Minor Sparks Ignite Racial Tensions at Jail : Inmates: A spiral of violence between blacks and Latinos at the Pitchess Honor Rancho reflects a power struggle, officials say. Crowding and boredom help fuel explosive brawls.

After guards removed an electric coffeepot because its cable had been slashed to light illicit cigarettes, tempers flared in Dormitory 336 of the maximum-security East branch of Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho.

In a jail already deeply divided along racial lines, black and Latino inmates blamed each other for the loss of hot water and flame. Within hours, both camps were plotting against each other in corners of the dormitory and during jail church services.

Soon, an argument over a card game touched off a fight involving all 127 dormitory residents, one of at least 17 major racial brawls at four of the five Pitchess branches in the past six months that have authorities perplexed.

Homemade weapons were pulled from hiding places. Sleeping inmates were awakened by shouting or by a punch or a kick. Metal-frame bunk beds were toppled for use as battering rams. Toilets were torn from tile floors and thrown at windows.

“It was crazy,” laughed Jose, 19, who is in the jail awaiting trial on charges of murder in a drive-by shooting. “All the blacks went into the bathroom, all the Mexicans went into the back. Then we rushed them in the bathroom. . . . We broke all the dorm brooms in the fight.”

Minutes later, a team of sheriff’s deputies--the jail’s guards--arrived in riot gear and threw sting grenades filled with rubber pellets. The fracas abruptly ended.

But Jose, who like all prisoners quoted in this story asked that an alias be used because he fears retribution by other inmates, has no remorse about the Nov. 15 fight.

“I went after one of the bigmouths,” he said. “I took advantage of it and got even.”

This is the complex challenge that faces sheriff’s officials, who are consulting outside experts about ways to stem the racial violence, which continued with three outbreaks at the North Facility of Pitchess in the past week. More than 9,000 of the county’s 21,000 inmates are housed in the sprawling Pitchess complex east of the Golden State Freeway near Castaic.

Officials identify the increasing number of violent offenders as the fuel for the supercharged atmosphere--there are at least 300 murder defendants in the East Facility alone--and they say the catalyst has been a shift in dominant jail population from black to Latino that began in 1988 and has bred growing resentment between the races. Currently, about 45% of the county’s inmates are Latino and about 34% are black.

Inmates add more mundane provocations: a new no-smoking policy, lousy food and too few activities that allow them to escape the boredom of the crowded, stuffy dormitories.

As Matthew, one of the few dozen white inmates in the facility, said, “You box up 120 hostile attitudes in a dorm the size of these, you’re bound to have problems.”

When arguments over something as small as the sale of potato chips or the use of telephones escalate into fisticuffs, Matthew said the whites side with the Latinos, because “by nature we get along better with them.” Accused in a drug-related slaying that occurred in 1983, Matthew has been at the East Facility for 17 months awaiting trial.

Few of the inmates interviewed in the Los Angeles County jail said they would think twice about joining another melee, despite the injuries they sustained or punishment they received for their involvement in one of several recent brawls at the East Facility.

As they explained it, their attitudes have been hardened by an inmate code of racial allegiance that precludes a Latino from even lending his coffee cup to a black, or vice versa.

Though the 13 dormitories in the East Facility, each of which houses up to 130 men, are statistically integrated, inmates work diligently to keep them socially and even physically segregated by such means as requests for bed and dormitory transfers and power struggles over the control of everything from telephones to barbells.

Such separatism and control is not condoned by deputies, but they seem largely resigned to it. Although they continue to search for solutions to the fighting, which travels like a virus from dorm to dorm and facility to facility, they are skeptical that they have the power to neutralize something so volatile.

“It’s a different world, a different set of rules that they live by,” said Sgt. Merlyn Poppleton, head of the jail’s gang unit. “You’re talking about two different cultures that don’t get along. . . . You’re beating a dead horse trying to change that.”

Interracial battles are common to all jails and prisons, but the combination of three factors makes Pitchess unique and is mentioned by officers and inmates alike in explaining the greater frequency and scope of the fights there: the transiency of prisoners in and out of the jail, which makes identifying and separating troublemakers difficult; the shift in racial dominance, and the large size of the dormitories.

In smaller dorms at other jails and prisons, “everyone actually knows each other,” said inmate Walter, 26. “People have got more respect for each other. Here you don’t know what you’re dealing with.” Walter has been in and out of the penal system for most of his adult life on various cocaine sales charges. As Walter spoke, he examined his finger, still bandaged from a wound sustained when he was struck by a toilet thrown in the Nov. 15 fight.

Bigger dorms became the vogue beginning in the 1950s, largely in reaction to public criticism that the smaller, more isolated cells of traditional jails were too oppressive, said Sgt. Jeff Springs of the Sheriff’s Information Bureau. Dorms also are cheaper to build than cellblocks, but they preclude the possibility of locking inmates down after a fight because that would only mean cooping them up with their enemies.

