Preliminary reports are indicating
the Management Training Corporation [MTC] is responsible for their initial failure
to manage and provide adequate resources at the Kingman prison complex
according to reports being released by the Arizona Department of Corrections.
Secondary reports are indicating a
secondary failure by their own Tactical Special Units [TSU] that was called
upon to quell the first riot and is subsequently blamed for the second riot and
additional harm and property inflicted and incurred during the July riots. There
is much to be said why it went wrong.
When the TSU team responds, they are
part of an operational plan that is managed by the Centralized Command Center
of the DOC – no team functions independently or separately from the Command
Center thus there is no misunderstanding who is in charge and what needs to be
done or executed by which member or the emergency response teams participating.
This command center is comprised of
senior management staff, including the Division Director of Offender
Operations, and the Director of Prison himself – this is verified with the
reports that Mr. Ryan was on-site and present in the command center.
When the TSU team was dispatched to
control the Kingman riots, protests and violence, there is sufficient evidence
surfacing there was an uncoordinated and shoddy response to this situation.
Hence the reports alluded to violations of excessive force, free-speech
violations, antagonizing the inmate population and many more infractions of
good police work and principles of diffusing critical situations.
This can be contributed to one main
factor – vague, inconsistent and arbitrary orders given by the command post to
the various TSU commanders. Rather than deescalating the situation, these TSU
members were without direct orders to do certain tasks that were revealed in
the number of weapons found and retrieved after the second riot was under
control. Blaming the TSU for such conduct or misconduct is irresponsible when
they were left in hostile territory and not under the same safe environment of
the shot-callers in the operational command center.
The command center did not lead sound
and best practices for restoring a prison environment to avoid secondary
conflicts and therefore allowed various triggers to exist to escalate the
violence once more. This was not a failure by TSU commanders in place; this was
a failure by command personnel in the Operational Command Center to direct
specifically and target precise sweeps of areas to control behaviors and
threats to staff and other inmates.
Not to mention a primary threat to
the public as these TSU members were severely outnumbered and not capable for
securing the perimeter without the assistance of other law enforcement
agencies.
I can say this lack of direction from
the command center by senior command staff to the TSU teams is not uncommon. I
have experienced this myself in situations at the ASPC Eyman Complex when TSU
was called to control and contain large racial groupings on the medium custody
recreation fields and yards. This is not an anomaly to the DOC. It is a long standing
problem with command center functions. This is a critical training issue and
has never been fully addressed or corrected.
Hence it comes down to the lack of
communication, lack of commitment to train frequently for such disturbances and
a lack of trust between the command center officials and the TSU team members
left without any direction or support to do their jobs. Without a unified
command, the disturbance spreads or creates dynamics that causes a loss of
control of the prison environment.
The problem delves deeper into the
phenomena at hand. This impacts basic security procedures e.g. searches,
escorts, containment, restraining, deploying chemical agents and the use of K9
dogs. There are best practices for such operational needs and objectives –
there were not carried out right and arbitrarily left up to the TSU commanders
without leadership from the command center.
There was no unified command – there
was no cohesiveness in the operation. Evidence of such deficiencies were the
documented time lines and delays in serious and essential functions to isolate,
contain, and control the inmates for count purposes and verification of any one
missing or injured in the activities.
If this report were to be truthfully
and accurately submitted, the blame [if that is the purpose of these reports]
would fall on the Senior Staff in the Joint Operations Command Center for
failing to provide leadership and joint, unified consistent orders and
directions according to a riot plan.
This critical incident revealed and
reflected serious flaws in their own policies and procedures by essentially tossing aside a good plan to run the operation without any
structured responsible and legal basis of an pre-approved department
established emergency response plan by either MTC and the DOC or both, which in
this case, applies and should be addressed immediately.
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