Corrections officers, union: Gangs are widespread danger
By TERRENCE DOPP
Trenton Bureau
TRENTON -- Gang violence in New Jersey's prisons has become a widespread danger for the state's corrections officers, union representatives and a lawmaker said Monday.
The assessment came during the second hearing into an altercation between guards and inmates at Bayside State Prison in Leesburg on Jan. 1 that sent 29 guards to the hospital and caused the shake up of prison administrators.
Department of Corrections Commissioner Devon Brown has so far refused to classify the event as a riot.
"This was just a symptom that emerged ... We have to look at the entire system and make some major decisions here," said Sen. Nicholas Asselta, R-1 of Vineland, whose district includes Bayside and Southern State Prison.
An estimated 4,092 of the 23,000 state inmates housed at 14 major institutions are gang members, DOC officials said.
At Bayside, an estimated 14 percent -- or 321 -- of the institution's 2,283 inmates are gang members.
Asselta said the state needs better anti-gang training for officers and must replace outdated dormitory-style trailer units among other needed fixes in order to deal with gang members.
"In the past these guys said 'I'll do my time and then get out,'" Asselta said. "We have a new culture of inmates. These (gang members) are just violent inmates."
Deirdre Fedkenheuer, spokeswoman for Brown, said the DOC has made anti-gang programs a mainstay of training and holds monthly gang intelligence summits.
She also pointed to the Strategic Threat Group Management Unit, which allows the DOC to isolate gang members and minimize the risk they pose top guards and others.
New Jersey's STGMU program has been emulated by other states, she added.
"We've been addressing this problem for some time," Fedkenheuer said. "I think we've addressed it pretty aggressively."
About three dozen people, primarily union members, attended the hearing in which a handful of officers with bandages, leg braces and other wounds testified about the event.
The Bayside fracas began when officers tried to stop an inmate found with a sack of contraband food.
That man, a member of the Bloods street gang, yelled "Bloods out," a call for other members of the clique to join him in attacking guards. During the melee, inmates used clothing irons, broom and mop handles and padlocks swung in socks to attack guards, officials said.
One officer was injured so severely doctors installed a titanium plate in his face.
Following the disturbance, Brown transferred Greg Bartowski, acting Bayside administrator, to the Mountainview Youth Correctional Facility in Annandale, Hunterdon County.
Similar incidents could erupt elsewhere, union officials said.
"There are incidents every day throughout the state," said Lt. Michael Mesi of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 183 and a supervisor at Bayside.
"You're never going to prevent a riot from happening. But one thing you do afterward is you look and see what can be done to make it a little safer."
About three dozen people, primarily union members, attended the hearing in which a handful of officers with bandages, leg braces and other wounds testified about the event.
At the center of the dispute between guards and Brown is the number of inmates involved in the disturbance.
According to DOC guidelines, any confrontations between guards and prisoners is not deemed a riot unless more than four inmates are involved. Union officials accuse Brown of downplaying the number involved at Bayside to avoid labeling it a riot.