Sheriff’s Department Seeks Solution to Race Riots in Jails

The African American inmates were frantic. As the worst of three race riots raged through their Pitchess Detention Center dormitory, one of their own was missing.

The black inmates begged the Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who run the sprawling jail to search for him. Deputies, ignoring a long-standing policy against entering the dorms before they are cleared of inmates, went in.

There they found only Latino inmates. Implored to look again, they returned. This time, they spotted something--a black hand or leg--sticking out from under a mattress on which three Latino inmates sat. The deputies pulled out a 21-year-old black man, Ahmad Burwell, unconscious and bleeding profusely from a beating so bad it had fractured his skull. He remains in a hospital on life support.

His were the worst injuries suffered during three days of racially motivated fighting that erupted between black and Latino inmates at the north county jails this month.

Such conflicts are not new to the Sheriff’s Department, which runs the country’s largest jail system. Although sheriff’s deputies have new weapons that allow them to more quickly quell jailhouse rioting, they are powerless when it comes to the demographics driving the recurrent conflict.

In Los Angeles County, Latino inmates now outnumber blacks by large margins. The latest figures show that 45.6%--or 8,729--of the county’s inmates are Latino, 34%--or 6,507--are African American, and 17.4%--3,319--are white.

The latest rioting has sparked calls, many from the inmates themselves, to racially segregate the jails.

Sheriff’s officials, however, are loath to adopt a racial solution to a racial problem, though they are mindful of their legal obligation to protect the inmates in their custody. Somewhat reluctantly, the Sheriff’s Department segregated the dormitories where they had major disturbances. But they plan to re-integrate the jails beginning this week.

From Sheriff Lee Baca on down through the chain of jail commanders, segregating the jails is viewed as a short-term fix, perhaps because it would be a logistic nightmare to maintain long-term and perhaps for moral reasons.

“I’m sitting here thinking this goes against everything I’ve been taught to believe my whole life,” said Assistant Sheriff Dennis Dahlman, who is white. “This is America. . . . You’re talking to a guy raised to believe in the evils of segregation.”

Baca suggested that jail safety and rehabilitation programs have equal importance and that both need to be addressed simultaneously. Inmates with less idle time, the sheriff’s thinking goes, will be less likely to fight with each other.

“I don’t think one is any greater priority than the other,” Baca said. “But I don’t know if there will ever be a complete fix. The predator prisoners . . . can spring up at any moment.”

A ‘Fair Chance for Survival’

Many inmates, however, see it differently. They want to remain racially segregated. On a recent day at the massive Pitchess compound, black inmates played basketball and milled around a recreation area while Latinos remained indoors.

“All we want is a fair chance at survival,” said Leonard Bryant, a black parole violator at Pitchess’ east facility, where the worst fighting occurred. “I shouldn’t have to come to jail as a parolee and have to fight for my life.”

A Latino inmate, facing a parole violation hearing for allegedly carrying a concealed weapon and resisting arrest, said: “It’s good to have us like this. We want to stay with who we know.”

And when they are re-integrated?

“The raza’s always ready to fight,” said the Latino gang member, who sports tattoos across his forehead and up and down his arms and chest.

Even on a good day, race relations at Pitchess are precarious. A black inmate who uses a telephone designated as a Latino phone can, on a bad day, spark a fight. A black inmate who eats at a Latino table faces similar jeopardy. Both Latinos and blacks have dorm “reps” who help smooth over tensions or “call the shots” on when to fight.

The design of the jails themselves does little to ease tensions among inmates. The dormitories at most of Pitchess’ four jail facilities were designed long ago for a jail population that was mostly composed of people sentenced on misdemeanor charges and those awaiting trial.

Over the years, however, a sea change has transformed the jails. Today, the inmate are predominantly felons, a more violent group that includes many more gang members, more former state prisoners and more inmates facing two- and three-strike sentences.

For this group, then, the dorms at Pitchess’ east facility, for example, are ripe for racial tensions and fighting, experts say.

“The whole jail system was built for a different era,” said Paul L. Hoffman, an attorney and former American Civil Liberties Union legal director. “It’s happened over the course of years, but now you have a more markedly different population, a more violent and more difficult population to manage.”

