Chill dude, just don't open the thread, m'kay

https://www.kbtx.com/2022/09/16/inmate-back-custody-after-escaping-huntsville-unit/

Did anyone hear about this escape from TDCJ? It was way less publicized than Gonzalo Lopez's escape.

Or this guy.

https://www.dps.texas.gov/news/escaped-inmate-coryell-county-added-texas-10-most-wanted-fugitives-list

Proc92 said:

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Or this guy.

https://www.dps.texas.gov/news/escaped-inmate-coryell-county-added-texas-10-most-wanted-fugitives-list

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Yeah, this guy has been on the lam for a good while now. He clearly had good help.

That looks like a county jail escape, since it says he was arrested in Coryell County in August and escaped the next month.

https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/06/04/brief-history-of-texas-inmates-who-have-escaped-tdcj-custody/

lethalninja said:

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That looks like a county jail escape, since it says he was arrested in Coryell County in August and escaped the next month.

https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/06/04/brief-history-of-texas-inmates-who-have-escaped-tdcj-custody/

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He was a county trusty, I believe. Just so happens Gatesville has a lot of TDCJ facilities.

If he didn't escape, he would have been eligible for parole when he was 99 in 2075 at the earliest (he was serving two consecutive life sentences with parole eligibility after forty years and thirty years, respectively, since Texas didn't have life without parole until September 2005), so he still had 53 years before becoming eligible for parole when he escaped.

Did anybody hear about the convicted murderer serving life without parole (the jury spared him from the death penalty, and he killed a hot dog stand vendor with a motion-activated bomb in a coffee cup that was placed on top of a car outside the Luxor Hotel, and his motive was that the victim was dating his co-defendant's ex-girlfriend, so the co-defendant probably hired him to build the bomb) in Nevada that escaped? He was recaptured five days later and the escape happened in September. His name is Porfirio Duarte-Herrera.

Rapier108 said:

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No, it isn't. The guy is dead, end of story.

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So you don't want any leadership at TDCJ or procedures that were viloated/ignored held accountable? Should we just wait for the next screw up and Grandpa and Grandkids killed? Hope it's not your family and this way of thinking is why our country is truly screwed, don't worry I am sure you next stimulus check will come from the trash you just voted into power

I think the reason he said that is because I posted in the thread after it was inactive for four months to mention his disciplinary record in prison (since it was new information), and he didn't care about his disciplinary record.

Thanks, that makes more sense, I just want accountability for those who are "supposed" to service the citizens/taxpayers, because this incident was totally avoidable and unacceptable to citizens of the United States living their normal law abiding lives

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/texas-prison-escape-mistakes-17632763.php

Not mentioned in the article, but mentioned in a different article: The prison where Lopez was held had a 45% staffing vacancy

Prison policy required three officers to be on the bus but it was made optional in 2015 due to staffing shortages

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said strip searches were performed on Lopez prior to his escape, however, they were not done in accordance with the policy.

Officials later said the other prisoners helped Lopez by shouting and singing. But Wages and several others said the only extra noise was two men rapping. According to the nearby prisoner, everything else was "a normal volume level on the bus."

Local prosecutors are still probing the case, and lawyers for the Collins family have sent the Texas Department of Criminal Justice notice of their plans to sue. Meanwhile, prison officials have disciplined more than two dozen staff and written up 15 prisoners, accusing them of creating a distraction. Some lost privileges, and one said he was in danger of losing his parole date weeks before he was scheduled to go home.

So far, cameras have only been installed on two buses, though a spokeswoman said Monday that the state is working out a contract for more.

Part of the problem is pay. Correctional officers only make about $45k/yr. Anyone capable of doing that job can make just as much if not more money doing something far less ****ty.

Do you think TDCJ is lying about the inmates helping him escape by making noise to cover their own asses?

lethalninja said:

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Do you think TDCJ is lying about the inmates helping him escape by making noise to cover their own asses?

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Maybe, but I don't know. It wouldn't be out of the question.

Either way, the root cause is chronic understaffing, and TDCJ can't do anything about it if they can't afford it. They need a bigger budget to pay their current guards more and attract qualified and capable new ones. I could only see it being a black eye issue if it were a private contractor instead of TDCJ or if TDCJ were hiring and keeping contractors knowing that they were understaffing or failing to follow procedures.

Isn't the root cause for the escape him not being strip searched or searched with their metal detecting chair? It seems the escape happened because of incompetence, not understaffing.

Understaffing leads to lapses in processes in every job/industry.

