Facts, Excuses, Counter-cultures in the Kingman Report - ADOC vs. MTC

Fact: Arizona monitors missed all negative information related to the conditions of confinement at Kingman prison.  NO apology from the Director for such most unfortunate oversight.

The director never said once he was responsible, and willing to hold himself accountable as the report reflects omissions in reporting facts. Director Ryan’s initial response was anger – disappointment – disgust – for something that he was not directly responsible for or was he? 

The director offered a solution to the governor to sever the ties with the prison contractor and the governor agreed with no blame pointing towards the ADOC for failure to report these failures. All the finger-pointing was directed at MTC. There was no the “buck stops here” by director Ryan – he shifted the buck to MTC as the responsible party for the failures. As a director, he makes all the final decisions and signs all the relevant policies. He hired five monitors to ensure it was done so where does the buck really stop and end up?

There was no sign of humility or humbleness – just arrogance and anger towards MTC. No nobility of spirit – no full acceptance of the failures as the director of the agency – no acknowledgment of responsibility.

What should the director have done?

1.     Admit that he was wrong and that he is sorry for letting the state down. He should learn to really own up to what we did or failed to do,

2.      

Show us he understands the effect it had on all of us, the taxpayers and constituents in this state. He showed no empathy - Hint – maybe no empathy because he surrounds himself with slip-shod sycophantic double dipping underlings who tell themselves solely positive news and their own propaganda praise releases.

3.     Tell them what you are going to do differently in the future so that it doesn’t happen again. Of course, that might not work since they failed to do the same thing in 2010 when three murders escaped this prison complex.

Excuse # 1

Director Charles L. Ryan told reporters when a report on the riots was released Wednesday: "When you take into consideration what they are to be doing primarily statutorily, and if information is being withheld from them, I don't know how you can expect the monitors to read the crystal ball that they're supposed to know if people are non-communicative,"

Excuse # 2

A report shows five senior Arizona Department of Corrections officials assigned to monitor operations at a private prison in Kingman were apparently unaware of brewing discontent among inmates or massive guard overtime and understaffing before riots broke out in July.

Excuse # 3

The officers apparently spent little time interacting with prison staff or prisoners, and when the officers did, they didn't pick up on the problems. Instead, they spent the majority of their time inspecting the facility, dealing with inmate classification and discipline and doing paperwork, jobs required by law that kept them from picking up on operational issues, according to the report.

Excuse # 4

Corrections Director Charles Ryan had boosted oversight of the prison in 2010 after three prisoners escaped, assigning more state staff to oversee operations. He said the department will now assess the role its monitors play in overseeing its six private prisons.

So what is the real motive for cancelling the largest bed contract with MTC? Does this give CCA or the GEO group (heavily favored by Rep. John Kavanagh) the upper hand and control the majority share if the bed contracts?

What is leadership?

How can leadership be so blind?

Does good leadership make excuses for themselves and refuse to accept responsibility for part of the blame?

This report is one culture blaming another culture. MTC (Kingman) is inundated with former ADOC employees - A counterculture is a group of people whose values, norms, and behavior clash with those of the prevalent ADOC culture e.g. slip-shod sycophantic double dipping underlings totally supported by the director’s personal preferences.

A counterculture is a kind of subculture, a culture within a culture; however, not all subcultures are countercultures. I believe in this ADOC vs. MTC concept of counterculture there are significant signs of antagonistic feelings to a dominant culture resulting in resistance to comply or communicate.

A classic example of a counterculture is the double-dipping personally re-hired groupies by the director as well as MTC as a perfect example of counterculture; members of this counterculture advocated greater executive freedom, political desegregation, and more rights for themselves than when they were an ADOC employee.

Today, members of the double-dipping ADOC culture groups exemplify a counterculture because such groups favor much stronger administrative power than mainstream culture does putting them above others. Countercultures sometimes meet with passive resistance from the dominant culture.

Kingman Riot Review of Summary Document - Narrated Video

A video summary of the Kingman Report - no audio but a good review of the facts of the riots.

Kingman Riot Response Failures by DOC Tactical Special Unit Team

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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