State Prisons Altering Rules on Use of Deadly Force

State prison officials, responding to large numbers of inmates who were shot to death or wounded by guards, are revising their policy to sharply restrict the use of deadly force.

Cal Terhune, director of the Department of Corrections, said the new policy will forbid state guards to fire assault rifles to stop inmates engaged in nonlethal fistfights and melees.

Deadly force will be allowed only if one inmate is inflicting serious injury with a clearly visible weapon to a prison staff member or another inmate.

“We’ve got to do all we can to get it down to zero,” Terhune said. “There’s been some misinterpretation of the [current] policy, and we’ve decided to go in and do a whole redraft. We’re going to put it in writing.”

To ensure that the new policy is applied consistently throughout the state’s 33-prison system, Terhune said the department will put together a standardized plan for guards and their superiors.

“The lesson plan will run down the scenarios in which deadly force can be used and can’t be used,” he said. “And we’re going to put the whole thing on video.”

The decision to revise the policy was prompted by a story in The Times last Sunday reporting that California is the only state that uses deadly force to break up inmate fights and melees.

Since late 1994, when the Department of Corrections shooting policy came under criticism for its role in widespread inmate deaths, 12 prisoners have been shot to death and 32 have been wounded by guards firing high-powered rifles to stop fights, The Times found.

In all other states combined, only six inmates were killed during the same period--all while trying to escape.

Critics of the state’s shooting policy said Terhune’s actions are welcome but long overdue.

“I applaud Mr. Terhune’s decision because it is the correct decision,” said Bob Navarro, an attorney who has sued the state over a 1994 shooting death at Corcoran State Prison. “But I feel this was a decision that could have been made in 1989 when the violence and shootings at Corcoran became so apparent.

“That was nine years ago and they failed to do anything until today and we’ve had all those needless deaths.”

California’s 44 fatal and serious shootings since late 1994, statistics and interviews showed, have occurred at maximum-security prisons up and down the state. Only one of the inmates was armed with a weapon or was inflicting serious injury at the time the fatal shot was fired, a Times review of the shootings found. No corrections officer was facing peril, and not a single inmate was attempting to escape.

Terhune pointed out that the 12 deaths and 32 nonfatal shootings represented a sharp decline from the period of 1989 to 1994, when 27 inmates were shot to death and 175 were wounded by guards trying to break up fights. Still, he said, the new numbers are too high. “We have to be more judicious with the firepower,” he said.

Toward that end, Terhune’s two deputy directors, Steve Cambra and David Tristan, spent an hour this week on a conference call with the state’s 33 wardens. They discussed how shooting practices vary from prison to prison, with some maximum-security lockups forbidding deadly force to break up inmate fights and others allowing it.

The state’s policy has called for guards to issue a verbal command to stop fighting and then to fire a warning shot with a wood or rubber block. When fights continued and an inmate posed “imminent great bodily harm” to another, guards have been trained to chamber a real bullet and fire at the aggressor’s torso.

But imminent great bodily harm has meant different things to different guards. And because the Department of Corrections has never specified the scenarios in which deadly force can be used, some wardens asked if three-on-one or a four-on-one fights would qualify, Terhune said. They were told no, unless the aggressors were inflicting serious injury with a weapon.

The officials also discussed making more use of less lethal options, such as emergency response teams and riot gas. The wardens were told to prepare for a revised policy that was consistent with the deadly force guidelines used by the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County sheriff.

Don Novey, president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which represents prison guards, acknowledged Friday that the “degree of force is something that always should be looked at.”

But Novey said he had not seen the new policy and is uncertain of the direction the department is taking.

“What happens when somebody is beating another human being’s head into the ground? Can they shoot? I don’t know. Do we let those things go on?”

Officials have cited the singular nature of California’s vast prison system--with 159,000 inmates, many of them rival gang members--as rationale for gunner posts inside maximum-security units.

During the past several months, in the wake of stories in The Times that focused on flaws in the state’s oversight of Corcoran, the corrections department has undertaken a number of reforms. An independent panel has reviewed nearly 40 shootings at Corcoran and other prisons since 1989, Terhune said.

The panel’s report, which will be released in a few weeks, is expected to recommend that some of the shootings be referred to local district attorneys for possible prosecution. Discussions growing out of the panel’s work also were a factor in the decision to tighten the deadly force policy, Terhune said.

At the same time the corrections department is seeking to fix its shooting policy, it did not last week agree to settlements in two controversial shooting deaths.

One lawsuit involved the 1994 shooting death of inmate Preston Tate at Corcoran. Tate was mistakenly shot to death during a fistfight in an exercise yard by a guard who was aiming at another inmate. Lawyers representing Tate’s family had been seeking nearly $1 million.

Three other lawsuits stem from a 1996 shooting at New Folsom State Prison in which one inmate was fatally shot and two were wounded. The cases are now headed for trial.