In response to recent claims made by former department rookie Joshua Sather that he had been instructed by a supervisor to beat a mentally ill inmate, as well as other allegations brought forth by the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU), Baca said he has created two separate task forces address concerns.

“A number of allegations of misconduct including excessive force by Sheriff’s Department jail staff have been brought to my attention,” Baca said in a statement. “In order to address concerns about jails and to ensure that we are doing the best we possibly can, I have implemented two separate task forces.”

The first, called the Commander Management Task Force, will hold Community Town Hall meetings with jail inmates, ensure that all personnel interact with inmates in a “manner consistent with the Core Values of the Sheriff’s Department”, conduct a comprehensive review of current inmate complaint process, as well as provide mentoring and oversight of Department personnel.

“I have also ordered a complete review of our current Department-wide employee personnel performance monitoring system,” Baca said.  ”This database helps us monitor our personnel for early warning signs of employees who performance may need to be addressed today to avoid problems in the future.”

According to an Oct. 9 report published by the LA Times, the second task force will consist of 35 full-time investigators who will reexamine old and current allegations of inmate abuse.

The Special Jail Investigations Task Force will be assigned to “thoroughly investigate each of the 78 declarations  alleging criminal or administrative misconduct,” Baca said.  ”While some allegations were previously investigated, each will be thoroughly re-investigated by this task force. I take these allegations very seriously.”

The inmate had been seen drinking water and appeared fine just 15 minutes earlier, prison officials say, but during a subsequent check they found Rosales in a state of distress. Rosales died during ambulance transport to a local hospital.

Sheriffs investigators say an autopsy will be performed to see what role, if any, the blow to his head played in his death.  The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office will make their final determination as to the exact cause of death in upcoming weeks.

This is not the first time the LA County Sheriff’s department has come under fire due to allegations of inmate abuse and deputy misconduct within county jails. On Oct. 7, the LA Times reported that a sheriff’s rookie resigned after just several weeks on the job.  Joshua Sather, 23, said a supervisor instructed to beat up a mentally-ill jail inmate in order to “teach him a lesson”.

This, and other incidents, according to the Times, have lead to FBI investigation of inmate abuse within LA County jails.  At current, the jail system is the largest within the country.  That investigation is ongoing.

A reported 4,579 serious violent crimes, including homicide, rape, and aggravated assault, have been recorded for 2011 by the end of the day Wednesday. This is equal to 51 incidents a day, which is a 12.5% decrease over the same time span as last year. The number of homicides in Los Angeles dropped from 72 during this time period in 2010 to 63 so far this year.

As with any crime, the number of homicides can fluctuate from one month to the next. According to recent figures, Los Angeles is on track to beat the total from last year of 297 killings. That has been the lowest homicide rate in over forty years.

Property crimes, which include burglary and auto theft, has dropped 11.8% so far this year to 19,642 incidents, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

His name has not yet been released to the public and the death of the inmate is now undergoing investigation. There is no information being released now according to why his death occurred or if there was any violence that contributed to his death. An autopsy is scheduled and homicide investigators are examining the cause of death.

They had been reportedly missing for about 14 hours from the North County Correctional Facility.  Residents reported there were two men asking people to give them clothes.  Barrios and Aldana were found in a storage container nearby.

Both men were working on a jail loading dock around 1 a.m., in which they had access to delivery trucks, when they reportedly fled.  Barrios and Aldana were reported missing around 3:15 a.m. when the correctional facility did a head count.

Barrios and Aldana are both illegal immigrants and there will be an investigation into the escape as well as trying to determine what role the federal government could have played when checking the men’s immigration status.  Also being investigated is why these men were given trust positions within the correctional facility in the first place.

Barrios and Aldana, reportedly from Van Nuys, escaped after they were identified by three witnesses as the ones who were responsible for a series of robberies in Hollywood and San Fernando Valley. 

Both men were previously being held on $4 million bail and are now held in a “No Bail” status. They are due in court today.

Being locked in a jail cell can’t be easy. But a program initiated at Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail , may offer many inmates a much needed ’metaphysical outlet’ by way of meditation classes, according to the Los Angeles Times.

A Buddhist Chaplain has been helping the inmates see a calmer, lighter sense of being through a popular weekly meditiation course being offered. So successful, it’s now in its third year and officials have commented on how it helps the inmates by keeping them calmer in this depressing environment.

In jail, inmates usually keep themselves racially segregated. When they come to class, they sit in their own groups. The Chaplain instructs them how to focus, how to breath and empty their minds. At a recent gathering, he asked them, “You’re probably thinking, ‘What am I doing here, what’s happening with my family, am I going to get big time at my sentencing… All of these things are gnawing away at you.”

