Judge orders surveillance, body cameras installed at five California prisons
A federal judge has ordered California prison officials to install surveillance cameras and have guards wear body cameras inside areas of five prisons where disabled inmates congregate, and to reform policies for how abuse of inmates by staffers are investigated.
U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland issued the sweeping order Thursday requiring state prison officials to come up with plans for installing the cameras and other reforms at California State Prison, Los Angeles County; the state prison and the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility at Corcoran; the California Institution for Women and Kern Valley State Prison.
“This is really a great victory for incarcerated people with disabilities,” inmate attorney Gay Grunfeld said Friday.
“We will be able to get some information and visibility on where the problems are so people can be held accountable,” she added. “The body worn cameras and the audio-visual surveillance systems will greatly improve the current discipline system, which all too often ignores the testimony and information from incarcerated people and takes the word of accused officers as gospel.”
The move follows a September 2020 order requiring such cameras inside the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego following a protracted legal fight over accusations that disabled inmates were being abused and mistreated. Body cameras were put into use there in January, and the audio-visual system is due to be working by April 5, Grunfeld said.
That order marked the first time that guards have been required to wear body cameras inside a California prison.
Inmate attorneys groups suing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sought the reforms at seven additional state prisons, the five the judge named as well as Salinas Valley State Prison and the California Correctional Institution. The judge did not find enough evidence to order cameras at those two prisons, but Grunfeld said attorneys may continue to pursue reforms there as well.
Lawyers submitted declarations from dozens of current and former inmates at the five state prisons named in the order in which they described being denied their rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“Some of the incidents involve the use of force against mentally or physically disabled inmates even though the disabled inmates appear to have posed no imminent threat to the safety of staff or other inmates,” the judge wrote.
In one case, an inmate at the Los Angeles prison “experienced a manic episode in December 2019, after which several officers brought the inmate to the ground,” the judge wrote.
“Once the inmate was under the control of the officers, one of the officers unloaded an entire can of pepper spray on the inmate, and then beat the inmate,” the judge wrote in a 71-page order. “Then, after the inmate was in handcuffs, the officers beat him again.
“The inmate now refrains from asking for help.”
Another Los Angeles inmate with bipolar disorder was struck after seeking help for hallucinations in June 2019, the order says.
“After a mental health evaluation, he was being returned to his cell, while handcuffed, by two officers when the officers and the inmate had a verbal altercation; once they reached his cell, the officers slammed him to the ground face first and punched him in the head,” the judge wrote. “The inmate now is afraid of asking for help for his disabilities.”
A third inmate at that prison asked for mental health counseling after learning his father had cancer, and instead of providing it “an officer pepper sprayed him in the face,” the judge wrote, adding that disabled inmates believe they are targeted “because they are vulnerable and unlikely to fight back.”
“The Court finds the inmate declarations to be credible,” Wilken wrote. “The descriptions in these declarations of the behavior of staff toward disabled inmates are remarkably consistent.”
CDCR said in a statement Friday that officials “are evaluating the judge’s order at this time, but we take the safety and security of the incarcerated population very seriously, and vigorously work to protect those with disabilities.”
“CDCR has taken steps to improve conditions for people in our care to accommodate for both physical and mental disabilities, including holding staff accountable for behavior that goes against the department’s values,” the department said.
During litigation, corrections lawyers argued that officials were not in violation of disabled inmates’ rights, presenting opinions from experts, including former CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate, that “disabled inmates have access to, and regularly utilize, systems for requesting accommodations and for reporting officer misconduct,” the judge wrote.
The judge wrote that she gave “little weight” to such arguments because even with the ability to report staff misconduct “some disabled inmates refrain from filing ADA requests or staff misconduct grievances that they would have filed but for the threats, intimidation, or coercion by staff.”
The judge’s order requires surveillance cameras be placed in housing units, exercise yards, dining areas, gyms, sally-ports and other areas and that video recordings be kept for at least 90 days.
Corrections officials agreed during the court fight that additional cameras “would help reduce misconduct” and aid investigations, the judge wrote, but they argued that they already have cameras in place in some areas, are adding more and said cameras “should not be installed anywhere other than yards that house the most vulnerable inmates.”
“The court is not persuaded,” Wilken wrote, adding that without surveillance cameras mistreatment of disabled inmates is “likely to continue.”
The judge’s order follows lengthy court fights by the Rosen Bien Galvan and Grunfeld law firm in San Francisco, the Prison Law Office in Berkeley and Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund Inc. in Berkeley.
In addition to the cameras, the judge ordered CDCR to reform how it handles staff misconduct complaints involving disabled inmates at the prisons, to develop an electronic early-warning system to track all misconduct complaints and to “significantly increase supervisory staff by posting additional sergeants on all watches on all yards at LAC, COR, SATF, CIW, and KVSP.”
The judge also ordered prison officials to come up with a plan to “more effectively monitor and control the use of pepper spray” and to develop policies that will “end and prevent any retaliation against disabled inmates.”
Inmate attorneys had sought an order asking that all pepper spray canisters be weighed before and after use, but CDCR objected that such a requirement would be “unnecessarily burdensome.”
The installation of cameras will not begin right away. The judge ordered CDCR to come up with plans for the ordered reforms that must be gone over by the inmates’ attorneys and, once agreement is reached on a “Five Prisons Remedial Plan,” cameras will be installed within 90 days, according to the order.
This story was originally published March 12, 2021 at 7:52 AM.