On Wednesday, the ACLU of Southern California issued a report on LA County’s Men’s Central Jail that tells of inmates alleging serious physical abuse by deputies. Here, for example, is what the LA Times said:
The report includes a complaint from an inmate who says he was assaulted by about a dozen guards. He said they entered his cell and hit him with flashlights repeatedly. “They used their flashlights like a bat, like I was a baseball or something,” the inmate told the ACLU. The inmate reported that he needed stitches but refused to visit the medical clinic because guards had intimidated him.
“I refused stitches. I refused a tetanus shot,” the complaint says. “I refused everything.”
Unfortunately the allegations are all to believable because they mirror the increasingly alarming anecdotal information that many of us who come in contact with the jail population have heard repeatedly from families of inmates, advocates and the inmates themselves for the past two years. The difficulty has always been in definitively verifying the accounts of abuse.
The report speaks of vicious beatings of prisoners by deputies, retaliations against anyone who complains or—worse yet—reports abuse to the ACLU.
Here are some clips from the ACLU’s announcement:
In one case, a prisoner said he was brutally beaten by deputies after complaining to an ACLU jail monitor that he and other prisoners on his jail row had not been allowed to shower for weeks. The deputies broke his leg and hurt his knee so badly that he had to have surgery. The ferocious attack had a chilling effect, silencing many of the prisoners on that row. When a jail monitor visited a few days after the beating, many refused to talk, while those who did spoke in hushed tones for fear of also being targeted.
[SNIP]
It is difficult for the ACLU to assess accurately the extent of violence inside the jails or to confirm some allegations. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department refuses to release basic information about how it conducts investigations of abuse and metes out punishment. This lack of transparency raises serious questions about the department’s independence and internal review process and could even encourage violence within the facility. The ACLU is further hampered by a widespread fear of retaliation among prisoners, portrayed in numerous prisoner complaints.
“…What is so troubling,” said Mary Tiedeman, jails project coordinator for the So Cal ACLU of Southern California co-author of the report. ” is that most of these prisoners are awaiting trial, still presumed innocent.”
More on this as specifics unfold.
Having dealt with the ACLU liars in an up close and personal way Celeste, I can say without question that nothing they put out regarding law enforcement should be looked at with anything but a chuckle. They hate law enforcement and come “only” from that thought process.
I wonder if the Office of Independent Review agrees with their latest bit of hysterical babble? You keep believing the thugs, gangsters, aclu types and other low-lifes and I’ll constantly side with those tasked with keeping the bad guys in line.
“Unfortunately the allegations are all to believable because they mirror the increasingly alarming anecdotal information that many of us who come in contact with the jail population have heard repeatedly from families of inmates, advocates and the inmates themselves for the past two years.”
Two years? Shit Celeste the culture of brutallity and rat packing of inmates by LA County Sheriff guards is common knowledge in the working class communities and especially the minority communities of Los Angeles, and has been going on for decades.
And as SF expects to be believed because he assures us that he dealt with the ACLU on a personal level, I also have personal experience with being in the LACJ and can assure all that what the ACLU is saying is just tapping the surface of the ugly brutal culture of the LACS guards that exists at County.
It is part of the culture and tradition of the LACJ by LASD guards.
I don’t know about the present situation (I haven’t been there for years, but still hear stories from friends that nothing has changed), but for many years rookie LA County Sheriffs spent their first or second year at County, that is where they were indoctrinated into the culture of violence and cover ups of the LASD.
These rookies are checked out during this period for weakness’s, like if they can keep thier mouths shut and a willingness to cover up incidents like the ones you have described.
As with the LAPD of the Parker and Gates era’s, the Sheriff guards at the County jail get to act with impunity because the underclass that ends up there is usually made up of Blacks, Mexican Americans or working class white men who are thought to be of little worth and a threat to the middle and upper class mainly white sectors of LA society.
This “News” is almost comical in it’s naivete and tardiness but as the old saying goes “better late than never”
DQ, check the report itself. (Follow the ACLU link and it’ll give you another link for the PDF.) It covers a longer period. As for the two years, I’m merely saying that, for the past two years, I’ve been getting more of these reports personally and the ACLUs report mirrors what I’ve been hearing.
