LOS ANGELES — The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal judge Monday to find Los Angeles County, the Board of Supervisors and Sheriff Robert Luna in contempt of court for failing to fix "appalling" conditions in the local lockups.
In a 27-page motion detailing the jail's "systemic failures," lawyers with the civil rights organization — which is representing inmates in a long-standing class-action lawsuit — accused the county of flouting court orders by chaining inmates to benches and gurneys for hours at a time, locking people in cells covered with trash and feces, and leaving them to sleep on crowded intake center floors with nothing but plastic bags to keep warm.
"We are treated like animals," Lester Evans wrote in one of the nearly two dozen inmate declarations the ACLU filed along with their motion. "People shouldn't live like this."
