Working on the Inside : Law enforcement: Prison guards face an ever-threatening environment as they try to maintain order at Pitchess Honor Rancho.

On any given day or night at the East Facility of the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic, prisoners outnumber guards about 35 to 1.

Just ask Michael Webb. In 1983, Webb, a guard, was beaten by an inmate during a weapons search.

“He just went off,” said Webb, 33, who suffered neck and back injuries severe enough to place him on disability leave for a year. According to Webb, the inmate told the court “he was just having a bad day.”

Webb returned to Pitchess, and still displays a tough, nonchalant attitude about the dangers of custody duty. But such outward poise, guards say, is the only way to survive in a maximum-security jail.

“Deputies don’t want to show their vulnerability,” said Sgt. Merlyn Poppleton, head of the jail’s gang unit, “because if you do that, you show you may not be in control, so we hide things like that. But there’s not a person in here who isn’t scared or intimidated, even if they won’t tell you.”

Recently, there has been good reason to be scared. Earlier this week a brawl involving 400 Latino and black inmates left eight prisoners wounded. Last week, there were two other incidents, one involving 29 prisoners that also left eight injured; the other a fight in which an inmate was stabbed 13 times in the chest by another prisoner with a handmade knife. These are among nearly 30 fights that have erupted since June at the 2,800-acre prison east of the Golden State Freeway. Most are racial brawls that leave several injured. Often sparked by quarrels over such simple matters as playing cards or potato chips, tensions rapidly escalate, as black and Latino gangs fight for control.

According to Poppleton, no statistics of confrontations were kept before last summer. “We really weren’t having that kind of trouble then,” he said.

With rising crime rates sending more hardened offenders to prison and gang warfare escalating even inside jailhouse walls, the job of prison guard grows more dangerous. One might wonder why anyone would want to do this work.

Sheriff deputies at Pitchess guard murderers, rapists and other felons or suspects awaiting trial or sentencing for similar offenses. Many prisoners have little to lose by starting a fight or injuring a guard.

“They may not like you,” said James Duran, a former Pitchess deputy who was recently assigned to patrol duty. “They don’t like cops. And what about the guy who may be headed to prison for 44 years? What does he have to lose for taking out one of us?”

Duran, like most graduates of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Academy in Whittier, was assigned to serve two years as a Pitchess prison guard in preparation for street patrol as a sheriff’s deputy. Prison duty is thought to help them fine-tune their communication skills and examine criminal behavior in a more structured environment. Some deputies prefer custody duty and come back to Pitchess after years of service on the streets.

In interviews at the jail’s maximum-security East Facility--Pitchess has five branches varying in levels of security, totaling about 9,000 inmates--deputies said their first assignment in law enforcement offers an accurate preview of the mental and physical demands they will face on the street.

Aspiring deputies must be accepted into the sheriff’s academy following rigorous physical and mental exams and a thorough background investigation.

“They talk to your neighbors and former fellow employees,” Duran said. “They want to see if you get along with people.”

The application process takes about six months. Once accepted, recruits undergo 21 weeks of training, including a wide range of physical and psychological exercises designed to prepare them for police duty.

“We tell them how to handle themselves in stressful situations,” said Sgt. Rufus Tamayo, one of the officers in charge of recruitment. “We also bring in their families to explain to them the stress their loved ones are going to face.”

To graduate, recruits must pass 30 of 36 physical endurance tests and demonstrate thorough knowledge of police techniques and strategies. Last year, 674 of the 875 recruits graduated.

But the academy can’t prepare deputies for everything, as Duran quickly discovered. In his first year at Pitchess, Duran asked an inmate to turn around, but the prisoner wouldn’t budge. The prisoner then swung at Duran, who had to use force to subdue him. The incident was relatively minor, but it stunned him.

“I realized that this is what I do, that people are threatening your life merely because you’re doing your job,” he said. “I was confused. I felt that I did something wrong because I let it get to the point where we had to fight.”

He notified his supervisor to make sure he acted properly, but, he later realized that “sometimes there are just no other ways.”

The Sheriff’s Department provides psychological assistance for deputies to help sort out such experiences. John Chamberlin, assistant director of the department’s psychological services unit, said his staff meets with deputies to make sure they are dealing with the emotional demands of the job.

