MDC Houston Riot

[Crosstimbers Okie]

Got this in the mail today...

March 11, 2008, 11:42PM
50 federal inmates injured in downtown Houston riot

By LINDSAY WISE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

About 50 inmates were injured when a riot erupted inside the Federal Detention Center in downtown Houston on Tuesday, authorities said.

Lawyers and prison officials said such fights are extremely rare in federal facilities, which traditionally house nonviolent criminals.

Houston firefighters and police arrived at the facility about 6:30 p.m. after receiving reports that up to 80 prisoners were fighting on the sixth floor at 1200 Texas, said District Chief Tommy Dowdy, a Houston Fire Department spokesman.

Guards used a "flash-bang," or stun grenade, to break up the brawl, which Dowdy described as a riot. The device momentarily stuns people with "a lot of noise and bright light, but (there's) no aftereffects like tear gas," Dowdy said.

One unidentified man was taken to the hospital with a head injury, he said. The other wounded prisoners were treated late Tuesday inside the administrative facility, which housed about 960 male and female pre-trial and hold-over inmates as of Thursday.

None of the inmates' injuries appear to be life-threatening and no guards were hurt, said Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

"The institution staff responded quickly and effectively and all of the inmates were returned to their cells inside the unit," she said. "All the units are now secure."

Officials will conduct a probe into the cause of the incident, Billingsley said.

"There will be an investigation for the institution to determine exactly what caused the fight to begin, and we'll take appropriate action," she said.

Houston lawyer Kent Schaffer said he has six clients in the facility but was unable to find out their conditions Tuesday night.

"I'm hoping that none of mine were injured, but I don't know," Schaffer said. "I asked my secretary to call the center, but she said they're not giving out any information."

He said he was shocked to learn a riot took place at the facility.

"It's so unusual because usually they have very nonviolent prisoners at the Federal Detention Center," Schaffer said. "I've never heard of a federal detention center having any kind of riot at all, and I've been doing federal cases almost 25 years. It's just unheard of."

Undergoing change
The prisoners in such facilities are more likely to be nonviolent drug offenders or white-collar criminals charged with fraud than dangerous felons, he said.

But as federal authorities indict more criminals involved in organized syndicates and racketeering, that has changed, Schaffer said.

"You used to have a much better class of federal prisoners. Now you're mixing documented gang members into a facility that's traditionally been nonviolent," he said.

"It's really changed the whole landscape of the federal court system so that it looks more and more like the state court system."

Another Houston lawyer, Todd Dupont, said he is concerned about his two clients in the detention center: a 64-year-old man with a minimal criminal history who recently received a 9-year sentence on drug charges and another defendant who was assigned to him on Tuesday.

"The [federal detention center] runs a real tight ship," Dupont said. "The federal folks put it right. But if there is a mass uprising like this, there has to be a fundamental breakdown at some point in the process — which is probably unheard of at some levels — or, I suspect, a large conspiracy of folks that just decided to uprise."

Whatever caused the fight, the public will find out eventually, he said.

"There are cameras all over the place. Everybody's accounted for, even to their last minute — even when they go to the restroom," Dupont said. "If something like that happened in that center, there is something wrong."

A prison official said she believes the sixth floor of the facility where the fight took place is a holdover floor for male inmates who have been sentenced but are scheduled in court for additional prosecution or testimony.

It is also a floor for those who are convicted but not sentenced, sentenced inmates who have not been assigned to a prison or those awaiting transportation to another prison.

"There are two beds in every cell, but whether there are two inmates who occupy that cell depends on our population," said Trish Doty, a case management coordinator at the prison.

A special housing unit, also known as the "shu," has two-person cells on the seventh floor for inmates who commit violent acts. An inmate might also be kept there for his or own protection, Doty said.

Sometimes "the shu" houses two inmates to a cell while other prisoners are alone, she said.

Chronicle reporters Cindy George and Mary Flood contributed to this report.

[Crosstimbers Okie]

"It's so unusual because usually they have very nonviolent prisoners at the Federal Detention Center," Schaffer said.

These clowns are really too much. Like we have only nice thugs in the federal jail, and the bad guys are kept... are put... where the **** are the mean ol' thugs put? Certainly NOT with my clients! MY clients are nice guys. They can't put those meant thugs with my nice guys!

[BikerRN]

I read the article on "News Clips" last night on Sallyport.

The one thing that I really paid attention to was the statement about how the Federal system is becoming like the State system with it's inmates. I've been saying it since I started with the BOP. We are a Federal system with State inmates.

Biker

[BOPCO87]

Any news on what kicked it off yet?

[Bowfish]

Goes to show what the people on the outside think and know about the BOP !

And a spokeperson ( Traci Billingsley) for the BOP calling us Guards !!

[KBCraig]

March 12, 2008, 11:47PM
Fistfight started inmate brawl
9 prisoners, 3 staffers injured in disturbance
By CINDY GEORGE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

The disturbance inside the Federal Detention Center in
downtown Houston Tuesday night began with a fistfight
between two inmates, a prison official said Wednesday.

Other prisoners joined, sending one to the hospital and leaving eight inmates and three staff
members with minor injuries, said Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for Federal Bureau of
Prisons.

The fight broke out just after 6 p.m. on the sixth floor, a male housing unit with about 118
sentenced inmates awaiting transfer. Billingsley said she could not confirm how many prisoners
were involved in the brawl or its cause.

A preliminary investigation led officials to believe no weapons were involved. Prison officials are
still collecting details, but Billingsley said she would not describe what happened as a riot
because the inmates were not trying to overpower staff or assume control of the facility.

