Hatred Persists Among Pitchess Inmates

After weeks of being kept apart in segregated buildings, black and Latino inmates at the Pitchess Detention Center are again sharing dormitory space--and again brawling.

More than 20 men were hurt, two seriously, in a surge of well-coordinated attacks July 8 and 9 at the Castaic facility. The first set of fights was incited by African American inmates who previously had been unable to avenge the beatings they took as a group in April, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Steve Day. The next day Latinos retaliated.

The fighting spread to six housing units and was evidence, authorities said, that friction remains high between the two inmate groups and may be impossible to resolve. In April, hundreds of prisoners battled with fists, feet and homemade knives in race-related riots, triggering sheriff’s officials to take the unusual step of temporarily segregating the jail.

“It’s better now than it was in April,” said Day, who is in charge of the Pitchess compound. “But this job is like a chess game. They make a move, we make a move, they make a move, we make a move. There’s only so much we can do with two groups who don’t seem to get along.”

During the past few months, sheriff’s officials have tried an array of tactics to diffuse tensions. First they split up black and Latino inmates into separate dorms, even separate buildings. Murder suspects and younger inmates were moved out of the large, open dormitories--which house as many as 120 men--to smaller, more tightly controlled cells at the Men’s Central Jail.

Patrols were boosted. Visits from clergy became more frequent. And then, starting mid-May and continuing through June, the dormitories were re-integrated, sometimes sparking violent resistance.

With more than 150 brawls involving blacks and Latinos since 1991, the 10,000-inmate jail will probably always be a place boiling with animosity, said Sheriff’s Chief Taylor Moorehead.

“It just takes the slightest provocation between two individuals and these groups line up and go at it,” said Moorehead, who oversees the county’s jail system. “Though we can’t stop the violence, we can reduce it--and I think we have.”

The night of July 8, deputies had heard a rumor that African American inmates were planning to attack Latinos in one housing unit, Day said. In response, deputies searched that unit and confiscated two freshly sharpened shanks.

An hour later, in a well-coordinated attack, black inmates in three dormitories jumped Latinos, he said. Deputies armed with “stingballs” (grenades that shoot out rubber pellets) and plastic bullets stormed into the dorms to stop the fighting.

At least 10 men were hurt, including one inmate shot with a plastic bullet.

The next day, a Sunday, three more dorms rioted, or “jumped off,” in jail parlance. This time the violence was initiated by Latino inmates, Day said, to express their anger at being housed with black inmates.

Separate Facilities Would Be Too Costly

Sheriff’s officials said they are determined to run an integrated jail because it would be too costly to provide separate facilities and programs for individual groups. Most of the friction at Pitchess is between African American and Latino inmates, the two biggest ethnic groups. Authorities said that occasionally there are problems with white inmates, as well as with Asian Americans in the jail.

Since the three days of rioting in April, authorities have gone to great lengths and even developed special computer programs to make sure the housing units are more racially balanced than they were when Latinos exploited their greater numbers to gang up on blacks, sometimes 9 or 10 to 1.

The six dormitories that recently rioted were roughly 50% to 55% Latino and 40% African American, as close to even numbers as possible, jail officials said.

The toll from the fighting wasn’t as heavy as it was in April when more than 80 men, mostly black, were injured and one man was beaten into a coma. Still, a total of 22 men were hurt July 8 and 9 and two were hospitalized for deep facial and head cuts. The violence led some mothers of African American inmates to call for segregating the jail by race to prevent more fights.

Moorehead said that, despite the violence, the vibes within the cell blocks are less hostile, at least according to the deputies on patrol.

And new programs will be launched, including expanded job training--which will bring more inmates of different races together.

Sheriff’s officials are also working with the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission to develop a video focused on how people of different races can get along, said Robin Toma, the commission’s acting executive director. The video would be broadcast on jailhouse televisions. One thought is to feature inmates in the production, Toma said.

Back to Violence

This week, some of the inmates in Pitchess said that, with the dorms no longer segregated, everything is back to normal. At Pitchess, they said, that means normally violent.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of people who say they want to do the get-along thing,” said Gary Beltran, a 47-year-old Latino inmate awaiting trial on assault and other charges. “But now we’re together, it’s the same old story. The tension is definitely there. You can still feel it, every day, all around you.”