Fatal beating in Los Angeles jail is believed to be linked to racial tensions

Stuart Pfeifer:

A series of questionable decisions by sheriff's deputies in the minutes before this week's fatal beating of an inmate in the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail are now at the center of an internal affairs investigation, authorities said Friday.

The attack, in which two Latino inmates are accused of savagely beating a white inmate after they were placed together in an unsupervised holding room, appeared to have been spurred by the victim's defiance of a jail ritual in which inmates decide what races get priority for such things as television, showers and telephone use.

On Wednesday, the deputies allowed the inmates to decide the order in which they should line up for dinner. The inmates decided that Latinos should be served first, blacks second and whites third. The victim, however, stepped in front of black and Latino inmates to grab his dinner.

All 30 inmates in the line were taken to an unsupervised room to eat their meals. After the deputies left them alone, the suspected attackers beat and kicked the victim in the head for up to 15 minutes as the others watched.

Investigators plan to examine the deputies' actions in the minutes before the beating as well as explore why they left the inmate alone in the room.

Another question authorities are trying to answer is why deputies placed the victim in the company of such dangerous inmates. When the victim arrived at the jail, deputies placed him in protective custody because of a previous escape. But at some point, he was moved into the general population.

The two suspects in Wednesday's attack are gang members classified by the Sheriff's Department as Level 9 threats. One was charged with murder and the other with kidnapping and carjacking. The victim, who had been charged with unlawful firearm possession, was classified as a more moderate Level 7 risk.

The Sheriff's Department has been struggling to segregate dangerous inmates from the rest of the population. Eight inmates have been killed in the jail — the nation's largest — in the last two years. In 2004, Merrick Bobb, the independent monitor hired by the county Board of Supervisors to evaluate the Sheriff's Department, recommended in a report that deputies not house Level 7 and 9 inmates together because of the potential for violence.

"You had two deviations from good corrections practice: first to mix a keep-away with the general population and second to mix individuals with a high security level with those [who pose] a lesser risk," Bobb said. "This is not the first time they've mixed inmates of different security levels and had problems."

In the wake of the latest killing, authorities said they planned to review the way they classify and group inmates. Jail managers are also developing a plan that would attempt to segregate all gang members accused of murder from the rest of the population.

Assistant Sheriff Paul Tanaka said Friday that the department would no longer hold inmates in the room where the man was killed. Three windows through which deputies could have seen into the room were boarded shut.

"Hindsight always being 20-20 it appears [using the room] is definitely not a good practice," Tanaka said. "That is a place we will not be putting inmates in the future."

Jody Kent, jails project coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of Los Angeles, said she had been seeking such a policy for months.

"Too bad somebody had to die in order for them to implement something as basic as not holding inmates in an area that physically cannot be supervised," she said.

The racial tension behind Wednesday's attack was nothing new to those familiar with the county's jail system.

"Race is the predominate issue in everything going on in these jail modules," said Michael Gennaco, head of the county Office of Independent Review. "Inmates who cross over and hang out with other races are internally disciplined with beatings."

Sheriff's Capt. Ray Peavy, who is overseeing the criminal investigation into the beating death, said it appeared that the killing was prompted by the victim's decision not to keep to his racial station.

"Very likely he wasn't familiar with the pecking order, and that could have led to his death," Peavy said. "It's very sad."

On Friday, Supervisor Mike Antonovich asked his fellow board members to approve a motion calling for Sheriff Lee Baca to report behind closed doors on staffing levels in the jail and recruitment efforts, and what corrective action will be taken after the latest jail killing.

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