Posted on 08/09/2009 7:37:47 PM PDT by Libloather
Hundreds Hurt in 11-Hour California Prison Riot
SOLOMON MOORE
Published: August 9, 2009
LOS ANGELES — Rioting inmates smashed and burned a large California prison on Saturday night and Sunday morning, injuring 250 prisoners and hospitalizing 55.
The 11-hour riot, at the Reception Center West at the California Institution for Men in Chino, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, broke down along racial lines, with black prison gangs fighting Latino gangs in hand-to-hand combat, the authorities said.
No prison employees were injured, no deaths were reported, and no inmates escaped, state officials said. But 10 of the 33 prisons in the state system were put on lockdown to prevent unrest from spreading. Those 10 were in the southern part of the state.
Damage to the 1,300-inmate medium-security prison was “significant and extensive,” said a spokesman, Lt. Mark Hargrove. One housing unit was virtually destroyed by fire, Lieutenant Hargrove said. The other housing areas were so badly damaged that they were uninhabitable, he said, so some inmates were being temporarily housed in tents while others were sent to alternate prisons.
With more than 150,000 inmates, the California prison system is one of the most crowded in the nation, with many of its facilities holding more than double the number of inmates they were designed for. A federal three-judge panel ruled last week that crowding and poor health care caused one avoidable inmate death each week and that the system was “impossible to manage.”
Lieutenant Hargrove said prisoners had smashed windows, torn down gates and used whatever they could to battle one another in the riot.
“Inmates broke out glass and used shards as knives,” he said. “They used pieces of metal, wood, whatever they could break off the walls, pipes.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Wow, 150,000 Obama supporters!
What happened? Cafeteria serve jelly instead of marmalade?
Yeah...Arnold wants to let 60,000 of them loose to terrorize California the way they just did to the Chino facility!
>>No prison employees were injured, no deaths were reported, and no inmates escaped, state officials said<<
Sounds like a happy ending to me.
More black vs chicano thuggery.
Somehow they’ll manage to blame whitey.
Eagerly awaiting the Kenyan to weigh in on how stupidly this riot was conducted.......
A Veritable Paradise, Doncha Know?
Nope - Obama knows it's always the cops who are at fault - or the guards - anyone who's on the side of the law...
Okay, I think we’ve figured out how to solve overcrowding in the cellblocks: Let the inmates burn the cellblocks down.
In South Alabama, they operate prison farms that grow the food they eat and do upkeep projects.
I for one am tired of the inmates running the asylum. Let them earn their keep or live on bread and water.
vaudine
The racist bastards!
Whitey put ‘em in there, doncha know. Ain’t one of ‘em guilty of a thing. Just axe ‘em.
From what a prosecutor told me, the Mexican mafia rules the prisons. They are organized and vicious. And, since every gang foot soldier is likely to spend time in the brig, it’s best to belong to the organization that will protect you once you are there.
Whitey threw ‘em in there according to them.
Latinos probably don’t want to convert to islam.
Hmmmm..the guards just got out of the way and let nature take it’s course. Sounds like we may have a template for those “no snitches” neighborhoods hostile to the police.
Should make for good TV.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.