“We’re getting a different, more violent type of inmate now,” said Cmdr. David Hagthrop, who heads the East Facility. “But we’re kind of stuck with what we’ve got in terms of buildings.”

The crowding inside the jail dorms thwarts guards’ ability to monitor inmates’ activities because views are obstructed by the high metal bunk beds, officers said. The five Pitchess jails were built to accommodate fewer than 6,000 inmates and currently house more than 9,000.

Among jail officials, there is a sense of urgency about finding ways to stop the fighting. Not only are the incidents continuing, domino-style, but there is tangible evidence that they will become even more violent: More inmates are arming themselves with homemade knives, known as shanks.

“We used to find maybe five to six shanks a month--now it’s more like 30 to 40,” said Deputy James Duran, a gang officer at the East Facility. “They are finding pieces of wire somewhere these days and sharpening them to pop each other with.”

Duran believes the heightened awareness about police brutality in the wake of the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers last March has also contributed to the jail violence. Inmates respect officers less now, he said, and “I don’t know if we’ll ever recover from it.”

A few of the inmates interviewed admitted privately that they too are afraid of the mounting violence. Said one 24-year-old man, his nose still swollen across the bridge where it was broken in one of the November fights: “I’m already tired of being in here. It’s scary. You don’t know if you’re going to come out alive.”

At the East Facility, opportunities to get outside the dormitories are even fewer than in the other four branches of the sprawling Pitchess complex because most of the 1,500 prisoners there are not yet sentenced and are therefore considered short-timers. Sentenced inmates receive priority for the 150 spaces in classes, the 75 spaces in a drug rehabilitation program and the few jail jobs in the kitchen, laundry and offices.

“There’s not a whole lot we can do with those people until they’re sentenced,” Poppleton said. “It’s a transient group, in and out, and that’s disruptive for the people who can really get something out of the classes.”

Yet because the East Facility houses the county’s most violent offenders, they often remain there for months and even years while their trials drag on through postponements and delays.

All inmates can release tensions by exercising on the one basketball court-sized jail yard for an hour or so most days, more than the three hours a week required by state law, but the inmates say that is not enough fresh air. They can also attend religious services daily.

The jail’s Catholic chaplain, Gerald Chumik, said that he has had to break up far more fights, weapon exchanges and collusions during his services this year than in the past five years.

(The only branch of Pitchess that has not experienced racial brawls is the minimum-security facility, called the Honor Rancho, where the least violent prisoners are allowed relative freedom of movement inside the jail and work on a jail dairy and farm.)

The inmates almost unanimously agree that if they were housed in single-race dormitories, arguments would be less likely to erupt into full-fledged brawls.

Currently, they said, disputes between two members of the same race usually can be resolved by inmate leaders, known as veteranos by the Latinos and, among the blacks, OGs for original gangsters. Even if it comes to blows, they said, the fight is limited to the arguing parties, one-on-one, and does not spread throughout the dormitory as the racial battles have.

Segregation of jails is unconstitutional, however, and Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials have said they would not endorse it at Pitchess. Moreover, jail experts say that when it was attempted in the state prison system in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it only increased the violence during the inmates’ few contacts.

Still, within the East jail’s dormitories, there is little mixing. Intraracial gang wars on the streets give way to strong racial identification inside the jail, and inmates said they are even less inclined to communicate with members of other races after the brawls.

As a member of a Westside Latino gang, Jose was arrested on charges of killing a member of a Salvadoran gang known as the Crazy Riders. But once in jail, he said, “I left that in the street. You’ve got to unite with your own people in here.”

The education in separatism begins soon after they step through the clanging jail gates.

“If you share a cup with them or talk with them, someone will say, ‘This your first time in jail? You don’t give nothing to them,’ ” said Carlos, 20. “You don’t drink from the same cup because the Mexicans think blacks are dirty.”

Criminal science experts and prison rights advocates have myriad theories about why racial animosities mushroom in jail. Most of those theories rest on the need to belong to a group. But the inmates tend to describe the problem in terms of fear, saying that if they do not side with their race in a fight, their brothers will turn against them in jail and, for those ultimately destined for state prison, in the penitentiary “upstate” as well.

“If I didn’t go with my race, I would be no good for them, they’d come down on me,” said Manuel, 19, who was convicted of starting one of the fights, adding 90 days to his sentence. “When we go upstate, we get points. Like the sergeant gets his stripes, as soon as we get up there, we have our package waiting for us. Word gets through.”

The race that dominates the dorm, either in numbers or in might, controls the perquisites, such as who gets the extra blankets left behind by departing prisoners and who gets the easiest cleanup jobs.

“You bet that’s power,” inmate Matthew said.

Aside from increased jail activities, which most inmates interviewed said they would welcome, solutions suggested by jail experts and sheriff’s officials met with little inmate enthusiasm. Punishments also appear to have had little impact.

