Wilson Launches Corcoran Prison Brutality Probe

Reacting to reports of torture and killing by guards, Gov. Pete Wilson on Friday launched a criminal investigation into allegations of brutality and cover-up at troubled Corcoran State Prison.

The governor asked Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren to oversee a wide-ranging probe of the prison. “We received the governor’s letter, and the attorney general’s office will be conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of illegal activity at Corcoran,” said Steve Telliano, Lungren’s press secretary.

The unusual move comes two years after the FBI began investigating the killing of Preston Tate, a black gang member shot by a guard while fighting with Latino rivals in Corcoran’s security housing unit. Prison officials acknowledged that Tate was shot in error, and a federal grand jury in Fresno is considering criminal indictments.

The Times this summer reported that the Tate killing and dozens of other shootings resulted in part from the state’s controversial practice of mixing gang rivals in a small recreation yard. The so-called integration policy has led to scores of fights between inmates and shootings by guards trying to stop the combatants, said several high-ranking Corcoran officers.

Fights also were staged between inmates for the amusement of guards in a ritual known as “gladiator day,” and problem inmates arriving at Corcoran were repeatedly beaten and intimidated, according to former prison officials quoted in The Times.

Wilson on Friday suspended the practice of mixing rivals in the yard at Corcoran’s security housing unit, a lock-up for problem inmates sent from other California prisons. “In order to protect correctional officers and inmates,” Wilson said, “it has become necessary to suspend yard privileges at the Corcoran [security unit] due to escalating inmate violence.”

In addition to the new probe, the Department of Corrections is conducting its own internal inquiry of possible violations by officials at Corcoran. Earlier this year eight Corcoran supervisors were fired, suspended or demoted for their role in a beating of inmates who arrived by bus from Calipatria State Prison. The prison officials are appealing.

The FBI, meanwhile, is apparently expanding its investigation into Corcoran. The federal grand jury in Fresno recently issued a broad new subpoena to the Department of Corrections demanding to be told the shooting policies for all California state prisons, plus seeking more information on the officer who shot and killed Tate.

The demand for documents also includes a request for the “entire personnel file” of former Corcoran Warden George Smith, plus rosters of guards and prisoners at the security housing unit that is the focus of the investigation.

Corcoran is home to 5,500 inmates, including Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan. Its security housing unit, one of only two in the state, is a prison within a prison for 1,800 gang members and other problem inmates.

Seven inmates have been shot and killed by guards since Corcoran opened in 1988, the most at any prison in the country in that time span. More than 50 inmates have been wounded.

Wilson’s office said closing the recreation yard at the Corcoran security housing unit would give the Corrections Department more time to decide whether to adopt a new yard policy that segregates warring black and Latino gangs.

In the past five weeks alone, guards overseeing the unit have fired wood pellets at brawling inmates nearly 100 times.

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Until Friday, the head of the Corrections Department, James H. Gomez, had ordered Corcoran to continue mixing rival gang members. The rationale for the policy is that gang members in the security unit need to be tested to determine if they can get along before being released back to the main yard.

“It’s not a flawed policy,” Gomez said Friday at a press briefing. “It may be a flawed implementation.”

He released statistics showing that about half the fights involve members of different races and ethnic groups, and that half are among members of the same groups. He said there is no policy short of keeping the security unit inmates in their cells 24 hours a day that will eliminate the violence. “No matter who you put them with, there are problems,” he said.

But some Corcoran administrators said the security unit experienced nearly a year of peace after they decided to quietly ignore the integration policy and segregate yards according to gang affiliation. It wasn’t until Gomez found out about their flouting of the policy in the Times story--and ordered integration to be resumed--that the violence broke out again, they said.

“Sacramento is digging in their heels and ordering us to follow a policy that is endangering the lives of inmates and the psychological well-being of officers,” said one high-ranking officer at Corcoran who asked not to be named.

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In recent months, some administrators have again refused to carry out the controversial policy. “Some of us have decided to ignore the orders from Sacramento,” said an administrator who also requested anonymity. “We don’t want blood on our hands.”

Integration is a policy generally enforced throughout the state’s 32-prison system, but it can mean different things at different institutions. Like Corcoran, many prisons have a form of a security housing unit where problem inmates lose the privilege of exercising on the main yard and are placed instead in cramped yards. But unlike Corcoran, these other facilities often take pains not to mix rival inmates.

“San Quentin is one of the prisons that has been able to achieve racial integration on its small yards without mixing, say, blacks and Latinos from Southern California who are sworn enemies,” said Steve Fama of the Prison Law Office in San Quentin, a prisoner rights advocacy group.

“At Corcoran, they say they want to be able to test the inmates to see if they can go back to the general population,” he said. “But if you’re a gang member, you’re not supposed to go back to the main yard. Their reasoning is a bunch of baloney.”

Don Novey, head of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which represents prison officers, agreed.

“It’s a naive notion that you’re going to teach these inmates to get along,” he said. “Obviously there’s something wrong with the policy when you have continual shootings. It wears the staff out, it wears inmates out and the institution begins to fall apart.

On Thursday the state’s lawyers offered a “substantial” financial settlement to Tate family members in return for their dropping a wrongful death lawsuit against the prison, the family’s attorney said.

The new investigation Friday was greeted with skepticism by a former Corcoran guard who is cooperating with the FBI probe. The governor’s response came three days after CBS News called Corcoran “the most dangerous prison in America.”

“All the fights, all the shootings, all the deaths, and the state wouldn’t budge,” said Richard Caruso. “It’s taken the national news to put them on the hot seat and get them to do something.”