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Speaker 1
2:00
members if you'll take your seats we'll go ahead and get started thank
you everybody for coming today we may have a little bit of a flexible agenda not removing things but jumping around a little bit, but I want to make sure that everybody's focused on the idea that this
committee will be discussing the events at Calico Rock and the subsequent response and the policies and procedures that led to that. We won't be delving into any other corrections issues at this time. If you'll notice, first on the agenda, we have a report from the Public Defenders Commission. We don't need to take any action on that. If you do have any questions or comments, though, I do believe that some members of the commission might be available.
Is anybody here from the Public Defenders Commission? Would
you come to the table, sir? I think we have a question from Senator Bryant. If you'd recognize yourself, and Senator Bryant, you'll be recognized for a question when you log in
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:20
there. Greg Parrish, Executive Director, Arkansas Public Defender Commission. Yes, sir, Mr. Bryant. you recognize thank
you mr. chair thank you mr. parish for being here i saw this on the agenda
and it probably came across your desk about i know we the end of the covid money kind of came at the end of the month we had a lot of your part-time attorneys that were being funded by that fund balance that were i'd say displaced they were trying to get reinstituted but there was a one-year wait period before they could take new cases you familiar with that request okay
Speaker 11
4:05
i think what you're referring to senator bryant
Speaker 16
4:08
when you're an employee with this when you're an employee recognize for
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
4:30
a point of order he just needs to identify stuff for the record he did okay i didn't recognize that all right
Speaker 16
4:36
go ahead greg parish thank you i i think to what you're referring
Speaker 11
4:41
to is when an employee leaves the state, and in this case, I'm going to say an attorney, okay, and they go back into private practice, by our statutes, when all my public defenders have conflicts or anything
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
5:01
of that nature, I can then look to the private bar to a point at a lesser rate. I cannot look those would be vendors then since they were an employee within the past year
they can't then switch over to being a vendor they've got to wait a year to become a vendor so I can appoint them privately
I think that's what you're referring to my
recollection I was kind of look through the some of the data that I extracted from from BOR was in title 19 the restrictions of employment for present and former state employees and ultimately what the i guess the public defenders commission they could not you could not hire those people back into a full-time
role because i remember we in fiscal session or in the fiscal portion of the general session we we put money into the public defenders to hire full-time permanent but those that were in the previous appointment could not we're not eligible for that that that I respectfully would
disagree if they were an employee I can bring them back as an employee in fact we've retained several of those what if they were vendors I'm sorry what
Speaker 28
6:14
if they were vendors no they would have to become a
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
6:20
vendor if I was going to appoint them privately but if they're a vendor now and we'd have to look real close at the statute because we work with opm if they become a vendor after having been an employee they may have to wait a specific period of time or alternatively they would give up that vendor status to become an employee i know that's convoluted and i'm sorry
but that's that's the way we interpret it if once they leave us i cannot appoint them unless they are a vendor but i can't do that for a year if
they were a previous employee okay so on that year window i think this the law prohibits them from even even leaving their district to assist in another area
of the state that may be short some public defenders is that i
Speaker 16
7:16
i couldn't appoint them say if they left little rock plat i could not appoint
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
7:21
them as a vendor for a year to
go to washington county or anything any place else
even though there's no typically no conflicts across the that's
Speaker 16
7:29
correct even though there's no conflict ethical conflict state law will control that do you agree with that state law is there
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
7:36
a reason that state law got implemented when it did i don't i don't know i
Speaker 11
7:42
mean i know 15 years ago it wasn't like that because i know I know of a circumstance it didn't involve me I know a friend of mine
but it got changed within the last several years okay okay I'll take the conversation
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
7:57
offline with you if you got certainly time later thank you thank you Mr. Chair thank you Senator
Speaker 10
8:02
Bryant are there any other questions you're released to go thank you thank
you okay members before we get started with this next bit I'll remind you that But we are going to kind of jump back and forth as far as the list of witnesses goes just because of some scheduling issues.
But I wanted to give my chairman, Representative Beatty, a chance to say anything if you want to. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
8:31
I just want to welcome everyone today. Thank you for coming out. And at this time, I don't have any further remarks. We'll get on
with the business at hand. Thank you. So I believe first on our list is going to be Chairman Benny Magnus, if we could
get him into the room. Okay, he's on his way. When he gets going, we'll get that. I think while we're waiting
on him, I think everybody here is just interested in making
sure that the folks that we represent are afforded the highest degree of security possible and so whatever questions that need to be answered or issues that need to be dealt with, we're looking to find those out. Mr. Chairman, would you come up to the table, please, and if you would introduce yourself, We'll recognize you, and then if you have an opening statement, you'd be welcome to give that, and then we'll open the floor up for any
Benny Magnus
Unverified
9:24
questions. Is the mic on? Yes. Okay. My name is Benny Magnus.
Speaker 46
9:29
I'm the Arkansas Board of Corrections serving as chairman at this
time. Thank you, Chairman Magnus. Do you have an opening statement or anything that
Speaker 46
9:41
you'd like to say before we open it up for questions? No, other than welcome the questions about the unfortunate incident we had at North Central. North Central had been there for 35 years, never had a pass escape outside the unit, coming from inside the unit. So a lot of the staff members were devastated when that incident happened because they had a pretty good record.
Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Are there any members that have questions? senator love is that you trying to be recognized you'd like that sucker up
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
10:15
and i'll light it up for you you're recognized well if you want to
recognize me that's fine all right uh thank you mr chair um chairman magnus was there any employees involved
Speaker 46
10:27
in this in this incident involved in the incident far as helping mr uh uh harden no
Speaker 55
10:34
not that we can tell in in our
interviews or any other um evidence we have been able to turn up so far no
Speaker 55
10:46
no okay other than not following policy and allowing the inmate out on the kitchen dock unsupervised or um letting a gate open from the sally port but forest being a part
Speaker 46
11:00
of the escape with mr harden no can't find anything all right now
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
11:07
mr magnus let's let's clarify some
things you said that that there was some policy violated yes as
it relates as it related to employees some of the what employees
Speaker 55
11:21
had done um the employee that was in the kitchen uh the the kitchen supervisor, allowed Mr. Harden to go outside the kitchen and work on the back dock without being supervised, which is against policy. Then the guy in the tower that let him through the gate was,
you don't open that gate for anybody or anything um when there's not a ground person there to verify who it is wanting to uh exit the prison and two policies were violated there and those two employees have been terminated okay so the employees
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
12:07
were terminated yes sir as it relates
to those so um so the other other employees are Are they reviewing those policies to ensure that nothing like this happens again?
I mean, well, I'll tell you what. You've been chairman for a
Speaker 68
12:27
while. Has anything like this ever happened before? Well, I
Speaker 55
12:32
think every time you have an escape, you learn from it and try to fill any kind of voids in the policy that might be addressed. And the, you know, like, for example, not having a second man out on weekends during visitation, we could either put somebody out there or find some electronic method to notify the captain or someone inside the prison
that that, even the first gate, has been opened. But the escape
Speaker 70
13:09
itself is pretty clearly that all the stars
Speaker 55
13:15
somewhat had to line up for Hardin and two employees violated policy that allowed this to happen. The policies were in place. This should not have happened.
Speaker 70
13:30
And it was human error on their part that allowed it to
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
13:36
take place. okay but you did terminate those employees that were found to have violated these policies
yes okay all right thank you mr chair senator
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
13:50
gilmore you're recognized thank you mr chair mr chairman magnus thank you for being here
unfortunate circumstances clearly i mean i know nobody wanted this to happen but i appreciate you being here and being
willing to to speak to it um because again it's as you understand it's a it's a big issue and it's important to arkansans and and certainly plays into the whole discussion that we're we're having about corrections in general um so i i think a question my first question for you is regarding notification when when were you notified or the board
Speaker 79
14:30
notified of the escape uh i can only uh talk on my
Speaker 55
14:35
behalf really because um i know that night when it started i got started
getting phone calls and i think i was on the phone with somebody else or something but anyway um the dog kennel man from calico rock tried to get a hold of me and that's usually not not good and he was trying to get a hold of me not because i'm chairman because i fly the helicopter for the baxter county sheriff's office and he was wanting uh to see if i could fly the weather was pretty iffy um but before i uh and i noticed then sherry gray was trying to the board administrator was
trying to get a hold of me and i uh talked to dexter pain is the first person i as i remember that got a hold of me and told me i think then uh i called mr lively told him i knew about it i was checking the weather and miss gray was continually trying to get a hold of me and i was trying to check weather and and talk to other people but but uh so so just to recap the
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
15:39
first person that reached out was the the man that oversees the kennels and then you're i didn't talk to him
Speaker 82
15:48
But he reached out. Yeah, he reached out to me.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
15:51
All right, and then Ms. Gray,
Speaker 55
15:54
who's the board's secretary. Ms. Gray, and then Mr. Payne. But Mr. Payne
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
15:59
got a hold of me. Okay, and
Speaker 55
16:05
what time roughly was that? Do you remember? Four something, 4-8, 4-13,
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
16:10
4-15, something like that. Okay, so about 4-15, 4-30? Yeah. Okay. I appreciate that.