"There was no damage to the institution," she said. "They were not trying to take over the
institution."

On Tuesday night, District Chief Tommy Dowdy, a Houston Fire Department spokesman,
described the brawl as a riot.

He said Houston firefighters and police arrived at the facility after receiving reports that up to 80
prisoners were fighting on the sixth floor at 1200 Texas.

Police responded
Around the same time, Houston police responded to "a call of an assault in progress," said
Houston Police Department spokesman Victor Senties. "We were told we were not needed in the
detention center," he said.

Guards used a "flash bang," or stun grenade, to end the brawl. The device momentarily stuns
people with noise and bright light.

Lawyers and prison officials say such fights are rare in most federal facilities, which typically
house nonviolent offenders. According to the Bureau of Prisons, more than half of the federal
inmates nationwide — 54 percent — were incarcerated for drug offenses.

Two-thirds of the inmates at FDC Houston were convicted of drug or immigration offenses,
Billingsley said.

About 1,000 prisoners are at the center, which covers a city block and houses prisoners in twobed
cells.

Prison under lockdown
Wednesday morning, Houston lawyer Mark Bennett found both of his clients, who live on the fifth
floor, in good shape after a visit. He said the client who lives under the wing where the fight
happened "heard lots of noise upstairs and described a lot of explosions."

"They were put in lockdown at 6:30 or 7 after dinner and they were still in lockdown
(Wednesday), which means they stay in their rooms. There's a common area (in each wing)
where people spend most of their time and the rooms are off of the common area."

Only about 10 percent of federal prison inmates are serving time for a violent offense, said Ryan
King, policy analyst at The Sentencing Project, an independent research group based in
Washington.

"It's a very different population than the state prison population, where about half of the people
are in for a violent offense," King added.

While federal prisoners are more likely to be nonviolent drug offenders or white-collar criminals
charged with fraud, Houston lawyer Kent Schaffer said he is concerned about the growing
number of dangerous felons involved in gangs and other organized violent crime in federal
detention.

Houston attorney Todd Dupont, who handles a significant number of federal cases, agreed that
the population of some federal prisons might be shifting.

"What you've seen in recent times is federal government indicting some of the gangs, like MS-13
and Texas Syndicate, for big conspiracies and big, violent, federal offenses, and they are locked
up in FDC," Dupont said.

'Recipe for disaster'
Houston defense lawyer Chip Lewis, one of the attorneys who visited the detention center
Wednesday morning, said none of his four clients were on the sixth floor, nor had they been
charged with a violent offense.
Lewis said that housing inmates awaiting transfer to federal prison for serious crimes under the
same roof with pretrial defendants is a "a recipe for disaster."

"They've been sentenced. They're not the folks who want to be on their best behavior or want an
outcome to be favorable," he said."And with those sentenced to lengthy prison sentences, you
can run into gang affiliation problems."

Sandra Guerra Thompson, a University of Houston law professor, said having dozens of people
sentenced to lengthy prison terms sitting in a detention center for a long time has the propensity
to turn ugly.

"[Detention centers] are intended for short-term stays. Normally, they don't offer a lot of
programs like treatment programs and there's really not an outlet for a lot of exercise or
education or jobs or other opportunities. I can imagine that there would be a build-up of
frustration."

[KBCraig]

Click2Houston.com
Gang Fight May Have Sparked Detention Center Riot
By Phil Archer
POSTED: 5:14 pm CDT March 12, 2008
UPDATED: 5:18 pm CDT March 12, 2008

HOUSTON -- A fight between rival gangs may have started a riot that involved dozens
of inmates at the Federal Detention Center, KPRC Local 2 reported Wednesday.

The riot that broke out on the sixth floor Tuesday injured three guards and eight
inmates. All of them suffered minor injuries, but another prisoner was sent to the
hospital for observation.

Jailers have not said what set it off, but when Houston attorney Kent Schaefer
questioned federal authorities about six of his clients being held in the facility he was
told it was a face-off between rival gangs.

"I just know there's a large amount of each gang's members incarcerated over at the
FDC right now," Schaefer said. "They wouldn't tell us which gangs. They just said there
were two gangs that began the fight."

The Federal Bureau of Prisons will not confirm that, but other sources do and pointed out that there are numerous prosecutions now under
way at the federal courthouse that include members of notorious gangs like MS13, the Mexican Mafia and the Texas Syndicate.

"I know for a fact there's a very large Texas Syndicate case being prosecuted here with over two dozen defendants in it," Schaefer said.

A Federal Detention Center spokesman said the Bureau of Prisons would not comment because they are still trying to sort out exactly what
happened.

Most of the offenders at the facility are there for non-violent crimes. The fight started in a section where inmates who are waiting to be
transferred to federal prisons are held.

[Mack the Hack]

Good to know it was not caused by Lack of Money for staffing. Lack of staff. Officer VACATE doing his job. Or anything to do with staff not being properly trained because of a lack of funds for training for the last couple of years. At least we can be safe knowing that.

[Movementarian]

Originally Posted by Mack the Hack

Good to know it was not caused by Lack of Money for staffing. Lack of staff. Officer VACATE doing his job. Or anything to do with staff not being properly trained because of a lack of funds for training for the last couple of years. At least we can be safe knowing that.

That puts my mind at ease. Whew...

[GUNNER]

Originally Posted by Bowfish

And a spokeperson ( Traci Billingsley) for the BOP calling us Guards !!

Yea, what the hell was she thinking, I think of it more as Babysitter, or day care worker. LOL