By Justin Fenton
The Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE, Md. — Eight correctional officers and six detainees were injured late Sunday night after a melee at a facility that recently absorbed the detainees from the closed Baltimore City Detention Center, corrections officials said Monday.
Detainees refused to “lock in” to their dormitories at the Baltimore Pre-Trial Complex after an argument between an officer and a detainee, and detainees then attacked officers and fellow detainees before barricading themselves in the dorms, officials said.
Officers from surrounding facilities had to be brought in, and the detainees eventually “ended their blockade to allow the injured to be treated,” officials said in a statement.
Two affected dorms remained on lockdown Monday. The incident drew attention after dozens of officers clad in tactical gear were seen entering the jail complex Monday afternoon. Corrections officials confirmed that those officers, along with Stephen T. Moyer, the state secretary for public safety & correctional services, were there to relocate those believed responsible for the disturbance to other secure facilities.
Gov. Larry Hogan recently closed the troubled and decrepit Baltimore City Men’s Detention Center, part of a corrections complex just east of downtown Baltimore. The Pre-Trial Complex, formerly known as the Metropolitan Transition Center, was among the facilities that absorbed the inmates from the detention center.
Inmates previously held two to a cell in the detention center are now held in larger dorm-style rooms that hold considerably more people.
Three of the detainees were sent to area hospitals and treated and released, while the officers also were treated and released. The status of the other three detainees was not clear.
Gerard Shields, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said one inmate has been charged in connection with the incident.
“The Department has moved aggressively to relocate to other secure facilities those believed to be responsible for the disturbance,” Shields said in a statement.