Finally, here’s a followup to the prison shooting earlier this week. A few FBI agents made their way to a prison in Florida to arrest a group of guards who had been illegally trading with female inmates for sex and money. They thought the guards were unarmed, but tragically, they were wrong. And now prison authorities are realizing that allowing guards to carry their own weapons is a mistake.
The federal Bureau of Prisons is considering whether to screen employees for personal weapons in light of a fatal shootout at a Florida prison, a prison official said Thursday. The shootout allegedly began when a guard drew his own weapon as federal agents tried to arrest him.
The guard, identified as Ralph Hill, was killed in the shootout that began as agents began to arrest him and five other corrections officers at the Tallahassee Federal Detention Center. Those officers faced charges of having sex with female inmates in exchange for money and banned items.
Under prison policy, Hill, 43, was not searched after he reported for work Wednesday even though FBI agents were planning to confront and arrest him, said Carla Wilson, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons.
Also killed in the shootout was William “Buddy” Sentner, 44, a special agent with the U.S. Justice Department.
Wilson said the incident has encouraged officials to re-examine the security policy for federal prison employees, who have not been subject to the type of screening that visitors face.
“The Bureau of Prisons for many years considered the issue of searching staff,” Wilson said.
And there’s no reason they shouldn’t. Guns don’t belong inside prisons (any more than they belong outside prisons, but that’s another story), whether they’re in the hands of the inmates or the guards. And it’s not just guns authorities are worried about.
As recently as 2002, the Bureau of Prisons rejected a recommendation by the Justice Department’s inspector general that called for searches of prison staff members to help reduce the flow of drugs and other contraband into such facilities.
Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, then director of the Bureau of Prisons, said at the time that the proposal was based on inadequate information and could have caused dissension among prison employees.
“Overall staff morale will suffer, thereby creating unwarranted concerns in areas other than drug detection,” Sawyer said in a December 2002 response to the inspector general.
Morale might suffer, but the families of the two killed in the shootout earlier this week are suffering as well. These guards have clearly proven that they can’t be trusted, and so the best solution is to search them.
Hill had been a prison officer since 1994, Wilson said.
“My best recollection is that he had no disciplinary record at work,” the attorney said. “He was still working right up to the time this happened.”
The five other prison guards accused in the alleged conspiracy have pleaded not guilty.
At a detention hearing on Thursday in Tallahassee, two of the suspects were released after agreeing to appear in court, and the other three were ordered detained, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Sprowls said.
And if the FBI had any clues these guys might be armed, the arrest would not have gone down the way it did. It may seem excessive to have to search these guards going in and out for their personal firearms, but it’s just another consequence of living in a country full of firearms.
