|
Atlanta's federal penitentiary poses threat to entire southeast, report says
[WSB-TV2] ATLANTA — A U.S. Senate Committee investigation has uncovered that security and safety lapses at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary are so bad, a government assessment called it a security risk for people across the southeast.Whistleblowers who previously worked behind the walls at that federal prison in Atlanta testified under oath on Capitol Hill to the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations. The committee is chaired by Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff. "It is now a penitentiary in name only," the facility’s former chief psychologist, Erika Ramirez, testified. Former jail administrator Terri Whitehead testified that Bureau of Prisons employees even had a nickname for the disfunction. They called it "the Atlanta Way." "The Atlanta way is far from the norm and certainly not the U.S. Bureau of Prisons way," Whitehead said. The committee’s investigation uncovered thousands of pages of internal records documenting mismanagement and wrongdoing at the facility in Southeast Atlanta dating back nine years. Among the safety concerns identified, 800 contraband cell phones were confiscated in a 2021 sweep. In 2020, more than half of the surveillance cameras did not work. 142 of 253 cameras were down, and even the ones in operation were three hours off in recording time. The investigation also uncovered that staff "intentionally damaged" the prison’s drug detection machine. It did not work for a year. "This was a major ongoing failure that presented a risk not to just inmates and staff but the city of Atlanta, state of Georgia and the whole country," Ossoff told Channel 2 Investigative reporter Justin Gray. For years, Channel 2 Action News has reported on security lapses at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. In 2018, we learned that some inmates were coming and going through holes in the fences and smuggling in contraband liquor, cigarettes and cellphones. And in 2019, we reported on an inmate even using a contraband cell phone to broadcast a Facebook livestream from his prison cell. Posted by: Besoeker 2022-07-29 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=639797 |