Wheelchair Hell in Men's Central Jail

Parks agrees, saying that doctors at the jail routinely deny people with various forms of mobility impairment the use of a wheelchair.

"One of the things we now know through the litigation process is that they have medical staff whose job it is to declassify people and review inmates with an eye toward taking them out of the 8100 unit," Parks says. "So if that's their job and if they're any good at it, that means that they are declassifying a lot of people."

ILLUSTRATION BY MATT MAHURIN

Christian Reyes back at home

PHOTO BY CHRIS VOGEL

If an inmate is declassified and cannot walk very far, it's likely that he will not be able to move the distances often required to get his medications down the hall, talk to his family or his attorney in the visitors area, which is in a different part of the jail, or even make it to the bathroom without help from a deputy or a fellow inmate. He can be left helpless.

According to court documents, the county argues that the declassifications are based on "medical judgment," but Parks counters, "The pattern of problems, as well as the well-documented nature of the inmates' disabilities, belies this explanation."

Asked about declassifications, Assistant County Counsel Roger Granbo says, "I am not going to talk about that publicly."

Parks says she does not yet know why the jail makes a habit out of declassifying inmates, but that the current system is too black-and-white.

For example, she says, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department has "no classification for people who can walk five feet but not more than that," she says. "You're either paralyzed and get a wheelchair, or you're not and you can walk and you don't get a wheelchair."

Reyes says that's what happened to him.

He had been locked up for about a year, he says, when a fellow inmate needed a push in his wheelchair. So Reyes propped himself up by leaning on the inmate's chair and pushed him. A deputy saw Reyes, he says, and within a week doctors had declassified him, taken his wheelchair and moved him out of the 8100 unit.

"They took my chair from me for four days," he says. "I was dragging myself to the bathroom, into the shower and across the floor through the medicine lines. Plus, of course, there were no handrails in the showers or the toilets. It was the worst days I ever spent in there. They took away my chair and I literally couldn't do anything but lie in bed and pray."

In October, disabled inmates Peter Johnson and Joe Gonzalez telephoned L.A. Weekly to describe the behind-the-scenes conditions — both good and bad — inside Men's Central Jail.

The 8100 wheelchair unit, they both said, has accessible toilets and showers in a largely unused common area but not in the individual cells, where barriers to such amenities still exist. The Inmate Reception Center has been fixed, they say, with two new accessible bathrooms.

"I realize I'm not staying at a Hilton," says Gonzalez, paralyzed from his left hip down, "but these are basic necessities for our health."

The improvements are among a handful made over the past few years. When asked for a list of alterations and upgrades, Granbo says, "That's litigation-related, so we wouldn't disclose a thing like that."

Inmates and advocates say the jail is still a long way from acceptable conditions, and the bulk of improvements have been simple cosmetic and construction fixes that do not address widespread, systemic problems.

"I still see guys getting urinary tract infections because they're not being given clean catheters," says Gonzalez, who has been in jail since 2009 on an attempted murder charge. "And no one will help you transfer onto the toilet except maybe another inmate. Most programming is still not being given to us as an option because we're separated from the rest of the jail, and while it may be a tiny bit better now, to me it's remained the same."

Johnson, a paraplegic who has been in and out of jail numerous times over the past four years for petty theft, says he still is not being given a decent wheelchair. This summer, when he was in the 8100 unit, his wheelchair did not have footrests. As a result, he says, his feet dragged along the floor and got caught in the wheels. Because of his paralysis, Johnson could not feel his feet and did not realize he was crushing them until another inmate noticed his bloody, mangled toes.

It happened again in October, he says.

"With no footrests, my feet are just getting trampled, but I can't feel my legs," Johnson says. "They are trying to accommodate us, but it's not happening like it's supposed to."

Perpetually upbeat, Parks is focused on solutions and not the blame game. If she had a magic wand, she says, Baca and the Sheriff's Department would remove the remaining barriers to the toilets and showers and offer equal educational and vocational opportunities to the disabled.

Finally, she would make Baca implement a consistent medical review process for wheelchair declassifications.

That would be "not only good for our clients," says Parks, "but good for the Sheriff's Department. It's not a good thing liabilitywise to have people falling or being discriminated against."