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March 28
1934 - Bouquet Canyon Reservoir, replacement for ill-fated St. Francis Dam & reservoir, begins to fill with water [story]
Bouquet Reservoir


More than half of the inmates in a single, 2,000-person facility on the Pitchess Detention Center campus have contracted coronavirus, according to documents obtained by The Signal on Tuesday from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

There are currently 4,752 inmates total at Pitchess Detention Center, a jail facility run by LASD that encompasses four facilities: North County Correctional Facility, PDC East, PDC North and PDC South.

Across all four facilities, 1,798 inmates have contracted COVID-19, or roughly 38% of the entire jail population.

However, within NCCF, the jail’s maximum-security facility, a total of 1,312 of the 2,214 have contracted the virus, or 59.2%. Of the remaining three facilities on the PDC campus, there are a total of 2,538 inmates, 486 of whom have contracted the virus.

How does this compare against the other jail facilities LASD manages?

Central Jail and Twin Towers Correctional Facility have a total of 5,944 inmates currently housed, of whom 642 have been diagnosed as positive with COVID-19, or 10.8% of their entire population.

The other facility listed on the information provided to The Signal, Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, has 60 cases among its 1,708-person inmate population, or 3.5%.

In all LASD jail facilities, Pitchess Detention Facility appears to have the worst outbreak by far.

The numbers used to calculate the above percentages were based on Public Health Department totals, which officials have said might lag behind the LASD numbers. As of the Wednesday numbers reported by LASD, Pitchess has 38.3% of the total inmates housed in LASD jails, but 69.3% of the total cases within the entire county jail system.

The breakdown of criminality at Pitchess is 124 misdemeanor inmates, while the remaining are felonious status. However, 1,858 of the inmates are “sentence status 1,” meaning that they are still awaiting trial or have not yet been fully sentenced.

“Most inmates in sentence status 1 will be pretrial,” said a statement from LASD sent to The Signal.

On May 6, The Signal reported that there was an outbreak at Pitchess Detention Facility. Then, on May 8, The Signal reported that some inmates within NCF, the most highly affected facility on PDC’s campus and in the entire Los Angeles County region, had submitted a grievance to the jail staff asking for social distancing measures and more protection from the spread of the virus.

That grievance, which was included in the files handed over to The Signal, shows that on May 4 the prisoners stated they could not follow government guidelines and they were needing to rip up dirty and possibly infected blankets to use as face coverings.

LASD staff partially approved of the complaint, making changes to certain procedures, but also said that the complaint was not an emergency, and that the inmate listed at the top of the complaint had it explained to him that new clothes were given weekly and undergarments, sheets and a new blanket are provided monthly.

“The dorms are cleaned daily with cleaning agents,” said the response to the complaint, which included medical request forms from a few dozen inmates. “Hygiene kits are passed out daily and face coverings were issued to all inmates. We have followed and posted signage from the Health Department for inmates to sleep in different patterns.”

“He stated he agreed and understood and was happy with our customer service,” the complaint response added.

As of Wednesday afternoon, no inmates at any of the four facilities on the PDC campus have died due to complications with COVID-19, according to DPH officials.

Out of 1,724 cases in Castaic, 59 cases were not associated with a detention facility as of June 16. Public Health officials have not responded to repeated requests for comment on the discrepancy between the total reported for Castaic and the total reported for the Pitchess Detention Center.

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