Oct 12 2011
Growing Chorus Calls for Lee Baca’s Resignation Over Inmate Abuse in LA County Jails
When 18 year old LA County Jail inmate, George Rosales, died late last week after being hit in the head by a Sheriff’s Deputy, it only added fuel to the growing fire over inmate abuse. Rosales was punched in the head two days before his death, apparently while trying to run toward an elevator. Around the same time, a rookie deputy named Joshua Sather, who graduated at the top of his class, resigned after being forced by a supervisor to beat up a mentally ill inmate and then cover up the incident. These reports, surfacing in the LA Times and other mainstream media outlets, come in the wake of a Federal investigation that was launched after an undercover sting operation revealed misconduct by Sheriff’s Deputies. Federal agents approached a former Deputy, Gilbert Michel, paying him to pass on a cell phone to one of the inmates who was an FBI informant. Michel implicated himself and several other employees of the LA County Jail system in past cases of inmate abuse. Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU National Prison Project in Washington, D.C. said “what is most stunning of all is the stubborn refusal of Sheriff Baca, the man in charge, to acknowledge there’s even a problem.” Baca has finally acknowledged that there are severe problems in the County Jail system and has announced a 35 member task force to investigate his own department. But the ACLU and others say that’s not enough. Winter added, “No jail in the nation matches the level of pervasive, savage, long-standing and notorious deputy-on -inmate violence of the kind we see in L.A. County Jails. The ACLU of Southern California, which has been issuing reports of abuses for years, has just released a new report calling for Baca’s resignation. In it, they cite for the first time, civilian eye-witness testimony to inmate abuse. LA Times writer Steve Lopez has joined the call for Baca’s resignation. In his October 7th column, Lopez said unequivocally, “If Baca’s got any self-respect, he’s got to walk.”
On September 21st, I spoke with Matt Fleischer, staff writer with the LA Weekly and senior editor of the LA City Beat, about his investigation into the abuses at LA County Jails.
GUEST: Peter Eliasberg, Legal Director of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
Find out more at www.aclu-sc.org. Read the report here: http://www.aclu-sc.org/contents/view/19
Watch a video of the report here:
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