BREAKING NEWS – Los Angeles, California – Sheriff Don Barnes pushed back against the Orange County Superior Court, which ordered the reduction of the county’s jail populations by 50% in an effort to achieve proper social distancing and prevent further spread of COVID-19.
“I have no intention of releasing any of these individuals from my custody,” Barnes said, according to Los Angeles’s KABC-TV. “We are going to file an appeal and we’re going to fight it and if the judge has any intent of releasing any one of these individuals, he will have to go through line by line, name by name, and tell me which ones he is ordering released.”
In the order, Judge Peter Wilson wrote that Barnes’ “deliberate indifference to the substantial risk of serious harm from COVID-19 infection to … medically vulnerable people in [his] custody violates their rights,” according to KCBS-TV of Los Angeles. However according to an unnamed source, Wilson is reconsidering his position after Barnes threatened to release the worst of the inmates on the block where the judge lives. Wilson responded to Barnes in a leaked email, stating “If you do that, I will dismiss any and all charges filed against a cop that uses excessive force in relocating those losers out of my neighborhood!”