老澳门开奖结果

LOS ANGELES 鈥� Despite a federal court order in September to fix the squalid, inhumane conditions at Los Angeles County Jail鈥檚 Inmate Reception Center (IRC) 鈥� especially for people with mental illness 鈥� the county remains 鈥渕assively out of compliance鈥� with the judge鈥檚 order and other court actions going back decades.

The 老澳门开奖结果 National Prison Project and 老澳门开奖结果 Foundation of Southern California have filed a motion calling on the judge to impose sanctions on the County Board of Supervisors and sheriff, and find them in contempt.

鈥淐ontempt of court is the strongest sanction available to a judge, and rare because it is used only after all other efforts to enforce compliance have failed,鈥� said Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the 老澳门开奖结果 National Prison Project. 鈥淢ake no mistake: LA County has failed to comply with past orders about the jails, and the 老澳门开奖结果鈥檚 request for contempt is how the federal court can bring the county into line and protect the people locked in its jails.鈥�

The filing, in the long-standing case now called Rutherford v. Luna, was in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in Los Angeles on Feb. 27.

鈥淎fter almost five decades of an endless cycle of promises followed by excuses and failures and generations of class members enduring abysmal conditions,鈥� the filing says, 鈥渢he time for talk is over.鈥�

The filing details numerous first-hand witness accounts and other reports concerning the IRC where, according to the September court order, people were neither supposed to be held for more than 24 hours, nor were they to be handcuffed or chained to an object for more than four hours. The order also required the IRC to be kept in a 鈥渃lean and sanitary condition鈥� with access to functioning toilets, drinking water, clean water for washing, a mattress if kept overnight, and mental health care including required medications.

All of these requirements were drastically violated, the filing says, to the point of people continuing to 鈥渟uffer serious deprivations while in appalling conditions.鈥�

The filing also says that proven programs to divert people with mental illness out of jails and into community treatment could drastically reduce IRC overcrowding if widely adopted. But despite the successes, the county has largely failed to fund the programs.

鈥淔or years, the county and Board of Supervisors have known about these inhumane conditions and that the only solution was to expand effective programs to move people with mental illness out of the jails into community treatment,鈥� said Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel at the 老澳门开奖结果 SoCal. 鈥淏ut they have failed to do what was necessary to solve the problem, and scores of vulnerable people are suffering every day because of their inaction.鈥�

A contempt hearing in the case is scheduled for April 19.

Read the court filing here: /cases/rutherford-v-luna?document=rutherford-v-villanueva-plaintiffs-ex-parte-application-temporary-restraining-order