BACA SEEKS REFORM OF JAILS; SHERIFF-ELECT BELIEVES SUPERVISION IS KEY.

Byline: Yvette Cabrera, Lee Condon and Douglas Haberman Daily News Staff Writers

As Sheriff-elect Lee Baca prepares to take office Dec. 7, he's calling for better training and supervision of deputies in county jails where five inmates in county custody have died in the past four months.

``We need more sergeants (in the jails),'' Baca said. ``We need more training.''

During a visit to the Malibu-Lost Hills sheriff's station last week, Baca repeated a postelection pledge to appoint an inspector general of the jails to act as a watchdog over the custody division.

The job would be to ferret out problems in the system and convince the public and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors that the department needs money to handle them.

``We've had some problems in our jails,'' he said.

``We can't fight our fight alone. There are parts of the county that don't think we're doing a good job regarding our jails. I think we're doing a fair job, but I think we can do better.''

Upon taking office, Baca said he plans to ask the supervisors for enough sergeants ``to keep (the custody division) in a strong, professional mode.

``What causes some levels of excessive force is we don't have enough training and supervisors for deputies in the custody division,'' he said.

But he denied that brutality is pervasive in the county jail system.

Total deaths down

The county runs nine jails, holding about 22,000 inmates at any given time and more than 200,000 inmates a year.

So far in 1998, 36 inmates have died, compared with 48 in all of 1997, Undersheriff Jerry Harper said. There have been three homicides this year, compared with four in 1997, and four inmates have committed suicides this year, the same as in 1997, he said.

Homicides include murders in the jails or deaths during inmate fights, for which jail workers are not held responsible.

``The vast majority of deaths are listed as natural,'' Harper said. ``Overall, I think we're doing a very good job.''

Coroner's officials said the Aug. 1 death of Twin Towers inmate Danny Ray Smith was a homicide, although an existing heart condition contributed to his death. Smith died with his hands cuffed behind his back after fighting with deputies.

The FBI said it was investigating the case not long after then-Sheriff Sherman Block announced a probe in mid-August into a ``posse'' of seven or more renegade deputies in Twin Towers who allegedly used unnecessary force on an inmate and were roughing up other mental health inmates they felt were being coddled. The deputies remain on paid leave while the investigation continues, Harper said.

Long history alleged

These incidents are nothing new, said lawyers who represent families of inmates. There is a pattern of deputy brutality, they said, stretching back 15 years.

``Not only do we see a number of deaths and a rash of them, but we will continue to see them because nothing is being done to forestall this conduct,'' said lawyer Eric G. Ferrer, who has filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff's Department on behalf of the family of Mark Philyaw, an inmate allegedly beaten to death at Twin Towers in 1997.

In the lawsuit, Ferrer alleges that sheriff's deputies kicked, punched and choked Philyaw during a strip search and that Philyaw did nothing to justify this use of force. Philyaw had been jailed on traffic violations.

``The Mark Philyaw case is typical of what we see happen to inmates in the jails,'' said Ferrer, who practices in the law offices of Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.

``This man was beaten unmercifully when he didn't comply with the officers' commands,'' Ferrer said. ``You can wind up in jail for a minimal kind of misconduct, and you can wind up not coming out.''

Because the matter is in litigation, Harper declined comment on Philyaw's case.

Common factors among inmate death cases, Ferrer said, are sheriff's deputies who are young and inexperienced and sometimes assigned to the jails because they have had difficulties in other divisions.

Harper disputed that.

While almost all new deputies start out in the jails, many remain there as long as six to eight years - hardly making them inexperienced, he said.

They receive nine weeks of Sheriff's Academy training that includes 144 hours focused on jail duty, Harper said. Of those 144 hours, 48 hours involve the proper use of force - from handcuffing and other restraint techniques to the use of pepper spray, he said.

Training continues once deputies are assigned, Harper said. ``It is recurrent training.''

Ferrer called for an outside investigation to put an end to a culture within the department that he claims allows brutalizing of inmates to continue.

``The culture itself is not one that's going to foster brutality,'' said Baca, a 32-year veteran who resigned in June as a division chief to pursue his campaign for sheriff.

``The most frequent cause of the use of force as I'm seeing it is overcrowdedness,'' he said.

Inmates ``are stressed out being in jail,'' and that leads to fights deputies must break up, he said.

There were 64 uses of force in the Twin Towers jail in 1997 when the inmate population was 3,200, he said. In the first six months of 1998, when the population was at 5,000 inmates, there were 118 use-of-force cases, Baca said.

``The story we've been trying to get out is that the number of excessive-force lawsuits and complaints has been going down in the last few years,'' Harper said.

Attorney Merrick Bobb, who monitors the Sheriff's Department for the supervisors, said in his last report, filed in June, that excessive-force lawsuits dropped from 381 in 1992-93 to 108 in 1996-97.

``Fiscal year 1996-97 produced the lowest combined figures for judgments, settlements, attorney's fees and costs for any year since we began measuring in fiscal year 1992-93,'' Bobb wrote.

Attorney Leo J. Terrell said he sees a pattern of brutality resulting in inmate deaths at the county jails.

``There needs to be full-scale investigation into this. You have to hold law enforcement officers accountable for their misconduct,'' Terrell said. He criticized the department for failing to punish deputies involved in inmate deaths.

``It shows there's a dual system of justice,'' Terrell said. ``If you or I commit a crime, we're in custody within 24 hours, but if you're a law enforcement officer, you get protection.''

Daily News Staff Writers Michael Coit and Sylvia Oliande contributed to this report.