By KIRBY ROSS
Phillips County Review
With major renovations taking place at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing starting a couple of months ago, hardened convicts there were transferred to correctional facilities across the state.
The prison in Norton, which houses medium and minimum security prisoners, had over 100 inmates from Lansing brought in, with others being sent out to different facilities in the corrections system.
Subsequent to these moves, major Kansas and national media outlets have discovered that there have been a string of disturbances at the maximum security prison in El Dorado.
After the most recent outbreak of violence at El Dorado, which is a maximum security prison, some of the prisoners there were transferred to Norton, joining the ones already brought in from Lansing. The newly-imported prisoners from Lansing and El Dorado numbered around 180, out of a total of over 800 at Norton.
With the large influx of new convicts, a corrections officer who works at the Norton Prison said the facility there has faced increased tension in recent weeks.
A report by the Associated Press confirms this, stating “The number of disciplinary reports at Norton jumped from 226 to 396 from July to August, an increase of 75 percent, according to figures provided by KDOC.
“The previous peak was 328 reports in June 2016. Last year the prison averaged 209 a month, compared with 245 per month from January through August this year.”
With this volatile backdrop in play and with tensions rising, on Monday night of last week there was a small inmate riot in C Block at the Norton Prison that was put down by correctional officers.
Then, 24 hours later, on Tuesday night, the pot boiled over in full force as a major riot erupted and law enforcement officers from across the state.
The severity of what happened next has become the subject of a bit of back and forth, with bureaucrats in Topeka calling what took place in Norton a “disturbance,” while the guards and police who had boots on the ground and were in harm’s way are calling it a riot.
With things falling apart a little after 9 p.m. that night, Norton police advised local residents to pull their car keys and lock their doors, as prison officials sounded a call for help to law enforcement in surrounding counties. The Phillips County Sheriff’s Department was among the first from the outside to respond, with Sheriff Charlie Radabaugh and Undersheriff Nathan Schwenn, along with three more deputies, arriving before a command post was even set up. They were assigned to the west side of the prison complex, where they provided security just outside the fence.
Sheriff Radabaugh told the Review that he and one of his deputies were pelted with rocks and bricks for a short time, and that his patrol vehicle sustained damage from a brick that narrowly missed the law enforcement officers.
Radabaugh, noting that the situation had the looks of being a riot from where he was located, diplomatically observed that “whether it was a riot or disturbance is subject to interpretation depending on where you were at at the time.”
Accounts from the scene indicate a serious situation. CBS News reports that Norton City Administrator Chad Buckley said all the town’s fire trucks and its entire police department responded to the scene to assist corrections officials.
In addition, the Norton Telegram newspaper reports the situation was so dire that armed reinforcements were called in not only from Phillips County, but also from sheriff’s departments in Smith, Ellis, Graham, Trego, Rawlins and Sheridan counties, as well as the Kansas Highway Patrol, including a special tactical team, dog teams and a helicopter. The need for manpower and firepower was considered so critical that game wardens were included in the request for assistance. In addition, hospitals, fire departments and EMS units from surrounding counties were put on standby alert.
With Kansas Department of Corrections officials telling KSN-TV in Wichita that the Norton situation was under control, the television station was simultaneously reporting, “However, the Union for Kansas Executive Branch Employees has reported a huge riot at the facility. The union reported buildings are burning, and some inmates have weapons.”
With 15-20 corrections officers reportedly trapped inside the fence at one point, Department of Corrections spokesman Samir Arif noted from Topeka that there were only two minor injuries to guards, neither of which required medical treatment. Arif went on to say damage at the prison consisted of a mattress and rags that were burned. Pressed, he was unsure if flames caused any structural damages, saying the buildings would need to be evaluated.
According to the Wichita Eagle, at least three Norton prison guards took exception to Topeka’s description of events– “‘When a little disturbance is when the inmates take over the facility, I don’t know what a riot is,’ said a corrections officer who spoke on a condition of anonymity. Two other officers on the scene backed up this description of the incident. ‘Basically, they tried to burn the place down,’ he said.”
In a statement to the Kansas City Star, Kansas Organization of State Employees director Robert Choromanski disputed comments downplaying the seriousness of the situation and provided what information he had, stating that the newly-transferred inmates in Norton were angry that they had been taken there, hundreds of miles away from their eastern Kansas families.
With state corrections officials and law enforcement issuing few statements about what happened, little more has officially been made public other than to say a full investigation is now under way.
The Kansas City Star reports that the Norton Correctional Facility riot “follows weeks of unrest in Kansas’ prisons, which prompted Gov. Sam Brownback to announce a pay raise for prison workers last month to help facilities deal with high staff turnover that has exacerbated safety issues. At the Lansing facility, multiple disturbances have occurred in recent months that the Department of Corrections did not initially report to the public. One of the more serious ones broke out in early July, when a half-dozen inmates were involved in an altercation. Four inmates suffered stab wounds, one had a punctured lung and two needed outside medical treatment.”
‘Threat Is Intense,’ lethal force authorized
The Kansas City Star further notes that pepper spray was deployed by corrections officers during last week’s Norton riot and that “For three hours Tuesday night at the Norton Correctional Facility, chaos reigned. Inmates tried to escape, and lethal force by guards was on the table, according to a log book obtained by The Star.
‘North yard threat is intense, advise (inmates) to remain on ground otherwise use lethal force,’ the log book states.
The emergency log is a record of communication among correctional officers by radio.
The log confirms correctional officers’ accounts about the state of disarray inside the Kansas prison: Inmates wrapped ‘large pieces of glass’ in towels to use as weapons, they threw rocks at correctional officers, and they tried to devise a plan to charge the guards on duty.
‘(Inmates) are trying to run over Capt. Crowder,’ the log states.
Another entry states that inmates had tipped over a medical response vehicle. An air conditioner was removed from a window and panes were shattered as inmates tried to move into different areas of the prison. They commandeered a cart and progressed toward a fence, apparently in an attempt to escape.
“The public does not appreciate what really happened behind the walls of Norton,” Kansas Organization of State Employees Director Choromanski told the Kansas City Star. “It blows my mind that the facility lost control and that there was a captain that almost got run over. That to me is very serious right there and what the administration did, saying, ‘Oh, maybe a couple stones were thrown and a mattress caught on fire, well, that’s not true. There was a lot more going on here.’”
As the riot was finally brought under control, the following day several fully-loaded prison buses, escorted by multiple police cars could be seen traveling east through the heart of Phillipsburg. KDOC officials stated inmates seen as being the most serious security risks were being moved from Norton to facilities at Lansing, Hutchinson, and Ellsworth.
Rep. Russ Jennings (R-Lakin), who serves as the chairman of the House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee in the Kansas Legislature, called what happened in Norton “a bit of a melee.”
After speaking with Department of Corrections head Joe Norwood about it, Rep. Jennings commented, “I’m sure that there will even be more that is revealed as this thing goes along. You had what sounds to be a very serious event with a large number of inmates that did a significant amount of damage and got into areas of the facility that they didn’t belong.”
Kirby Ross can be reached at [email protected].