Los Angeles jail guards too busy watching porn to notice noose in suicidal inmate’s cell: report

A group of California jail deputies were too distracted by a “sexually explicit” video to notice an inmate had hung a noose in their cell, a new report alleged.

Inspectors Haley Broder and Eric Miller were making rounds at the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles last month when they saw a noose hanging in one of the cells on the high security unit.

“Though unlikely to support the incarcerated person’s weight, the noose was obvious to anyone looking into the cell,” the inspectors wrote in their official report.

A jailer walked by the cell for a safety check and ignored the troubling sight, the inspectors alleged.

Broder stayed behind with the suicidal inmate, who had started banging his head against the wall, while Miller went to find a deputy, they explained.

When Miller first walked up to the deputy station, the eight jailers seated around the television station brushed off his concern.

When he returned 30 minutes later, he noticed the group was gathered around watching a “sexually explicit” video.

“To me it looked like the beginning of an OnlyFans video or something,” Miller told the Los Angeles Times. “It was women in underwear, and it certainly didn’t look like they were going to put more clothes on. It looked like they were going to take them off.

“The degree of callousness they were exhibiting was just horrific,” Miller added. “What’s the purpose of the security check if you’re not actually taking any action?”

The deputies only turned the explicit film off after Broder walked into the room, the report noted.

It also took several requests for one jailer to reluctantly go and tear down the noose, the scathing evaluation added.

Both Miller and Broder said the noose incident was indicative of a larger issue of bad conditions at the jail.

“There was just continuous neglect and bad conditions,” Broder told the LA Times.

“People were saying they were hungry. We saw people with giant open wounds. The trash was just everywhere — there’s so much trash. It smells. There are fires. And it seems in general there is just a genuine lack of interest in changing that situation.”

The showers at the facility were “boiling hot, dirty, [and] humid,” while the cells themselves were “moldy” and there was a lack of circulating air on many of the cell blocks, the report read.

Many of the inmates only had one set of clothes, and the mattresses did not satisfy regulation requirements.

“There was also a man whose cell was covered in mold and water and he was using his clothes to sop up the water,” Broder recalled.

“In that unit they don’t have books, they don’t have pens. They have absolutely nothing, and it’s completely dark.”

Several of the infractions noted in the report have already been address, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement to The Post.

An investigation into the eight deputies who were supposedly watching the illicit video is also underway, the office also claimed.

“The department investigates all allegations of misconduct and expects its personnel to perform its responsibilities in a professional manner in accordance with department policy,” the statement read.

“When violations of policy and procedures are discovered, personnel are held accountable.”