Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — If it was just one or two troubling reports coming out of the Metropolitan Detention Center, they could be classified as an aberration. But it isn’t just a couple. In the past six months, eight allegations of guard complicity have come to light in connection with:
Two brutal beatings, the second of which left the inmate in a coma.
A rape in which two inmates in segregation strolled into the victim’s cell.
Four incidents in which inmates, some shackled, were thrown to the ground.
A sexual relationship with an inmate in which the guard got pregnant and had the inmate move in with her upon release.
Add in what jail officials consider an appropriate standard operating procedure of dumping newly released inmates on a deserted Downtown street corner in the wee hours of the morning. That helped one young woman die hours later of a heroin overdose.
Bernalillo County took over managing the jail in 2006. These incidents have hit the front page since December. So far, not one member of the County Commission or administration has stepped up publicly to ask the hard questions about an operation taxpayers pour around $55 million into every year. It could be worse, considering that conditions at the jail are under the scrutiny of federal court, which could mandate new expenses.
One jail guard has been fired in the incidents; another has resigned. Another guards is under indictment and the union president is on leave. But looking at the incidents in aggregate, clearly something needs to be done with the screening, training, staffing and oversight at the jail.
Right now it appears the 40,000 people booked into MDC every year get a shot at playing the victims in an ongoing made-for-cable-TV drama. Some might argue many have earned it. But someone on the County Commission should stand up and declare that the people in charge are better than that, that brutality is not a two-way street, that taxpayers are paying for public safety, not a high-dollar, high-tech Roman Colosseum where there’s fresh meat every night.
Copyright 2009 Albuquerque Journal