Men’s Central Jail on Lockdown to Prevent Racial Brawl

The Men’s Central Jail has been on lockdown since Friday evening after the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department learned that inmates were plotting violence.

Sheriff’s officials said they placed the downtown jail — known for holding the most dangerous inmates — on lockdown after learning that some prisoners were planning racial violence.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said the facility was locked down to visitors and inmate movement until this morning and that now those restrictions were being eased.

Violence between black and Latino inmates has been a problem at the jail.

Since it opened just east of downtown Los Angeles 44 years ago, Men’s Central Jail has been the scene of many of the jail system’s most disturbing incidents, including nine inmate homicides between 2000 and 2007. In 2004, an inmate roamed the jail unsupervised for hours before tracking down and killing an inmate who had testified against him.

Months after that killing, Merrick Bobb, the county’s special counsel, wrote a report that described the jail as “nightmarish to manage” and suggested the department close it.

– Richard Winton

Men’s Central Jail Police Accused of Pepper-Spraying Inmate’s Genital Area

Three Los Angeles Sheriff Department (LASD) deputies assigned to the Men’s Central Jail in downtown are suspended (or, paid leave, that is) as a criminal investigation is opened into accusations from an inmate saying that he was isolated by them, punched and pepper-sprayed in the anus and scrotum area. It all started when inmate Alejandro Franco, 23, who is there for “allegedly violating terms of his probation for a domestic violence conviction,” swore at a deputy when he requested a clean shirt and was refused.

About 45 minutes after the argument, three deputies removed him from his cell, handcuffed him and took him to a recreation area away from other inmates, Franco said.

One deputy jabbed him in the face, the inmate alleged. Another yanked his T-shirt and asked, “How’s this shirt?” Franco said.

Then the deputies ordered him to lie face-down on the pavement. Two held him there, pressing their knees into his back and neck. Then, he said, “my boxer shorts were pulled down and I was pepper-sprayed . . . . ” [LA Times]

“My testicles and area down there was burning really bad,” Franco told The Times in a phone interview. “If they had just punched me and yanked my shirt, this wouldn’t have been an issue. They took it an extra step. It was humiliating, degrading, embarrassing. . . . They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

And to that, the LASD is taking it “very seriously.”

Photo by o2ma via Flickr

20 LA County Inmates Infected With Swine Flu

Jul 22, 2009 10:52 pm US/Pacific
20 LA County Inmates Infected With Swine Flu
LOS ANGELES (AP) ―

Authorities say 20 inmates in the Los Angeles County Jail system have contracted the swine flu.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said Wednesday that the first confirmed case was reported about two weeks ago at the downtown Men’s Central Jail.

He said most of the infected inmates are housed at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic. At that facility, about 190 inmates were placed in two quarantine housing areas, where they will be tested and monitored over a seven-day period.

Two inmates were taken to outside hospitals for treatment.

About 20,000 inmates are in the county jail system.