Gangs' 'all-out war' to spread?

Official: Rioting expected to flare next in prisons

Three days of rioting at the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic appears to have been ignited by an "all-out war" among rival gangs on the streets and is now threatening to spread throughout the state prison system, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

African-American and Latino inmates have been temporarily separated onto different floors at the Castaic facility in the wake of the violence that left one dead and more than 100 injured, sheriff's officials said.

And authorities are investigating whether the slaying of a member of the Mexican Mafia by a rival African-American gang in South Los Angeles sparked the rioting at the 4,000-inmate jail, Marc Klugman, chief of the Correctional Services Division, told county supervisors.

Authorities suspect gang leaders called members inside the jail and ordered them to attack African-Americans in retaliation.

"This stems from a racial incident on the streets that has ignited the jail system, and there is concern it will spread into the state prison system," Klugman said.

Officials said they are working on a plan to isolate the most violent inmates - considered the "shot callers" who lead racially motivated violence - by placing them in one- or two-man cells.

The details came as the Board of Supervisors sought information on the riots and tried to find long-term solutions to staffing shortages that the Sheriff's Department said contributed to the situation.

Sheriff Lee Baca - who supervisors said failed to attend the meeting because he was taping a radio interview - has requested an additional $547 million to provide "desperately needed" funding to hire hundreds of additional deputies.

But supervisors said Baca already has plenty of money in his current $1.95 billion budget for hiring. And they expressed disappointment that Baca did not attend the meeting.

"I have to express my disappointment that the sheriff is not here because if there is any time he should be here to express to all of us that he is in full command of what is going on, now is the time," Supervisor Gloria Molina said.

"This is a fairly terrifying situation. It started in the community and it's escalating."

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said Baca wasn't able to attend the board meeting because he was "swamped with his calendar" and trying to address the crisis.

Molina said tensions have been escalating in the jails in recent months after the county's Gang Murder Task Force arrested and jailed hundreds of gang members, especially in the Florence-Firestone area, where 40 gang-related homicides occurred last year.

The number of riots at the Castaic jail - mainly involving racial tensions - rose from 17 in 2001 to 30 in 2004, according to a recent auditor's report.

"This is a carry-over and a direct result from the all-out war going on in the streets," Assistant Sheriff Paul Tanaka said.

Jail officials described the Castaic jail as designed to house drunk drivers and petty criminals, but now populated by "hard-core felons" and violent criminals and plagued by rival gang feuds.

Sam Jones, chief of the Custody Operations Division, said the rioting over the weekend ignited between Latino and African-American gangs.

"We have a crisis in our jails," Molina said. "We've had some inmate deaths along the way. But this is night and day from what we've talked about in the past. We have racial tensions that are built up, requiring us to segregate by race, which is a violation of the inmates' civil rights."

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that jails can segregate inmates by race under "extraordinary circumstances." Jail officials said the weekend riots met that standard.

Next month, officials plan to move women now incarcerated at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility to a reopened Lynwood jail and transfer many of the most violent inmates in the 21,000-inmate system to the high-security Twin Towers facility.

"We think this will be a revolutionary model for our jail system and will make a major difference in how we operate," Klugman said.

After the board meeting, Joann Moye, the mother of Chadwick Shane Cochran, one of eight inmates killed at Men's Central Jail in the past two years, asked the supervisors why cameras were not used in the day room where her son was killed.

"I came from the small town of Macon, Ga., and we have cameras," Moye said. "Don't let this happen to anyone else. ... Part of my life has died. This was not necessary. It could have been stopped."