And then shifting to, if I may, Mr. Chair, follow up, uh, shifting to,
you mentioned two employees that this happens or allowed this to happen. Right. And I think those two employees have been terminated as I understand. Yes, sir. Okay. And when did that happen? Were they terminated shortly after, or I know this is able
Speaker 55
16:44
to, you'll have to check with the warden to make sure that when he terminated them. I checked a couple times to see if they had been terminated. Normally because of the escape maybe information they might be given
they're not normally discipline is not followed out until the inmate is brought back in custody in case there's something they forgot i just don't know when warden uh terminate them we we can ask him that question at some
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
17:15
point i appreciate that and then final question i'll get back in the queue so others have an opportunity uh mr chair
uh how many times i don't know in the course of
looking at cameras or whatever else how many times had he been allowed to go out on the loading
dock i can't answer that question it was
Speaker 98
17:42
the kitchen loading dock right just so we're understanding okay
Speaker 55
17:45
yeah i can't answer that question how many times uh normally the uh uh department of corrections does a critical incident review on all this and we get a lot more detailed information at that time uh we have not they have not completed that in my understanding uh the critical incident review and so i'm i know that's coming
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
18:05
okay and how long does that usually take to do that they
Speaker 55
18:14
will um in a case like this i'd say that uh mr pain will uh set the committee i'd say within the next uh 25 30 that's up to him but there will be
Speaker 46
18:27
a critical incident review done and you said that's
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
18:31
up to mr pain so we can on timing we can we can ask him that question okay
Speaker 70
18:37
um and what now it's not that's that's usually separate from an internal or internal affairs investigation okay it's it's separate from that and and i guess and i promise this
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
18:47
is my final and i get back in the queue do you know what time the inmate was noticed misting i
think or what time he was buzzed through i mean do you
Speaker 55
19:02
have any of those times uh it's only time of the uh of the internal affairs report but i don't have that with me but i think that he somewhere around
Speaker 46
19:11
three o'clock is when um they put him out that they could not find him on the uh uh the kitchen doc okay and and then they've tried to find him of course inside and and then it didn't show up okay thank you chairman magnus i'm going to
Chair
Unverified
19:33
follow up just a little bit on oh hey mr badey how are you sir
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
19:43
just follow up a little bit on on what senator gilmore uh asked you i specifically want to ask for your recollection of the events of May 25th when Hardin left the prison or was released from the prison, your recollection of the events of that day from the time you were notified until we notified local authorities, state police, notified everyone. I want your recollection, and you tell me and the committee
what you remember about the events of that day and then also i would like you to be specific with any decisions or directives or or your involvement from that point on once you were notified the decisions as chairman of the board of corrections any orders or directives that you gave to those on the ground and how long did it take you so just kind of your memory of what went on that on that day that you have knowledge of i'm not asking for specifics that we can get through
a report or an internal report but just what you recall from that day and but specifically any orders or directives that
Speaker 46
20:59
you gave to staff or folks on the ground i um after i received the call i
Speaker 55
21:07
started checking the weather because that was the request that was given
Speaker 46
21:14
to me could I fly um the weather was uh really really questionable to be flying um but I went ahead and went to uh the site and started searching with the helicopter and
the weather kept deteriorating and
Speaker 55
21:31
so it's at one point we also had a electrical problem in the helicopter so I made the determination to cancel the flight I came back to Baxter County Sheriff's House hangar and then after putting the helicopter back up i drove to the command center and in the command center when i was there um uh it's appeared to me
um that um most everybody that baxter county had officers there at i think i arrived at the command center somewhere around seven i think it's in the documentation
Speaker 118
22:21
what time i arrived but I'm going to guess somewhere around
Speaker 55
22:26
7, and I stayed about not in the command center. I went out and looked at some areas like around Moxigan Creek
because Moxigan Creek was flowing. It would have been nobody could have crossed it. It was flowing that high, and I made a few passes by Moxigan Creek, went up to a couple of roadblocks see where the roadblocks were see how what staff they had and then i went back to the command center and stayed for a while and then i went i went home about
Speaker 119
23:05
two in a morning i know that uh um the warden was there um
Speaker 46
23:15
uh deputy director strong got there when i was there we went over the escape and some
Speaker 55
23:22
of the issues where the dogs ran and where i flew the helicopter if i'd seen anything and uh some of that was given to strong to bring him up to date but i wasn't the only one it was warden and
Speaker 121
23:41
other people that had been involved in there in the command center operating it and just
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
23:50
one follow-up you keep mentioning the command center
so i'm going to ask this question who was actually in charge and who was who was the the person in
Speaker 55
24:02
charge at the command center normally the warden is until a higher ranking officer gets there like
Speaker 46
24:09
deputy strong uh like that and they'll uh to give you a kind of a idea there there's a room with a uh we'll have uh all the maps and the area where the dog teams
Speaker 55
24:23
tracked where uh aircraft flew where all the roadblocks are all the perimeter and it'll all be on a big screen inside one room and there'll be several uh adc employees in there um taking notes to who's coming and going where who why don't what roadblocks and what agency they're with and whatever and then then right outside the the main uh room there'll be a usually a table there for all the different agencies to have their command staff there whether it's a sergeant
for the state police or whether it's the sheriff of of baxter county whether it's sometimes it takes a little bit of i think the second day the u.s marshals got there or some of their representation and srt from uh our probation pro but all those command even the game and fish that is there will be sitting normally at that table on the outside of the big room to work with their staff what is participating
Speaker 46
25:32
in in the uh in the manhunt okay well i'm going
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
25:38
to ask that question one more time and and maybe
try to be a little clearer who was in control and who was the leader in that command center during this escape. Not normally or usually, because there's not a normal or usual in this. This is the first escape that I've seen since I've been in the legislature for five years. So who was in control at the command center, and could you be more specific?
Speaker 121
26:11
Warden Hurst. Warden Hurst was? Gordon Hurst was in control of the command center. All right.
Chair
Unverified
26:16
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Rose, you're recognized. Thank you,
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
26:26
Mr. Chairman. Chairman Magnus over here, thank you for joining us today. I had a
couple of kind of preliminary questions, Mr. Chair, if you allow me. You had mentioned that there was discovery of how the individual was able to get outside the kitchen and through a gate
and that those two employees had been terminated
for violating policy. With that in mind, I was under the impression that a component
of his escape was a disguise that allowed him to look like security personnel or prison staff. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Have you done some type of an independent review or an outside review that has determined how he was able
to procure a disguise, put it on,
and have all of that take place
Speaker 55
27:18
without any notice? A few things that I can say that I've seen and a couple things that I was told. I want to make sure I make that clear. It was my understanding that he had had became available to him a black marker, regular black marker and that's how he uh died his clothes to make it look dark i did actually see
the uh the little badge that he made out of a soup can uh top and um i actually physically seen that and also of course seen his uh id that he lost in the woods but those are the items i've seen and but the one how he got it dark i can
Speaker 139
28:04
only assume as i was told that he used a magic marker to
Speaker 141
28:11
darken his clothes is it correct that he had a tactical vest no
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
28:16
i don't think so okay so i'll
go back to has there been any type of independent review
Speaker 79
28:26
to determine that i think that um i uh the internal affairs report i haven't
Speaker 55
28:32
read that in there that i know of i know that when we do a critical incident review that will be uh found i also i'm not sure but um i think that what they're talking about was a um
Speaker 70
28:50
a vest I'm not sure I haven't seen anything on the vest Smith follow-up thank you so
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
29:02
with a couple of the things that you had said previously that it was discovered a
couple employees did not follow procedures protocols that led to this additionally he was able to to manufacture or procure a disguise that enabled his escape and there are some components of that
that you're not sure of. I asked about an independent review. You mentioned a couple of internal reviews or DOC reviews. My question is what is being done to ensure that this cannot happen again you had said earlier that this was perhaps the stars aligning that led to this i don't think that's an official designation for why the prison break took place so so my question i'll
phrase it again is what is being done to ensure that it can't happen again and will there be
Speaker 55
30:04
an independent review we always do a review of every incident similar to this and uh okay i want when you're dealing with humans you can only do so many policies and if they're going to be they're not going to follow them um then something like this is going to happen now if you ask me is there
anything to do to try to prevent it and I think that's what you're asking I feel like that we uh we are going to have to keep a second person on that back gate at all time or come up with some electronic device that will notify the captain inside that that gate has been open somebody wonder why the gate need to be open well it's for emergency purposes let an ambulance in whatever it may be it still needs to be open and but it has to be someone either either back there
that's on the ground or we have to have some kind of device that will let the captain and the warden know that that gate
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
31:13
has been activated i'll hop out of the queue after this one mr
chairman should there be or shouldn't there be already in place some type of an inventory check or a review of a prisoner's quarters cell to determine that they don't have contraband or
any appropriate items that could be used as a disguise or any other form of assistance in an escape?
