2 Weeks Into His Jail Sentence, Jim Brown Is Still Not Eating

Football legend Jim Brown hasn’t eaten since beginning a jail term two weeks ago, but Ventura County officials said Thursday that he is fasting for “spiritual cleansing” and is not on a hunger strike.

“Usually on a hunger strike, the person is protesting something--his treatment or the reason he’s in jail,” said sheriff’s spokesman Eric Nishimoto.

“I know Mr. Brown has been very vocal about his incarceration, but he gave us assurances that his fasting had nothing to do with any kind of protest,” Nishimoto said. “He communicated to us that he knows his limits. He’s not out to kill himself. He communicated that it’s a personal thing he does to cleanse himself and that it’s something he’s done before, outside of custody.”

Brown could not be reached for comment, but filmmaker Spike Lee, whose documentary “Jim Brown: All-American” will have its Los Angeles premiere next month, said Brown called him two days into his sentence to tell him that he was fasting.

“Gandhi fasted,” Lee said in a telephone interview from New York. “Dr. King fasted. Reverend Al Sharpton fasted. People do that. It shows that it’s mind over matter, it’s about becoming stronger and in tune spiritually.

“In prison, they try to break you down and take your soul and will,” Lee said. “And they’ve been trying to break Jim Brown for a long time--law enforcement, Hollywood, take your pick.”

A retired Hall of Fame football player and action film star, Brown later established a program to rehabilitate gang members.

Brown, 66, has been charged five times with domestic violence since the 1960s. His only conviction came in 1999, after he smashed the windows of his wife’s car. After lengthy appeals, a judge in Los Angeles sentenced him to six months in jail beginning March 13.

Brown was an icon of black pride in the 1960s and ‘70s. By the late ‘80s, he had turned his focus to rehabilitating gang members, establishing his Amer-I-Can program, which continues today.

But throughout his life, Brown had a history of trouble with women, including accusations that he once threw a girlfriend off a balcony.

Brown could have avoided jail if he had paid a fine, contributed to a battered women’s shelter and undergone counseling. He refused to accept that offer, saying he had hurt the car, not his wife. Monique Brown did not testify against him and has stood by him through the case. Last year, she gave birth to the couple’s child.

Although Brown was sentenced in Los Angeles, his anti-gang efforts through the local jails were thought to pose a conflict, so he was sent to Ventura County to serve his time.

Lee said Brown shouldn’t be behind bars at all, but that if he must serve time, he should be in Los Angeles, to be closer to his wife, and that he should be permitted to mix with other inmates.

“I think it’s crazy and inhumane they have him locked up in this closet they call a cell for 23 hours a day,” Lee said. “Why? For vandalism of a car?”

At the county jail building near the farm town of Santa Paula, Brown spends all but one hour of each day in a cell alone. Nishimoto said that is standard procedure with high-profile inmates and that Brown has displayed model behavior that could earn him an early release.

While many local law enforcement officials said they idolized Brown as boys, they also said they aren’t extending him any special privileges.

He may receive visitors once a week. He’s been issued standard jail blues--a short-sleeved shirt and long pants--and may not wear his trademark African cap, a kufi.

On Thursday, the jail kitchen was cooking up a popular spread: chicken-fried steak, green beans, white rice, cole slaw, bread and milk or juice.

Nishimoto said Brown’s decision to hold out said something about his self-discipline.

Brown is consuming only water, jail officials said. He bought energy bars and other snacks from the jail canteen early on and stashed them in his cell in case he changes his mind, a jail supervisor said.