Jessica Masulli Reyes, Brittany Horn, Esteban Parra, Karl Baker, and Scott Goss

The News Journal

Trouble at Delaware’s toughest prison percolated for years before inmates took control of a building and killed a correctional officer.

In interviews with The News Journal, three dozen inmates and their families, prison advocates and former and current correctional officers said anyone at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center could see the deadly standoff coming.

Inmates insist that they continuously begged for respect from officers, better counseling and drug treatment, access to doctors and opportunities to earn a high school or college diploma.

"We've been trying to reach out – pushing the pen – and it was like no one was hearing us," said one Vaughn inmate whose identity was verified by the newspaper but requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. "We've been crying out for years."

Inmates had been staging increasing numbers of peaceful protests inside prison walls –– refusing to obey commands, refusing to line up for head count or to bus their dinner trays in the chow hall, according to Bruce A. Rogers, attorney for the Correctional Officers Association of Delaware.

Correctional officers said short staffing left them unable to control inmates, who outnumbered them 75 to 1. The unarmed officers expressed fear that frustrated inmates could riot at any moment, Rogers said.

“Some of the CO’s have said to me that, ‘We walk into the prison on any given day and we are the only ones that are not armed,’” Rogers said. “They take that seriously.”

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On Feb. 1, inmate anger bubbled over when a group of inmates seized control of Building C, a unit where approximately 120 of Vaughn's 2,431 prisoners were housed. While Gov. John Carney and Prison Commissioner Perry Phelps have refused to confirm details about the uprising in which officer Steven Floyd Sr. was killed, those held hostage during the 18-hour siege are starting to break their silence.

Three maintenance workers were cleaning a boiler in the unit shortly after clocking in at 10:18 a.m. when they heard Floyd's screams coming from a nearby closet where he was being held. The men rushed to Floyd's aid but were met by angry, masked inmates.

An inmate quickly shoved a makeshift knife called a "shiv" against the throat of one maintenance employee, according to Thomas S. Neuberger, one of the attorneys representing the maintenance workers, two correctional officers and the family of Floyd. He said his clients were too traumatized to speak with a reporter.

The maintenance worker's colleague, who had a respirator strapped to his face to avoid breathing toxic fumes, threatened to unleash on the inmates a 5-gallon container of potentially deadly cleaning chemicals if the knife was not lowered.

“If you breathe this, you will f—ing die,” Neuberger said, recounting what the worker told the armed inmates.

Neuberger said that exchange gave the maintenance workers just enough time to run into the building’s basement, where they barricaded themselves away from the violent uprising. For almost 13 hours, the men used a cellphone to funnel vital information to hostage negotiators outside prison walls, he said.

What the workers couldn’t see was that hostage takers placed hoods over the heads of correctional officers and brutally beat them, according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday by an inmate against the state, asking that the rights of prisoners not be violated and that their personal belongings not be destroyed as the criminal investigation continues. Inmate Donald Parkell – serving an 8½-year sentence for burglary and conspiracy – claimed in the lawsuit that he and two other prisoners crowded into a cell to protect a female counselor being held by hostage takers.

The mother of another inmate who protected the counselor said she received frantic phone calls from her son throughout the 18-hour standoff, even as hostage takers moved the men and counselor from cell to cell to thwart their efforts to signal authorities for help through prison windows. Her identity, and the identity of her son, is being withheld to avoid retaliation.

“I told him, 'I need to be reassured that this lady is safe,'” the mother said. “I made him [and the others] promise, ‘You will protect her at all costs.’ My son was willing to give his life up for this woman.”

Floyd had earlier used a two-way radio to warn other officers about the uprising, telling his colleagues from the closet that if they rushed in to help they would be entering a trap. The 16-year veteran was found dead at 5 a.m. the next morning when police used a backhoe to break through the unit wall, allowing authorities with heavy weapons to rush in and end the siege.

Many expressed condolences to Floyd's family but said the death of a correctional officer came as no surprise. Floyd, a sergeant at the time but posthumously promoted to lieutenant, was the highest ranking officer on the floor – which could have made him a target.

"Whoever is going to be the one who enforces the rules, whoever is going to be a stickler for detail" on the prison floor, Rogers said. "Those are going to be the ones nobody [inmates] wants to have around."

