Peace Plan Elusive as County Jails Race War Continues : Violence: Melees between blacks and Latinos escalate. Pitchess facility is at the front line of the battles.

The word passed quietly through the jailhouse, from visitors to inmates, then on to other inmates: The Mexican Mafia wanted its minions to “get the blacks” at 3:55 p.m. as they watched the Raiders playoff game.

And when the time came, Allen (Chivo) Gonzalez and his homeboys went to work.

Far outnumbering the black inmates in their maximum-security dormitory at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic, the Latinos swarmed toward them with homemade shank knives and broom handles, beating the blacks into a corner, where they fought for their lives.

The attack eight days ago, which involved about 1,000 inmates and injured 80, was unlike the hundreds of smaller spontaneous jail melees in the past. Those were largely sparked by fights over cigarettes or pay phones. This one was planned, authorities have confirmed, and the aggressors were organized.

“We heard the word that we were supposed to jump them, so we let them have it,” Gonzalez said.

There is a race war going down in the Los Angeles County jail system, and the Pitchess jail is the front line. It is a war that inmates, authorities and sociologists say is but one symptom of a black-versus-brown gang power struggle over drugs and turf that has reverberated through state prisons, the streets of Venice and other parts of the county.

And, inmates, deputies and sociologists say, it is a war that no one may be able to stop.

The war has erupted in jail dormitories and court lockups, on buses and in jail workout rooms and cafeterias from Santa Monica to Pomona. But the largest conflict to date--the largest in county jail history--was the Jan. 9 melee at the Castaic jail’s maximum-security North County Correctional Facility, where Gonzalez and other inmates began fighting as the Raiders clinched their victory over the Denver Broncos.

“It’s gonna happen again and again and again,” said Gonzalez, who at 18 is headed to state prison for attempted murder and armed robbery. He turned to grin at his Latino cellmates as they flipped gang signs in Dormitory 611.

“That’s just how it is,” he said. “Now it’s either them or you.”

Once inclined to fight gangsters of their own race, blacks and Latinos are squaring off in the cramped confines of incarceration and lashing out at each other with unprecedented ferocity. Authorities are at their wit’s end, trying to buy time with racial segregation, shows of force, discipline and lock-downs.

“We have a tremendous problem here,” said Cmdr. Robert J. Spierer, head of the Pitchess jail, located 39 miles north of Downtown Los Angeles.

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Chief Paul Myron, who oversees all jails for the Sheriff’s Department, confirmed Friday that the department is investigating intelligence information that the riot was sparked by visitors affiliated with the Mexican Mafia, who passed on the directive to Latino inmates.

The attack went off in two buildings at once--instantly spreading from one 50-man dorm to another. Overwhelmed deputies in riot gear tossed in “stingball” grenades, trying to regain order from outside the bars.

It was not until eight hours later that the fighting at the mammoth jail facility ended. Twenty-four of the 80 injured inmates required hospital treatment.

Since then, fights have occurred daily at North County and the use of pay phones and other privileges has been halted “until they start acting like human beings again,” Myron said. Visiting hours were canceled over the weekend.

A chilling foreshadowing of last week’s violence came before Christmas, Myron said, when a member of the fearsome Black Guerrilla Family prison gang was viciously attacked by Mexican Mafia cohorts in the maximum-security Pelican Bay Prison in Northern California.

“That, possibly, was the first signal that the attacks on blacks was beginning,” Myron said. “They want to show that they can do what they want to do, and that one group is superior to another.”

Last week, deputies in riot gear prowled the sprawling Pitchess facility, randomly searching inmates and their bunk beds and common areas for homemade weapons.

“They’re quite ingenious,” said Deputy Robert Harms, holding up deadly looking knives fashioned from plastic toothbrushes and metal shoe supports. “They find things we overlook.”

Troublesome inmates are being sent elsewhere, mostly within the county jail system. Slowly, deputies are trying to re-integrate inmates.

But re-integration is exactly what many inmates do not want--especially the African Americans, who are outnumbered nearly 2 to 1.

Alonzo Hicks, 42, was one of many black inmates who told Spierer that Latinos would cause more bloodshed if the races are not kept separate.

“They are arming themselves, and there is animosity,” Hicks said. “I’m concerned about making it out of here alive.”

Gonzalez and other Latinos said they prefer to remain separated too, that they dislike blacks, and that they are just following orders to fight. They believe orders come from veterano gangsters, including the Mexican Mafia, to settle the latest killing or affront.

“That’s just what I heard,” Gonzalez said. “We bomb on them, or we get bombed by our own if we don’t take care of business. . . . You have to do it. You just do.”

