Week’s 2nd Brawl Injures 15 Pitchess Inmates

A total of 28 inmates were injured in two separate incidents at the Pitchess jail this week in what Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials are calling two “major disturbances.”

Custody Division Chief Barry S. King characterized both disturbances--one Tuesday afternoon and the other Sunday night--as brawls involving African American and Latino inmates that “quickly broke down along racial lines.”

The institution has been plagued by a series of hundreds of black-Latino fights for several years.

The largest of the two fights occurred at 2:45 p.m. Tuesday in a dormitory in the maximum-security East Facility. King said all 129 of the occupants in the dormitory were involved in the fight that left 15 men injured by feet, fists and broomsticks.

Three inmates were taken to the County-USC Medical Center for stitches. King said the fight started over an item of personal property: “It may have been a candy bar or tennis shoes or socks,” he said.

After about three minutes, sheriff’s deputies halted the fight with two stingball grenades.

At 8 p.m. Sunday, a fight erupted in a dormitory in the maximum-security North County Correctional Facility involving 71 inmates, which also broke down along racial lines. Deputies halted it by ordering the inmates to stop.

King said 10 inmates were treated at the facility clinic and three were taken to County-USC Medical Center for stitches.

Deputy Bob Killeen said sheriff’s investigators determined that overcrowding and racial tensions were to blame for Sunday’s fight.

No charges have been filed, said Killeen. Both incidents are still under investigation.