Former inmate Michael Bartley said the standoff was a foregone conclusion.

"It was coming; we knew it was coming," said Bartley, who was released from Vaughn on Jan. 2 after serving 15 years for burglary, assault and weapon charges. "If they [prison authorities] would have only listened and took a little bit of our advice."

Complaints in Delaware’s largest prison have been well-documented over decades through court cases, grievances and letters from inmates.

Nobody has been on the front lines of the fight more than Stephen Hampton, a Dover attorney who repeatedly sues the Department of Correction for the most egregious cases brought to his attention.

“People talk about conditions of third-world country prisons, but we have those conditions right here,” Hampton said.

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He doesn’t always win, but occasionally succeeds in getting help for inmates and their families who have suffered abuse or neglect within the prison system.

Take, for instance, in 2005 when he represented the family of Anthony Pierce, an inmate whose cancerous tumor grew to the size of a second head before he received treatment in the Sussex Correctional Institution in Georgetown.

Pierce, nicknamed the "brother with two heads," died days after being released from prison, and his family eventually settled their wrongful death lawsuit for an undisclosed amount of money. Pierce’s grotesque death was portrayed in a News Journal series of stories that led federal officials to open an investigation in which the state agreed to improve conditions at all three men’s prisons.

If Pierce’s story couldn’t change the standard of care, Hampton said nothing would.

Hampton has seven open cases against the Department of Correction – alleging everything from inmates being held long past their release date to inmates being denied medical care after repeated requests to see a doctor.

One civil rights case filing from June claims the prison office responsible for processing a judge’s order and releasing an inmate violated its own policy at least 17 times by holding inmates for longer than a day, and at times up to 25 days – even after a judge said the prisoner could be released. The DOC has fought these allegations.

That kind of delay led inmate Jermaine Lamar Wilson to hang himself with a sheet tied to a bar in his solitary cell on the day he was scheduled for release in 2005. He repeatedly asked correctional officers what time he would be released, but never got an answer, according to a lawsuit.

Yet these are only a small number of the complaints that ever make it out of the barbed-wire fences of Vaughn.

Inmates said they were ignored in November when they cried out over GreenTree, a drug treatment program run by prisoners, which was being shut down even as Attorney General Matt Denn called for better access to treatment to combat Delaware’s heroin epidemic. Inmates complained again when coveted honor visits were moved from weekends to Wednesdays, preventing families from spending time with inmates in a less-restricted setting.

The News Journal repeatedly tried to set up interviews with Commissioner Phelps, Gov. Carney and Secretary of Safety and Homeland Security Robert Coupe to address the years of complaints that many said led to the riot. All refused to discuss the uprising or the conditions that may have led to it.

State officials did provide some initial details on the takeover but quickly fell silent after Delaware State Police launched a criminal investigation and Carney named two former judges to lead an independent review of the hostage situation.

Phelps, who is less than a month into his new job, said through an emailed statement that correctional officers in Delaware are highly trained and skilled and do their jobs with “professionalism, tact and expertise” every day.

“While challenges may arise, DOC staff abides by its mission to protect the public by supervising adult offenders through safe and humane services, programs and facilities,” the statement said.

Prison advocates said they doubt that the department’s silence will turn into real reforms – especially after such prolonged indifference from the state.

Inmates have long used their meager resources to call, write and sue state officials and prison staff. Hampton alone turned over 30 letters to The News Journal as a sliver of correspondence he received in the past two years.

Even the Department of Correction’s internal process, whereby inmates can file grievance forms, rarely leads to changes, current and former inmates said.

“It’s their word against ours,” said former inmate Bartley. “It’s very rare that you’ll see someone come up right on the grievance process.”

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Most complaints that come from the prison center on inmate health care – which costs the state nearly $63 million annually and is expected to rise by another $9 million next year because of rising hepatitis C cases.

Despite the high cost to taxpayers, inmates said their medical problems fester and grow in the bureaucracy of sick call slips and ignored doctor’s orders.

One inmate serving an 18-year sentence for attempted murder met with The News Journal late last year in Vaughn’s most secure housing unit, known as "the Hole."

