2 Supervisors Seek Probe of Slaying at Jail

Los Angeles County Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke called Friday for an independent review of the jailhouse killing last week of a witness in a murder case.

The inquiry would be in addition to the investigation launched this week by Sheriff Lee Baca, whose department runs the Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, where the slaying took place.

“This was something out of a crime novel from the 1930s,” Yaroslavsky said. “It’s bad enough they are in jail. If we can’t keep people reasonably safe, we have a problem; the justice system has a problem.”

Burke said she was particularly concerned because a judge had ordered that the victim be protected in jail.

“How does a person who is a witness get killed in jail?” she asked. “Certainly a person who is a witness in a murder case needs to be kept under real scrutiny and safe conditions.”

Sheriff’s deputies discovered Raul Tinajero dead in his cell April 20. Just two weeks earlier, he had testified as the key witness against former neighbor Santiago Pineda, who was on trial for murder. Pineda is the prime suspect in the killing of Tinajero, authorities said.

The supervisors, who have been embroiled in a public dispute with Baca over funding levels for his department, suggested that the independent review could be conducted by Merrick Bobb, a special counsel to the board. They also want Bobb to examine past killings at the jail.

In a report last September, Bobb warned that deputies were given inadequate training in the use of force, leaving them potentially unable to defend themselves or to control violent inmates. The review found that deputies transferred to work in the jail system frequently didn’t receive formal training until sometime after they started the job.

Baca said Friday that he planned to change procedures to provide his staff with more data on both witnesses and accused murderers taken to the jail. He proposed ranking the accused murderers to ensure that the most dangerous were watched more closely.

“There has to be some sort of rating system when you are dealing with the volume that we are dealing with,” Baca said of his 7,000-inmate jail system. “Who are the worst of the worst?”

Baca also said the paperwork on accused murderers and protected witnesses should be more informative.

“I will get to the bottom of this, and I will change policy,” he said. “I have to continue to tighten this system. If I don’t tighten the system, what’s to keep this from happening again?”

An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said there were unanswered questions about the circumstances.

“The right to life is the most important civil right of all, so we always support steps that will make inmates safer,” said Ben Wizner. “But none of the accounts that I’ve heard so far make sense. The focus right now should be on finding out what happened and who is responsible.”

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Terry Green, the assisting supervising criminal judge, said the court regularly meets with the Sheriff’s Department and is always amenable to policy changes.

“These aren’t unique problems,” Green said. “I was unaware that there were any major breakdowns, but I guess we’ll discuss it.”

A third supervisor, Gloria Molina, said she believed the sheriff should be held accountable for the slaying.

“If they would follow their own rules and procedures, this could have probably been prevented, and other incidents could be prevented in the future,” she said.

Molina also urged Baca to complete the inquiry quickly. The supervisor has asked for a full report on the killing but has yet to receive it.

“These types of issues do not typically get investigated quickly,” she said.

Baca said, however, that a thorough investigation, which is already underway, takes time.

“We are publicly acknowledging mistakes, so this isn’t a question of avoiding accountability,” he said. “When we wrap it up, we will come forward with how it all happened.

“Everyone needs to learn what happened, especially the family of the victim,” he added. “He was doing the right thing, and he was risking a lot. It’s tragic.”