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Calif. prison riot leaves 1 dead, dozens injured
This is just a case of boys will be boys. Missed the big Saturday night dance. Working off a little tension.
By Kevin Krolicki
Sun Feb 5, 1:48 AM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A racially charged riot pitting hundreds of Latino inmates against blacks at a Los Angeles-area prison on Saturday left one inmate dead and about 50 injured, officials said.
By Saturday evening, the fighting at the Pitchess Detention Center about 20 miles north of Los Angeles was contained, and several hundred guards, who had repeatedly fired tear gas inside the prison, were in control of the facility, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca told reporters.
At one point, up to 2,000 inmates were involved in the fighting on Saturday. Most of the injuries were caused when inmates hurled bunk beds and other objects from a second-floor tier onto a brawling crowd of hundreds of inmates below, the sheriff's department said in a statement.
The sheriff's department said that the riot in the all-male prison may have been in retaliation for the stabbing of a Latino inmate by a black inmate earlier this week at the Men's Central Jail, a major downtown Los Angeles facility.
"It is essentially a brown-on-black incident today. What happens in the street will also carry over into the county jails," Baca said in a televised news conference.
Baca said police had earlier received an anonymous, hand-written letter from an inmate warning of more violence between Latino and black inmates and urging, "please separate us by race for everyone's safety."
Officials at one point set up a triage area to evaluate the injured inmates. The most seriously hurt, including some 10 with critical injuries, were sent off in dozens of waiting ambulances to nearby hospitals for treatment.
The dead inmate was identified only as a 45-year-old black man and a convicted sex offender. Baca said retribution for his sex crime conviction could have been a contributing factor in the violence.
The prison has been the site of more than 150 racially motivated brawls since 1990, police have said. Most of those altercations pitted black inmates against Latinos. In a 2000 riot, 81 inmates were injured at the prison.
The facility is built to house 3,800 inmates but the exact number detained there as of Saturday was not immediately available, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Tanya Plunkett.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department put a lockdown in effect for the six jails across the sprawling county that house some 18,500 inmates to keep the violence from spreading.
The Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles houses over 6,300 inmates, making it one of the largest jails in the country.
A special counsel has recommended that facility be closed, saying it mixes violent offenders with lower-risk inmates and could be subject to a violent takeover by prisoners, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In November, two gang members housed at the downtown jail tortured and killed a fellow inmate, repeatedly stomping on him and beating him with metal trays while over 20 other inmates looked on, according to prosecutors.
The two suspects in that murder could face the death penalty.
Sun Feb 5, 1:48 AM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A racially charged riot pitting hundreds of Latino inmates against blacks at a Los Angeles-area prison on Saturday left one inmate dead and about 50 injured, officials said.
By Saturday evening, the fighting at the Pitchess Detention Center about 20 miles north of Los Angeles was contained, and several hundred guards, who had repeatedly fired tear gas inside the prison, were in control of the facility, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca told reporters.
At one point, up to 2,000 inmates were involved in the fighting on Saturday. Most of the injuries were caused when inmates hurled bunk beds and other objects from a second-floor tier onto a brawling crowd of hundreds of inmates below, the sheriff's department said in a statement.
The sheriff's department said that the riot in the all-male prison may have been in retaliation for the stabbing of a Latino inmate by a black inmate earlier this week at the Men's Central Jail, a major downtown Los Angeles facility.
"It is essentially a brown-on-black incident today. What happens in the street will also carry over into the county jails," Baca said in a televised news conference.
Baca said police had earlier received an anonymous, hand-written letter from an inmate warning of more violence between Latino and black inmates and urging, "please separate us by race for everyone's safety."
Officials at one point set up a triage area to evaluate the injured inmates. The most seriously hurt, including some 10 with critical injuries, were sent off in dozens of waiting ambulances to nearby hospitals for treatment.
The dead inmate was identified only as a 45-year-old black man and a convicted sex offender. Baca said retribution for his sex crime conviction could have been a contributing factor in the violence.
The prison has been the site of more than 150 racially motivated brawls since 1990, police have said. Most of those altercations pitted black inmates against Latinos. In a 2000 riot, 81 inmates were injured at the prison.
The facility is built to house 3,800 inmates but the exact number detained there as of Saturday was not immediately available, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Tanya Plunkett.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department put a lockdown in effect for the six jails across the sprawling county that house some 18,500 inmates to keep the violence from spreading.
The Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles houses over 6,300 inmates, making it one of the largest jails in the country.
A special counsel has recommended that facility be closed, saying it mixes violent offenders with lower-risk inmates and could be subject to a violent takeover by prisoners, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In November, two gang members housed at the downtown jail tortured and killed a fellow inmate, repeatedly stomping on him and beating him with metal trays while over 20 other inmates looked on, according to prosecutors.
The two suspects in that murder could face the death penalty.
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