Inside State Investigation Over Mass Use of Force Incident at CA Women's Prison

Here are the morning’s top stories on Thursday, October 10, 2026

• Former Democratic Health Secretary Xavier Becerra and Republican commentator Steve Hilton clashed over taxes, immigration and Trump on Wednesday night in a CNN debate.
• AI researchers and safety advocates warned a U.S. Senate subcommittee Wednesday that AI developers are racing to build systems they don’t fully understand or control.
• Today we’re going to bring you the third and final segment in my investigation into the Central California Women’s Facility. Yesterday, we brought you the story of Aug. 2, 2024, when correctional officers used pepper spray and chemical grenades against women locked in a dining hall at the prison.

Two months after that mass use-of-force incident had nearly blinded her former cellmate, a woman named Aliksandria Prout walked into a Madera County courtroom.

“The events on August 2nd were on my mind when I went to testify, because I was not only fighting for me, I was fighting for other women who are still facing injustice,” Prout said.

Prout was the first witness called in the trial of Gregory Rodriguez, the former correctional officer accused of sexually assaulting her and many other women incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility.

“I had to be strong, and I was factual. I had to point him out in the courtroom. So when I had to point him out, I did make eye contact with him.”

Ultimately, the jury found Rodriguez guilty on 64 counts, and he was sentenced to 224 years in prison. Prout’s former cellmate, Cameron, wondered if the officers involved in August 2nd would also face consequences.

“They assaulted us,” said Cameron. “So now that’s why we’re like, we’re waiting. Like Rodriguez had to pay for his crimes. Why do they not have to pay for theirs?”

This is Angela Kent…

“In my opinion… anyone involved should be fired.”

She’s retired from CDCR now, but when the August 2 incident happened, she was working in administration, appointed by the Governor as the associate director of the whole women’s division of the agency. She had watched the video of the incident.

“It looks like they’re lining ’em up for the firing squad,” said Kent. “ And there’s nothing in what those women were doing that even warranted the kind of force that was delivered.”

In late 2024, the prison agency launched an internal affairs investigation. KQED obtained leaked audio of some of the interviews including one with an Officer named Jordan Chavira.
Investigators asked him about something that had been caught on his body-worn camera in the moments after the second round of chemical weapons outside.

INVESTIGATOR: You stated something to the effect of, “Fun, fun, baby.” Did you hear yourself say that?

CHAVIRA: Yes.

INVESTIGATOR: And what was the point of saying that?

CHAVIRA: Just sarcasm.

Chavira was among three officers who were fired over the incident. Thirty-one additional officers received discipline ranging from reprimands to temporary pay cuts. Some are still appealing their discipline. No one was criminally charged.

From what we can see, the state’s investigation didn’t look into whether the operation was an effort to stop sexual assault complaints. Here’s Kent again:

“There is no doubt in my mind that if you start to empower women that are incarcerated and you start to give credibility to their voice that there’s gonna be tremendous resistance.
After speaking to a dozen women who were there that day, reading over hundreds of documents, and analyzing sexual assault complaint data, our investigation found this incident was at least, in part, retaliation for women reporting sexual assault.

The Department of Justice reached a similar conclusion. A recent report found an “unbroken pattern” of sexual abuse and retaliation in California’s women’s prisons. CDCR says it will work with the DOJ.

Just in the past two weeks CCWF’s warden has been demoted and transferred, and, once again, several officers are under investigation for sexual misconduct.

The Justice Department gave CDCR 49 days to take meaningful steps to address abuse and retaliation in California’s women’s prisons… or the DOJ could sue. That deadline is today …

Madi Bolaños produced this series in collaboration with Snap Judgment. You can find the extended story on snapjudgment.org.

Former Democratic Health Secretary Xavier Becerra and Republican commentator Steve Hilton clashed over taxes, immigration and Trump on Wednesday night in a CNN debate.

The candidates sparred over a central promise of Hilton’s campaign — the Republican’s proposal to cut state income taxes.

“I’ve been in every one of our 58 counties — the struggle people face with the highest cost of living in the country and the highest taxes. You want them to continue to pay taxes at the same rate?”

Becerra argues the tax cut will blow a hole in the state budget:

“Which means of course he’ll take it out of our schools, he’ll take it out of health care, he’ll take it out of housing and make condidtions even worse.”

The candidates found agreement on one issue — both said they will be voting against Proposition 40, the billionaire wealth tax.

AI researchers and safety advocates warned a U.S. Senate subcommittee Wednesday that AI developers are racing to build systems they don’t fully understand or control.

The hearing focused on events that demonstrated a shocking-for-humans level of agency, like the Hugging Face incident over the summer, when hundreds of AI agents in an isolated OpenAI testing environment broke out of their “sandbox” and hacked into another company.

Chris Painter heads a Berkeley nonprofit that investigated.

“We train agents in ways that we do not understand well, ways that can teach unintended goals. And when we make those agents more intelligent, unintended goals can have dramatic real-world consequences.”

The subcommittee chair said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was invited to testify, but declined.