‘Like Living in Hell’

Deveron Ratliff’s description of the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic is stark, but heartfelt:

“Everybody will tell you that living in the Los Angeles County Jail is like living in hell.”

A recent tour of Pitchess East showed why Ratliff feels as he does.

In the corner of a cell they shared with approximately 20 Latinos, about 10 black inmates nervously showered in their undershorts, mindful that the facility’s regular black-versus-brown brawls--often involving hundreds of men, many armed with homemade “shank” knives--can start at such vulnerable moments.

“You wonder if some Mexican guy is going to stab you in the back,” said Ratliff, 27, a black parolee who served more than a year in the jail and various state prisons after an armed robbery conviction in March 1995. “I asked a deputy, ‘Why don’t they do more to stop this?’

“He said, ‘It’s not your business. Stay out of it. Don’t ask questions.’ ”

But, like Ratliff, others are asking why more has not been done to halt race-related brawls at Pitchess, where there have been more than 150 since 1991. It is, in fact, one of the issues being raised by the three candidates opposing Sheriff Sherman Block in the June primary.

Other observers, like American Civil Liberties Union attorney Paul Hoffman, have also expressed concern.

“The worry is that somebody’s going to get killed,” said Hoffman, who believes that political and civic apathy are part of the problem.

“When we first went into the jails, I said to sheriff’s officials, ‘Look, you’ve managed [the interracial brawls] so far. But at some point, if it explodes, you’ve got Attica.’ I don’t think anybody can give you any assurance that it’s not going to blow up again.”

The recurring race riots are not the only problem Block faces in connection with his department’s management of the county’s jails. Deputies assigned to the Men’s Central Jail downtown are being investigated for allegedly encouraging other inmates to beat alleged child molesters, one of whom died, and for allegedly extending special favors to jailed celebrity Robert Downey Jr.

Block’s aggressive engagement of these more recent problems contrasts sharply with his handling of the racial brawls. In an interview, the sheriff said that a solution to the jail violence spawned by black and Latino antagonism is much harder to frame.

Block said that the racial problems are caused by factors beyond his control, and that first among them is the chronic overcrowding at Pitchess East and at the county’s newest jail, the North County Correctional Facility. Pitchess East, designed to hold 960 inmates, currently holds 1,760, said the facility’s commander, Capt. Bob Hoffman. North County has 3,700 inmates living in a facility designed to house 2,064.

The jails’ design also is a problem, as Los Angeles County special counsel Merrick Bobb wrote in a 1996 report on conditions there. Inmates at both Pitchess East and the North County facility are housed in college-style dormitories. That design was fine in an era when most prisoners served time in county jails for misdemeanors. Today, a sizable part of the jail’s population is made up of inmates--often repeat offenders--awaiting trial for violent crimes like rape, armed robbery and murder.

Bobb’s report estimated that the jail system was about 6,000 beds short.

Racial Composition Undergoes Shift

On top of those factors, Block said, is the dramatic change in the jails’ racial composition. Latinos now make up 58% of the population at Pitchess; black inmates make up 30%.

The change hasn’t gone unnoticed by California prison gangs, particularly the Mexican Mafia.

For members of African American gangs--such as the Black Guerrilla Family, the Crips and the Bloods--which ruled Pitchess through intimidation and fear for nearly two decades, what went around came around in 1988, when Latinos became the majority in the facility. But black prisoners aren’t giving up control without a fight.

Jail commanders like Capt. Chuck Jackson of the North County facility and Hoffman of Pitchess East generally agree that many Pitchess brawls are ordered by the Mexican Mafia, which is establishing control in the state prisons and wants to show black gangs that it controls the county jails as well.

Gang leaders allegedly put the word out by telephone. At an appointed time, a prisoner will call a Los Angeles-area home with a phone equipped for three-way calling. That way, a jail inmate can call and be a third party to conversation with a higher-up in the gang.

Latino jail inmates on their way to prison, the jail commanders say, are encouraged to carry the Mexican Mafia’s orders out or face isolation and possibly beatings by gang members once they reach prison.

