Jail Separates Anglo Inmates for Fear of Post-Verdict Attacks : Castaic: Action is aimed at protecting whites. Racial violence followed last year’s King beating trial acquittals.

More than 50 Anglo inmates have been moved to a separate facility at a large county jail in Castaic by sheriff’s deputies worried that they will be targets of racial attacks when verdicts are reached in the Rodney G. King case, as happened after the previous trial.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Robert Spierer said 52 inmates at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho were transferred from the South Facility to the North Facility Friday to avoid a repeat of the riot that broke out last year among 1,000 inmates following the Superior Court verdicts in favor of the four officers accused of beating King.

The targets of last April’s fighting, said Spierer, were the white inmates, who had to be rescued by sheriff’s deputies.

“Last year . . . there was a problem because only 10% of the inmates were white,” Spierer said. “Because of the vast disparity in the number of white inmates to minority inmates, we have decided in advance to move the white inmates out of the South Facility.”

Deputies began reducing the number of Anglo inmates from the South Facility through attrition when the federal trial started for the four officers accused of beating King, Spierer said. Typically, there are about 150 Anglo inmates housed in the medium-security facility.

“Now that they’re closer to the verdicts,” Spierer said, “we decided to move them as a group to the North Facility, which is a medium- to maximum-security facility.” The inmates will remain there until it’s safe for them to return, Spierer said.

Large brawls are more difficult to control in the South Facility, where more than 800 prisoners can congregate and barracks are only separated when gates are lowered. The North Facility is made up of separate dormitories, each housing no more than 100 prisoners, which can be dealt with individually in case of trouble, Spierer said.

The Anglo inmates transferred to the North Facility will not be clustered in an all-Anglo cellblock, but will be dispersed throughout the general population in numbers sufficient to keep them from being heavily outnumbered by minority-race inmates, deputies said.

The five facilities that comprise the Pitchess Honor Rancho house about half of the county’s 20,000 jail inmates, an estimated 48% of whom are Latinos, 33% black, 17% white and 2% Asian or American Indian, Deputy George Ducoulombier said.

The Castaic jail is the site of frequent racially motivated brawls, often between black and Latino prisoners, including one last Wednesday that involved 600 to 800 prisoners. Eight inmates and four deputies were injured.