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| Illegal cellphones key to Lee prison riot |
| By heraldonline.com - John Monk |
| Published: 06/07/2012 |
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Cellphones played a prominent role in the Lee County prison riot that that ended in the early-morning hours Wednesday with tear gas and the release of a guard being held captive. Cellphones like the ones that inmates used to talk with officials during the riot are illegal in prison, but many inmates have them. “I’m told an average cellphone — nothing real fancy — will go for $500,” S.C. Department of Corrections spokesman Clark Newsom said. No one has any idea how many of the state’s 23,000 inmates have cellphones. But Newsom said that in the past six months, about 3,600 cellphones have been confiscated from inmates during shakedowns and searches across the Department of Corrections’ 27-prison archipelago. Although some cellphones are obviously smuggled into prisons by guards or visitors, most are thrown over the fences that surround prisons, including the sprawling 1,100-inmate maximum-security Lee Correctional Institution, one of the state’s highest-security prisons, just outside Bishopville, about 60 miles east of Columbia, where the riot took place, Newsom said. Prisoners, sometimes using cellphones, tell friends on the outside where to throw packages, Newsom said. Often, such packages contain cellphone chargers, cigarettes — also illegal in state prison — and marijuana, he said. And it’s not easy for guards to spot the “throw-over” packages. For one thing, the state prison system doesn’t have enough guards to eyeball all the open space outside a prison, Newsom said. And although prisons have “rover” vehicles that patrol the fences, someone can hide in nearby bushes or woods and wait for the patrol to leave the area, he said. No one was seriously hurt in the riot that started Tuesday night and ended shortly before 4 a.m. Wednesday when some 100 law officers wearing gas masks stormed a high-security building inside the prison where a guard had been taken hostage. “The corrections officer was a little sore, but his biggest worry seemed to be he had broke his glasses,” Newsom said. The incident took place in a prison wing called the Special Management Unit — a lockdown unit for inmate disciplinary actions. “These are the worst of the worst,” Newsom said. Read More. |
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