Block has started a program called Operation Safe Jails to combat the problem, and numbers suggest that it has. Major brawls between inmates fell from 61 in 1996 to 25 last year, sheriff’s officials say. So far this year there have been two major incidents.

“It’s all about power,” Block said. “Some people have suggested that if we separate the system by race, we wouldn’t have any problem. But we have 46 classifications of inmates. If we tried to separate it by race, we’d have to build 20 more jails in Los Angeles County.”

Complicating the Picture

Black and Latino inmates aren’t the only groups consolidating power at the jails. White males dominate the ranks of sheriff’s deputies who watch over the racially diverse inmate population.

“It is sad that so little progress has been made in increasing the numbers of women and minorities,” Bobb wrote in the 1996 report. “Policing Los Angeles County is and remains principally a job filled by white males.”

Attorney Peter Eliasberg, another ACLU lawyer, sides with Block on the crowding issue.

“You can’t lay it all on the sheriff,” said Eliasberg. Californians from the governor on down “have the will to throw people in jail, but they don’t have the will to provide money so that they can live there. There’s no question in my mind . . . there’s a sense of frustration.”

Not everyone agrees. Block’s critics charge that he has mismanaged the Sheriff’s Department’s $1.1-billion budget. In 1996, for example, a state auditor found that the department could save $44 million simply by hiring civilians to do paperwork at the jail.

Bill Baker, a former chief under Block and now a candidate for his job, said the boss he once admired is no longer capable of running the vast department.

“He’s a crisis manager,” Baker said. “He doesn’t accomplish control by planning.”

Block’s inability to ease racial tension at Pitchess East, Baker said, is “testament to his lack of planning.”

Baker said Block should have gone outside the department for help, but the sheriff “is of the opinion that the L.A. County jail system is the largest of its type in the country, and he knows everything there is to know. He places very little value in enlisting outside counsel or external organizations.”

That’s not entirely true, however.

In 1991, Block turned to clergy members, human rights experts and civil libertarians for help when the race-related brawls suddenly escalated.

Block took some of their advice, which included allowing prisoners to have more control over their day-to-day lives via inmate committees.

But jail inmates average about a five-week stay. Other inmates coming through the revolving door aren’t as interested in the committees as those who helped start them.

Since then, Block has not sought outside advice.

But he has received it. The ACLU, armed with a court-imposed consent degree, forced its way into Pitchess East and began a campaign to ease tension between inmates and their jailers.

Commanders at Pitchess East and the North County facility seemed to need the help. In 1996, major inmate brawls that were broken up by rubber bullets and grenades peaked at 61.

Prevention and Force

That’s when the sheriff started Operation Safe Jails, or OSJ, as it’s known behind bars.

The program is a carrot-and-stick approach to penology that uses prevention and force. As a preventive measure, guards seek to separate jail gang members from their leaders, the so-called shot callers, by placing the leaders in isolated cells.

Without leaders, who tend to be hard-core convicts with allegiances to state prison gangs like the Mexican Mafia and the Black Guerrilla Family, the problem lessens.

When a major fight breaks out, the jailers call in the SWAT-inspired Emergency Response Team, armed with rubber bullets and grenades called “sting balls.”

On orders of Jackson, commander of the North County facility, the emergency team practices in the dorms. The exercise gets a reaction out of inmates, officers say.

“It has a calming effect,” said Sgt. Dale Tullio, who supervises the group. “There’s smoke still hanging in the air. It’s very impressive. They back off the bars.”

Baker asked: “Why now? It’s taken 10 years. The point is that these problems have not been addressed.”

Sheriff’s Chief Lee Baca, another of Block’s challengers and a three-decade department veteran, believes that Block’s physical condition--two bouts with cancer and kidney failure that requires dialysis--has compromised his leadership.

Baca says Block has done about as much as he can to ease racial tension at the jails, with the important exception of training deputies regularly in cultural diversity.

Training “wouldn’t be just a one-time shot with me. It would have to be on the job. You bring in a trained psychologist. You interview the fighters. Ask them why they fought. Are [the brawls] racial or a part of overall inmate tension?”

Block said he’s done all that. He said the answer to Baca’s last question is easy:

“It’s definitely racial tension.”