CCPOAIronwood.com - Internet Bulletin Board for Members of ISP Chapter CCPOA

Recently, CCPOAIronwood.com unvailed it’s Blog feature to the membership of our chapter. You are encouraged to participate and post information of interest about Ironwood State Prison.Members are reminded that posting actual names of subjects may have some legal implications. In order to make this site a success, we all must keep each other informed about what’s wrong with Ironwood. Some stories we will be working on in the near future…..Ironwood’s Stab-Resistant vest defects.Is Ironwood over crowding its visiting-rooms?Will management fully implement Inmate Property Policy changes? Keep checking back for more information on these and more issues at ISP.

On Monday April 25, 2005 a special meeting was held in Blythe, Ca. During this meeting, the Chapter President James Baumiller appointed Terry Hammon as Rank and File Vice President. Additionally, Donald Long and Barry Bias was appointed to the vacant Board Positions.
President Baumiller also appointed four Chief Job Stewards.

They are:
Burt Young (Facility A)Terry Hammon (Facility C)Chris Tellez (Facility D)Mario Alonzo (Facility E)Troy Crawford remains the Chief Job Steward for Facility B.The regular chapter meetings will once again be held on the third Wednesday of every month.
The next meeting will be on Wednesday May 18, 2005 in Indio at the Round Table Pizza.

It seems that even with everything else going on in the world, the California Department of Corrections is still the prize target of the media, as it continues to hang on to this story like a junkyard dog with a bone. Appearing in papers across the country and online this week, a report titled “California Spending Millions to Guard Comatose Inmates” made the rounds.

It is well scripted and versed, angled dead set against CDC, CCPOA and correctional officers as individuals, typical of today’s anti-law enforcement media:

“California stands out as the only state where comatose inmates are shackled and guarded - often on overtime - for months or longer at community hospitals outside prison walls.

“Elsewhere in the nation, unconscious inmates are treated and guarded in prison hospitals or high-security wings of private health care facilities, sometimes watched by lower-cost security guards. Or they are medically paroled, sometimes to nursing homes as a way to save taxpayer dollars…

“Questions of how California cares for inmates with severely damaged brains sparked a lively debate at [a recent prison oversight] hearing. Corrections officials disclosed that for several years they have been struggling to write a legal form in which inmates can spell out whether they want to remain on life-support should they become comatose. Without a clear policy, critics contend, cases are not handled in a uniform manner.”

Those arguing against the policy have stated that 24-hour guard surveillance of comatose inmates is “ludicrous” and “wasteful spending,” alluding that CCPOA - called “the well-connected prison guard union” in this article - is behind this policy. They maintain that despite the Governor’s push to make changes within the Department, this practice alone shows that the priority is to “maintain tough security” and to “reward the correctional officers union with coveted jobs.”

Lance Corcoran, Executive Vice President of CCPOA in Sacramento told the press that there is no agreement between the state and the union about medical guarding. He said, “There’s nothing that CCPOA has done that’s created a financial burden for the state of California.”

CDC Officials told the press that they were continuing to “examine the guarding policy” in the wake of recent cases reported in the media. A spokesman for CDC, Todd Slosek, told reporters that by law they are obligated to guard inmates in this manner unless a judge tells them to do differently. “We have very limited options in decision making,” said Slosek. “Unless we know the inmate’s condition is believed to be terminal. And even if a compassionate release is recommended, public safety will always be the determining factor.”

Jeffrey Schwartz, a critic of CDC policy, and a court-appointed expert on prison and jail reform stated that he felt that the policy was developed by or for the union, rather than reflecting upon the needs of the state or the needs of the inmates and their families. However, quite the opposite is true… CCPOA officials maintain that the handling of comatose inmates is up to the department - but agrees with the department that there are a variety of reasons to keep guard on inmates, even while in a vegetative state.

By law, Correctional Officers are charged with the responsibility to protect the inmates while they are in their care, this extends to protecting them from enemies that may seek out the inmate while in hospital care - and to prevent family members from staging a jailbreak from the hospital. In addition to this, Correctional Officers are also charged with protecting the public - and other hospital patients have a right to be protected from these inmates as well.

Sources: www.mercurynews.com, www.ccpoa.org.

According to breaking news released by press agencies and the CDC, one officer was stabbed twice in the forehead and a second was stabbed in the arm today by an inmate, using a homemade weapon that he pulled from his pants. A third officer stopped the attack using his side-handle baton.

Both officers were taken to the hospital and there has been no news released at this point about their condition. California Correctional Institution, commonly known as CCI, in Tehachapi, California was locked down.

A race riot occurred at CCI back in February between black and Hispanic inmates. There has been no information made available at this point regarding the motive behind today’s attack.

NEWS WILL BE POSTED AS IT BECOMES AVAILABLE.

