FBI’s Jail Probe Is Welcome

The FBI has stepped in to investigate possible civil rights violations in the alleged beating of an Orange County Jail inmate by sheriff’s deputies in 1999. The FBI entered after local investigations by the county sheriff and district attorney ended with no actions being filed.

This is the third federal probe. Two months ago FBI agents began looking into possible civil rights violations in two other cases of alleged inmate beatings.

The latest case involves a 21-year-old inmate who had to be hospitalized for injuries suffered in a beating. He said he was punched and kicked by four deputies at Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana. The accused deputies deny beating the prisoner. They say other inmates assaulted him.

In a letter, the district attorney’s office criticized the Sheriff’s Department, which runs the county jail facilities, saying the initial investigation of the 1999 incident by sheriff’s personnel was “fatally flawed.” The letter also noted that even though prosecutors decided not to file charges against the deputies, that doesn’t mean that they believed that the prisoner’s beating allegations were “without merit.”

It was noted that deputies failed to interview potential witnesses and, more disturbing, that jail authorities allowed one of the accused deputies to help in the early stages of the investigation.

That kind of investigating only invites the charge leveled by one attorney for inmates who alleges the department doesn’t police its own deputies. And it raises the question of how much credence and confidence the public, and those who level charges against deputies, can have in the objectivity and outcome of investigations the Sheriff’s Department makes into charges against it.

In addition to the three federal probes are lawsuits filed by more than 20 inmates who allege they were beaten by jail guards.

The FBI probes are a welcome intervention. They bring in an impartial outside look into the charges and denials surrounding inmate treatment at the county jail and can help determine whether prisoners in county custody are indeed being beaten and their civil rights violated.