For one, reduced staffing means reduced man hours per shift. Every task requires a certain money of man hours that eats from the total. If there's not enough man hours in the shift to cover the total man hours of all of the tasks, then obviously something isn't getting done and corners are being cut

For two, reduced staffing means reduced oversight. If no one sees corners being cut, then there is no accountability for it and the failures will continue. Even if they are seen on lower levels, if they're viewed as unavoidable, they're not going to be reported higher and everyone higher is not going to have the time/ability to verify.

So the failure is not checking him, the root cause of the failure is an understaffed system where such a failure was allowed to become a common and accepted standard due to the understaffing.

If proper searches had been done, it's likely they would have found what resembled a handcuff key that Lopez at one point hid in his mouth, as well as two 8-to-10-inch metal weapons that he used to cut through the metal grating of a security door, allowing him to overtake the driver, according to the reports.

In its internal review, TDCJ uncovered several errors. Correctional officers failed to use on Lopez a device known as the Body Orifice Security Scanner, or "BOSS chair," which is designed to quickly detect metallic contraband within body cavities of inmates. Leg restraints were improperly placed on Lopez, leaving them loose. A device that's put between handcuffs to block inmates like Lopez from accessing the keyhole was apparently not placed correctly and didn't cover the keyhole, possibly helping his escape.

Additionally, two officers had falsified search logs indicating Lopez's cell had been searched when it had not.

https://wtaw.com/texas-department-of-criminal-justice-releases-findings-of-two-investigations-about-the-gonzalo-lopez-escape/

And, as stated, the root cause of all of those things is chronic understaffing. Understaffed operations cut corners, violate policy, and fail to properly follow procedure because they simply don't have the man hours to devote to doing it right and don't have the oversight for proper accountability and managerial insight to understand the extent of failings.

When you look at the swiss cheese model of risk, an understaffed organization has far more and much larger holes than a properly staffed one. Yes, ALL of those things went wrong, but they also had to go wrong at the same time for this to happen. The root cause of having so many failings at the same time is chronic understaffing that leads normally unacceptable, and thus rare, practices or failures to become commonplace and frequent to the point that their alignment becomes probable and inevitable.

You seem to not understand the difference between proximate cause and root cause.

Just read the report. So many people failed in this.

I also want to know why it would take two days to check fingerprints in a very high profile case with a dangerous individual. And after the break in why didnt they go ahead and begin to search the area again.

Because the TDCJ is run by a bunch of incompetent buffoons.

The TDCJ report suggested prison staffing shortages were at 'critical levels.' It noted that the issue was especially bad at the Hughes Unit, where Lopez was housed. Staffing was at 57%, with 318 of 556 officer positions filled. On the day of the escape, the report said that 21 general population positions and 12 restrictive housing positions weren't staffed.

An officer was "observed retrieving one bag of property from inmate Lopez without searching the property to determine the contents of the bag and placing it in front of a neighboring cell."

The report says one of the corrections officers "left the bus unattended for approximately 30 minutes after inmate Lopez was loaded into the restrictive housing compartment."

https://wtaw.com/electric-fences-coming-to-five-state-prisons/

cool, does nothing to address transport issues

https://wtaw.com/brief-comments-from-state-prison-director-day-after-release-two-investigation-reports-about-gonzalo-lopez-escape/

This article addresses it

https://www.kbtx.com/2022/12/19/report-gonzalo-lopez-requested-books-survival-techniques-weapons-ahead-escape/

https://www.scribd.com/document/613205982/Gonzalo-Lopez-Escape-Review (the second link is 51 pages)

He also attempted to escape from county jail in 2004 and had 28 disciplinary cases (22 minor and six major) in prison

"Several things that I found in the different reports that I didn't really hear in any type of news coverage, we're little things actually, that I found fascinating. One of them was that Lopez had requested some books on survival, and survival skills, and that sort of thing," said Roth. "There were like six books that he had ordered, and they wouldn't let him get the books. But they didn't keep a record that he had asked for those ahead of time. If they had some type of system for keeping track of who asked for books like that, you know, that might be something to think about."

"One of the other things that I haven't heard mentioned is inmates were allowed to bring some personal property in a bag," said Roth. " Once the contents of the bag were put in they weren't searched before they were brought onto the bus. The contents were listed. They were in the bag. But the problem was they were listed by the prisoner bringing them."