With scars across his cheekbone and neck, he retold the story of Oct. 4 when someone threw scalding chemicals at his face during recreation time in Building C.

Although the inmate, whose name is being withheld for his protection, refused to name those behind the chemical attack, he has pointed a finger at the Department of Correction for what he claims is inadequate medical care.

The inmate was thrown in solitary confinement before the yellow liquid was even flushed from his blistering, peeling skin, he said.

Twenty-four hours later, he was allowed to file a sick call slip to see a nurse for the second-degree burns.

“I’ve been stating for over 24 hours that I have absolutely no hearing in my left ear at all and that I’m in pain from my face burning and headaches, yet I received no antibiotics or pain meds for my hearing loss or pain,” he scrawled across the slip.

Even in the coming days as a nurse cleaned his wounds and prescribed antibiotics, the inmate insisted he needed to see a specialist.

“Emergency! This is the 4th day I’ve had no hearing in my left ear due to a scalding chemical being thrown on me,” he wrote on Oct. 6. “Now, for the past half a day I’ve had blood leaking from my ear.”

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It was not until three weeks later – after repeated calls by his mother to the warden and other staff – that he was transported to a specialist in Newark who said he had a “traumatic rupture” in his ear drum.

Months later, other specialists who saw the inmate agreed that he needed to see a surgeon to fix the hole, the prisoner said. But his mother explained this week that the inmate still has not had a consultation with a surgeon, more than five months after the initial attack.

“I just want him to be treated,” she said. “I’m not asking for anything that no one else would ask for.”

The prison insists the inmate is receiving proper care but refuses to give details because medical information is private unless an inmate gives consent for its release.

This man's ordeal mirrors countless other claims from inmates, ranging from not being allowed to use a walking cane after knee surgery to having a leg amputated months after being thrown from a wheelchair not properly secured in the back of a prison van.

The complaints finally were aired on a national scale 2½ weeks ago when hostage takers called in their demands to The News Journal during the siege in Smyrna.

“We just want the world to know that this wasn’t for nothing ... or this is [going to be] a trial run,” said a prisoner who went by the name Sam.

Coupe, during a live press conference the night of the uprising, assured inmates who may have been watching that their concerns would be addressed only after the hostages were safely released. Yet state officials and legislators now say the focus must only be on keeping correctional officers safe.

“We are not going to be funding anything that is an issue that is arising out of the inmates' demands,” said Rep. Melanie George Smith, D-Bear, who heads the Joint Finance Committee. “That is the same thing as negotiating with terrorists. It would reward people for killing a good man, a father, a correctional officer.”

Those who guard some of Delaware’s most dangerous inmates said officials like Smith have ignored their calls for more staff and higher salaries for years.

One correctional officer working in Building C on Feb. 1 had been on the job for only a month, said Rogers, the attorney for the state correctional officers union. Another had about 18 months of experience, he said.

Inexperienced officers – who earn a starting annual salary of roughly $32,000 – put in years at the Smyrna-area facility before transferring to less volatile prisons elsewhere in Delaware or higher-paying corrections jobs in surrounding states, Rogers said.

“People who move a little further up in the pecking order will get out,” he said.

While all prisons can be explosive, Rogers said, Vaughn has the reputation of being Delaware's toughest prison.

When Vaughn opened in 1971, the complex was built to hold 441 inmates but has since expanded its facilities to fit more than 2,600 people, according to the state. As of Feb. 1, more than 2,400 men live behind the walls of the prison.

Since the prison standoff, 14 officers and one teacher have either quit or announced early retirement. And crowded spaces have grown tighter with Building C still off limits to inmates.

A high turnover has long led to low staff counts, which state budget officials have dealt with it by mandating significant overtime – to the tune of 9,600 hours each month – according to Rogers.

“Officers are often over-worked and have to work [overtime] involuntarily,” said Josh Dickson, a former prison officer, who retired in 2013 to take a job as a school teacher.

The volatile situation facing officers has gotten worse since Dickson left four years ago, Rogers said.

A settlement announced in September between the state and the American Civil Liberties Union ended solitary confinement for approximately 100 mentally ill inmates. Rogers said this has caused already tight spaces to become more cramped.

