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Thursday, September 25, 1997

Jail panel to consider rules for lockups in wake of inmate abuse video

By MICHAEL GRACZYK / Associated Press Writer

CLUTE, Texas (AP) -- The pictures and sounds on the videotape are vivid.

Dogs barking and biting at the legs of prisoners. Inmates crawling on their bellies while being bitten by the animals or jolted by electronic stun guns. The continuous screaming by men wielding the weapons and urging the dogs.

The videotape was intended by its makers a year ago at the Brazoria County Jail as a training device. It ultimately may serve that purpose -- with the training an example of how not to do something.

The images, obtained by the Clute-based daily newspaper The Brazosport Facts, were beamed from Brazoria County, Texas, around the world last month by print and broadcast media and on the Internet.

Now the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, meeting Thursday in Austin, is poised to set up rules to ensure such conduct displayed in the Brazoria County Jail in Angleton, where Missouri inmates were being housed under a private contract, cannot be repeated.

The nine-member panel will consider the state's first effort to regulate how much force may be used at county and privately run jails to quell disturbances. No such guidelines exist.

"I think the best thing is we wanted some assurance that this was not going to happen again, whether it was to Missouri prisoners or to local prisoners in any county jail in Texas," says Wanda Cash, managing editor of the newspaper about 50 miles south of Houston.

"We felt that was vindication and affirmation of everything we had been reporting. If you can effect a change or cause good policy to be written where previously there was none, then we feel we have done a good job. There were no standards governing use of force in county jails."

Jack Crump, executive director of the Commission on Jail Standards, has branded the conduct on the tape as unprofessional and humiliating. But the establishment of rules at jails is not the lone fallout from disclosure of the video.

--Missouri canceled its $6 million annual contract with Brazoria County and transferred its 415 prisoners home.

--More than 100 full- and part-time employees hired by Capital Correctional Resources Inc., the company hired to supervise the inmates, were laid off, resulting in a $1.8 million loss to the county.

--The jail standards commission has assigned a person full-time to look into prisoner complaints, which have soared in the wake of the video.

--The FBI is investigating allegations of excessive force and brutality and possible civil rights violations related to the incident on the tape.

Inmates who complain of mistreatment while behind bars file hundreds of lawsuits in courts around the nation. This one, though, filed in federal court in Galveston by Missouri inmate James Kesler, alleged the abuse at the Brazoria County Jail could be substantiated.

There was a videotape, Kesler said in his suit.

"We knew we had to have that tape," Ms. Cash says. "There was something to look at. There was some documentation."

The sheriff said it was no big deal but refused to release a copy. The district attorney said the tape couldn't be released because of a pending investigation. County commissioners were allowed to view the tape during an executive session of the board and while some commissioners would talk about it, no one would surrender a copy of the tape.

Finally, a source cultivated by the newspaper came through, resulting in the shocking Aug. 17 story.

"I had a double reaction," Ms. Cash says of her first view of the tape.

"The brutality was not as bad as I expected. But the second reaction was absolute outrage. That's not the right word. It's difficult. I felt ashamed -- I think that's a better word -- I felt ashamed to see people being treated that way.

"It's like: ÔYou are scum and you have no rights to anything and we're going to see to it you understand that.' "

Convicted burglar Kesler, in an interview broadcast Tuesday night on the television program Dateline NBC, recalled being ordered to the floor, bitten by a dog and zapped with a stun gun.

"I didn't know what was going on," he said. "I knew it wasn't good."

Asked what the electronic prod felt like, he replied: "Felt like putting your hand on a spark plug wire.

"A couple of times they told us to say: ÔWe love Texas.' I didn't want to speak at all."

Kesler says he filed complaints with jail officials but got nowhere until his lawsuit revealed the existence of the tape.

"I'm human and I deserve to be treated like a human, not an animal," he said.