paris: December 2007 Archives

It also says Paris Hilton didn't get preferential treatment. The report, released this afternoon by the OIR goes into a wide variety of other topics regarding the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

UPDATE #1 3:44 p.m. 12/20/07

It's funny how we focus on the celebrity aspects of a report like this and miss some of the more important details. A whole section of the report deals with in custody deaths and while it is entirely without names...there is a curious entry on page 24:

C A S E A 76-year old inmate went down in a dorm at North County Correctional Facility and
subsequently died. He had been seated on his lower bunk and, when he tried to get up,
he fell and struck his head on the floor. While being treated for the resulting laceration,
he complained of chest pains and was transported by ambulance to the hospital, where
he was treated for various ailments, went into cardiac arrest, and died three days later.
An NCCF sergeant interviewed several inmates assigned to bunks near the deceased
inmate’s. All said that the inmate had been in poor health, and none noted anything
unusual about the fall or the circumstances surrounding it. Even though the facts
suggested this elderly inmate died from natural causes, because the deceased inmate had
gained notoriety for his role in the murder of an LAPD officer decades earlier, both
Homicide and IAB investigators responded to the scene to insure there was no suspicious
activity. The on-call OIR attorney likewise rolled out. In the end, the coroner determined
the inmate had died of natural causes. However, the case did raise the issue of
whether this particular inmate, given his age and background, should have been housed
in a more appropriate location than a general population dormitory. Housing older
inmates is an ongoing problem for the jails, and the LASD used this case as an occasion
to renew its efforts to create specialized “old man” dorms or housing units.

Obviously this refers to Jimmy Lee Smith, one of the infamous Onion Field Killers.

I plan on linking to the complete report in a post later today.

UPDATE #2 4:57 p.m. 12-20-07

And....here  is the report.