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Sheriff Baca Takes Heat for Prisoner Abuse in L.A. County Jails

Mary Slosson |
October 3, 2011 | 11:19 a.m. PDT

Executive Editor

Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles County (photo courtesy ACLU of Southern California)
Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles County (photo courtesy ACLU of Southern California)

It's been a bad week for Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca.

He is under intense heat over the conduct of his deputies in the jail system, with a damning new report on prison conditions from a court-appointed monitor shedding light on related federal investigations.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, a court-appointed monitor of prison conditions in L.A. County, released a report on Wednesday documenting hundreds of inmate complaints about deputy-on-inmate abuse. The report also includes testimony from civilian witnesses, including two chaplains and a volunteer tutor.

One chaplain, who was not identified in the ACLU report, recalled that "he saw four or five deputies repeatedly kicking an inmate. The inmate was lying motionless, facedown on the ground. His hands appeared to be tucked behind his back; they remained there throughout the attack. The inmate pleaded with the deputies to stop, yelling, 'help me.'"

"I was afraid that if I had tried to stop the beating or even just yell at the deputies to stop, they would come over and hurt me," the chaplain said, according to the report.

The revelations come at a bad time for the sheriff...

Read the full story on KCET's 1st and Spring blog here.



 

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