organization, its members . . . openly and notoriously exchange hand signals with fingers affixed roughly in a ‘W’ sign, and that their superior officers know . . . of their unlawful and unconstitutional activities in beating, harassing and otherwise intimidating black prisoners.”

Denny, Crawford’s attorney, said that his office has interviewed other victims of the alleged Wayside Whities, and that the group’s activities might be related to other white supremacist deputy groups at other county jail facilities.

The department fired two deputies after an investigation into complaints that deputies had engaged in a cross-burning in December, 1987, or January, 1988, in a Men’s Central Jail module where members of a black street gang were housed.

Denny also said that earlier this year the county approved a $175,000 settlement with six black inmates who claimed in a lawsuit that they had been subjected to racial taunts and beaten by sheriff’s deputies in the Hall of Justice jail.

Crawford and Denny said that black deputies assigned to the jail are aware of the Wayside Whities and that at least one black jailer witnessed Crawford’s beating.

“I said, ‘Can you help me?’ ” Crawford said. “He just kept watching.”

Denny said the black deputies might be afraid to report incidents of racially motivated attacks or intimidation.