Speaker 125
31:42
We do searching for contraband constantly all the time. And, uh, so, um, that is already been done at every unit we have at all times to try to make sure there's not contraband for his drugs or weapons or something to
Benny Magnus
Unverified
32:05
allow them to escape. It's, it's, it's part of the, what they
do. It's, uh, all right. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman. I'll jump back in.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
32:24
Thank you, representative Rose, Senator Dees. You're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you,
Mr. Magnus. I've gotten a few emails from folks concerned. Um, people asking me, uh, are we safe? Are, are our correctional facilities secure and i i understand there's there's some concern and this
rightfully so got a lot of publicity and and people are have concerns but one email caught me off guard a bit because i didn't know the answer and and they asked a question about why are we sending some of the worst of the worst offenders to facilities that you described that we have policies in place where limited supervision is possible for for murders and rapists and and repeat offenders so how would you respond to that what why
do we have criminals like mr. Hardin even
Speaker 46
33:22
at this facility altogether mr. Hardin North Central used to be what we call a parent unit and a parent unit is It's one of the few units that when people come out of diagnostic, they go to
Speaker 55
33:37
what we call their parent unit, sometimes for just 60 days, sometimes longer. Mr. Hardin, when he first came to us, he was, yes, it was a first-degree murder, but he had only 30 years.
so our classification system said that he could actually go at that time to north central he was there two years and then he got the charge of rape mr harden prison records did not show So anything in his prison record that said he could not be at North Central because he had never had a disciplinary, we do classifications every year.
That's one thing I'd like to look at, see when the last classification he had that said he could still be there. but at the time he was placed there he met the criteria under our classification system for him to be at north central
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
34:47
are there any other murderers or rapists at that facility today yes and
so there's other well the highlighted offenders that have i always want to make sure abilities to kitchen docks and there's other other inmates that have that same capacity
Speaker 55
35:04
Well, I want to make sure I never want to answer the question as truthful as I can. You asked me if there was any murderers there, and I do know there is some, at least one or two murderers at Calico right now. I know there's sex offenders there, but I don't know if there is rapists there that are forcibly raped in the same sense that Hardin did to his victim. but I do know there is sex offenders there and there is a murderer or multiple murderers there
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
35:42
at this time. And then trying to piece back what you said
earlier that this is extremely rare and it does sound rare. I don't think we have a lot of people escaping, but you had said that this was some errors and stars aligning and that very rare. So you believe the policies and
procedures are correct we just didn't have people following them is that is that fair or do our policies and procedures need to be changed what what i would
Speaker 55
36:12
is 20 some odd years being on the board of corrections every time we've had an escape and our policies were not followed or failed um we've learned something from it and we've tightened the the policy up or made changes as i just said possibly recommending some kind of notification that that gate is going to be open um you know um it's easy to sit there and say
Speaker 161
36:47
that we'll always have a second man back there but there could be something arise like a riot or whatever inside the
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
36:58
ground needs to go into the unit who's responsible for the policy and procedure
Speaker 55
37:03
review and adoption? The adoption of policies review will come either to the board or
Speaker 89
37:09
to Mr. Payne. So the Board of Corrections is responsible for all boards and policies and procedures? And the secretary, Ms. Lindsay, Ms. Wallace.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
37:18
And I think I'll probably have more questions, but has anybody
sent any apology to the victims of Mr. Hardin's? crimes that you're aware of. Not that I'm aware of.
Thank you. Thank you Senator Dease, Senator Johnson, Mark Blake
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
37:46
Johnson you're recognized. Thank you chairman for being here. So in our max I'm assuming this is not what is
considered a maximum security prison is
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
38:00
medium security prison so in a maximum security prison how how are those inmates that are equivalent with him with rapists and murderers how are they handled do they get to go into the general population do Do they get to do assigned duties in the kitchen areas?
And also, in this medium security,
Speaker 179
38:30
do they have their own wing to be in? No,
Speaker 55
38:39
are assigned duties, like in the kitchen or in the laundry, whatever, that may be cleaning the floors, whatever, whether it's a maximum security unit or a medium security unit.
Inmates do the kitchen, the food, the whatever. So it wouldn't make a difference in that sense what level of security facility as inmates are still doing the day-to-day running of the prison. And so,
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
39:16
I mean, just as a lay person, a citizen, and sitting where I sit, I think could you not do that with the other inmates that are in the prison
that are not at a maximum level or that are not murderers or rapists? I mean, do you not have those other inmates do
Speaker 118
39:44
those duties? Yes, sir. Again, there is policies that have followed
Speaker 46
39:51
that whether they're in there for homicide or what they're in there
Speaker 55
39:57
for, they should not be able to reach the facility and get out into the public.
And the policies are there in place for this not to happen. i can't stress any more than that that you had two people unfortunately if either one of them would have said no if any of them would have stopped mr hardin hadn't got out but we have we have people that come to us that are are convicted of drugs let's say
there are constant problem every day that uh behavioral problems and we have people there that are uh convicted of a homicide that work in different parts of the prison and never give any the staff any trouble whatsoever so that's why you have a classification system That's the reason that we have just, the board had just voted to study our classification system.
It's part of Protect Arkansas, and so we're re-looking at our classification system and see if there's a better, something better or different that we can use. but i think it's hard to sit here and testify and tell you that that we shouldn't have somebody that's convicted of a homicide working in the kitchen because there is all the time
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
41:53
and we don't have a problem with it well when i was uh whenever i was giving my parents problems the ones that give the problems would be the ones that work the most that's how that's what the dad's theory was that's uh i guess that's what my mine would be also well they stopped letting us do that several years ago yeah it's just a voluntary mandate so i appreciate it thank you thank you senator johnson members
uh in the sense of time i want to remind everybody that we do have
Seven or eight other witnesses to hear from so I want to make sure you have time to answer all get your all of your questions answered If you feel like this is the place it needs to be asked this witness of the chairman Please do so, but we all will be hearing from the warden next and then the director of the department And so we'll keep you keep going
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
42:52
now senator Gilmore Thank you, and I actually appreciate you bringing up the classification
That was a big component of the PROTECT Act because it matters where we house people. It matters who they're housed with. It matters that we understand and have risk needs assessments. These are things that we've had conversations on in the recidivism task force, of which you participated, and I appreciate that. These are all things that need to be looked at, and I think these are a lot of things that we've talked about before And I think that are still in limbo with as regards some of the risk needs assessment.
And I don't know when the last time that was looked at from this particular inmate standpoint. But I think I do think that it is important that we get that handled and addressed. My question to you on on this, we we keep talking about the two people and clearly there was a failure of these two individuals. they've been fired appropriate action I think taken but do we believe that this was more systemic than two people because I'm trying to and I'll elaborate and you can answer because if a if
if an inmate has gotten a marker to dye some clothing one would stand to reason that probably he's got ink on his hands how did he get the clothing did he sew it did he put it together how did he do that was there was there an inspection of his of his particular you know cell and bunk i just from my standpoint i have a hard time and and i hear what you're saying and i understand that there are two people certainly to be blamed in this regard but i think that
there needs to be a more comprehensive look at this because i mean what are your thoughts do you do you think it's just more than
Speaker 46
44:48
two people or do you think the two people is it I think that it's a staff day in and day out do an unbelievably great job the
Benny Magnus
Unverified
45:00
but a lot of not north central a lot of places are overworked
Speaker 55
45:07
they don't get to do some of the checks they probably I don't say need to because, I mean, if a T-shirt comes up missing, that was his T-shirt. So that was his T-shirt he blackened. So, no, they're not going to go in there and try to find whether he has three T-shirts or two. They're trying to find contraband and other weapons
Speaker 70
45:39
that they can use on other inmates and staff.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
45:43
Okay. Well, I think my final question, I'll move on because I know for a second time we need to move on. When did
Speaker 119
45:53
y'all take the vote on the classification? Before or after the escape?
Speaker 196
45:58
No, no, no, it was before escape. It was an in-person meeting, if I remember correctly, before the escape. Okay.
Speaker 119
46:12
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. mr chairman if it's one thing i i
Speaker 55
46:18
was taught to when i testify only answer the questions
that is asked of me absolutely i'm going to break my own rule i want to tell you all something and i'm going to make it because you asked me about who was running the uh the command post right over the last 50 years i've been involved in law enforcement last 35 years i've flown a helicopter i probably fly four to five manhunts a year not just in arkansas but in missouri and everything
every place most generally it's all sheriff's departments police departments other very seldom outside the state of Arkansas is at a corrections. I've probably been on every escape corrections had in Arkansas. We run them as tight ship as they can and will be, and all the information and the guidelines and protocols to run that
or be there and uh i didn't see any difference in that
Speaker 46
47:36
night when i walked into the command post and i've walked into many others and that's
all i have to say mr chairman i appreciate that so by your own admission you've oh are you you done yes you don't want to keep
answering questions by your own admission you've had a lot of experience with escapes so were you in the command post or
were you flying a helicopter no when it
Speaker 55
48:02
helicopter until the weather got uh when i quit flying i had a hundred and uh like 50 some
Benny Magnus
Unverified
48:12
odd feet between the treetops and the clouds i just couldn't stay and i probably um we also had electrical
issue that happened so i had to go back
so and then you said the warden was running
Speaker 46
48:26
the response team do you have an emergency response director yes yeah emergency preparedness and he he
Speaker 55
48:31
was there at some point now each unit has one but they're also the main one for the
agency I don't know what time he got there Mr. Shores but I know when Mr. Strong got there that night because i was i was there in the command center when he walked in okay senator dismay and i think i'll
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
48:57
be brief because i think you've answered one of the questions and that is were you satisfied with you know the
responsiveness that the agency provided and satisfied with actual protocols and procedures that were in place everything that i've seen in the past
Speaker 46
49:14
or then was the same and being followed the same. Okay.