The notion of holding race awareness classes brought cynical laughter from the inmates, who said they would not attend and, if forced, would not listen.

Several inmates suggested that additional telephones--which are planned--would help ease friction by allowing them to unwind by conversing with their loved ones. Others, however, said telephone conversations just get people riled up.

“People talk on the phone and they get emotional,” said inmate Tyrone, 26, who is charged with armed robbery. “They start thinking about what their girlfriends are doing, why they’re not at home when they call.”

Deputies have a difficult time determining who caused the outbreaks, partly because everyone proclaims their own innocence and blames someone else. Those they ultimately peg as the most likely instigators are sent to a row of 48 cells in the jail--called “the hole”--for periods of 10 days or more. But this punishment is actually greeted enthusiastically by many inmates as a vacation from the tense atmosphere of the dormitory.

“The hole’s just perfect when you want to go relax, you let your mind drift a little,” Jose said after spending 13 days in the cell for his involvement in the fight in Dormitory 336.

Dozens more inmates are moved to other county jails in what are known as “harmony moves,” aimed at correcting racial imbalances and reducing lingering hostilities, but this only spreads the problem around.

In fact, several of the inmates involved in the East Facility brawls said they had been moved there after being involved in the fights at the South and North facilities in the summer and fall.

Additional time added to the inmates’ sentences, through a more aggressive prosecution program initiated this summer, also has not yet proved to be a deterrent. Often the added months are scheduled concurrently with the inmate’s existing sentence, Poppleton said.

“And if you’re looking at life already, if you have a serious crime, what are you going to care about extra time?” asked Tyrone.

6 Months of Fighting

Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho near Castaic, where 9,000 of the county’s 21,000 inmates are jailed, has been the scene of at least 17 racially motivated brawls in the past six months.

JUNE 2: Twenty-nine Latino inmates were injured in a fight with at least 11 blacks at the North Facility, one of five branches of the Castaic jail. The cause was not reported.

JUNE 19: Five inmates were injured at the maximum-security East Facility in a fight involving a majority of the dormitory’s 130 residents. Jail officials blamed hot weather and acknowledged that it was racially motivated, but insisted it was “not a trend.”

JULY 19: Five inmates suffered minor injuries in a fight at the North Facility involving 40 black and Latino inmates.

JULY 31: Three inmates suffered minor injuries in a fight between blacks and Latinos outside a dormitory at the South Facility. They used broom and mop handles to beat each other and broke a window.

SEPT. 1: Thirty-five inmates were injured in a race-related fight that was traced to an argument over use of a telephone the day before. The brawl involved all 92 people in the dormitory in the maximum-security wing of the North Facility. Shattered fluorescent light bulbs were used as weapons.

SEPT. 1: Two inmates in the South Facility were hurt when 500 of them went on a rampage armed with broom handles, trash cans and rocks after deputies tried to break up a fight between a black and a Latino. The fight was blamed on a no-smoking policy that was to begin the next day.

SEPT. 3: Eight inmates were injured in another melee at the South Facility touched off by a card game, which escalated to include at least 18 of the medium-security dormitory’s 86 inmates.

SEPT. 4: Two inmates were seriously injured in a fracas in the North County Correctional Facility that involved all 41 inmates in a dorm. A fight between a black and a Latino over telephone use was blamed.

OCT. 14: Eight inmates were hurt, one of them seriously, when about 50 inmates fought at the North Facility. The catalyst for the fight was not reported.

OCT. 26: Twenty-five inmates were injured in fight in a medium-security area of the North Facility. It began with an argument over telephones.

NOV. 10: Ten inmates were injured, some slashed with shards of glass, in a fight involving 129 inmates at the East Facility, which that began over telephones. Inmates threw broken toilet fixtures to smash wire-reinforced windows between the bathrooms and the dormitory.

NOV. 11: One inmate was seriously injured after a gambling dispute in a dormitory at the East Facility erupted into a brawl involving all 127 residents.

NOV. 15: Thirteen inmates suffered minor injuries in a fight between blacks and Latinos in the East Facility, which began as a telephone dispute and grew to involve most of the dormitory’s 97 inhabitants. Officers said the fight “was not racially motivated” but did involve blacks versus Latinos.

NOV. 16: Seven inmates were injured slightly in a fight involving about 30 inmates in the South Facility after a Latino blamed a black inmate for a theft.

DEC. 1: Nineteen inmates suffered minor injuries in a fight between blacks and Latinos at the North Facility involving 40 inmates. It erupted over the sale of a bag of potato chips.

DEC. 2: Four inmates were injured in a fight between 10 black and 10 Latino inmates in a maximum-security wing of the North Facility. The cause was not reported.

DEC. 3: Eight inmates were injured in a brawl between 10 blacks and 10 whites at the North Facility. The cause was not reported.

SOURCE: The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Information Bureau and interviews with sheriff’s deputies.