Inmates frequently ask for more blankets, the employee said, as they are allowed only “very thin” blankets, something that is “unreasonable.”Ī lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California - which is representing inmates in two major lawsuits against the county and its jails - said she had repeatedly spotted people in the jails using trash bags for warmth. Still, one former jail employee - who asked not to be named due to pending litigation - said the department’s inability to handle winter cold snaps has been a persistent problem. Because final autopsies have not been completed for either inmate, it’s unclear whether hypothermia contributed to either death. In the other case, Aloma said it wasn’t clear to which death the report was referring. In one case, Assistant Sheriff Sergio Aloma said, a man died after he flooded his cell and was covered in water. Jail officials told The Times on Tuesday that the deaths were not related to a heating problem or a lack of warm clothing. “However, the Office of Inspector General sees little logic in holding large stores of thermal undergarments while people in custody experience precariously low temperatures.”Īmid the jails’ struggles with heat and warm clothing, the report said two people died in custody during the late fall of 2022 and early winter of 2023, after experiencing “symptoms consistent with hypothermic arrest.” “The Sheriff’s Department command staff believe that people in custody would destroy the thermal undergarments and create security concerns by concealing contraband in thermal undergarments,” the report added. Then in early April, the Sheriff’s Department said that it already had 315,000 thermal tops and bottoms in inventory, but that state regulations didn’t require them to be handed out. To give everyone warmer clothes, officials told the inspector general’s office, they’d need about $3.1 million. When the Office of Inspector General asked about the possibility of distributing thermal undergarments, the Sheriff’s Department said that - based on medical need or inmate worker status - it had given out around 1,000 thermal tops and 900 thermal bottoms across a population of more than 13,000. Usually, the jails issue each inmate a short-sleeved shirt and pants, one short-sleeved undershirt and one blanket, though some facilities allow people extra clothing depending on the weather. “To mitigate these living conditions, many people in custody have requested long-sleeved thermal undergarments,” the report said. Some people took to using plastic garbage bags as blankets, even sleeping inside them to shield themselves from the cold. That generated an increase in complaints to oversight officials, and during site visits, Office of Inspector General monitors found some areas dropped to as low as 58 degrees indoors. In an emailed statement Tuesday afternoon, the Sheriff’s Department said officials were aware of the report and its allegations about the reluctance to hand out warmer clothing.ĭuring last winter’s storms and cold spells, though, some of the county’s seven jails also struggled to handle low temperatures inside. “Our jails have dangerous cold spikes, and when we called this to the attention of the Sheriff’s Department, they expressed no concern beyond saying that if they gave prisoners warm clothing, they’d hide contraband in it,” Inspector General Max Huntsman told The Times. The 38-page Office of Inspector General report offers few other details about how the two inmates died but describes a jail system so ill-equipped for cold weather that indoor temperatures sometimes fell into the 50s and inmates slept inside plastic garbage bags for warmth.Īnd even when the department had hundreds of thousands of thermal underwear sets on hand, the report noted, officials did not distribute them because they said that they were not required to and that they feared inmates would destroy or misuse them. Two Los Angeles County jail inmates who died last winter showed signs of hypothermia before their deaths, according to a new report released by county watchdog officials.
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