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
49:18
And then I think that's good to know and understand that that's the position.
I find in life that rarely, if ever, stars align. Things always happen because of intention by someone. I mean, you kind of alluded to it, I think, in a little bit. You said it is what they do in regards to the inmates, and I guess trying to find a path out or whatever it may be. it is what they do which means we should expect it right um and so and knowing that we expect it
and by the way the devil in the ozarks wasn't just a murderer rapist he was also an ex-law law enforcement officer which i think holds him to a much higher level of deceit and whatever you want to say about that individual uh but so he was a little bit more than just a murderer and a rapist but my question would be what do y'all do how often do you assess risk and weaknesses at a facility in regards to the facility as a whole I would like for you to
Speaker 55
50:25
ask Dexter Payne that I know through the years I mean what is the board's policy of a review that that I can't tell you I know that we we go through escape procedures at each unit several
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
50:39
times a year but how often do you assess the facility so for instance this gate i mean in the modern world to think that there's not a sensor on a gate when it opens and closes at a corrections facility seems almost because unheard of i mean it's a gate on a corrections facility
and there's only so many points of access to a corrections facility there's two okay so there's Two points of entry, and they don't have
Speaker 218
51:08
a sensor on them. Two gates. There's two gates on that back gate. There's not one. He didn't have to pop
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
51:14
just one gate. He had to pop both gates. Okay, but there's not a sensor. How many points of entry? I don't want you to get into that. All right, but as far
as how – but you don't know how often we're assessing a site as far as weaknesses and opportunities and that
Speaker 125
51:28
sort of thing. I know they go through drills, escape drills, several times a year
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
51:33
because I actually get called to come and fly for it. Well, I'm not asking about that. I'm asking about the facility itself. You
know, we have all these different facilities that have their own weaknesses and, you know, points of concern and that sort of thing. And because these inmates, because what they do is trying to figure out how to leave, you know, they're continuously evaluating those. My question is, are we doing the same thing? Yes.
Speaker 125
52:03
I think you'll find when you interview Dexter Payne or Randy Shores, they'll be able to best answer that question.
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
52:10
But it's not board policy that these happen on any type of time frame. It's up to the individual leader of that
Speaker 125
52:17
facility? No, I think they'll be in policy that they have to do it every so often. And they're going to say what you're asking is review, and I'm saying it's an escape trail to go over all their policies and procedures to see if there's anything there
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
52:33
that they need to do. But all the potential routes, the escape points, the, you know,
hey, there's high water at this, there's, you know, all those things are already mapped out and everybody has that on hand when they're sitting in that room deliberating and where they need to go and where they need to send manpower for an escape. Absolutely. Okay, and so that's a written type thing that you all have in place
Speaker 125
53:01
we're going to be able to take a look at that. But, you know, notifying each agency, whether it be Israel County, Baxter County, any other counties around, state police,
there will be a notification there and a procedure to notify them and document the time they're notified. I'll ask – I mean, I'm not going
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
53:22
to ask you because I don't think you know the answer, and that's okay. I mean, part of these questions I get. I was more concerned about whether or not you had a policy in place requiring review of the risk and assess risk of a particular facility. So thank you.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
53:41
Senator Clark, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. the i'm going to follow up on senator dee's questioning the when at my company uh when things go wrong and they go wrong too often it should be perfect uh but when things go wrong we have meetings and we find out if it's policy it's rarely policy policy is usually right but
sometimes we find a policy issue we find something that we're doing it this way and there's there's something else that we that we should be doing that we're not but more often than not it comes down to not following policy uh and unlike i've heard here that there's two people i've had as many as four that if they each one had followed policy which they knew that the whole big thing wouldn't have happened so what have y'all discovered as far as policy that needs to be
changed and i understand you're the board but down i'm assuming everybody's reporting back up to the board what have we discovered as far as policy that needs to be changed
Speaker 55
55:03
i want to make sure that my opinion from looking at what i see uh that at some point that we need define as mr domain uh senator dismayne says you know it's you know in this day and time there probably is something that will alert uh the captain in charge the duty warden on in charge
that that gate has been opened or we are just going to have to insist a second person to be at that gate if the second person on the ground would have been there even as lax as the employee was in the tower that could not and would not happen even when it was against policy for let the inmate work on the back porch of the kitchen in the back dock would not have happened
if there would have been a second man on that ground. So it's got to be one of the two. You've got to find some way to assure that that back gate is opened, that somebody inside is alerted and there's a time lapse before he can get out there
Speaker 139
56:19
and check, or it has to be a second person there, one of the two.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
56:26
Okay, so you have policy that needs to be changed, or at least in your view, needs to be changed. So let's come back down to following policy. I've got a great staff, and I think they do a superior job to other people that compete with us in what we do. But still, like I said, we've had as many as four people not follow policy in order to have the problem that we had. uh that is systemic in my company great people but that's systemic if i got four people who
didn't follow policy that's not just the four people that that's a problem beyond that so if you've got two is that
Speaker 118
57:17
not systemic no sir i don't believe so you don't think there's more I
Speaker 55
57:23
think the problem a lot of times working the corrections people staff get complacent that on dealing with inmates Mr. Hardin for example had never had a disciplinary
never had one so they get to thinking they're like um it's either that they get complacent dealing with them or they're lazy one of the two and and this should not have happened if either one of those would have done their job either one of is it extemic from the rest of the staff at north central uh you can't convince me that
there's no way they're dedicated people up there just like we have in every facility listen i don't know senator dismayne was saying it a while ago but i was taught by an old-time sheriff exactly what senator dismayne was telling me saying that you're worried about your car payments you're worried about your kids you're worried about this you're worried about that only thing an inmate's concerned about is trying to get out that's it but i can tell you that anytime you start not following policy every escape we ever had in
adc is because the policies were there and they didn't not follow them the 2009 escape where two of them walked out with uniforms that they made in the garment factory it's because the captain didn't stay at
Speaker 161
59:04
the door like he's supposed to if you have 15 people come to work you have 15 leave you don't have 17 but the bottom line is the captain didn't stay up there to count them
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
59:19
i think you complacency is exactly the right word that's what i find in my company
and again i'm not insulting the people that are working i have a great staff but complacency that we don't think the policies are necessary and when i say that systemic if you got two people who happen to be in as you said the stars come together that they both didn't do the job they were supposed to do yet knowing what that job is i think complacency is such a natural thing in
humans that i'd be interested to find out from others why it's not systemic does that make sense it it
Speaker 55
1:00:05
makes sense and i understand the question i really do is there more people
Speaker 125
1:00:12
like that our staff most generally is trained to follow policy
Speaker 55
1:00:18
period and they do a unbelievably good job on most days why this happened you know you got to look at it it you're calling extemic and
i get what you're saying but we had two that
Speaker 161
1:00:30
day if either one of them would have been ballroom policy i agree that happened and that's why i'm calling and there are two different types one was a kitchen staff employee not a security employee and the other was
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:00:46
a security employee And the reason I'm saying systemic, and it may be in all security places, is because I don't think anybody would have predicted that those two wouldn't have followed policy.
And if you can't predict those two, then you can't possibly predict that there's not more. And then that comes back to within the system. How do we change that? How do we keep people from being complacent? Wouldn't you agree? Yes.
