Keep Bailing

Longtime Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has come under attack recently from a civil rights group, which is demanding his resignation because of the problems stemming from the jail system. The group, the American Civil Liberties Union, calls the system corrupt and says that it encourages fear and deputy brutality.

Sheriff Baca and his deputies are responsible for the supervision of more than 15,000 inmates in the LA County jail system, the busiest in the country. The Sheriff disputes the claims that have been made by the ACLU. The ACLU stated during a news conference that the sheriff and his top commanders were intentionally Read more »

LOS ANGELES – Yesterday, at approximately 7:30am the 20-year-old inmate was reportedly found lying lifeless in his jail cell at the Men’s Central Jail in L.A, according to the Sheriff’s and Coroner’s officials.

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 Read more »

Tuesday, authorities announced that there would be a criminal investigation conducted in efforts to find out the truth behind allegations towards two Sheriff’s Deputies who beat an inmate unconscious at the Twin Towers Jail in Los Angeles.

On Monday, a statement was filed at the courthouse by an ACLU staffer who had visited the jail and claims to have witnessed the act which spawned the investigation.

The ACLU staffer, Esther Lim, stated that she saw two deputies through a window, who were unaware of her presence, and she was able to see them punching, kicking and tasering an inmate while his body appeared to be limp.

According to an internal sheriff’s log, the incident was confirmed to have happened on January 24, although the log further stated that the inmate was punching the deputies until they had no other choice by to tase him. Lim stated that the deputies’ log was distorted and that the inmate, James Parker, was completely lifeless and Lim worried that he was dead.

The allegations are suggesting that Lim, during the incident, heard Read more »

To focus on communities rather than criminals, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck and Sheriff Lee Baca announced a database that shares files between the federal, state and local agencies. Included in the “Community Based Information System” is information about community demographics, school dynamics, crime, social service referrals and other relevant data for decision-making by law enforcement officers. 

The purpose, as stated by officials, is to get a better grasp on the socioeconomic dynamic that occurs in troubled communities, it is not a tool for tracking criminals and analyzing crimes.

According to Sheriff Baca, “This system has the capability Read more »

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department re-captured a man who was taken in for burglary charges and consequently tried to escape the confines of an L.A. County Jail.

On Monday, Ryan Martinez of Palmdale had been arrested and taken into the Sheriff’s Station at the Santa Clarita Valley Jail for questioning due to a burglary charge. While Martinez was being held in an interview room within the jail, officials were waiting to perform further questioning until the victim could provide a clear identification of the suspect.

According to officials, they Read more »

The L.A. Sheriff’s deputy, responsible for the 2006 arrest of Mel Gibson for drunk driving, is suing his department in claims that he’s been ostracized and dismissed for promotions by the department since the arrest took place.

The lawsuit details repercussions for Deputy James Mee’s emotional distress, mental suffering as well as damages for the loss of income, medical bills, and benefits. Mee claims his superiors forced him to remove any reference to anti-semitic slurs by Mr. Gibson.  Furthermore, the racial comments and slurs appeared to have been leaked on a celebrity website.

Mee declares that Read more »

Los Angeles jail officials and staff are planning to test out a new form of technology produced by the military as a weapon at the LA County Castaic Jail. This innovative tool is an invisible beam of heat that will produce “intolerable heat” to those whom it is beamed on.

The heat-beam is officially known as an Assault Intervention Device developed by Raytheon Company. It is said to be harmless and the one inside the L.A. jail is scaled down considerably.

The device works by emitting a beam, focused on the wave of energy that is traveling at the speed of light to produce an intolerable heat sensation that advertently will cause those in it’s line of fire to move. Once the individual has moved away from the beam, all heat sensations cease to exist.

Jail officials and deputies have tested this device and it is all controlled by a single joystick. According to Sheriff Lee Baca, “We Read more »

Chief Neal Tyler of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department announced that 43 gang members had been arrested. Originally a Pasadena area gang, they had extended their operation into Antelope Valley, which is where the arrest occurred.

The resulting arrests took place due to a partnership operation involving several different police forces. In total, approximately 400 police officers helped to perform the arrests, which included the help from; Antelope Valley Crime Fighting Initiative, California State Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, Los Angeles County Probation Department, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department-Operation Safe Streets Bureau, United States Drug Enforcement Administration Mobile Enforcement Team, and United States Drug Enforcement Administration High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force.

Within 80 locations throughout Read more »

You can call it lack of judgement, or maybe even temporary insanity. But whichever way you think of it, you can never really grasp why a 2-year veteran Los Angeles Deputy would smuggle, get this — 161.5 grams of heroin, 51.5 grams of marijuana and 24.4 grams of methamphetamine into the North County Correctional Facility, Castaic jail, and think he’d get away with it.

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy, Peter Paul Felix, was arrested in October on the charges of attempting to smuggle the drugs into the Read more »

A report submitted to the Board of Supervisors in Los Angeles County revealed how two deputies were cheating the bar code system by avoiding inmate’s cell checks. The bar code cheating lead at the downtown Los Angeles Men’s Central Jail to the firing of two deputies as well as disciplinary actions for eight other deputies.

These delinquent behaviors, now called the “Scannergate” scandal, are due largely to a March 2009 incident where a high security inmate was found dead after committing suicide in his cell.

Deputies in the jail system are responsible for checking the safety and health of inmates on an every half-hour basis. They are then required to document each check point by using a scanning device that scans a bar code near each row of cells.

According to investigators, after Read more »