As part of its ongoing lawsuit against Los Angeles County, the American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday asked a federal judge to use an emergency order to force Sheriff Alex Villanueva and the Board of Supervisors to take action on the county’s jails.
Images and testimony have revealed “barbaric” conditions such as inmates being forced to sleep on concrete floors, lie in puddles of their own urine and defecate on the floor, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
The ACLU has highlighted one specific site as being particularly egregious: the Inmate Reception Center in downtown L.A., which processes 120,000 inmates a year, but not quickly enough, the group claims.
Melissa Camacho-Cheung of the ACLU described the Inmate Reception Center in downtown L.A. as “full and overflowing.”
“I saw a man chained to chair, but laying down in the concrete floor in a puddle of his own urine,” she added.
Other inmates claim they’ve been subjected to violence at the hands of LASD employees.
If the ACLU’s request is approved, jail officials will be forced to make sure no inmate is held in the reception center for more than 24 hours, no inmate is chained for more than four hours and that clean drinking water, functioning toilets and medical care — including that of inmates with mental illness — be provided.
In the past five months, two inmates have died at the reception center, and the ACLU says unless changes are made quickly, more inmates are at risk.
“If the county does not meaningfully fund beds outside of the jail for people to get treatment, the problem is just going to keep coming back over and over again,” Camacho-Cheung said.