Prisoners Are Segregated After Brawl : Jails: The Sheriff’s Department says the action is temporary ‘until things calm down’ between blacks and Latinos at Pitchess facility.

In response one of the largest brawls ever between black and Latino prisoners at the racially troubled Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic, Sheriff’s Department authorities said Monday they are temporarily segregating hundreds of maximum-security inmates “until things calm down.”

The unusual tactic was triggered by a Sunday melee in which 600 inmates fought with knives and other weapons, injuring 80. It was another in a prolonged series of fights at the sprawling facility in northern Los Angeles County, which experienced more than 55 racial brawls last year, in which 200 to 300 inmates were injured.

Minor scuffles continued at the Pitchess facility Monday, and another racial fight broke out between prisoners in a holding cell at the Santa Monica courthouse. Fighting at the Santa Monica facility was quelled within seconds, but sheriff’s officials at other jails were placed on alert to make sure any other outbreak could be put down quickly.

The brawls underscored mounting racial tension that has resulted in conflicts, not only in local jails but also on the streets, between black and Latino street gangs.

For decades, Southern California’s black and Latino gangs operated in separate worlds, coexisting in their neighborhoods with little conflict while warring primarily with gangs of their own ethnicity. Recently, however, gang experts have seen black and Latino gangs begin to clash over turf boundaries and drugs--a power struggle that experts say is linked to the racial conflicts inside jails and prisons.

The commander of the Pitchess facility, Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert Spierer, said Monday afternoon that the racial climate may have been exacerbated by gang warfare in Venice--where 40 people have been shot in interracial gang conflict, 11 of them fatally, since September--and other problems on the street and in the state prison and county jail systems.

Spierer said authorities were continuing their investigation into the cause of the brawl and remained perplexed about how to prevent problems between blacks and Latinos from escalating.

Segregation of prisoners is against Sheriff’s Department policy and it will remain in effect “just until things calm down,” Spierer said. “I would doubt it will last for more than 24 hours; then we have to re-integrate them.”

He said authorities are bracing for the worst once the 500 to 700 inmates who are segregated in 14 maximum-security dormitories are desegregated.

“Certainly, we are worried that the hostility will carry over when they are re-integrated,” Spierer said. “But we believe there is a greater danger in keeping them segregated.”

Authorities said a four-week pilot program is scheduled to begin at Pitchess in the next few months in an effort to teach inmates to defuse racial tension. Besides the constitutional problems of permanently segregating inmates along racial lines, Spierer said allowing groups to remain separate would only cause deeply rooted societal and racial problems to fester.

Carol Sobel, senior staff counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles, said any permanent segregation probably would not only be unconstitutional, but virtually impossible to uphold without leading to all sorts of other discrimination complaints.

The Sheriff’s Department sent extra guards and other personnel to the Pitchess jail facility, and top management officials spent Monday determining what other steps to take as part of a pre-arranged inspection.

Frequently, the fights in the ranch’s five jail buildings start with a simple confrontation between two men over the use of a pay phone or a minor theft or because one inmate feels that another hasn’t shown him the proper respect, authorities said. Such fights can start anywhere, including areas where inmates cannot easily be segregated, such as in buses and holding cells, authorities said.

“It may not actually start out racially, but it breaks out along those lines,” Spierer said. Sheriff’s Department officials said it may have been just such a minor incident that touched off the Sunday melee. Deputies said the fighting broke out almost simultaneously at 20 separate maximum security dormitories at 3:55 p.m. In the next half hour, more than 600 Latino and black inmates battled with homemade knives, broomsticks and “anything they could get their hands on,” one deputy said. Dozens of guards fired rubber bullets to break them up.

Of the 80 injured inmates, 24 were sent to hospitals for X-rays or for treatment for stab wounds, severe cuts and head injuries. Some of those hospitalized were brought back to segregated dorms Monday, Spierer said, but others remained in the jail hospital downtown and in the Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Santa Clarita with serious injuries.

In all, between 500 and 700 inmates at two of the five buildings on the north campus remained segregated late Monday. The two buildings house about 1,400 inmates, with Latinos outnumbering blacks two to one, Spierer said.

In recent weeks, tensions between the two racial groups appear to have escalated, Sheriff’s authorities have said.

The Sunday brawl came on the heels of three fights in the previous week at the Pitchess jail. Last Friday, several inmates of the jail’s north facility suffered minor injuries when 15 Latino and black prisoners fought, authorities said. The day before, 15 inmates had been hurt when 40 men battled each other in a medical dorm at the north facility. And on Wednesday, five inmates were hurt when 80 prisoners fought in the jail’s east facility.

Times staff writer Chip Johnson contributed to this story.