Injured Inmates Seeking $660,000 : Lancaster: Sixty-six file claims following ‘cell extractions’ conducted during a search for weapons. Several guards were also hurt.

A prisoners rights law office filed claims Thursday seeking more than $660,000 for dozens of inmates at Lancaster State Prison who said they were shot with wooden pellets and forcibly removed from their cells by guards during a violent crackdown earlier this year.

The Feb. 2 incident stemmed from an investigation into a tip that several inmates in a special unit for problem prisoners were conspiring to stab a sergeant.

According to claims filed by the San Rafael-based Prison Law Office, a daylong series of “cell extractions” to search for weapons left at least four inmates with broken bones and one with a severed finger.

In the course of the operation, one of the guards used a gas-propelled gun that fires wooden bullets to force uncooperative inmates from their cells, according to claims filed with the state Board of Control.

“The guards were vicious and used far more force than necessary,” said Steven Fama, an attorney for the private law office near San Quentin State Prison.

But Lancaster prison Warden John Ratelle on Thursday defended the operation in which 13 guards also sustained minor injuries. The incident was never reported to the news media.

“We’ve done an internal affairs investigation on that whole incident,” Ratelle said. “There was no excessive force.” He described the inmates as “totally uncooperative” and said they threw urine and feces on guards.

Almost all of the prisoners pulled from their cells that day were transferred from Lancaster to high-security units at Pelican Bay and Corcoran state prisons, according to the claims filed on behalf of 66 inmates.

Eve Shapiro, another lawyer working on the case, said one prisoner received no medical treatment for a broken foot until he arrived at Pelican Bay two days later.

Ratelle denied that any prisoners with apparent injuries were taken from Lancaster without medical treatment. “All of the inmates we knew of who were injured were treated here at the institution before they were transferred,” he said, adding: “They get better medical care than you or I do.”

According to prison records and the claims filed Thursday, the violence unfolded after a weapons search was ordered of the “administrative segregation unit,” which houses recalcitrant inmates.

Occupants of 49 of the 100 cells in the unit refused to allow their cells to be searched. In an effort to force the inmates out, guards fired wooden pellets in. The practice is proper prison procedure, according to Ratelle, and similar to techniques used in the Los Angeles County jail system to quell riots.

Inmates struck by ricocheting pellets reported a broken nose, a broken thumb, a broken foot and a broken ankle. Two of at least 13 injured guards were treated at Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center for minor injuries and released.

At least one improvised metal weapon was found in the search.

According to a prison report written shortly after the incident, the sergeant who was the subject of the conspiracy operated the air gun that fired wooden pellets. But Ratelle on Thursday denied that the sergeant took part in the search.

“He was in the unit, but he did not participate in cell extractions,” Ratelle said.

If Thursday’s claims are rejected by the state Board of Control, the group will probably file a lawsuit against the state, attorneys said. The individual claims--one for each inmate--each ask for more than $10,000.