Inmates’ Families Decry Jail Violence

Janice Cooper’s son got slashed in the face so deeply he could see bone. Evelyn Womack’s son was stabbed in the back with a homemade blade. Jennifer Usher’s son was jumped by 15 men and beaten with lunch trays.

Half a dozen mothers of inmates housed in Los Angeles County’s Castaic jails spoke out Tuesday against conditions they say leave African American inmates vulnerable to attack.

The women talked of their sons as if they were still boys and detailed their suffering in emotion-choked voices. With the support of community activists, they urged authorities to keep inmates segregated, saying that was the only way to keep their sons safe in a racially polarized environment in which African Americans are outnumbered.

“I know that people say segregation is not fair, whatever, whatever, but segregation is safer for our boys,” said Ethel Fuqua, mother of an inmate.

Authorities concede that racial imbalances, with Latino inmates outnumbering African Americans 2 to 1, helped fuel last week’s riots at the Pitchess Detention Center in which more than 80 men, most of them black, were injured, some seriously.

In one dorm where blacks were outnumbered 60 to 5, a group of Latinos jumped Cooper’s 19-year-old son and slashed him from lip to ear, she said. “Can you imagine how it feels to go and visit your son and see 43 stitches across his face?” Cooper asked. “‘Yes, he may deserve to be in jail, but my boy doesn’t deserve to be maimed.”

On Tuesday more violence broke out, this time in the recreation yard at the Men’s Central Jail. Fifteen blacks and Latinos fought with one another, leaving three injured.

Joining the mothers at a news conference outside the Men’s Central Jail, former O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden said he is considering legal action against the county.

“So many members of the black community are in the system and the county has the duty to protect them,” said Darden, who is now a private defense attorney. “If it takes segregation, then that’s exactly what the sheriff should do.”

Last week’s violence was the worst in years at the jails, officials said, and Assistant Sheriff Dennis Dahlman agreed to meet today with parents, their lawyers and activists.

Dahlman said officials plan to re-integrate inmates within the next week, but will not maroon small groups of blacks in dorms overwhelmingly dominated by Latinos. The inmates were separated by race last week after three days of brawling.

“The racial balance is something we constantly have to watch, but it’s difficult,” Dahlman said. “We don’t have enough blacks in the system to keep it 50-50. But when there’s too big a gap in the numbers, we get problems.”

Authorities say that with high turnover in the jails--the average stay is 41 days--it is impractical to permanently segregate inmates.

“We don’t have the resources to run two separate systems based on race,” said Dahlman, who oversees custody issues.

Tensions between black and Latino inmates are nothing new. Dahlman blamed the violence on the Mexican Mafia prison gang, saying it sent out an order of sorts for Latinos to attack African American inmates.

Pitchess is a sprawling compound of four jails, with most of the 10,000 inmates housed in dorms. In an apparently well-coordinated plan, Dahlman said, Latinos spread word on the exercise yard, via telephone and through notes that if the ratio of blacks dropped below 40% in a dorm, Latinos should attack.

Sheriff’s deputies learned of the plans at midday April 24. One telling sign was that many Latino inmates were gobbling candy and other snacks, Dahlman said, something that happens before a big fight because candy is often smashed or stolen during brawls.

As deputies were entering one of the dorms to search for weapons, the Latinos “jumped off,” said Cmdr. Steve Day, who oversees the Pitchess facilities. That fighting ignited other dorms and soon involved 600 to 700 brawling inmates. It took dozens of deputies, armed with rubber bullets, tear gas and plastic “stingball” grenades, to quell the violence.

Similar disturbances erupted in the next two days, and sheriff’s officials say a 21-year-old black inmate remains on life support in critical condition with a fractured skull.

Darden said it is important to remember that many of the inmates in jail are innocent.

“Many of these young men haven’t even been tried,” Darden said. “We can’t forget that they are sons and brothers and fathers to people who really care.”

Evelyn Womack cares so much, she says, that she can’t sleep. Her 22-year-old son is in Pitchess, on charges of possessing stolen goods. He was stabbed in the back with a shank last week. Now Womack worries that he may get killed by a Latino gang if the dorms are re-integrated.

“My boy was so scared he didn’t even know he was bleeding,” Womack said. “Won’t anybody do something to stop our sons from getting killed in there?”