Thank you. okay members i've got three more in the queue and then we're going to move
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:01:26
on representative rose you're recognized thank you mr chairman i know i should have quit chairman magnus you you had said earlier in your testimony that we run as tight a ship as can
i'm i'm speculating uh your perspective is that's that's you saying that That's your opinion, correct? Yes, sir. And you're saying that before
critical incident review has taken place. Is that
correct? The critical incident review has not taken place yet. When the critical incident review is
Speaker 55
1:01:57
given to me, I will read it like everything else. All right, but it hasn't happened yet. But the bottom line is, plain and simple, if two people hadn't, this doesn't,
Speaker 125
1:02:08
if they hadn't violated policy, we wouldn't be here today.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:02:14
It's plain and simple. So I just wanted to go over your words and just
end with this question I told the chairman I would be brief. Without an independent outside review, audit, evaluation, or any other kind, we're left with the determination that we run a ship as tight as we can. you had two individuals that were terminated and what took place was that there was insecurity at a kitchen back doors gates disguises were created transported there was lack of verification
nobody caught this on security cameras why it happened in the cells and the supplies were available do you think that from an outside independent review that they would say that's as tight a ship as possible i think that if they if you're
Speaker 55
1:03:08
way you said it it doesn't seem to be but i can tell you i'm not saying it i'm just repeating your words back to you listen when we get our critical uh review incident report back you'll see how
detailed it is and you'll see that we've done this several times independent reviews the board done a
Speaker 125
1:03:31
review when we've had escape because we didn't want the agency doing it it I can tell you that my years
Speaker 55
1:03:42
of experience is you need to let the critical incident review finish and then see what's in it and I right now don't feel like there'll be a whole lot in it
that would change any policy or any other concern except what I said about preventing some form of preventing that back gate being opened without someone else being out there whether it's a notification of the captain if we call for an ambulance and it has to come through the back gate the
Speaker 161
1:04:17
captain goes out there to let it in they just don't pop the gate let them the ambulance in so what i'm trying to say is yes they in this incident what we will learn from it is that we
Speaker 55
1:04:36
cannot count on two people doing their job so the gate being the last part of security will need to be someone some way secured
Speaker 256
1:04:51
differently where it doesn't happen again. All right
Speaker 258
1:04:57
thank you thank you Mr. Chairman. Senator Deese.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:05:01
Thank you chair and i'll be quick um the escape
happened on may 25th correct yes sir and um i heard you
say earlier that y'all had met and voted before on inmate assessment yes before that escape i just don't quite understand because democrat gazette reported that that topic was was passed over in committee meeting in april can i can i ask uh miss gray our assistant i i thought we passed it but it does
Speaker 161
1:05:32
say you passed over you did not vote on it did we
Speaker 61
1:05:42
i thought we had the agenda i i'm not you know
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:05:50
you did vote on it was after the escape though It was May 29th, is the records I see on the agenda. Is that correct? Okay.
Speaker 161
1:06:02
We can check. That's the report I'm looking at. I mean, I'm not trying to say. I know that it wasn't. This
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:06:10
is not a gotcha. It's just to be clear that we are looking at after actions, after the escape.
Speaker 55
1:06:16
And I'm glad we are looking at it. But I do want it to be clear. It wasn't voted on because of the escape. Sure. Because we hadn't done an instant review report yet. We voted on it for two reasons. For Van Ayer, the people that's doing the new prison, has asked for a new classification, plus it's part of the law. And so if you're saying we didn't vote on it until the 29th, you're probably right. I thought we'd vote on it before. That goes to show I don't remember everything correctly.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:06:47
No, you're fine. It's hard to
remember at all. But help me with this, with responsibility from the time that an inmate escapes, who takes authority? Is the Department of Corrections,
is the facility itself, the warden, is the U.S. Marshal, who actually
Speaker 125
1:07:09
has authority once an inmate leaves the facility? The warden of that facility, too, we
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:07:17
have a higher-ranking correction official there. so the warden is the still responsible for the for the finding the
Speaker 55
1:07:25
manhunt of the command center
and getting everything um roadblock set up whatever but there's a set of protocol books that tell them them every step they do in that manhunt and what to do um so and there's like at calico it's pretty obvious there's preconceived um where roadblocks need to be set up one of them would be at calico one of them be at moxican creek it's pretty you
know not far from the unit but it there's there's um natural barriers let's say that would make it logical to have your first set of perimeter set up at Moxon Creek in this case and Calico Rock okay and
Speaker 256
1:08:20
then last one I'll be done do you think there's
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:08:24
any responsibility with the Board of Corrections on on the escape any responsibility for the board
needs to do something anything different or should
Speaker 125
1:08:35
have done different I think we should when we get the review incident review done we should read it we should talk to staff and to the secretary to see anything that we can help do or pass that would make it not
Speaker 55
1:08:52
happen again we've done the same thing unfortunately with a lot of other escapes you know we don't no longer do our own uniform sewing we don't do it anymore because that's how that happened they brought a piece in at a time
Speaker 161
1:09:07
so that was a recommendation from staff and that's a policy that the board put in so this one will be handled no differently when
Speaker 55
1:09:19
the incident review is done i'm sure staff will come to us with any kind of recommendations and uh they're always pretty logical thank you representative richmond thank you mr. chair very quickly
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
1:09:42
did the two individuals that ultimately got fired did they have immediate supervisor a common immediate supervisor yes a lieutenant is
Speaker 55
1:09:54
my understanding yes what disciplinary action did he receive?
Speaker 125
1:10:01
He did not receive any disciplinary action because he he was part of the trying to find uh what happened the escape and he wasn't notified until one
Speaker 55
1:10:13
of those the I think it was
the food service guys that called him and said hey I I let Harden out on the back dock I went out there he's not there so then him and the supervisor made a search they even called the guy in the tower and the guy in the tower says
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
1:10:34
i hadn't seen him well you were talking about complacency if he's a supervisor or immediate supervisor and then the supervisor himself you know complacency is the number one killer on the battlefield it's it causes more problems than
what most people will ever recognize but the way you get around that is with good leadership good supervision to make sure people are doing those things they're supposed to be doing in other words why is this guy on the on the dock why is this guy why don't we have two people at the gate so i don't really understand why there wasn't some kind of disciplinary letter or something else put in there and i only say that because you know hindsight's 2020 there's no reason to go back and do it but in the future your standard operating procedures or whatever else you may have, should have some actual supervision that you go around and you check
on your people and you make sure that they're doing their job properly and look for those kind of complacency
Speaker 125
1:11:30
issues. Would you not agree with that? Well, sir, during the time
Speaker 55
1:11:35
of the escape, in fact, even after the escape, visitation was going on. That is a manpower drain for visitation, and
Speaker 125
1:11:44
in fact, when they declared an escape, they wouldn't let the families have visited the inmates.
Speaker 55
1:11:54
They couldn't let them leave until they cleared everything out and got enough staff there to take care of it. But so the staff and the lieutenant probably, and
Speaker 125
1:12:09
the captain, was probably very busy with trying to maintain security with the
Speaker 55
1:12:15
visitation, make sure no contraband, no this, no that. Well, I appreciate that. But are you telling
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
1:12:21
me that this is the only time or the first time
that that particular inmate had access to the back dock or something else? Well, see, that's what I'm saying is that he probably had been out there before, probably on several occasions, and the supervisor, if they're doing something other than just sitting on there doing other things, I know they're busy. I understand everybody's busy. But if you have a certain responsibility for individuals and how they perform their duties, well, that's part of your job too.
And that's what I'm getting to, and I think that maybe some emphasis on training and stuff like that in the future might help correct that. I'm not interested in guilt or anything else. I'm looking to the future of what could possibly solve some of this, and I think better supervision that if you're going to get paid the big dollars, which I know there really isn't any big dollars involved in this, But if you're going to get paid extra, then do the extra work. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:13:27
Chairman, I have one question. I'm going to go back to something I've asked and hit on a couple of times because it's still not clear to me. When I asked about who was in charge in the command center, originally you said, well, it's the warden until somebody of higher rank or, you know, seniority, someone with a higher position arrives. so it sounds like that leadership was changing in and out by who walked in the room so to be more specific when you were on site were you in charge were you the man no sir you never were no
Speaker 55
1:13:59
sir and it's not set up to that uh way for the chairman of the board or any board member try to run a manhunt it's just i have experience but a lot of the board members doesn't there is no way a board member needs to be telling staff that train on how to conduct a manhunt what to do that's just not you know that's just not proper and i wouldn't expect any board member of this
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:14:30
board that would ever do that i agree with you 100 on that were
the people in that room did they have that same opinion that you weren't the man that you weren't making decisions did they feel like they could discharge their duties and they didn't have to get approval or a thumbs up to move forward with what was going on there? Was it clear line of communication of who was
Speaker 55
1:14:56
in charge at all times in that command center? For me, my opinion, it was. Now, also, I will ask questions
of what's, you know, of the escape. I'm sure some of the people were telling me how they thought he got out showing me the badge he made that they'd already covered. But at no time should a board member interject his self in what the professional is trained to do every day. I feel like I'm safe to say that I'm a little bit different, and it's not the title.
I go to them all the time. i mean unfortunately i go to probably at least four manhunts a year and whether it be boone county baxter county carroll county whatever it may be howe county missouri i mean uh i have been to a lot of i don't interject myself there well i may if i'm asked
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:16:02
appreciate that, and you have a little more expertise in those areas on manhunts.
I guess my real problem and why I'm really trying to hone in on who was in charge is because there's a gap of time from the escape until notification to the outside of the prison. And that's a couple hours from the timeline of information that I've received. I'm just trying to find out why there was a gap from escape to notification to the local authorities, to the state police, to other folks, because there's only one reason I see, and I think we all know what that reason would be.
Speaker 55
1:16:40
I think there was a time delay in actually figuring out whether he was gone or which inmate was gone, okay? I think there was a delay for that reason. It wasn't, but I've seen some of the stuff that Captain Brandon did that night, and I think he done a good job trying to determine whether we had escape or not escape.
