"They out-waited us," said Capt. Ray Leyva, who runs the North Facility. Unrest continued over the next few days. More than 80 inmates rioted Monday in Leyva's building, leaving one prisoner with minor injuries.
"I had deputies dressed in riot gear standing outside the door, and that didn't stop them," he said. "I could have had a deputy in front of every dorm and that wouldn't have stopped them."
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.
The rolling fights that broke out Wednesday at the East Facility at Pitchess occurred in the span of about an hour in four separate dormitories that house racially mixed inmates.
Despite going to lockdown after deputies used tear gas and sting balls to stop 120 inmates from battling in the first fight, which started about 12:15 p.m., racial altercations soon broke out among hundreds of other prisoners in other parts of the building, officials said.
With so many problems in recent days, area rescue personnel said, they were not surprised to be called back again.
"It is like we are expecting it every day now," said Doug LaCount, a Los Angeles County fire captain at a station near Pitchess.
He said that although the inmates undergoing treatment have been cooperative with rescue personnel, concerns remain about patients fighting other patients.
Until Wednesday, the East Facility, which normally houses about 2,000 medium-high- and high-security-risk inmates, had not been the site of any of the recent rioting. In fact, on Friday a water main break that left part of the facility without working toilets, showers or drinking water had forced the transfer of 1,000 inmates from there to the nearby North Facility.
The prisoners were moved although officials believed that a racial attack was being planned by Latino gang members against blacks.
Officials said they had no choice but to relocate the men. McCorkle said the transfer meant that the North Facility's population had grown from 3,500 to about 4,100 medium-high- to high-security-risk inmates at the time of Saturday's rioting.
But officials said that given staffing shortages and available beds, they had no choice but to move those inmates to the nearby facilities, despite concerns about violence at the complex.
This week, Sheriff Lee Baca said he will begin using Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles to hold "level eight and nine" inmates -- the most violent rankings of prisoners in the jail system -- next month.
Baca had said that until now he could not afford to house violent inmates at Twin Towers because of higher personnel costs.
The state-of-the-art building was designed to handle the most violent inmates, but has been used instead for female offenders and prisoners with mental health problems since partially opening in the late 1990s.
County Supervisor Mike Antonovich said Wednesday that he and other supervisors have warned for years that keeping women in Twin Towers while placing dangerous felons in dormitories at Pitchess would lead to increased violence in the jails.
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Times staff writers Sam Quinones, Sharon Bernstein, Richard Winton and Stuart Pfeifer contributed to this report.
