[CAUGHT 10-31-07]Uhh Oh..2 max custody escapees

[robbob340]

From KAKE.com

Authorities around El Dorado are involved in a manhunt for two escaped maximum security inmates. The escape was reported at about 8:30 Sunday evening when a hole was discovered cut in a fence, according to emergency dispatchers in Butler County.

The escapees are unidentified as Steven A Ford and Jesse L. Bell.

Ford was convicted in 1998 in Wyandotte County of robbery and aggravated indecent liberties with a child.

Bell was convicted for offenses stretching back to 1991 in Finney and Cowley County. Those offenses include forgery, burglary, kidnapping, aggravated robbery, and aggravated escape from custody.

Department of Corrections Spokesperson Bill Miskell says Ford and Bell should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. He asks that anyone who sees anyone matching their descriptions call local law enforcement immediately and do not approach them.

Isn't special management 23hr lockdown? They do not even recreate outside afaik, so how the hell did they get out? This should be a good story!

You can view these idiots at Offender Search — KDOC Web

Apparently Steven Ford was due for release November 26th, not anymore!

[Karnaj]

Ok, I just got home from work. Here is the deal it was a VERY elaborate plan.
Reference this article KWCH - Kansas News and Weather - Search Continues For Escaped El Dorado Prisoners they had assistance from a former corrections officer at our facility. We do have Outside Yard for our Administrative Segregation inmates they are housed in individual yard cells made out of fence material, they are strip searched prior going to yard, and there is an officer watching Seg Yard. I can't talk too much about what exactly happened, it was a very unfortunate string of events. That link is the most up to date article.


Karnaj

[dilligaf]

How big is your compound that by the time the response team arrived, they had already made it through the second perimeter fence and escaped? Do you have towers??

crazy!!

[Bobshouse]

Receipts for ammunition found in the car...wow, she is the best! Helped them out, gave them a car and guns/ammo!! Hope she enjoyed her short lived career in front of the bars, cause now she will be behind them...hopefully much longer that it would of taken her to reach retirement age.

Hope nobody gets killed in aprehending these idiots, that would add a murder beef onto her long list of current charges.

[Karnaj]

They couldn't have gotten through our second fence before our response team would have arrived With out her help from the outside, we only use 2 towers and the location that was used the tower is no longer used, because of the fences, her career with the DOC had already ended. Last update at 3:50 pm they are believed to have been in Sayre, OK.

Karnaj

[KSDog]

When I saw the escape blurb on the news, I prayed it wasn't LCF. Maybe the state will listen to us when we say we need a better class of officer. More money?

[robeans]

WTF is wrong with her. Sad thing is that it isn't the first time nor will it be the last.

[Crosstimbers Okie]

Originally Posted by robeans

WTF is wrong with her.

Come on. It's obvious. She's in love with one of those romantic outlaws. It's for certain that he's paid here more attention than any other man. Hell, he's probably spent hours composing tender poems and romantic love letters. He LOVES her, damnit!

This thread was duplicated here: KS Escape?? . I locked that one so that the discussion can continue in one place.

[Greg]

Escape 'well planned,' prison official says

BY TIM POTTER
The Wichita Eagle

A continuing review of how two high-security inmates escaped the El Dorado Correctional Facility has found no wrongdoing or "inattention to duty" by current staff, a Kansas Department of Corrections spokesman said Tuesday.

If someone is to blame, it is Amber Goff, the former El Dorado prison officer accused of being involved in Sunday's escape, department spokesman Bill Miskell told The Eagle.

"This escape would not have occurred without the active participation -- in the planning and execution of the escape -- of Amber Goff," he said.

But based on information available so far, a lack of sensors and a lack of staffing also could be partly to blame, said Timothy Crowe, a Louisville, Ky., criminologist who has critiqued correctional facilities and been a consultant for the U.S. Department of Justice.

"The facility design needs to be looked at," Crowe said.

There can be barriers that block officers from monitoring inmates, he said.

In a news conference Tuesday in Augusta, Goff's mother, Laurie Nutter, said her family thinks other staff at the prison could have been involved or looked the other way.

"How did they cut three fences and not be seen?" Nutter said. The family also doesn't understand how the inmates, Jesse Bell and Steven Ford, got a tool to cut fences.

Nutter said Goff was recently forced to resign her prison job for an improper relationship with an inmate.

Goff denied any wrongdoing but had mentioned Ford's name several times, Nutter said.

Asked why Goff lost her job, Miskell said the law doesn't allow such a disclosure.

Goff, 23, worked at the prison for a little over a year, until Oct. 11, the department said.

Asked how often staff members get into inappropriate relationships with inmates, Miskell said: "It is not a large number, but it occurs too often. One is too many."

Officers undergo training to avoid improper contact, he said.

It is the first time someone has escaped from the high-security unit at the prison, which opened in 1991, Miskell said.

Although the department review is not finished, "a number of changes to the physical plant and operations are being discussed," but no decision has been made, Miskell said.

He wouldn't say what the potential changes could be.

Asked if the escape showed any problem with fencing or security measures, Miskell said that the department is conducting a complete review of circumstances of the escape to determine "what, if anything, needs to be changed to minimize... the potential for this situation occurring again."

"I do not believe at this point you can isolate any one aspect and say that this incident was the result of this aspect," he said.

In response to questions, Miskell provided these details of the prison security procedures and more information about what happened around the time of the escape, about 8:30 p.m. Sunday:

The two escapees were among 25 inmates who were let into an outdoor exercise area for about an hour. After being patted down, each inmate is placed in a 12-foot-by-12-foot chain-link enclosure with a 10-foot ceiling.

Investigators are trying to determine how the escapees got wire cutters, Miskell said. It's not clear if the pat-down missed the tools.

Crowe, the Louisville security expert, said it would take "pretty substantial" wire cutters -- that would be difficult to hide -- to bite through heavy chain-link and razor wire.

One officer walks around the lighted area, watching the inmates. No cameras monitor it.

There is a guard tower in that area, but no one has been posted there for about 10 years. Following a staffing review and the addition of camera monitors, the tower staff was moved inside the facility. Two other towers at the prison have remained staffed around the clock.

Cameras for a perimeter fence feed a display in the two towers and a control center. When an alarm on the fence activates, it sounds at all three locations and starts a flashing red light on a perimeter fence. Miskell said he didn't know if the officer in the exercise area saw the red strobe. But whoever has the exercise-yard duty must remain with the inmates there, he said.

To escape, Miskell said, the inmates had to cut through the chain-link exercise enclosures, run about 70 yards, slice through a barbed-wire fence with detection wires, cut through razor wire and finally get through the last perimeter fence.

"It was not easy for them to do," he said.

When the alarm on one fence sounded, the officer responsible for responding was in a patrol vehicle on the far side of the prison. It took "a matter of minutes" -- Miskell said he didn't know the precise timing -- for the officer to reach the area where the inmates had escaped.

Authorities have said they think Goff was waiting nearby in a vehicle.

"This was a well-planned escape," Miskell said.

[Karnaj]

EDCF News Release #6. October 31st, 2007 6:30 AM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

The El Dorado Correctional Facility has been notified by law enforcement officials that inmates Jesse L. Bell, Steven A. Ford, and former employee Amber Goff were apprehended this morning in New Mexico.

The facility is receiving the details and will provide additional updates as information is confirmed and verified.



karnaj