Deputies sit outside at desks and are hard-pressed, even on calm days, to see to the rear of those deep dormitories. During the worst of the fighting at the east jail, also known as “old max,” the inmates turned heavy metal bunks upright, forming a type of barricade.

It was behind one of those that the slightly built black man was so badly beaten.

Standing on the spot where he was found, Lt. Gary Sinclair, who runs the east facility, said Burwell is small, about 5-foot-5, maybe 120 pounds, making him an easy mark.

“He was certainly the best target of opportunity,” Sinclair said.

At a meeting last week of the top jail commanders, Chief Taylor Moorehead, who oversees the sheriff’s custody division, said the department will actively seek federal hate crime charges against inmates who are caught fighting in racially motivated brawls.

“If they did this on the street, can you imagine the hue and cry?” Moorehead said to about 28 captains, lieutenants and commanders in his tactical meeting called after the Pitchess fights. “I don’t see any reason why these inmates should be exempt from federal hate crime charges.”

When the facilities are re-integrated, Moorehead suggested, his jail commanders should monitor the demographics in their facilities several times a day and make changes whenever necessary. If, for example, a dorm becomes predominantly Latino when black inmates leave to attend court hearings, the few blacks remaining won’t be allowed to become targets.

Moorehead told those officials to racially balance the dorms, even if it means leaving some Latino and white dorms without any blacks at all.

“For the short term, I think we’re better off doing some things differently,” Moorehead said. “Look at this like Plan B.”

Better Equipped to Deal With a Riot

The Sheriff’s Department now has nonlethal weapons to deal with fighting. A darker side of the most recent Pitchess fighting, which first broke out at the end of April, was that it gave deputies their opportunity to test new types of pepper sprays and tear gasses.

“Yes, it’s good training,” said Cmdr. Steve Day, who added that the deputies don’t get much chance to use the weapons. But he said the department would prefer not to try out the nonlethal weapons in a riot.

The “clear-out gas” canisters became the deputies’ first choice, officials said. The canisters, which remain cool to the touch when used, are thrown into the dorms and set off a powerful blast of tear gas.

Additionally, guns similar to those used by paint-ball players are used to shoot pepper-filled balls into the dorms. Those balls quickly break, releasing pepper spray. The department had been using those weapons on a pilot basis.

But after hearing how effective jail officials believed they were in quelling the fights at Pitchess, Moorehead told his officials: “I think the pilot [program] is over. Let’s get more of ‘em.”

Deputies also shot inmates with hard rubber pellets, which could be seen strewn on dorm floors a week after the fighting. They also used “sting ball” grenades that left markings on the concrete floors.

When the worst fighting occurred at Pitchess in 1996--5,000 inmates rioted for five days--sheriff’s officials say they weren’t as well equipped.

“There were rivers of blood flowing through these aisles,” said Day, who commands the huge Pitchess facilities, which house about 8,000 inmates. “In the first 15 minutes, we were out of ammunition.”

Even before those riots, tensions at Pitchess ran high. Reports of racially driven fighting among hundreds of inmates were particularly common in 1994 and 1995, when 14 inmates escaped.

At the height of those riots, sheriff’s officials discussed segregating inmates, even calling in the ACLU and community groups to discuss the racial problems.

No solutions were found.

Now, Baca says he will attempt to convene a panel of black and Latino community members to perhaps help the jailers.

“I think it’s in the community’s best interest from a public safety standpoint to be involved,” Baca said. “These jails don’t belong to Lee Baca or the men and women of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. These jails belong to the community as well.”

Several black community activists, along with former O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden, have recently called for the department to make changes in the jails to better protect African American inmates.

Baca says he welcomes the help.

Some inmates say, however, that the department simply must accept that racial brawling now is part of jail life.

“This is normal,” said one 25-year-old Latino inmate, who said he has been in and out of jail since he was 13. “You’re talking about the outside world and trying to over-dramatize the situation. This is the inside world.”

A friend of his added: “What you’ve got to understand is everybody’s a killer in here. We’re all in jail together.”

Several black inmates say they know that all too well.

“It’s going to be very difficult for me to go to sleep with someone above me, next to me, under me who would kill me at the drop of a dime,” one said.