"One of the issues has been, and it was the case in this particular incident, is they were aware when the date and time was of the prison transport to the medical appointment," Roth said. "And somebody basically leaked this to the inmates. So they knew ahead of time when this was going to go down."

Reports detail that of the three strip searches TDCJ policy would have required Lopez to have the morning of May 12, none of them were completed correctly, and one wasn't done at all. Conclusions from both reports state that if just one of these searches was done properly, it could have prevented the rest of that day's events.

In total, 28 Texas Department of Criminal Justice employees broke or outright ignored security policies. Trafficking, falsifying documents, advanced notice of transports, and search issues were all violations mentioned in the reports. Some of these policy breaches are fireable offenses.

"Recognizing that a person that has been caught trying to escape in the past would be somebody you wouldn't want on these transports," said Roth. "And evidently, Lopez had on his record that he had tried to escape before, and so not only did they not check him properly, but he was kind of a walking red flag to a great extent."

The Texas legislature convenes on Jan. 10, and right now, TDCJ reform doesn't seem to be on the shortlist for legislators.

In September, the agency asked state lawmakers for an extra $1.39 billion to solve issues they call "exceptional." That's on top of the agency's $3.5 billion yearly budget.

Reform is impossible without budget increases.

The leg isn't going to allocate more money to the agency, so they can't seriously discuss reform.

Whitmire is running for mayor of Houston. He's typically the agency's watchdog. During the summer, I predicted he would hold the agency's feet to the fire for all the failures. Now, I don't see how he can draw attention to the issue while NOT increasing the budget AND successfully run for mayor.

Granted, I don't think he will win this election anyway, but he definitely can't win it if he's screaming about a problem he's not going to be able to fix.

In addition to a budget increase, they also need employees of a substantially higher caliber than they currently have. Budget increases would obviously allow for salary increases, which would pull in a few more employees, but I would expect the increase would be marginal - single digit percentage points.

Basically, TDCJ's issues are largely due to lack of quality employees. Budget increases aren't really going to help that. For the foreseeable future, the agency is pretty much ****ed.

A quick story to illustrate inadequate employment:

My FIL is still working tangentially with TDCJ (not directly). One of his employees was showing her parents the grounds of the Walls Unit a few months ago, when out of the blue, an inmate dropped onto the sidewalk in front of them.

This is where it's important to note that he dropped from over a 32-foot high brick wall that is supposed to be watched by (at this particular point) three correctional officers in pickets, whose ONLY responsibility is to watch the wall.

Anyway, the inmate is there as a transfer. He's not even supposed to be there for more than overnight. He managed to walk, unbothered by any of the regular employees of the unit, across the grounds of the prison (of which he was unfamiliar, as this was not his unit), scale the 32-foot brick wall, and hop over the top.

So back to my FIL's employee. She's a college student, not from Huntsville, but pretty sure the men in white cotton uniforms are supposed to be on the other side of the wall. She isn't really sure what to do, so she calls my FIL. He tells her to call 911, and he heads toward the Walls himself.

The Walls is in the middle of town, about a block off the square. My FIL was in his office in the northern part of town, off I45 (by the Hitchin' Post, if you're familiar). With no traffic, and hitting green lights, that trip is going to take no less than 20 minutes.

As he leaves his office, he calls the warden of the Walls to convey that an inmate just jumped the wall. The warden says the employee must be mistaken; no inmates are out. Nevertheless, she tells my FIL she will check it out.

The warden's office inside the Walls is about 50 yards from where the inmate was seen. My FIL reached the sidewalk where his employee was still standing, talking to police by this point, when the warden comes strolling out.

My point - this is not simply a CO problem. It's a "the first really awful generation of COs are becoming facility administrators" problem also.

During the summer, one of my posts on this thread was about the pool from which COs come now versus when my dad and FIL started in the 70s. I think that's really the root of the issue.

The current Executive Director started his TDCJ career as a switchboard operator. He's never been a co or worked on the security-side of the agency. That doesn't instill a lot of confidence in the thousands of COs across the state.

No one wants to work for the prison. Maybe the agency, doing paperwork or accounting or whatever, but no one wants to work the security side. Even with a pay increase, there are still dozens of vacancies at each unit.

Hard to believe it was over a year ago that he escaped. Rest In Peace gentleman, 5 lives taken to early.

Given the couple of posts above I have to offer my fathers idea originally inspired by all those commercials asking you to donate .39 a day to feed someone in a 3rd world country.

Auction inmates off in travel size blocks and length of sentence to third world countries to secure, house, and feed. Should be good for all parties.