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| State officials zeroed in on ease of jamming cell doors in Geoghan probe |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 02/16/2004 |
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When the door on Cell No. 2 slid shut behind him, the inmate knew just what to do. He jammed the tracks of the sliding door with a book, nail clippers and a toothbrush, leaving him and his target alone inside - and a frustrated officer outside. That, officials say, gave Joseph Druce six precious minutes to murder one of his most notorious fellow inmates: pedophile priest John Geoghan. The jamming of the cell door is an intriguing detail in a grisly case. It's also been flagged by a three-member panel that investigated Geoghan's murder as one of several flaws in the security at the Souza-Baranowski prison. Druce, who was serving time for murdering a gay man, allegedly tied Geoghan's hands behind his back with a T-shirt, then used the stretched socks and a pillow case to strangle him. The investigative report, released two weeks ago, detailed a host of flaws in the system that contributed to the slaying - from alleged physical abuse by officers, trumped up disciplinary reports that led to Geoghan wrongly being transferred to a unit where the state's most dangerous inmates are housed, and problems with the cell doors. Public Safety Secretary Ed Flynn told The Associated Press in an interview that he doesn't know if the doors used at Souza-Baranowski are in all of the state's prisons. But he said authorities have made changes to the doors - rather than undertake a painstaking and expensive project of replacing all of them. But, the panel is recommending that the manufacturer "should be compelled to fix this design flaw" or the department must find "some fail-safe means to prevent the jamming of this track" and look into other means to get into cells in emergencies. The company that makes the sliding door systems at the prison has told investigators that the incident was isolated and no recalls or retrofits for the doors are in the works. Tom Heath, vice president of Detention Device Systems Inc. of Hayward, Calif., which manufactured the Adtec 6500 rack and pinion sliding door systems used at Souza-Baranowski, told the AP that there was nothing inherently wrong with the sliding door mechanism. The company every year sells hundreds of the devices that open, close and lock doors to state prisons and county jails nationwide. Heath blamed correction officials, saying it was prison operations - not the door - that caused the problem. |
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