Lawmakers and guards predicted that a deadly riot like Sunday’s racially motivated incident was likely to occur at the high-security U.S. Penitentiary in Florence because of deficiencies in staffing.
On Monday, Sen. Ken Salazar wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey renewing a 3-year-old request that the Department of Justice take action on staffing and security at the complex.
After two inmates were shot and killed Sunday by guards trying to stop a riot, Salazar also requested an independent report be conducted on security at the Florence campus by the Government Accountability Office.
“The incident this weekend demonstrates a continued pattern of violence that has been escalating over several years on the Florence campus, not only at the USP, but at the Supermax as well,” Salazar wrote in his letter to Mukasey.
State Rep. Buffie McFadyen, who represents Florence, said that there needs to be an analysis of what caused the riot to keep something like it from happening again and that crowding throughout the federal prison system has become a serious problem.
“Some very dangerous individuals are being housed together,” she said, “and it becomes a tinderbox.”
Guards opened fire
Guards in three towers at the prison fired every round of lethal and nonlethal ammunition at their disposal to quell the 12:30 p.m. melee that erupted Sunday when a white-supremacist prison gang taunted African-American inmates on Adolf Hitler’s birthday.
U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said policy allows guards to fire upon inmates to prevent escapes, loss of life or serious physical injury and to maintain or restore control of the institution. An investigation is underway.
The inmates who died were Brian Scott Kubik, 40, who was white, and Phillip Lee Hooker, 41, who was black.
Kubik was serving a 15-year sentence after being convicted in federal court in Oregon as a felon in possession of a firearm. Hooker was serving a 25-year sentence for armed robbery on state charges out of Milwaukee. Information about why Hooker was in a federal prison for a state charge was not available.
Five other inmates were injured, but it remained unclear Monday whether any of them were shot or were simply injured in the fight.
Prison still in lockdown
Leann LaRiva, spokeswoman for USP Florence, said the fight involved about 150 to 200 of the facility’s roughly 950 inmates who were on the recreation yard. She said inmates were armed with homemade weapons, including rocks, sharpened metal, plastic and wood.
McFadyen said that the corrections officers repeatedly fired warning shots into the yard away from human targets. The intent is to scare and warn, not to hit a target, she said.
“The quick and effective response by staff prevented further loss of life,” LaRiva said in a release.
The prison remained on lockdown Monday.
In February 2007, after guards fired several rounds to stop another inmate fight at the prison, Ken Shatto, leader of the corrections officers union, warned of the gathering danger.
“Today, I’m trying to head off full-blown riots,” Shatto said at the time. “That’s where I think we are headed.”
In 2006, the union filed a grievance with the Bureau of Prisons about staffing, and a federal arbitrator found that staffing at Supermax was deficient and that hazards had increased for officers.
Salazar toured the Florence campus in February 2007 with then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to discuss the issues, and he reiterated his concerns in a letter to Gonzales the following month.
Last year, Salazar asked the Bureau of Prisons to spend more to meet the safety and security needs at Florence.
“To date, the BOP has not allocated additional staff to correct the problem,” Salazar wrote in Monday’s letter.
“The GAO report I am requesting will objectively examine the critical staffing and security needs of the Florence campus, which I believe is necessary given the failure by the Department of Justice to address these security concerns in a meaningful way.”
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