Speaker 55
1:17:15
was called, It was Warden Hurst that was in charge until a higher-ranking Department of Correction official got
Speaker 256
1:17:21
on the property. Well, I'm just going to ask you, and
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:17:26
I just don't understand that timeline from escape to notification, and you're saying it's to decide if it was even Harden that had escaped? Well, I can tell you
Speaker 292
1:17:37
what I've seen, and I can tell you when I was called.
Speaker 55
1:17:49
flu, I heard different agencies talking on the radio. I have four radios on an aircraft to listen to four different agencies. I heard many different agencies on the radio. When I got to the command center, I know there was some talking about the state police having their drone there. um so i know there was uh the agencies uh that needed to be called were called at some point
whether there's a delay or not i can't well i can't tell you that's i can read the timelines i've read some
Speaker 221
1:18:26
of the timelines and um i i mean my my
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:18:35
whole point is timing is everything and i think that notification time and that timeline is a big stickler and a big problem for me and i think many members of this committee when they see that timeline they're going to have the same problem because there were there were arkansas lives that were in harm and in harm's
way for that two-hour period that we're just thank god that that harden didn't didn't run into someone outside those prison walls and harm someone and that's what we're that's what we're agitated about that's the big issue with me is who was in charge and why was there not notification sooner and maybe someone can answer that today i can only tell you when
Speaker 55
1:19:14
i was notified and when i was notified and when i finally got
Speaker 46
1:19:19
in there all the agencies that that i felt like should have been notified i heard them on the radio well and so i can't i other than that i
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:19:30
can't well tell you I'll just say I thank you for your testimony taking time to come today and hopefully we'll get some insight and and some answers and and maybe get a tighter ship
moving forward mr. chairman again we want to thank you for coming today you mentioned several times that this was not a systemic issue but when you look at all of the chain of events that led to him walking out of open gates. We misclassified him, or I should say you misclassified him after his
first conviction. His second conviction, a change in classification, wasn't communicated to the prison, so he was in a facility that was not appropriate for his needs. Your staff let him have access to the parts of the prison that he shouldn't have had solo access to, multiple occasions enough occasions where he was able to requisition paraphernalia and contraband in order to make himself a uniform you don't make yourself a uniform out of a t-shirt in an afternoon when you got to color the whole thing with a marker unless you're there for three or four hours
which an individual who's supposed to be in max custody shouldn't be in for three or four hours by himself without supervision and then he was able to walk out maybe you could say that if the guy up at the in the tower hadn't opened the gate you know that was a failure of he didn't follow policy well if the 17 other policies before that had been followed it wouldn't matter what he did and and sometimes i feel bad for that guy because he should have never got to the gate so i think we've got major issues here that need to be dealt with but we do appreciate you coming and sharing
your your thoughts with us on it and you're you're free
to leave thank you And we would ask that you go
ahead and vacate the premises. We are going to move on to Warden Hurst.
We appreciate you coming today. If you'd
be willing to introduce yourself to the committee and if you'd like to make an opening statement, and then maybe recount the events of May 25th for us, or June, the
day of the escape, and how things unfolded, and then we'll open the floor up for questions from the committee. Okay.
Thomas William
Unverified
1:22:25
My name is Thomas William Hurst. I'm currently the Correctional Order at the North Central Unit. Would you like me to recount
Chair
Unverified
1:22:33
the event? Is that what you're saying? Do you mind if I read the prepared summary? Senator Gilmore, you recognize? Thank you. And I know
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:22:47
for the sake of time, I know we're running out of time,
so I just would like to be mindful if
we can keep it succinct and ask colleagues, including myself, to be
succinct in our questions. So you be as detailed as you want to be. We're asking members to be succinct in their
Speaker 316
1:23:08
questions. Okay. We appreciate you coming. All right. Thank you. So on May the 20th, 2025, approximately 2.53 p.m., in May Grand Harden, 168541, assigned as a 1C kitchen worker escaped from the north central unit
by walking through the side of Fort Gates dressed in a homemade uniform designed to impersonate a correctional officer. He was pulling a flat cart containing a cardboard box and a homemade ladder, later determined to be constructed from dismantled pallets and drawstrings from state-issued clothing. At approximately 1.53 p.m., 1.58 p.m., Inmate Hardin was granted unsupervised access to the kitchen back dock area under the pretense of cleaning the chemical cage.
This violated standing security directives that specifically prohibit inmates from being on the back dock without supervision directors clearly communicated to kitchen staff and acknowledged in writing on may the 14th 2025. It made Hardin remain unsupervised for approximately one hour and eight minutes which gave him ample opportunity to change into the disguise he used to facilitate his escape. Around 308 p.m the food service supervisor noticed Hardin
was not on the back dock area and began a search to locate him by telephoning the laundry and West Tire staff. After being unable to locate inmate Hardin, excuse me, he advised the shift supervisor of the incident and more extensive search of the immediate areas began but was unsuccessful. Subsequent review of surveillance footage by the shift commander revealed an individual later confirmed as inmate Harden walking through both Sally Port gates dressed in a dark uniform with
a vest and hat pulling a flat cart. He was last seen walking near the ICC garage with a box in hand before disappearing from Camry View. At approximately 3 40 p.m. the unit was placed on lockdown. Emergency escape procedures were activated and the command center was established. A roster count was conducted at 3 47 p.m. confirming inmate Harden's absence and all other inmates were accounted for by 4 48 p.m. 17 internal and perimeter checkpoints
were activated and the unit's canine team began searching the facility grounds. The box seen on the surveillance footage was located within behind the ICC garage and the homemade ladder was found nearby. A facility-wide investigation into the breach identified critical failures and protocol. A directive to all food service staff before the incident was that no inmate or inmates were allowed access to the kitchen back dock without direct staff supervision.
The on-duty supervising staff member disregarded this policy allowing inmate hardened access to a sensitive area despite having knowledge this violated a previous directive. Camera footage and follow-up interviews confirmed this failure. Additionally, the West Tower officer admitted to observing an individual on the back dock dressed similarly to a staff member. Believing this person to be an employee, the officer allowed the individual, later identified as Hardin, to pass through both Sally Port gates without verifying identity or issuing a challenge.
From May the 25th through June the 6th, 2025, the facility remained locked down. The command post remained operational throughout the duration of the search. The command post coordinated ground and aerial searches and gathered intelligence and worked with local, state, and federal law enforcement partners. Local residents were also notified of the escape through the phone alerts and coordination of the local authorities to ensure public safety and awareness. On June 6, 2025, at approximately 3.45 p.m.,
Inmate Hardin was located by U.S. Border Patrol approximately 1.5 miles northwest of the north central unit in a densely wooded area. His identity was confirmed using a portable fingerprint scanner provided by the Arkansas State Police. After a medical evaluation, inmate Harden was immediately transferred to the Varner Supermax for high security confinement. Post-incident review and findings, a comprehensive review of the incident confirmed that the escape resulted from multiple failures in staff adherence to established procedures.
The makeshift uniform was found to be made from state-issued pants, a white shirt, a ball cap, and a kitchen apron, all of which were dyed black. The inmate's unsupervised time on the back dock allowed him to don their disguise and prepare for his escape. A secondary failure occurred when Sileyport West Tower procedures were not followed, and identity verification was not performed. Unfortunately, this allowed inmate Harden to exit the facility unchallenged.
That's a summary of the incident. Thank you. Do you want to make any
other comments before we go to questions?
