Salt Lake City Tribune Editorial
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — During a routine hospital visit, an inmate overpowers and guns down his guard, carjacks an SUV and leads police on a high-speed chase before he is tackled and disarmed by a 59-year-old veteran.
The story reads like pulp fiction. We have a villain: 27-year-old white supremacist Curtis Michael Allgier, the alleged killer. A victim: Corrections officer Stephen Anderson, known for his compassionate treatment of prisoners, dead at age 62. And a gung-ho hero: former Army paratrooper Eric Fullerton, 59, who stood and fought when others fled.
We also have a serious problem. The story, according to police, is true. And for the sake of the state’s 1,400 Corrections officers, and the safety of Utah’s 2.5 million mostly law-abiding citizens who go to the hospital and walk the sidewalks and drive the highways with the reasonable expectation that they will not encounter an escaped killer, we have to make sure it never happens again.
Monday’s tragic killing at University Medical Center brought an immediate reaction from the Utah Department of Corrections. Prisoners were put on lockdown at both state prisons. Non-emergency medical visits and court appearances were temporarily canceled. And when prisoner transports resumed Thursday, there were two guards for every inmate, not just those deemed dangerous. Those were wise moves, particularly the doubling of the guard.
Until this week, a single guard would escort most prisoners to outside medical appointments, and additional guards were assigned for high-risk inmates. But Allgier, who had planned an escape and threatened prison officials in the past, slipped through the cracks.
The department also asked the Utah Department of Public Safety to conduct an investigation to help determine if and how policies and procedures for escorting prisoners should change. But the solution has already been found: Two guards are better than one.
One could argue that doubling the guard is a knee-jerk reaction, costly, and perhaps unnecessary. Anderson was just the fifth Corrections officer killed in Utah since the late 1800s, and the department safely transports thousands of prisoners a year.
But if the Department of Corrections is erring on the side of caution, good. It’s something it should do every day. “Better safe than sorry” is sound prison policy.
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