ACLU/SC JAILS REPORT 2011
"Cruel and Usual Punishment: How a Savage Gang of Deputies Controls LA County Jails"
From the report:
"To be an inmate in the Los Angeles County jails is to fear deputy attacks. In the past year, deputies have assaulted scores of non-resisting inmates, according to reports from jail chaplains, civilians, and inmates. Deputies have attacked inmates for complaining about property missing from their cells.
They have beaten inmates for asking for medical treatment, for the nature of their alleged offenses, and for the color of their skin.
They have beaten inmates in wheelchairs. They have beaten an inmate, paraded him naked down a jail module, and placed him in a cell to be sexually assaulted.
Many attacks are unprovoked. Nearly all go unpunished: these acts of violence are covered up by a department that refuses to acknowledge the pervasiveness of deputy violence in the jail system."
"I've investigated jails and prison systems around the country. Really, there is nothing to equal the horror of what I've seen in the Los Angeles County jails."
-- Margaret Winter, ACLU National Prison Project.
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“What kept going through my mind was ... this is just a concrete concentration camp. Nothing more, you know? ... We live in a civilized society and this is the way people are treated? This is astonishing.”
-- Gordon Grbavac, assaulted by two sheriff's deputies.
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“It really comes down to the commitment at the top ... to bring about changes, to make things happen. And I don't believe that exists within the LA County Sheriff's Department.”
Call for Sheriff Lee Baca's resignation now.
