Life, death, and community journalism


Raul Barreto was 32-years-old when he died on March 11, 2020, inside Los Angeles County’s notorious Men’s Central Jail, located northeast of downtown LA. Barreto was a bright man who’d come from a difficult background. His mother struggled to stay employed, and frequently moved the family as a consequence. His father vanished into California’s prison system early in Raul’s life. An older brother who tried to protect his baby brother with lessons in the art of being tough, disappeared into his own lifetime prison sentence before he turned 21. In Raul’s teenage years, his attempts at toughness brought him four trips to LA County Probation’s youth lock-ups. Yet, on the fourth trip, he acquired a mentor who recognized his knowledge-craving spirit and his intelligence. In the years after his release, Raul found a series of good jobs, then began doing justice advocacy work, where he became something of a star. Fast forward five years to early 2020 when, despite his glowing future, and an abundance of friends and supporters, Raul began struggling with mental illness that displayed itself as paranoia. He tried to control his worsening symptoms with self medication. “He was hallucinating. He thought there were worms under his skin,” his sister told me, “or that people were after him. That they were trying to hurt him.”On the night that led to his trip to Men’s Central Jail in a state of distress, Raul ran out of his apartment and up several flights of stairs to the fifth floor roof of the apartment building, where he deliberately or accidentally broke a window. Worried for Raul’s safety, the apartment manager, who knew him, called the police, assuming the members of the Los Angeles Police Department who arrived would take him to a hospital.