“They never activated a command center, and we weren’t given an update as to what was going on.”
By CINDY GEORGE
The Houston Chronicle
HOUSTON, Texas — Insufficient staffing and mismanagement contributed to last week’s brawl that injured 12 people at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Houston, members of the correctional officers union said Sunday.
The guards leveled the accusations after accompanying U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee on an hourlong tour of the facility, which houses mostly pretrial detainees as well as sentenced inmates awaiting transfer.
A fistfight between two prisoners on Tuesday night erupted into a melee in a common area of the sixth floor, a section for those who have been sentenced and are awaiting transfer to prison. At least 25 inmates joined the fight, which prison officials said was not a riot.
One inmate was hospitalized. Eight other detainees and three staff members sustained minor injuries.
Correctional officer Clifton Buchanan, president of Local 1030 branch of the American Federation of Government Employees union, said the detention center needs more guards. Last month, he visited Washington, D.C., to share his concerns with Jackson Lee and other members of Congress.
“They’re not funding us appropriately,” he said Sunday outside the detention center. “There’s a fear of retaliation or reprisal, and that’s why we’re reluctant to say anything.”
The incident last week illustrates why employees have filed multiple grievances, allegations of unfair labor practices and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints, he added. Buchanan said administrators followed only certain protocols last Tuesday, which resulted in the “misuse of staff, mismanagement of resources and lack of leadership.”
Buchanan’s shift ended at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, but he was recalled to work when the fight broke out three hours later. He arrived but was corralled with other guards in a visiting area.
“They never activated a command center, and we weren’t given an update as to what was going on,” he said.
None of the four guards on hand for Sunday’s press conference were at the detention center when the fight began.
According to Buchanan, there are 4.4 inmates to every staff member at the facility. The ratio is slightly lower than the national average, 4.7, but higher than the average in other large states including California, New York and Illinois — 3.2 inmates per employee.
And the statistics are misleading, Buchanan said, because every staff member is not a correctional officer. For instance, Houston’s detention center has about 230 employees but just 117 guards, he said.
Lawyers and prison officials say fights such as the one last week are extremely rare in federal facilities. Federal prisoners are more likely to be nonviolent drug offenders or white-collar criminals, but the system is receiving a more violent class of inmate.
Neither the Washington-based spokeswoman nor Houston prison officials could substantiate whether the brawl was between rival gangs. The guards who spoke on Sunday did not elaborate, because “you never want to give credibility to a gang,” Buchanan said.
But Jackson Lee, without commenting directly, said, “Gangs are here, and a report is coming out that will probably give evidence to gang conflict.”
The Houston Democrat said she intends to call on the Bureau of Prisons director to investigate a changing federal prison population with an increasing percentage of inmates prone to or participating in violent acts.
Warden Al Haynes and Jackson Lee toured the facility Sunday. He declined to comment.
Detention center spokeswoman Trish Doty said 95 percent of the facility’s correctional officer jobs are filled.
Jackson Lee said the facility, which opened in 1999, was clean and seemed secure and had “a reasonable record of safety” — an impression she contrasted as “night and day” with the Harris County Jail, which is under investigation by the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
The Houston Chronicle