Because of demographic shifts in the county, officials said, Latinos outnumber blacks in the dormitories, which legally cannot be segregated along racial lines except in emergencies.
The inmate who was seriously injured Wednesday at Pitchess was black, officials said.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday February 10, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 3 inches; 104 words Type of Material: Correction
Jail riots -- An article in Thursday's Section A about rioting at Los Angeles County jails said that sheriff's officials had been forced to transfer 1,000 inmates from the East Facility of the Pitchess Detention Center to the center's North Facility. The inmates were transferred to the nearby North County Correctional Facility. The article also said that the North Facility population had grown from 3,500 to 4,100 medium-high to high-security-risk inmates. That population increase occurred at the North County Correctional Facility. Also, the article said that more than 1,000 Pitchess inmates had been involved in fights through Wednesday. The actual number is about 2,800.
So was the prisoner beaten to death Saturday at Pitchess' North County Correctional Facility. Wayne Tiznor, 45, was a convicted rapist in jail on a parole violation for failing to register as a sex offender. .
Investigators traced Saturday's riot to Mexican Mafia prison gang leaders, who they say greenlighted Latino jail inmates to attack blacks. The riot was planned as retaliation for an attack on one of their associates that they said was committed by a black gang member in Los Angeles, said Chief Marc Klugman, head of the sheriff's Correctional Services Division.
The recent organized attacks by Latinos on blacks in county jails reflect long-standing racial conflicts made worse by interracial street battles that were rare until the early 1990s.
The change in street culture was originally driven by the prisons, with Mexican Mafia prison leaders ordering Latino gang members on the outside to take over black-controlled neighborhoods and drug trade, said Wes McBride, a Sheriff's Department gang investigator for many years and now president of the California Gang Investigators Assn.
The direct ties between street conflicts and racial tensions in the jail are difficult to combat, given the ever-changing jail population, which includes a wide range of offenders, from petty criminals to homicide suspects, awaiting trial, officials said.
Jail officials said racial allegiances in the jails have long taken precedence over street gang ties -- with a strict code among Latinos and blacks to defend their own, regardless of whether they would be rival gang members on the outside.
Still, jail officials said that when inmates are segregated along racial lines in emergency situations, their intra-racial street rivalries and gang affiliations reemerge quickly -- something that occurred among segregated inmates in recent days at North County Correctional Facility at Pitchess.
The recent riots and fights took place although jail officials had intelligence, which they took seriously, indicating that Latino-on-black racial violence was brewing at Pitchess. Officials at the complex said Saturday's riot occurred only an hour after an emergency response team had checked the dormitories for anything out of the ordinary.
