Hard Questions, Sharp Words on Inmate’s Killing

The scene unfolded Dec. 6. Four high-ranking sheriff’s deputies were being grilled about why yet another inmate -- the eighth in two years -- had been killed inside the nation’s largest jail.

Los Angeles County supervisors, fresh from agreeing to pay a $1.7-million wrongful-death settlement to families of two other inmates, were angry and in search of an explanation.

For more than an hour, they peppered the deputies -- sent to appear in place of Sheriff Lee Baca -- and repeatedly suggested that the latest death could have been avoided if the Sheriff’s Department had kept the most dangerous inmates away from the general jail population, as recommended by special monitor Merrick Bobb.

The 35-year-old victim, awaiting trial on a firearms charge, had allegedly been beaten and stomped to death by two inmates, one an accused murderer. They had been left unguarded in a holding room with other inmates.

Led by Undersheriff Larry L. Waldie, the deputies told how difficult it was to watch every inmate all the time in the 6,300-bed Men’s Central Jail.

Then, Supervisor Gloria Molina made a comment that drew a sharp retort from Waldie, a 39-year department veteran. He accused her of insulting the department’s integrity. The following excerpts reflect some of the deep frustration surrounding the jail debate:

Molina: I think what this board is asking you is -- and we’re trying to communicate it as effectively as we can -- we’d like to see this not happen again.

Now, I understand that’s a simple statement and probably even [a] simplistic statement, because we do know that, potentially, it is going to happen again. That’s just the nature of prison life; it is the nature of inmates of this type and this kind of security level being placed together.

The issue is that, when you look at this death and if you look at the Merrick Bobb recommendations, it is very clear. If all of the implementation of the Merrick Bobb recommendations [had been done], this should not have occurred. It should not have occurred. Because there would have been a separation for the housing [of violent inmates from those deemed less dangerous]....

I do think there has to be risk management involved -- even if you don’t care, if we don’t care about these people’s lives, that’s one issue -- because I don’t want to be paying this. This is taxpayer funds; they’re supposed to be going toward security of and protecting all of us from these inmates, including other inmates from each other.

I don’t want to be paying out good tax dollars for things that could have been prevented....

We’ve hired Merrick Bobb to do these kinds of investigations. He made some very clear recommendations that made sense to me....

And, if you’re going to say, “We’re not going to do this” or “We’re not going to do this for the following housing complexities” or “We’re not going to do these things because of the cost-prohibitive aspect,” we need to know that....

So I’m asking you to come back with a more comprehensive report that enlightens me as to how you’re implementing the Merrick Bobb recommendations, and, if you disagree with me and say, “No, we’re not going to do this,” we need to know that....

I don’t feel comfortable with the information that has been presented so far, and I also know that I don’t want to sit here, two weeks from now, 16 months from now, regurgitating the same stuff....

Waldie: Well, we will show you what we’ve done with the Merrick Bobb recommendations and what we plan to do.

I just want to say something. I’m terribly offended about something.

To say that the deputies don’t care, or we don’t care about an inmate, goes against our core values to the nth degree. The amount of time that the deputies spend in the jail and endanger themselves -- when there’s 500 inmates, murderers, and [they] go in there to protect other inmates -- is a clear indication of how hard they work to protect people.

They do care about them -- every single one of them that works in there does -- and if you got that impression [that they don’t], I’m terribly sorry for giving that to you.

When the four inmates or five inmates died [in 2003 and 2004], we went over in detail what happened there, what went down and how we could correct it.

On this last incident in question, I went at 11 at night to the jail myself to go through it, to see what happened to this inmate, how we could prevent it and what we did there. I saw very distraught people, very distraught people about this poor inmate that had been brutalized like he was.

So to suggest that we don’t care goes against everything Sheriff Baca believes in and what we believe in.

We have a very bad jail in terms of inmates. It’s a jail but it’s really like a state prison. That’s a point of fact. Some things will happen there; as you said, it’s the nature of the type of facilities and the type of inmates we have.

But we care about those inmates. We risk our lives, the deputies do, every single day to protect those inmates and to say that we don’t care is not accurate.

Molina: Well, excuse me, Undersheriff Waldie, let me just say one more thing. I never accused an individual deputy sheriff of not caring.... I am concerned about administrative responsibilities and duties.... I’m saying you may have done all of these things, but this board has not gotten that reconciliation of the Merrick Bobb recommendations.

Waldie: And you will have it, Ms. Molina.

Molina: And so that doesn’t mean that I’m accusing you or anyone else. What it does mean is that recommendations were made and we have not had the kind of reconciliation to say, “I did these five things to get this done and here’s where I am and here’s where I’m going.” I don’t have that information.

Waldie: You will have it.

Molina: And so I’m sure that we regret every one of these deaths, and more so we regret having to pay out the money that we do all of the time.

But the other part of it is we don’t want to escalate any danger to any of our deputy sheriffs. If we had these systems in place, it would also protect the deputies who are there every single day, risking their lives taking care of the kind of inmates that we’re housing.

So you know that it goes both ways. It isn’t just about the inmates; it also gives us an opportunity to better manage our jails, to better protect the personnel that are involved every single day in trying to carry out their duties.

So I’m not accusing. What I’m saying is we are not getting the information or at least we’re not informed enough as you are to have a sense of security that things are getting done. On our end of it, we’re not getting it.

But I’d love to see it, because I’d like to have the same confidence that you’re demonstrating here, and we know that things happen and particularly in this kind of environment. But it is clear that we have -- you have to assure us and we need to assure the public. That’s a duty we both have.

Waldie: You’re right.