The ACLU is asking a federal judge to find Los Angeles County in contempt of his earlier ruling mandating improvements in the handling of people at the Inmate Reception Center.
In a motion the civil rights group filed Monday, the ACLU told Judge Dean Pregerson that “the evidence indisputably shows the IRC yet again has long delays in processing and intake of detainees, and people continue to suffer serious deprivations while in appalling conditions.” It added, “the law is clear that ‘trying’ is not enough, nor is it a license to ignore valid court orders.”
The ACLU said it found the county is still not providing adequate access to medications and is chaining people to objects, and is holding people in the IRC more than 24 hours, all of which would violate Pregerson’s order from last year.
Pregerson issued his order in response to an emergency court filing about the “abysmal” conditions at the Inmate Reception Center. The group cited a litany of abuses, including the shackling of detainees with serious mental illness to chairs “for days at a time.”
But problems have persisted.
Inspector General Max Huntsman told the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission on Feb. 15 that inspections found incarcerated people are still being tied to objects like gurneys during the intake process at the IRC.
“As long as we have our jails overcrowded, we will see IRC continue to be shut down repeatedly, we will continue to see people’s constitutional rights violated, either in the IRC or elsewhere, simply because we lack the capacity to care for the number of people we have in our jails now,” he said.
Responding to the issues raised by Huntsman and the ACLU, Sheriff Robert Luna told the commission, “that is not acceptable,” adding that his department…
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