“The young ones aren’t likely to talk about things,” said Chamberlin, “but the older, more seasoned ones will admit that it’s OK to have a problem and seek assistance for it.”

For some guards, just talking with their families about their work is a concern. Duran, for instance, said his father was proud of him, but his mother worried about his safety.

Most families are supportive, deputies say, although several guards admit that they rarely talk with loved ones about confrontations with inmates.

“I don’t share war stories with my family,” Poppleton said. “All they know is that I work here. Things that happen here are not things that contribute to a wholesome family.”

Ilene Bower, 36, one of two female deputies in the East Facility, must deal with continual harassment from inmates.

“I put up with a lot more leering than the men do,” she said. “When I walk by, they’ll make rude gestures or lick their lips. They just want to see how much they can get away with and impress their buddies. I just get deaf, dumb or blind. You can’t react to every incident here or you’ll go crazy.”

Because deputies are not permitted to carry guns, for fear it might get in the hands of inmates, they are always vulnerable to attack. Guards are perhaps most in danger when entering the dormitories three times a day for routine weapons’ searches, Duran said. Each dormitory holds about 120 inmates, and is searched by guards who normally work in pairs.

“I remember the first time I walked in there,” recalled Paul Donnan, a deputy for three years, “and I thought, ‘You want me to walk in the dorm and count? Are you serious?’ ”

Another tense time in the daily routine occurs when prisoners are taken to the cafeteria for meals. With dozens of inmates in the hallway at once, prisoners can divert the attention of the guards, rendering some dormitories, which usually have at least two guards on duty, understaffed.

“Remember, they are in here 24 hours a day,” said Duran of the prisoners, “and we can’t watch them all the time. What’s to stop them from killing themselves?”

Donnan, 25, admits that the job gets to him. He previously worked for USC’s campus police, where the toughest assignment was breaking up fraternity fights.

“I try not to think about reality when I’m here,” he said, “but it will come up at home. When you do a breakdown of why the inmates are in here, that’s when the reality sets in.”

For Duran, the sense of danger was perhaps more constant. Soon after being assigned to Pitchess in 1989, he was promoted to the jail’s gang unit. The unit monitors gang members to ensure that their on-the-street rivalries aren’t carried out behind bars.

Duran, who is only 5-feet-6, 155 pounds, frequently met with inmates to gather information.

“These are people who have maimed people, who have disfigured people,” Duran said. “This one guy came in recently who was about 6-foot-4, 250 pounds. This guy could have had me if he snapped.”

To protect themselves and to find an outlet for their anxieties, many deputies work out several times a week. Duran practiced Thai boxing, a combination of boxing and karate in a ring at Pitchess, ran an average of three to five miles three times a week and lifted weights.

Most at Pitchess endure the rigors of their detail to acquire knowledge of criminal behavior that they will need when they are assigned to street patrol. Some guards even discuss specific crimes with inmates. Donnan said that several years ago, when the East Facility held only a few murderers, deputies treated them as celebrities.

“We thought it was really neat, and we’d go see them to see what they’re like, what they say,” Donnan said. “Now, we have 300 who are here for murder.”

On occasion, guards have befriended prisoners. Poppleton recalled one inmate, Goldie, who continued to fight with rival gang members. Goldie refused to talk about the disputes, until the day Poppleton asked about his family and his entire demeanor changed.

“He said how his dad was never there for him and how much that hurt,” Poppleton said. “I asked him if he wasn’t doing the same thing for his children. He let down emotionally, and I could then talk to him. When he was released, he told me he wasn’t going to do to his children what his father did to him.”

These encounters, Poppleton said, allow deputies to see that not everyone on the streets is “hard-core and terrible. They get to know that the inmates have a good side to them, and if you spend enough time with them, you can remove the shell and find out who they are. This helps the deputy prepare for the streets.”

But deputies draw boundaries to those relationships.

“You have to be on guard not to give them any personal information,” said Steve Herrel, 32, who doesn’t wear his wedding ring and lies about where he lives for fear of retaliation against his family.

“If they don’t like how you arrested them, these people can do something to your family,” said Herrel, who after two years at Pitchess said he can’t wait for patrol duty. “They could tell their friends while they are still in jail. That’s why you don’t tell them anything.”