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
1:28:26
No, sir. Okay. Senator Disbang, you are recognized. Thank you. My question has to do with how often we assess, yes, sir, assess the weaknesses and threats that may be there at a particular facility. So, for instance, Calico Rock, when is the last assessment done on potential issues
Speaker 322
1:28:41
there? we do a yearly security audit which is performed by outside uh source through the uh emergency
preparedness staff that we have they come in and look at our facility at everything we have our policies procedures our cameras our layouts and make sure that stuff is checked you
Speaker 324
1:28:59
know on a yearly basis but now we also have a uh what we call a threat assessment that
Speaker 316
1:29:06
is done by our emergency preparedness coordinator once a month and he goes through and he checks this
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
1:29:13
stuff too okay so as far as so there's a gate and as my understanding is it's a gate that has no notification of when it opens and closes is
Chair
Unverified
1:29:22
that right that gate is electronic gate are we talking
Speaker 322
1:29:24
about the sally port gate yes it is a electronic gate that is operated from the
Speaker 316
1:29:32
tower the officer in the tower is responsible to open that gate and close it and he's also responsible to make sure
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
1:29:39
he knows who he's letting through and then
so when they're doing their assessments i mean so for instance that how often do you think even employees were walking out without being checked prior to there's
Speaker 324
1:29:52
i don't i don't guess i understand the question how often employees won't i mean well
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
1:29:58
it almost feels like we're saying that we had a one-off incident on the dock and we had
a one-off incident with, you know, someone disguised as an employee walking through. Yes. Clearly they weren't one-offs. How often do you all do your own assessments to make sure that your employees are following protocol, especially at entry points and exit points? we
Speaker 335
1:30:24
have we have seasoned staffed and the staff that's on these positions
Speaker 324
1:30:30
have post orders there to follow they're signed for these post orders daily we have people that work at the sally port gate itself but this was on a weekend this was on a sunday uh the incident took place there should
Speaker 335
1:30:49
not have been anyone coming through that gate at that time during what was going on uh and that's
Speaker 324
1:31:00
you know that's a failure on our part for the officer yeah but but the checks that we
make i mean we periodically check the people we have people assigned there that checks the people come out if he doesn't if the person doesn't know who it
Speaker 322
1:31:15
is their post orders require them to contact the supervisor to get clear clarification also clearance for that person to come through they're not supposed to just pop the gate let them through okay
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
1:31:26
when they do their assessments and so who's the outside entity that does the assessment on the facility annually
Speaker 335
1:31:32
annually okay that is our emergency preparedness section that we have
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
1:31:35
with adc i thought there was one you contracted with
that does an independent and then you've got an emergency preparedness that does it monthly no sir no
Speaker 324
1:31:43
sir okay i may have misspoke on that we have our emergency preparedness division which is major shores division does security audits on all the state facilities all the state uh units so it's not independent then well they don't work at that unit well but they're not
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
1:32:01
but it's not independent of corrections which is what my assumption is when you said it that's i thought You had a third party come in and say and do a true threat assessment
and, you know, identified points of weaknesses or whatever it may be. So do they test then the procedures or do they just look at the procedures and say, well, this is followed, everything's going to be fine? They look at our policies and our procedures. Okay, but
Speaker 324
1:32:21
there's no actual testing? They look at our practices too. Okay. But there's no
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
1:32:28
testing of those procedures to ensure that they're being followed? it's okay probably not i don't know the answer i mean i i don't really i don't really know the
Speaker 324
1:32:42
answer to that uh they they submit a report on what their findings are they make recommendations to us on what we need to change if there's anything that needs to change uh that's that's really about all i can say on that
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
1:33:00
and it's as far as an escape right
so i mean I think Commissioner, you know, said it earlier, and I think he was right. I mean, this is, it's what they do. It's what inmates are looking to do, right? So they're continuously assessing our facilities.
They're finding the weaknesses. And in this particular instance, he parlayed multiple weaknesses into an actual escape, which would be incredibly hard to do, even with the complacent, you know, behavior of your two employees. Because, as was alluded to, the stars have to align. and that's just almost impossible that that's just what happened so my my question really for that is what if there is an escape do y'all already have i mean like at that particular
facility obviously there's only a certain number of places that someone can walk out of facility or the escape could actually happen from there are only a certain number of roads there's barriers where it'd be creeks or whatever it may be so did y'all already have all that in place so that when the escape occurred you knew where the hot points would be where you might need to go where you need to first look or what is the policy look like that for an
Speaker 335
1:34:07
escape and so we have an emergency plan for escapes we have checkpoints that we send staff out to to man
Speaker 322
1:34:13
uh on a perimeter we set a perimeter
Speaker 345
1:34:16
up and all that's in uh our escape plan now okay and it was in there then okay all right thank you very
much and how quickly was that plan executed after the the role was called and you realized it was hardened we had to we
Speaker 324
1:34:33
had additional staff come in and as soon as additional staff arrived up to unit then we sent them out to these checkpoints approximately how long
Speaker 322
1:34:43
did that take probably 15 to 20 minutes
so you set up the checkpoints before you notified the
local community and the state police yes okay yes
senator Gilmore thank you and I'll follow
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:34:59
up right where chairman left off what time were you notified and what time was state police
notified and you may have stated that already I may have missed
Speaker 324
1:35:12
it I was notified about somewhere around 3 23 something like that I was actually at the
Speaker 322
1:35:20
unit working that day okay and the captain who was on duty come up to
Speaker 354
1:35:26
me and said hey we have a problem okay all right and and then
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:35:33
the chairman testified to critical incident report you familiar with this yes
okay um i think you just said that that had been done is that correct the critical incident
have you has that been done has that been completed have y'all done a critical incident
Speaker 322
1:35:51
report the critical incident report is scheduled for the 21st would schedule to we're talking
Speaker 324
1:35:58
about the the report where they come up and investigate it is that what we're talking about i i don't know
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:36:04
it's y'all's report that's why i'm asking he he referenced a review is that what maybe that's
what it is but i think there's a report that comes after the review okay
Speaker 324
1:36:15
well the report that i submitted okay was sent up to the internal affairs you know after all this was all over
with the critical instant review is what i'm talking about now is where we have a team from adc that comes in from the other units to looks at look at what happened determine you know what we did good what we did bad yeah make recommendations on any changes we may need to make and you said
Speaker 335
1:36:42
that's scheduled that hasn't happened yet the critical incident review hasn't happened
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:36:46
yet okay all right so you know we keep talking about um how this happens i know it's been
mentioned you know there were two people that basically failed do you know what the tenure of those two people were were these longtime employees were these new new people were these the officer in the
Speaker 335
1:37:06
tower was a five-year veteran okay the officer in the kitchen had been there believe over three and a
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:37:15
half years okay so these are people who've been doing their job
for a little while yes sir okay um you referenced the ladder that he walked out the gate with is that
correct yes how did he make that did he make it on the way to the gate because he had to store it
Speaker 359
1:37:32
somewhere it was on the back dock he fashioned this on the back dock area when he had that time period out there by his
Speaker 324
1:37:41
cell so how much time was he out there an hour and eight eight minutes
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:37:48
by cell okay and there's no cameras out there there's not on the back dock area no so he fashioned that together on the back dock the best of my knowledge yes okay so he had all the stuff out there with
Speaker 335
1:37:58
him there's pallets out there we have deliveries that come in their own pallets
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:38:03
and stuff like that and they were out there on the back and so it's typical to keep pilots like that because i would think that that would be a risk by itself you could throw that up against something and climb up just
way the pallets made so those are just out there yes okay um final question i'll get back in the queue mr
chair we talk about you know policies and procedures one of those policies and
procedures is the security um security policy or security rule for for corrections and the the procedure lists and i'll read from it and quote the warden slash center supervisor of each facility will establish in writing detailed security rules and procedures for all area of his or her facility such rules and procedures will be formulated to ensure maximum protection of the citizens the state of arkansas and the employees and offenders of that facility these rules will be available to all employees of the facility is that is that accurate yes okay so you
have these procedures and and you you are the ones that you as a warden write that procedure correct these are these are
Speaker 322
1:39:11
policies that are already established what we do is we review them yearly or if we have to make a change to it then we we revise it but these are already been in place for years and
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:39:26
so correct so this procedure has been in place for a while but it was established initially by a ward may not have been yourself but someone like yourself whoever the first
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:39:39
unit established those correct so this is specific to those units correct yes okay is there overall policy of corrections that supersedes these individualized rules for the facilities the unit policy goes hand
Speaker 335
1:39:55
in hand it cannot contradict our ADs or administrative directives or ARs, administrative regulations or
Speaker 322
1:40:01
the SDs, the secretary of directors. We cannot conflict with those. And if there is a conflict
who... If there is a conflict then we have to refer back to the higher policy. Okay, so you would
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:40:16
then change your facility policy to mirror the system wide? Yes. If we have
Speaker 324
1:40:21
a change in our grievance policy or AD, then we have to go to our unit policy on
Thomas William
Unverified
1:40:27
grievances and make that same change to make sure it reflects the change in the policy above that okay
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:40:34
I will yield mr. chair senator Boyd you recognized thank you
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
1:40:49
mr. chair so clearly there's a system involved and there
are lots of breakdowns in the system i can you know i've been hearing but at the end of the day what is the root cause where did this start where if we change this we wouldn't have to worry about all the things downstream in your opinion is is the warden we had
Speaker 335
1:41:11
two chances to prevent this we failed on both the officer in the kitchen had directed
Speaker 324
1:41:16
us not to allow this inmate to come out there and he did the officer in the tower allowed this inmate to go through both gates
and never ask who he was I spoke to that officer personally and asked him why did he let that person out his comment to me was he thought it was an officer they were complacent in their job duties and the when you have somebody complacent like that bad things happen
