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Nearly 2,000 inmates riot in Calif. jail
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-05 19:44
Nearly 2,000 inmates rioted at a Southern California jail, throwing
mattresses and banging heads against bunk beds, in an uproar that officials said
stemmed from racial tensions. One inmate was killed.
More than 100 inmates were wounded and 20 were hospitalized with serious
injuries from the nearly hour-long melee on Saturday, authorities said. Smaller
fights broke out for at least four hours after the main brawling ended.
"The motivation appears to be racial tensions and a carry-over of a feud
between black and Hispanic gangs," said Deputy Steve Suzuki, a sheriff's
spokesman. Two days earlier, a Hispanic gang member was stabbed by a black gang
member, he said.
Black and Hispanic inmates were being segregated and a lockdown was ordered
systemwide, Sheriff Lee Baca said.
Authorities had information that a disturbance was imminent, but they didn't
know the time or location, said Sam Jones, chief custody officer of the county
jail system.
A 45-year-old black inmate who was a registered sex offender was killed,
Suzuki said. Twenty-six wounded inmates were treated at the jail; the 20
hospitalized inmates did not have life threatening injuries. No jail employees
were injured.
The North County Correctional Facility, about 40 miles northwest of downtown
Los Angeles, is a maximum-security complex composed of five jails that together
house about 4,000 inmates.
It is illegal to segregate inmates based on race or ethnicity, but legal
advisers said it can be done in emergency situations, Jones said.
The jail has a history of race related riots. In 2000, a three-day riot at
the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic injured more than 80 inmates, leaving
one in a coma. Attorneys representing 273 black inmates filed a civil rights
lawsuit alleging the sheriff's department failed to disarm Hispanic inmates.
Several racially motivated brawls at Castaic jails in 1998 injured dozens of
inmates. In 1996, 5,300 prisoners battled, leaving six guards and 123 inmates
injured after the Mexican Mafia prison gang ordered an attack on
blacks.
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