UPDATE 5:38PM

From www.sfgate.com

Both officers were treated and released from a hospital, and the maximum security building and yard at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi was locked down, said Department of Corrections spokesman Todd Slosek.

The names of the injured guards and the alleged attacker were not immediately released.

The stabbings followed the Jan. 10 stabbing death of an officer at the California Institution for Men in Chino, the first Department of Corrections guard killed in the line of duty since 1985.

Friday’s attack came about 8:45 a.m. after the inmate set off a metal detector as he was released to an exercise yard, Slosek said.

As he moved toward a group of inmates, guards tried searching him. Despite being hit with pepper spray, he pulled a 4- to 6-inch homemade knife from his pants and attacked, Slosek said. The attack was stopped by a third officer using a baton, said spokeswoman Terry Thornton.

The 44-year-old inmate was serving a 31-year Los Angeles County sentence for attempted first-degree murder since Christmas Eve 1990, but served prior stints dating to 1981, Thornton said.

Both guards were wearing stab-resistant vests, she said.

The prison about 40 miles east of Bakersfield was the scene of a race riot Feb. 24 involving 480 black and Hispanic inmates that left three inmates injured.

A memo was released by Rod Hickman, Secretary of the Youth & Adult Correctional Agency, stating that effective Monday, April 11th parole violators will be returned to prison and will no longer be merely placed into drug treatment programs, home detention or halfway houses. The policy - which had been promoted heavily by the Schwarzenegger administration as part of its budget cut initiative within the state’s overcrowded prison system - had not shown any evidence of benefit to the prison program. Instead of helping ex-convicts turn their lives around through social placement programs, the policy was shown to have had a negative affect on parole violators, increasing returns for violent crimes rather than the violations they would have returned for previously.

Crime victim advocates have heavily criticized the initiative - and some parole agents spoke out stating that they felt pressure from supervisors to allow dangerous parole violators avoid prison - and possibly commit new crimes. It was these concerns among other statistical factors released recently that prompted the change, Rod Hickman said in a memo to the press. He also stated that this change does not mean that the Governor will back off from his pledge to make California prisons rehabilitative institutions rather than merely sentences of punishment.

CCPOA Sacramento has spoken publicly on their stance against the parole policy, and in a hearing last month Mike Jimenez called the approach “a flop” and “a danger to public safety.” The Crime Victims United of California group agreed with Jimenez and a few weeks ago began airing television ads that accused the Governor of abandoning the victims of the crimes, suggesting that the reform policies were also putting communities at a safety risk.

But while this is a huge relief for public safety issues and parole agencies alike, it just means more of the same for correctional officers that work the nation’s largest prison system. Currently there are about 162,500 men and women institutionalized within the state’s 32 facilities, which report nearly two times as many assaults behind bars as are reported in Texas, which houses nearly as many inmates.

As the Governor and politicians like Senator Gloria Romero continue to work against the system by focusing on minute issues such as name changes for the department, the public is unaware of the high-risk situation growing within the prison walls. Inmates are stacked in triple-level bunk beds in gymnasiums originally intended for exercise… they are living packed into hallways and other areas that are clearly not intended for housing… the safety risk for officer and inmate grows with every passing day. Experts call the current situation a recipe for riot.

Because of this many inmate advocate groups were upset by the decision to overturn the parole policy, feeling that the community support group programs were actually helping to improve the odds of parolee success, rather than increase violent crimes as recent reports have shown.

However one expert, who has been working intimately with the state’s plans for prison reform, a criminologist at UC Irvine told the press that she feels this move shows that the state is serious about its commitment to find a program that will work. With 67% of California’s parolees returning to the system - nearly twice the national average - something will need to be done soon.

We would like to thank everyone who has participated by mailing in their vote for the recall effort against the current Ironwood Chapter President. If you still have not mailed in your ballot you can do so still as long as it is post-marked by the 13th (next Wednesday) of April.

If you have not received a ballot and have moved, it is important that you contact the CCPOA Headquarters in Sacramento to change or check your address on record. This is important not JUST for this recall effort, but for important future mailings that you will need to receive.

Please call CCPOA Sacramento at 1-800-821-6443

If you have any other questions about anything relating to the Ironwood Chapter, please contact one of the board members - a list of shifts and work locations is posted on the website @ CCPOAIronwood.com.

On March 9, 2005 Baumiller and Hammon filed a grievance on the memorandum dated February 7, 2005 the subject of the this memo was Vacation and Holiday Time Off Requests.

This Memorandum states in part, any employee requesting to utilize vacation or holiday time off must have the corresponding accrued leave credits available for use at the time the request is made in order to have their request considered. This was a violation of multiple section of our MOU, many BU6 employees were affected by this new procedure.

On or around March 29, 2005 a grievance conference has held with the Warden and ERO. At the grievance conference the Warden stated, “he would resend the memorandum dated Febuary 7, 2005.