The Sheriff’s Department allows the classes to be run by volunteers, which doesn’t create any additional burden on their budget. L.A. County Sheriff’s Captain, Daniel Cruz states, “They look within themselves… They’re not so easily excited or angered.”

Hopefully, meditation could be the ray of sunlight needed for the windmills of everyone’s mind.

Perhaps the aged tagger had had it with ‘teenage tagger-hooligans and their misspellings and their naughty language’.  He certainly showed those ‘young whipper-slappers’ a thing or two by eluding deputies for over half a year.  Witness descriptions of an old man seen around LA’s Westside, plastering orange and black stickers that asked “Who Is John Scott?”  deepened the mystery.

According to the Los Angeles Times, deputies answered his question on November 13, when they caught an elderly vandal, named (what else?) John Scott, in a main transit hub, stickers in hand.  “We knew our guy was older — but not 73!” said Sheriff’s Lt. Erik Ruble.

Scott had stickers stuffed in his pockets and a briefcase that matched one in photos he’d posted on his very own whoisjohnscott.com website.  The site featured a man disguised in black with a question mark superimposed over his face, seated happily under web copy that read: “Who am I?  John Scott — world traveler, entrepreneur, producer, but, above all, mystery — an ordinary man with an extraordinary idea of himself.”   Apparently, Scott was chasing the same dream many do in LA:  fame.  (Or at least, hobbling behind the dream, shaking his cane and yelling at it to stay off his lawn — nobody knows for sure).

According to deputies, he was agile for a man his age.  Many of his stickers were found in hard-to-reach spots and equipment had to be dismantled in order to remove them. Scott was taken to the Los Angles County jail where he was held on charges of felony vandalism at $20,000 bail.

Photocredit: Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department

Federal officials want to extradite him back to Los Angeles courts to stand before a judge. Seems Polanski was at actor Jack Nicholson’s house one night back in 1977 when he gave Samantha Geimer, (then 13) Quaalude’s and champagne during a photo shoot. 

In the past, there have been several attempts to get Polanski to stand before a judge on these charges, but officials have been unable to  get him to return to California and attend the hearings. He’s just flat out refused. He even missed out on receiving the lauded, Best Directing Oscar for ”The Pianist” in 2003.

Recently, Polanski’s attorney’s have attempted to get the case thrown out of court. However, the Los Angeles judge and prosecuting attorneys simply refuse on grounds it would be a miscarriage of justice to let Polanski go free on such serious charges.

The then 13-year-old girl, Geimer is now 45. She has asked the judge to throw out the case, even filing court papers stating, “I am no longer a 13-year old child. I have dealt with the difficulties of being a victim… every time this case is brought to the attention of the Court, great focus is made of me, my family and others.”  She has since won a suit for the charges against Polanski and has received an undisclosed settlement.

It’s an all together sad story which plays out of decades of heavy issues. In 1969, the then pregnant wife of Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, was savagely murdered in the famous Manson family slayings. Ironically, Tate’s confessed murderer, Susan Atkins, died in prison yesterday. While there is no word at how long extradition may take, it seems the screenplay of Polanski’s life is fraught with tragedy and ‘ghosts-of-the-past-come-haunting.’

Nicholas Prugo, 18, of Calabasas, is believed to have been one of a group of people who were caught on tape entering Lohan’s home last month. LAPD officer Rosario Herrera says detectives made the arrested on Thursday morning on suspicion of felony burglary. Prugo’s bail was set at  $20,000.

Officers believe that Prugo is the male wearing a baseball cap in the above YouTube footage taken from the scene of the crime.

A search or Prugo on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s inmate information site shows that he was arrested just before 8am by the LAPD Hollywood Division and released just before 11pm.

Interestingly, Prugo was also arrested on August 21 by the Beverly Hills Police Department. News reports indicate that was a drug possession charge.

All inmates that were diagnosed with the swine flu were placed in isolation, similar to that of San Diego jails. There they will be receiving tests and monitoried for seven days. All infected inmates are not receiving visitors. Two of the infected inmates have been taken to a local hospital and are said to be in good condition.

This is not the first reported case of swine flu at the Los Angeles County jail. One month ago 12 other inmates had also taken ill to the swine flu at the Pitchess South Facility, but none were H1N1.

Sheriff’s say that they are taking all necessary precautions to sanitize the cells that housed the infected inmates, testing the other cellmates, and of course, isolating all infected inmates.