Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Ed Reynoso said the lockdown began at 10 a.m. and lasted until approximately 10:45 a.m.  The jail continued to accept bookings once the lockdown was lifted.

The Indio jail serves the Coachella Valley and is run by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.  Constructed in 1959, the facility represents approximately 9% of the county’s 4,100 jail beds.  Booking at the Riverside County Indio Jail can take between two to four hours and includes fingerprinting, background checks, the taking of mug shots and having the defendant’s information entered into the computer system. Bail can be posted at this facility 24-hours a day.  In Riverside County, bail bonds cost 10% of the total amount of the total amount of the set bail.

Those wishing to visit an inmate are required to call the jail’s visiting number one day prior to the desired visiting date to schedule an appointment.  Visits are limited to 45-minutes and visitors are required to check in no later than 10 minutes before the scheduled visit time.  The number of visitors is limited to two per inmate, and inmates may not have more than two visits scheduled within a seven day period.

The 353-bed detention center has faced severe overcrowding throughout the years, being forced to release inmates prematurely. Expanding the facility is thought to be the fastest and most cost-effective solution, as opposed to a previous effort to build a 7,200 bed facility to be used by the entire county.

The 60-year-old facility doesn’t show as much wear as people would expect, due in part to the upkeep by the inmates. Jail staff members also take pride in maintaining the facility by keeping up with all necessary repairs.

One of the most pressing issues with the jail is the lack of medical services, which are currently only available on a part-time basis to inmates. According to Sheriff Stan Sniff, providing around-the-clock care to inmates could cost $20 million.

Expanding the facility will also mean increasing staff at the jail, though Riverside County is already straining to afford operational costs at the Indio Jail. Studies will be done over the coming months about the best way to expand jail facilities, starting with Indio. Officials are hoping to have a workable solution by the end of the year.

There are some who still feel it would be in the county’s best interest to build a large jail to house all of the county’s inmates, saying that it’s more efficient than having five separate facilities operating at the same time.

In July, a customer used Bail Bonds United. In turn, the bail bond company posted the bond but the customer is said to have not been able to pay the premium (the bail bond fee, which is generally arranged in advance) to bondsman, according to the California Department of Insurance. Thus, Bail Bonds United and Damion Paul Perkins, also the co-owner, became quite dissatisfied.

Allegedly in August, Perkins (the bondsman now in custody) and a fellow male went the customer’s home, order him out at gun point, handcuffed him, placed the victim in the back of their car, and Perkins drove them around until he and they could negotiate an amount of ransom. Perkins and his accomplice apparently received illegal drugs and additional money from the victim’s family and in turn, the victim was released. Talk about unethical bondsmen!!

Perkins is being prosecuted by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. If Perkins is convicted, he will face a maximum sentence of life in prison with possible parole.

The Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility, aka “Banning Jail“, upgrades are expected to be finished next month, but until now Sheriff Sniff feared he would not have enough funds to hire these security and administrative personnel, thanks to a former $50 million county deficit.

Now, 45 sworn law enforcement personnel are expected to be hired to work at the prison, along with 49 non-sworn correctional deputies and 48 “classified” employees, including food service workers, clerks and accountants. .

Sniff also doubts that all the money in his new budget will actually be needed and he predicts that the new jail units will be fully operational in one year. The expansion includes 582 inmate beds lodged in three housing units that are 173,000 square feet in size.

Opening these new cells can’t come soon enough, said Supervisors Jeff Stone and John Benoit.  The two are referring to the impending early release of 40,000 convicted felons from state facilities  in compliance with a federal judicial panel’s mandate that California’s prison population be reduced for health reasons.

“We are going to have to house more dangerous criminals that we shouldn’t be responsible for housing in the first place.  We have to make our facilities function as prisons when they’re detention centers,” Stone added, alluding to expected re-offenders.

Sniff agreed, saying that law enforcement officials are preparing for a statewide increase in crime.  Currently, the county has 3,600 inmate beds available, compared to 6,000 in Orange County Jails. Some 3,500 prisoners were already released before the end of their sentences in 2008 because of overcrowding.

On the morning of January 27, 2010, six hundred and fifty officers from thirty-four local and federal agencies swarmed the Riva Gang’s territory and arrested fifty alleged gang members, including Riva leaders and members of their rival gang, the 1200 Blocc Crips.

For years, the East Side Riva gangs of Riverside have functioned as a powerful arm of the Mexican Mafia, trafficking in methamphetamine and fighting any African American gang members or bystanders unfortunate enough to cross their paths. Last week, however, all that changed.  Authorities, responding to a federal complaint, successfully ferreted offenders out of hiding on their own home turf and took them into custody.

“We hope we made an impact,” Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach said. “Gangs don’t own the parks and the streets. The citizens do.”

Investigators reportedly spent months grilling informants and wiretapping suspects’ phones to compile evidence.  Local district attorney’s investigators worked alongside Riverside Police gang detectives and FBI and DEA special agents during Operation Promise. They discovered that Riva leaders communicated with Mexican Mafia elders in coded language about large-scale meth trafficking and “tribute” payments for imprisoned gang members’ protection. A federal agent explained that these kinds of relationships have revealed that city gang investigations must be expanded beyond geographical and jurisdictional boundaries.

Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco spoke to the press about the Riva Gang, standing behind a table littered with seized weapons like assault rifles, shotguns, knives, armor-piercing bullets.  Most bizarre was the inclusion of two venomous rattlesnakes in his display. “They don’t have jobs … They’re living off the fruits of their drug sales.” He said of the suspects.

In a related sting, authorities also arrested Riva Gang’s rivals — members of the predominantly African-American gang called the 1200 Blocc Crips. These two gangs once worked together to target mutual enemies in the Casa Blanca region of central Riverside, officials said, until the Mexican Mafia ordered the Latino Rivas to attack blacks, launching a race war.

Over the last 20 years, Riva gang members have since been convicted and sentenced in several hate crimes against innocent bystanders, including the 2005 shooting of a Nigerian tourist on University Avenue and two separate murders of 13-year-old African-American boys in 2002.

Despite Wednesday’s arrests, officials say about three-quarters of the seven hundred Riva members are still active in this community.  They also believe that about two hundred active members of the 1200 Blocc Crips roam on the streets, as well.

Seick is now behind bars, and has been accused of stealing the cattle (worth about $3,600) from the Morongo Indian reservation. He tried selling eight of the head of cattle an an Ontario stockyard. That’s when officials were called in.

The state branding inspector described the cattle as being from the Morongo Tribal Cattlemen’s Association.

Stockyard owner, Jeremy Gorham explained that the brand on cattle is like a license plate to a car. He further stated “one-hundred years ago, this guy, you wouldn’t be investigating anything, you would probably go to the morgue instead.”

Seick will later be arraigned on cattle rustling charges at the Riverside County courthouse.  A juvenile accomplice was also detained and later released to his parents.