In an open letter last week, more than 50 black inmates said sheriff’s deputies who patrol the jail are exacerbating the situation by forcing them to re-integrate, and baiting them with racial slurs. Written by inmate Clyde Hayes, the letter says: “. . . organized confusion, which is being fueled by the sheriffs . . . jeopardizes the lives of blacks.”

Hayes, like other inmates, said in an interview that the situation is superheated because sheriff’s officials have long ignored the root causes of the racial tension, including overcrowding and dwindling programs to keep inmates busy.

“They should be trying to establish lines of communication between the blacks, Latinos and the sheriff about why this is happening,” said Hayes, 27. “But nobody is doing it.”

“Now, somebody is gonna die,” he said. “We’re tired of playing these silly-ass games.”

Greatly outnumbered, whites try to stay on the sidelines. “I’m terribly worried,” said Igor Russo, 33, who in jail for failing to complete community service work. “I’m scared for my life.”

Racially motivated fights and riots have been commonplace in the nation’s largest county jail system for years; more than 400 inmates were injured in 57 racially motivated melees last year, Spierer said.

In the past, sheriff’s officials attributed the violence to the power struggle that has evolved as jail demographics changed. Blacks used to control the jails, but by 1991 found themselves outnumbered by Latinos 40% to 37%. The disparity has grown ever since.

Now, with the fighting escalating from sporadic scuffles to organized activity, the Sheriff’s Department has enlisted the help of outsiders--top black and Latino church leaders and, last week, the American Civil Liberties Union.

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It asked the ACLU, which monitors jail conditions, to examine whether inmates could be segregated by race. ACLU leaders say they are seriously considering it, even though it would represent a major policy shift.

“We sat around . . . and nobody had an answer,” Ramona Ripston, ACLU executive director for Southern California, said of last Tuesday’s meeting with sheriff’s officials. “Even if we were to agree that segregation was acceptable under these circumstances . . . what do they do when these inmates go on buses to court? What happens in the lockups in the courts and the holding cells? It is a terrible, terrible situation.”

Sheriff’s officials have so far opposed segregation, which has been used only in a handful of U.S. jails or prisons. It is not prohibited by law, but authorities believe it may be not only unconstitutional, but impossible do.

“We live in an integrated society, and I think it sends the wrong message and says too much about our failure if we can’t deal with this in an integrated setting,” Spierer said. “We need to find a way to deal with it rather than throw our hands in the air and say we are giving up.”

Inmates and other critics counter that the Sheriff’s Department has long ignored festering problems that created such a tense atmosphere in which inmates are quick to rumble.

A 1991 sheriff’s task force recommended a system of “progressive housing” that would reward inmates for good behavior with better living conditions. However, two years later, that system is just beginning to take shape, mainly because of tight budgets, officials say.

Some outside experts have called for inmate councils that can bring problems to jail officials. Myron says that idea was tried and discarded as ineffective.

Experts such as Ed Koren, of the National Prison Project in Washington, say the dorms such as those at Pitchess, which house as many as 130 inmates, are fertile ground for racial tensions and rioting.

In the dorms, blacks and Latinos kill time side by side, and the smallest slight is seen by everyone. Locking down dorms only means cooping up the combatants together. That was clear Jan. 9.

Myron said most dorms at Pitchess were built before jail overcrowding set free all but the most violent criminals, who go to Pitchess to serve county jail sentences or to await trial or sentencing before heading off to state prison. Built to house 6,000 inmates, Pitchess holds 10,000.

Although the dorms and group barracks were not meant to house the accused murderers and other intractable offenders who reside there, Myron said, scrapping them for more manageable cells would be astronomically expensive.

Inmates have laughed at the suggestions of some programs, including racial sensitivity classes. Nevertheless, 1,700 more inmate beds in Lynwood are to come on line in the spring. Sheriff’s officials say they are planning another safety measure: a moneyless jail credit system so inmates can buy foods and supplies, without fear of extortion from other inmates.

Meanwhile, the county’s jail inspection commission, which advises the Board of Supervisors, plans to meet Wednesday to discuss the scuffles and melees.

It has asked Sheriff Sherman Block to report on the situation and members also want to tour the facility “when it’s safe,” said Commissioner Jim Cragin.

And an internal investigation is under way into allegations that at least three deputies engaged in misconduct toward inmates during or after the Jan. 9 riot that could have exacerbated the situation.

But some say that all the money in the world would not solve problems that sheriff’s officials say come from the street and society.

“The Latinos want the power,” the ACLU’s Ripston said of the inmates. “And they are going to take it.”