“Inmates, who might not [have been] on the same tier because they are enemies on the outside – might be different religious beliefs, might come from different backgrounds – now you have them on the same tier,” he said.

Hiring more officers would go a long way toward relieving these conditions and averting another possible rebellion, Dickson said.

“Obviously, the more correctional staff on duty, the more safe the staff are against threat,” he said.

Complaints like these will be at the center of the lawsuit Neuberger, along with the law firm of Jacobs & Crumplar, plan to file on behalf of two correctional officers and three maintenance workers who were held hostage on Feb. 1, as well as the family of Floyd.

Neuberger said the “deliberate indifference” of former Govs. Ruth Ann Minner and Jack Markell and some of their senior prison staff “shocks the conscience” – a legal basis for the lawsuit. He said the Minner and Markell administrations failed to implement changes recommended by two reports commissioned after a 2004 incident in which a counselor was abducted and raped by an inmate at Vaughn.

Two legal experts said Neuberger has a tough case to prove because he has to show that prison officials had knowledge that a riot was likely and yet acted with complete indifference.

“Shock the conscience is … one of the highest, most difficult standards to meet in the law because you have to show someone was personally involved and the response was outrageously inadequate,” said David Shapiro, an assistant law professor at Northwestern University who represents prisoners in lawsuits across the country. “It’s a daunting legal burden.”

While Neuberger is trying to hold past governors legally accountable, whether by trial or an out-of-court settlement, he holds the current governor morally responsible to now right their wrongs.

"This will define his career and his administration," Neuberger said of Carney. "He needs to put these kind of things behind him and whitewash the boards ... and bring some people in who can address solving the problem, as well as address the budgetary realities facing them.”

“Maybe have some less bicycle trails and more money available to properly staff the prison."

More than two weeks after prisoners and correctional officers were held hostage, families have banded together through Facebook to share what little information trickles out from the inmates previously housed in Building C.

Now those inmates have been moved to isolation cells and had their privileges cut to a minimum, according to multiple accounts. Families allege they get no visits and short phone calls in which their loved ones complain of meals consisting only of cold sandwiches and cereal without milk, as well as little access to mail, showers and medical treatment.

“They look at us like we are animals,” one inmate said. “We have to be here, and what they are doing to us is not right.”

Gravell, the spokeswoman, denied these accounts. While prisoners are still locked in their cells, the only thing they don’t have access to are educational and work programs, she said.

“It is our hope to resume normal operations as quickly as possible without compromising the safety and security of staff and inmates,” she said in an email.

All 120 inmates from Building C are under investigation, according to state officials. The department has not commented on which inmates have been interviewed or sequestered since the hostage crisis.

This information is what mothers like Connie Runyon, who founded the online support group, want to know. She has only spoken to her son, serving time for drug charges, once since the riot broke out. The little news she and dozens of other mothers, girlfriends and loved ones have received include worrisome accounts of inmate abuse.

“I’m 100 percent behind Blue Lives Matter,” she said, “So I gave my respects and my consideration to my community and ... their anger and grief in the weeks leading up to [Floyd’s] burial, but now it’s [my son’s] time.”

Tension still boils behind the prison walls. Inmates feel that they are being punished for the Vaughn takeover, and disciplinary action may have led to assaults of at least three on corrections officers – confirmed by the state – since the hostage situation.

Those who've spent time in Vaughn warn that if action isn’t taken to address inmates’ concerns, there will be another tragedy in Delaware’s prisons.

“There is no question that this will create more violence,” said Isaiah McCoy, an inmate who was released from death row last month after being found not guilty in a murder retrial.

James Green-Surman, who served nearly 12 years in the facility after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a child when he was 14, agreed.

“If DOC is worried about the officers and not the inmates' demands, this will keep happening until something gets done,” Green-Surman said. “If nothing changes, I guarantee there will be another hostage situation in a different building.

Contact Jessica Masulli Reyes at (302) 324-2777, jmreyes@delawareonline.com or Twitter @jessicamasulli. Contact Brittany Horn at (302) 324-2771, bhorn@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @brittanyhorn. Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3. Contact Karl Baker at kbaker@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2329 or on Twitter @kbaker6. Contact Scott Goss at (302) 324-2281, sgoss@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @ScottGossDel.