Guards at a Los Angeles jail fired rubber pellets and pepper spray to swiftly quell a racially charged brawl involving as many as 62 inmates, and six injured prisoners were taken to a hospital, a jail spokesman said, and reported by Reuters reported.The brawl was mostly split on racially lines. The altercation between Hispanic and African inmates erupted shortly after noon on Tuesday inside Tower One of the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Steve Whitmore said.
"There is something that does occur throughout our jail system from time to time," Whitmore conceded. "People in our jailes are under a lot of tension... and it does regrettably happen."
Whitmore said that the sheriff's deputties lobbied pepper spray cannisters and "sting ball" grenades, which released a burst of hard-rubber pellets into melee, managing to break up the violence in less than two minutes, Reuters also reported.
Whitmore also said that six inmates were taken to a hospital, with four of them with cuts, bruises and other non-life threatening injuries. Eric Scott, the L.A. Fire Department spokesman said that two of the patients were transported to the hospital in serious condition.
The precise cause of the fight was under investigation, Whitmore said. The Twin Twoers facility, one of eight detention centers run by the sheriff's department throughout the county, houses an estimated 4,500 inmates.
Whitmore said that charges will be forthcoming once the culprits are identified, UPI reported.
The overcrowded conditions at prisons in the U.S. county jail system, comprises about more than 18,000 prisoners nationwide.
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