RICHARD J DONOVAN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY FREE

Despite evidence of criminal assaults, not a single officer has been criminally charged for hurting an incarcerated person. Since January 1, 2017, CDCR has only issued terminations to five RJD officers for engaging in misconduct against incarcerated people. In the face of this crisis at RJD, CDCR’s response has been shockingly inadequate. CDCR’s Chief Ombudsman, who reports directly to the Secretary of CDCR, wrote that she had never previously heard “accusations like these in all my years” or “such despair, hopelessness, and fear from inmates.” Investigators heard over and over again that officers were targeting people with disabilities with violence, hiring incarcerated people to assault other incarcerated people, retaliating against anyone who dared speak up, and engaging in “gang-like” activity. In 2018, CDCR’s own auditors and Plaintiffs’ counsel each wrote to CDCR regarding significant reports of abuse of people with disabilities.ĬDCR sent a “strike team” to conduct more than one hundred interviews withincarcerated people on one yard at RJD. In 2016, Plaintiffs’ counsel began notifying CDCR of horrific allegations of misconduct at RJD. In 2015, California’s Inspector General recommended installation of cameras to combat violence at High Desert State Prison. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (“CDCR”) has known of profound problems at RJD and other high-security prisons for years.

RICHARD J DONOVAN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY FREE

This widespread abuse has destroyed the protections at the heart of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Armstrong Remedial Plan: the right to request and receive reasonable accommodations and to be free from discrimination based on disability. Out of fear, people have foregone requesting wheelchair pushers, wheelchair repairs, hearing aid batteries, writing supplies needed to communicate, access to mental health clinicians when they are feeling unwell, and toilet paper, clean clothes, and showers when they soil themselves. The systemic, omnipresent violence and retaliation have made incarcerated people too afraid to ask staff for basic disability accommodations, either informally or using the court-ordered disability grievance process. Please, just leave me alone I just want to go to sleep.”

As one class member described his time at RJD: “I just want to die I got beat up by officers on the yard, look at my bruises I can’t do it anymore. Those who complain about mistreatment become the officers’ next victims or are tagged with discipline for “resisting”-even when they have intellectual disabilities or are otherwise too fearful to dispute the charges. Broken bones, shattered teeth, bloodied faces, and concussions are routine. Donovan Correctional facility (“RJD”) in San Diego County from assaulting and terrorizing incarcerated people with disabilities.Īs alleged in the fifty-four declarations filed with the Motion, officers are throwing people out of wheelchairs, punching deaf people when they cannot hear spoken orders, beating people with disabilities who request help carrying heavy packages, closing cell doors on people who use walkers and wheelchairs, and attacking suicidal people when they ask for mental health care. Plaintiff’s Motion seeks a remedial plan to stop correctional officers at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in federal district court in a long-standing ADA class action, Armstrong v. State prisons officials said the sentences of Mendez, Delgado and Figueroa also included street gang enhancements.San Francisco – Febru– On February 28, 2020, attorneys for a class of California prisoners and parolees with disabilities filed their Motion to Stop Defendants from Assaulting, Abusing and Retaliating Against Persons With Disabilities at R.J.

Michael Figueroa, 20, who in 2019 was went to prison from Orange County to serve 10 years and six months for attempted voluntary manslaughter.

Luis Delgado, 24, who was in 2019 was sentenced in Fresno County to 13 years for assault with a semiautomatic firearm and.

Joe Mendez, 39, who was sentenced in 2000 in Orange County to 52 years to life with the possibility of parole for first-degree murder.

William Barba, 41, who was sent to prison from Los Angeles County in 2000 to serve a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder.

Two inmates also were taken to hospitals, and other inmates were treated at the prison’s medical facility.įour inmates have been identified as suspects in the brawl, Hardy said, noting that they could face charges of attempted murder of a peace officer.

On Monday, she said the number of officers taken to a hospital was seven.

On Sunday, Hardy initially said six officers suffered stab wounds, lacerations and possible broken bones.

Richard j donovan correctional facility