By MIKE BILLINGTON
The News Journal
02/19/2005
The task force investigating security lapses at the Delaware Correctional Center following last July's abduction and rape of a counselor blames the incident on the prison's management and makes dozens of recommendations for improving the safety of employees and inmates there.
The report was given to Gov. Ruth Ann Minner late Monday. She released it Friday morning.
The report, compiled after 52 interviews and the review of 5,700 documents, does not recommend that anyone be dismissed or disciplined for the security lapses. Department of Correction Commissioner Stan Taylor said Friday that he had offered to quit several weeks after the July 12 incident, but Minner refused to accept his resignation. Taylor also said Friday that he takes full responsibility for the incident.
The central issue facing the prison and the entire corrections system, the report noted, is a staff shortage that forces officers to work large amounts of overtime. As of Friday afternoon, according to department spokeswoman Beth Welch, the department had 286 corrections officer vacancies. That staffing shortfall creates a ripple effect, Taylor said, that leads to many other problems.
The report praises some of the people involved in the incident, including counselor Cassandra Arnold, who was taken hostage by serial rapist Scott Miller after he had passed through two security checkpoints armed with a homemade knife. Miller was later shot and killed by a corrections officer after he raped Arnold and threatened to kill her.
She wrestled the knife away from Miller as he tried to stab her after being shot.
According to the report, Arnold "in the face of incredible danger, maintained her composure throughout this horrific event, and her actions were instrumental in saving her life."
The task force also singled out the prison's emergency response team, saying that its performance during the more than six hours Arnold was held hostage was "excellent."
The task force disagreed with experts from the National Institute of Corrections who said in a review of the incident that the hostage negotiation team did a "very good" job.
The task force rated the efforts of negotiators only as "fair." The lead negotiator was not the most experienced member of the team, the task force noted, and critical information was not relayed between the command center and the negotiators, according to the report.
Minner praised the task force for its work and said the 128-page report was thorough and well written.
"I look forward to working with Commissioner Taylor and his staff, as well as members of the General Assembly, to ensure that working conditions at DCC and throughout the correctional system are as safe as humanly possible," Minner said in a prepared statement. "The task force's numerous recommendations represent a very important start in that effort."
Victim finds errors in report
Arnold said Friday that while the report contains some errors, she is pleased with the recommendations.
"It brings great attention to some very important issues," she said. However, she added, "unless the recommendations are taken seriously and something is done, they are going to be pointless."
Arnold took issue with some points of the report. For example, the task force members said she should not have confronted Miller when she found him lurking near a bathroom in the prison's administrative wing. The report also says she should have called for backup.
'Just a flash of yellow'
"I did not confront him," Arnold said Friday. "I didn't even see him, just a flash of yellow out of the corner of my eye before he grabbed me."
Inmates wear bright yellow jumpsuits.
Arnold said she could not call for backup because she was taken hostage so quickly.
"But how would I have done that anyway? I didn't have a radio. My call for backup was when I yelled for help," she said.
"The report says that Cassie made a mistake in not calling for backup," said her attorney, Jeff Martin, "but you can't make a mistake when things happen so fast you can't even make a decision. Overall, we're very happy with the report. There are some minor errors of fact that need to be corrected, but we think the task force did a tremendous job."
Taylor said he has no timeline for making any of the changes recommended by the task force in its report.
"I'd love to see them all happen immediately," he said, "but even if we got all the money dropped on us tomorrow it would take time."
Taylor said he and his staff are analyzing the task force's report now to determine what implementing the recommendations will cost.
Once that is done, he said, he will go to the General Assembly or to outside funding sources such as the federal government to ask for the money he needs to put them in place.
Contact Mike Billington at 324-2761 or mbillington@delawareonline.com.
