Released Inmates Call Jail Brawl ‘Total Chaos’

Punches were thrown, noses were broken and backs were stabbed during a series of violent racial melees at the Pitchess jail last week that were apparently orchestrated by Latino gangs, newly released inmates said Monday.

“It was total chaos,” said Thomas Williams, a 26-year-old Hawthorne resident who was released Friday.

“It was all started” by Latino inmates who jumped African Americans on orders from a gang based in the state prison system, contended Williams, who is black. “They must have gotten the word from the prisons and then all of a sudden they came up and began acting crazy.”

Sheriff’s officials and other prisoners have identified the gang as the Mexican Mafia.

When the fighting erupted at 2 p.m. Wednesday, prisoners quickly divided along racial lines, attacking each other with “shanks,” prison slang for improvised knives, for about 10 minutes, Williams said.

“One guy was stabbed in the back, his tooth was knocked out and he had a concussion.”

Deputies in riot gear quelled the first outbreak of violence, Williams said, firing non-lethal rubber “stinger” rounds.

The jail was placed under lock-down and the inmates were told to strip to their underwear and lie face down on their bunks, Williams said. The prisoners are kept in underwear whenever the jail is locked down. Phone, television and mail privileges were canceled.

The next day, “it just all took off all over again,” Williams said in an interview outside the Men’s Central jail downtown. “At times we [African Americans] were watching each other’s backs just to survive.”

George Cramer, 45, of San Pedro, said he was depositing money in a jail account for his son, who had been stabbed. “He said blacks and Mexicans broke out fighting and started stabbing each other,” Cramer said. “He was stabbed in the back . . . I don’t want him dead.”

The brawling, the worst in the history of the Pitchess Detention Center, resulted in more than 160 injuries and tens of thousands of dollars in damage. The fighting continued sporadically for the remainder of the week. In the most recent outbreak Sunday evening, four inmates were injured.

So far, five deputies have suffered minor injuries in the brawls, but none were harmed by inmates, Undersheriff Jerry Harper said. The deputies were involved in accidents while fighting the violence. One deputy stood on a table and fell off, he said.

Sheriff’s officials have said the attacks are the result of an ongoing jail race war, which has set off a decade-long series of brawls, and may also indicate a power struggle within the Mexican Mafia.

One released inmate said that word had spread throughout the jail that the Mexican Mafia had ordered the brawls to “take back their power base.” The Latino inmate, who asked to be identified only by the name Arturo, said that members of the Bloods and Crips--African American street gangs--have been taking over drug sales territories, both in the jail and on the streets, previously controlled by Latino gangs.

“The Mexican Mafia wants to stop that,” Arturo said. “In a couple of weeks the fighting should begin again because they haven’t won control yet.”

Arturo said prisoners feel compelled to fight for their racial group, because those who don’t risk being attacked as traitors. “We’ve got to take sides,” he said.

An African American woman, waiting at the Men’s Central Jail on Monday to deposit money in her son’s jail account, said her son told her that “if he doesn’t fight he’d get beaten by other blacks later.

“Everybody has to fight,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.

Williams said that the white inmates, 17% of the county jail population, tend to side with the Latino inmates, the dominant group.

Relatives of other inmates said they had been told that sheriff’s deputies have caused some of the problems and have been too rough on the inmates.

“I’m worried about my brother,” said Moe Everett, 31, of Long Beach, whose brother is jailed at Pitchess. “I’m quite sure he’s scared for his life.”

Everett said his brother called him Sunday night and told him he had been attacked by two inmates in his dorm and that when he tried to fight back, several sheriff’s deputies struck him with flashlights.

Frank Berry, an executive assistant with the NAACP, said his office received roughly half a dozen calls from relatives of inmates who have claimed deputies instigated some of the fights by taunting prisoners. One caller complained that a group of five Latino deputies beat a handcuffed African American prisoner, he said.

Berry said the NAACP would investigate. “All of this came by telephone shortly after the situation took place,” Berry said. “You don’t know how much is fact and how much is fiction until you get it in writing and you are able to investigate it.”

Undersheriff Harper said he was unaware of any complaints involving deputies being lodged against his department.

“If anyone has any specifics we would like to know about them,” Harper said.

Times correspondent Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this story.