Surveillance footage newly obtained by KQED increases the scrutiny on the Central California Women’s Facility in Cowchilla after a ‘horrific’ pepper spray assault in 2024. The incident resulted in discipline for more than 40 staff members, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and $1.9 million in payouts to some of the women injured during the incident.
TW: descriptions of state-sanctioned violence against incarcerated persons
The August 2024 incident, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle after internal surveillance videos were leaked online, involved two separate use-of-force incidents at CCWF. On August 2nd 2024, correctional officers summoned dozens of incarcerated women to the prison cafeteria, two lawsuits assert, during a property search allegedly intended as retaliation for filing sexual misconduct complaints against staff members under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a 2003 law.
According to footage reviewed by KQED and the Chronicle, as well as leaked audio interviews from the ensuing internal affairs investigation, guards fired chemical agents at women who appeared to pose no threat. They then did so again against a group of incarcerated women brought to the yard, many of whom had their hands zip-tied.
Attorney Robert Chalfant, who represented 13 incarcerated women allegedly injured by the attacks, said the state agreed to settle a federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of California for $1,915,000, with plaintiffs receiving between $50,000 and $200,000 apiece. A second federal lawsuit representing nearly 160 incarcerated women is scheduled for mediation in August.
“You don’t lose your constitutional rights at the doors of a state prison,” Chalfant said. “The (women) should be protected if they come forward with PREA complaints, not subjected to searches and the use of force.”
Despite the changes made by CDCR in response to the first lawsuit, Amika Mota, Executive Director of the Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition, an organization for formerly incarcerated women and transgender people, said that retaliation against incarcerated women remains severe, in testimony before the California Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Public Safety hearing in April on sexual violence and retaliation in California’s women’s prisons.
“Since we met last year, retaliation against survivors of staff sexual abuse has escalated,” Mota told Assembly members. “Survivors are losing jobs and peer roles, denied privacy when reporting and facing ongoing harassment.”
You can read more in “Surveillance Footage Sheds Light on Mass Use-of-Force Incident at Women’s Prison” from the KQED website. KQED is the Northern California affiliate station for National Public Radio/Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
