By Bob Kalinowski
The Citizens’ Voice
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Sen. Pat Toomey admits he wasn’t focused on the extreme dangers facing federal prison workers after he took office in 2011 — then Correctional Officer Eric Williams was slain inside U.S. Penitentiary at Canaan, ambushed by an inmate who beat and stabbed him to death.
Since then, the safety of federal prison workers has become a top priority for him, Toomey said Friday at the Luzerne County Courthouse during an event to tout a bill named after Williams.
The bill, which passed in the Senate last month, would mandate workers in the nation’s most dangerous prisons have pepper spray to defend themselves.
“This is a non-lethal way to completely neutralize an attacker,” Toomey said from the courthouse rotunda, flanked by Williams’ parents and Luzerne County District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis.
Toomey, who co-sponsored the “Eric Williams Correctional Officer Protection Act” with Sen. Bob Casey, urged the House of Representatives to pass the bill and send it to President Barack Obama for approval.
Williams was equipped only with keys, handcuffs and radio when he was killed during a lockdown on Feb. 25, 2013, while working alone in a housing unit of more than 120 inmates.
Toomey said the public expresses admiration for police officers, but often overlooks correctional officers because they work behind prison walls and aren’t out in the community like cops.
“They are the ones who have, in some ways, the toughest job. They’re inside the prisons. They’re protecting us by keeping an eye on people that we know are extremely dangerous — that’s why they are in the prison,” Toomey said.
Prosecutors say an inmate, a gang assassin already jailed for murder, stabbed Williams more than 125 times with a crude, hand-made knife after ambushing the officer. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, at the behest of Williams’ family, against Jesse Con-ui, 38, the accused killer. Con-ui remains jailed at ADX Florence, the supermaximum security prison in Colorado known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”
Toomey saluted the determination of Williams’ parents, Don and Jean, to increase prison safety in their son’s name
“They took this horrendous tragedy they experienced and they turned it into a mission — a cause they have relentlessly pursued,” Toomey said
Don Williams thanked Toomey and Casey and vowed to keep fighting for prison safety.
“Our son is not coming home, but our family is resolved,” Don Williams said. “We don’t want any other family to receive that knock on the door at 1:30 a.m. to learn their son is dead.”
Copyright 2016 The Citizens’ Voice