Animosity Runs Deep at Troubled Jail : Penal system: Racial tension, combined with crowding and an influx of serious offenders, is a recipe for violence at Pitchess facility. Officials are at a loss.

After guards removed an electric coffee pot 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.

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 Pitchess in the past six months.

Homemade weapons were pulled from their hiding places. Sleeping inmates were awakened by shouting or by a punch or 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 on charges of murder during 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 facing 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 last week.

Pitchess, situated in the foothills east of the Golden State Freeway near Six Flags Magic Mountain, began as the Wayside Honor Rancho in the early 1900s and was expanded in the 1950s and again in the 1980s. Its five facilities were built to house fewer than 6,000 inmates, but 9,000 of the county’s 21,000 prisoners now reside there. Inmates accused of everything from drunken driving to murder are housed at the jail. Last year, Pitchess began receiving many of the pre-sentenced inmates who tend to be the more violent offenders, destined for state prison.

Jail officials identify the increasing number of violent offenders as the fuel for the supercharged atmosphere--there are at least 300 accused murderers in the East Facility alone--and they say the catalyst has been a shift in dominant jail population from black to Latino which began in 1988 and has bred growing resentment between the races.

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 Anglo inmates in the East Facility, said, “You box up 120 hostile attitudes in a dorm the size of these, you’re bound to have problems.”

Few of the inmates interviewed said they would think twice about joining another melee, despite the injuries they suffered or punishment they received for their involvement in one of three recent brawls at the East Facility. As they explained it, their attitudes have been hardened by an inmate code of racial allegiance and bigotry 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.”

Interracial battles are common to all jails, but the combination of three factors makes Pitchess unique and is mentioned by officers and inmates in explaining the greater frequency and scope of the fights: the transiency of prisoners among the jails and in and out of the jail system, which makes identifying and separating troublemakers difficult; the shift in racial dominance, which so far has occurred at only one of California’s state prisons; and the large size of the dormitories.

Larger dorms became the vogue 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 and jail experts. 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 newfound enemies.

Among jail officials, there is a sense of urgency about finding ways to stop the fighting. Not only are the incidents continuing, but there is evidence that they will become even more violent.

“We used to find maybe five to six shanks (knives) a month, now it’s more like 30 to 40,” said Deputy James Duran, a gang officer at the East Facility.

Duran believes the heightened awareness about police brutality in the wake of the beating of Rodney G. 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 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. You might lose your nose.”

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 the majority 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 and for the few jail jobs.

Yet because the East Facility houses the county’s most violent offenders, their trials frequently drag on through months and even years of 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.

Aside from increased jail activities, solutions suggested by jail experts and sheriff’s officials have met with little inmate enthusiasm. Punishments exacted 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.

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 greeted enthusiastically by many of the inmates, a vacation from the tense atmosphere of the dormitory.

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 prior 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 inmate Tyrone, 26, who is charged with armed robbery.