SF, good suggestion. I haven’t talked to Mike Gennaco at the OIR in a while. I will have to remedy that.
Comment number one is nothing but an attempt to incite anger in here. Equating the ACLU to gangsters and thugs? Is Sure Fire a relative of yours, Celeste?
By some miracle I managed to stay out jails even though I was a victim of our racist society.
But I’ve heard that snitches in Jail are rat-packed by other inmates. And I have also heard from a few white people locked up in L.A. County jial, that they have to worry about being rat-packed by latino gang members not the guards.
And if a jail inmate is suspected of being a snitch or friendly to any guards he has to placed in protective custody so he won’t be rat-packed or killed by the latino gangs in L.A. County Jail. I wonder if anybody the ACLU is reporting on those dangers.
lol. How do you know so much about jails if you’ve never been to one, WTF? A lot of “I heards” in there for somebody who’s never been on the inside, in any capacity.
WTF probabley “heard” about jails from the same places as you did SNS. InTheHat.com , streetgangs.com, The History Channel’s GANGLAND….or maybe he actually knows somebody that did a little tiempo. It’s no secret snitches get stitches.
Reading comprehension should be a requirement here. If I wasn’t clear what I meant was fuck all gangsters, thugs and ACLU types. The statement is an opinion not meant to incite anger but express my feelings based on personal experience.
Yeah Don, there’s no “ugly culture” rampant in the prisoners or how they treat each other, spare me please. I’ll consider the source who hasn’t been in CJ for years but has pals still going through the grind. I’m sure all of them are stellar citizens.
Oh you were very clear about your “feelings” SF, but if reading comprehension is a concern of yours then you might want to reread my comment again, just for the practice of course, you’ll see that I nor anyone else on this thread ever stated that there wasn’t also an ugly culture of violence to be found in the organized subculture of inmate gangs at the LACJ, there certainly is and it has grown exponentially with the increase in the inmate population and deteriorating conditions. But I think the post by Celeste, concerns itself very clearly with the abuse, and rat packing of prisoners by LA Sheriff guards at LACJ, and even more specifically about the ugly culture of brutallity and cover up by the LACS guards at the LACJ.
Now whether you refuse to believe the ACLU or anyone else who brings this culture of violence and cover up by the LACS Dept guards at LACJ is your perogative.
But SF, I would just ask you though, knowing your a fair minded and honest person, if you say fuck all gangsters thugs, and ACLU types, would this “fucking” then include the very LACS guards who act like thugs and gangsters when they brutalize and rat pack inmates, then cover up the incidents and refuse to discuss the complaint with anyone outside thier gangster like subculture?
Makes sense to me.
You’re right DQ, you didn’t say there wasn’t but you didn’t say there was, you were busy putting that on LASD. Having been attacked by more than one prisoner in my time gives me a little bit of a perspective on this that you couldn’t possibly understand. Of course you’d have to want to and you truly don’t Don so what’s the point.
I’ve made it real clear here that I never have or would tolerate brutal cops or deps working at cj or cops who abuse their authority in any way, shape or form anywhere. I’m not believe some con though when I know better, they know how to play the game Don, you know that.
My son arrested a guy the other night who right off the bat started playing the race card. He’s mother fucking my kid the whole way to his lock up and when he gets him out he starts beating his head against the outer wall of the sally port yelling “quit beating me, quit beating me”. My kid said “Hey, that’s a camera right there, knock it off, everything you’re doing is being recorded”. The guy looked up and said “My bad”, end of fucking story.
That’s par for the course for so many of these shithaeds that I have little sympathy for their tales of woe. I’m also way to smart to believe all the anectdotal crap I see here and believe the problem isn’t as bad as people here will leap to believe when some cop hate orginization, like the ACLU, says so.
In a previous chapter of my life, I spent a great deal of time covering the courts and the penal system. Anyone who thinks these inmates are innocent and non-violent and being mistreated….is dangerously delusional.