Some men began to pray. Some just screamed. A few began to vomit while others, according to court filings, slipped and fell on the floors slick with chemical spray that jailers had unleashed inside the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic.
That was April 21, 2022. Now, some of the men who endured that “brutal event” are suing the county, claiming that deputies fired more than 50 canisters of tear gas at a dorm housing several dozen inmates — allegedly because two of them were mouthy and uncooperative when staff ordered them to get off the phone for the evening.
In a pair of lawsuits filed last month in federal court, current and former detainees accused the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department of violating the U.S. Constitution — specifically the 4th and 14th amendments — by allowing deputies to use excessive force.
“Pretrial detainees cannot be punished, and the defendants, including a lieutenant, a captain, a sergeant and numerous deputies, subjected an entire unit of pretrial detainees to a literal blizzard of pepper spray without any justification,” said attorney Jeff Price, who is representing the plaintiffs in both cases.
The county has not yet responded to the filings in court, but the Sheriff’s Department issued a brief statement via email.
“All use of force incidents which result in injury are unfortunate,” the statement said. “Due to this pending litigation, we are unable to offer further details at this time.”
The trouble began in Unit 711. It was late at night, and some of the men were already in their bunks, reading or dozing off. A few were still up and about, chatting on the unit’s landline phones.
Just after 11 p.m., the suit alleges, a deputy came in and ordered the men to hang up for the night. At first, two refused.
After the deputy repeated himself, the men obeyed. But according to the court filings, as they walked back to their cells, one said something, seemingly directed at the guard.
The lawsuits don’t specify what he said, but in response the guard allegedly ordered the men to come to the gate and be handcuffed. Instead, they walked upstairs and back to their bunks.
That sparked a tense back-and-forth that ended with the deputy stepping away, only to return with at least 20 jailers in riot gear, shields and gas masks, carrying Tasers and chemical spray.
They ordered the men to put their property on their bunks and face the wall. Three or four jailers were talking through their gas masks, allegedly cursing and insulting the men. Eventually, the lawsuits say, they ordered the two inmates who’d originally refused to cuff up to come to the gate, and they threatened to gas the whole unit if they didn’t do it quickly enough.
As the men started down the stairs, one of the jailers allegedly turned on an industrial fan and, according to court filings, “began tear-gassing the entire unit.”
One man ran toward the door but crashed into it because he couldn’t see through the thick fog, the filings said. Another reported getting hit in the head with balls of chemical irritants.
Some of the men began to run around, allegedly hurting themselves when they slipped and fell on the slick floors. An elderly detainee injured his back when he fell off his bunk, according to the court filings.
“Every inmate in the unit was suffering from the cruel and unusual effects of the extreme amount of tear gas that the defendants forced into the unit, and some were hit with pepper balls that were fired into the unit by the officers,” one suit says. “No inmate was spared, while the officers were protected by gas masks.”
Eventually, the jailers ordered all of the inmates to the dayroom and left them there for a few hours before interviewing them about what happened. In the end, all of the men got punished, the suit said: For 25 days, they couldn’t call home, use the television, exercise or receive visits — even from their lawyers.
Price first heard about the incident last year, when one of the men in Unit 711 alerted him to it. Afterward, the lawyer interviewed more than a dozen people who’d been in the dorm that night and reviewed numerous video interviews obtained through a public records request.
Then, last month, he filed two lawsuits: oneon behalf of two men who have since been released, and the other a class action representing several dozen of the men who endured the incident.
Among other things, the suits accuse the guards of using excessive force and department leaders and the county of failing to train employees well enough to prevent such a thing from occurring in the first place.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