Chair
Unverified
1:41:46
unfortunately we had the policies in place we had the procedures in place they just
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
1:41:51
didn't follow okay so i hear that and i hear it's a personnel problem but let's think further up the stream
i understand there's a campbell soup lid or something where we made a badge we needed a marker somewhere to to do that i mean where where did this really start because this was a symptom downstream i mean so like i don't know how you do things in corrections but in health care we're always looking for the root cause where where did the problem start because if we stop that we don't have to worry as much about does somebody else catch it right that doesn't mean we're going to take take those things away but that's that's what just what i want to probe you to to think
Chair
Unverified
1:42:30
about well i think i think the problem is we get too overly familiar with that one inmate in the kitchen area okay the things that he
Speaker 324
1:42:37
used the the lid you're talking about come from the kitchen area the uh pens and markers and stuff like that come from the kitchen area he was uh we just got too overly familiar with him okay so he'd been in that he he had been working in that kitchen a long time since he had been at that facility and it you have a tendency to get too
Speaker 383
1:43:00
close to him and i think that's one of the
Speaker 326
1:43:06
things that he he was allowed to do some things
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
1:43:10
he shouldn't be able to do so there was a leadership breakdown somewhere before this person made it to the two people that that let him out the the door if you will so i'll let you think about that i just wanted to to prompt you to think and i'll i'll back out of here uh thank
you okay you you mentioned that he spent an hour out on the back dock we don't are you think do you think that that was
the first time that that had happened or do you think that that is a habitual occurrence? That was not the first time that's happened. Okay so and then it would probably be we could probably assume that the guard in the tower that wasn't the first officer he'd let out without checking their ID. I mean it probably wasn't the very first time he'd done that right? Well I can't I can't say that for sure. Yeah because thankfully no other prisoners got out but uh so do
these does the garden of tower have a supervisor does the kitchen employee have a
supervisor where they say hey how's things going today where's your
inmate yes and everything had been going great up until that point or was there ever any other rep reprimands that occurred no there was no other reprimands no okay senator johnson
Speaker 392
1:44:29
i'm i'm over here to your left i'm sorry that's all right so uh the tower controls
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:44:34
both the gates what's the distance between the tower and those gates that he's
Speaker 179
1:44:43
that he's opening yes uh 20 feet so visually he ought to be able to
Speaker 359
1:44:51
see that person pretty well right he's as he's as close to me and to the chairman
Speaker 188
1:44:59
okay so i mean it this is can't i mean even
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:45:05
what you said it can't be a one-off and and he there was some comfort level with the employees in the kitchen because he devised this plan and i don't think he died that uh clothing while he was out on a dock for an hour uh you know he had the plan
Speaker 179
1:45:25
what was a chemical clean out or whatever there was
Speaker 324
1:45:28
a a chemical storage room on the back dock area he was assigned as a chemical clerk for the kitchen okay um that is uh that would have been one of his uh areas to clean supervised though not by supervised he should somebody should have been there
Speaker 359
1:45:48
with him and you know i'll add this to it at the time when all this was going on that was
Speaker 324
1:45:57
not a critical task and the officer should have understood that that that's not something that had to be done right that minute yeah he
Speaker 182
1:46:07
could have waited till he could have went out there with him yeah but well whenever i'm thinking of
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:46:14
somebody in a tower it's not 20 foot you know i mean i'm thinking somebody at a great distance that you would need a camera system to be able to see that's I mean that was my that's my I was asking that question is is I wouldn't have assumed the tower guard would be 20 foot from the you know from this this occurrence so appreciate that
answer so so is there any way of knowing review I mean I'm sure in in these reviews that how many times that unsupervised that he was allowed on a dock because i mean it's not just going to be one once or twice you know it has to be a pretty regular occurrence or or he wouldn't have been comfortable enough to
Speaker 330
1:46:58
make the plan what what caused this directive to uh come out was myself
Speaker 335
1:47:05
and the deputy warden had noticed approximately a month before this that they were allowing the inmates to go out there unsupervised and we changed that directive then and told them they are not allowed to have an inmate out there unless he's supervised this was passed on to the shields passed on to the the service food service supervisors that's what changed that the the inmates should
Speaker 383
1:47:32
have never been out there and the and i say i understand what you're saying
Speaker 324
1:47:38
it happened but the officers were told not to do it and it just there's nobody that's more embarrassed about this than me you know this is I mean it's not good we failed and
Speaker 182
1:47:55
I understand that we learn from experience and they're not always good
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:47:59
and I appreciate you being here today and thank you for answering my questions representative rose thank you mr chairman wardenhurst
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:48:12
thank you for taking time to
give your testimony today take these questions um i have a few the first place i wanted to start is you referenced whether we semantics here if it's an outside audit
or a somebody who's just not from inside the prison or something along those lines, there's
a review of policies, procedures, practices annually. Is that correct? That is an internal, I
Speaker 383
1:48:39
guess you'd say internal, review by staff that are not assigned to that unit.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:48:47
Okay. And then, and I can't remember how frequently you said, but then there is also a security assessment that
Speaker 339
1:48:55
is done. Is that correct? That's done once a month
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:49:00
by our emergency preparedness coordinator at the unit. Have you reviewed or are you aware of any findings in the security assessment from the past previous month before this escape or months or that internal review from the previous year that had any findings that suggested that there were insecurities at Calico Rock?
No. So there are no findings in any of those reviews or audits? Not that I know of.
Speaker 324
1:49:29
The last audit that was done there was done before I was assigned to the unit. When were you assigned
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:49:38
to the unit? July the 26th. Of 24? 24.
Mr. Chairman, I don't know if it's an appropriate question or not, but can this subcommittee be furnished with those findings? Can we request that? Is that something you can provide to this committee?
I'm sure I can. Okay, if you can get it with Mr. Little,
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:49:59
and we'll get that distributed. Have there been any immediate policy or procedures or staffing changes following the escape beyond the termination of those two employees? We have changed the policy
Speaker 324
1:50:14
kitchen. The policy before said that no inmate that's
Speaker 335
1:50:18
not assigned to the back dock would be allowed out there unsupervised. We have changed that to say no inmate that is not a 1B trustee will be allowed out there.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:50:36
I'm going to bypass the question for the sake of time, and I'll kind of
end with this line of questioning. Some of my Senate colleagues had asked questions about previous possible violations of policy of letting individuals through gates or letting inmates out on this dock that's adjoining to the kitchen area. Since this escape by prisoner Hardin, have you or anybody on your team reviewed
security footage of kitchen interactions between staff and Hardin or staff and any other prisoners who were released onto the back dock after the policy change? And along the same lines, have you reviewed security footage to make sure that employees or individuals of any kind, vendors or anybody coming and going, is having a verification process take place before being allowed to exit or enter any of the gates on the premises?
Speaker 322
1:51:37
So to answer the first question about the back dock, we have a system in place now to where the kitchen supervisor, radios the officer in west tire and advises him that i'm going to be on the back dock with two inmates as for the vendors come in all the vendors come through the front the front entrance they don't come through the
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:51:59
side of port gate so and i know i said a lot there i want to reiterate
it real quick let's do one at a time between the time the policy changed before the escape roughly
within a month or so it sounds like you you had a policy change or a couple of weeks prisoners were not supposed to be going out unsupervised to the dock is that correct correct has there been any review of security footage in the time leading up to the escape to see if any additional kitchen staff were allowing prisoners to go outside in violation of that policy without supervision not to my knowledge so nobody's reviewed to see if the violation was taking place by more than one kitchen employee not to my knowledge okay what led me down this question
path was the questions about whether this was systemic or not we've been told um that it was not but what i'm hearing is that it's not been really reviewed to see if this was happening on a regular basis since the policy change by additional employees and then my my last question with regards to this gate in particular that Hardin escaped through. Has there been any review of security footage to see if any employees or any guards in towers
were allowing individuals, staff, to exit through that gate without verification? Not to my knowledge, no. So there's not been a review of the security footage to see if that has happened in addition to this one time? Not to my knowledge, no. And I'm sorry to press you on this. So you cannot say definitively that this was not systemic behavior by staff in addition to the two employees who have been terminated? No. Okay, thank you.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:53:49
Warden, I'm here. Question for you. You said you were notified at 3.20 that y'all had a problem. Somewhere in that area. And then you stated that at 2.53 is when Hardin walked out the last gate and left the premise. I'm assuming that that information, how were you communicated and what was told to you other than we've got a problem? Okay, so what happened was I was in my office.
Speaker 324
1:54:20
We were doing visitation. I heard the captain come over the radio and say we need to do a roster count.
Speaker 383
1:54:26
I contacted the captain and asked him why we were doing a roster count at that time because it was not normal. He told me that he was on his way up to talk to me then. He came up to talk to me and advised me that he thought that we had had an inmate go out the back gate, but he wasn't sure. He was then going to
Speaker 319
1:54:48
download the video to make sure to verify while we were starting this roster count.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:54:52
And that's how I became aware of it. Okay.
and then then my question once once you established a command center at what point did that happen where where you actually said okay we have an escapee and we're gonna we're gonna kick in to we have an escapee and follow our our our business plan uh at what time did
did that happen was it at 448 after all the other prisoners were
Speaker 383
1:55:21
accounted for no sir no sir he he brought
the video up to me he had downloaded and we reviewed it and seen that it was
Speaker 324
1:55:29
uh an inmate going out the back gate and that's when we opened the command center then we were still counting to
Speaker 339
1:55:35
that time so right we start our emergency
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:55:38
procedures at that time okay and then then just kind of one of
the following up on the same line of a question i asked before who's in
Speaker 322
1:55:48
charge of that command center whoever the immediate commander is on the on site then at that time
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:55:54
it was captain brandon so the captain was in in in charge in the command center but you were on site yes okay did
everyone in the room know the captain was the man and he was in charge yes even
Speaker 335
1:56:10
though you were in the room well i was in i was in the office taking calls calling people stuff
Speaker 322
1:56:15
like that he was the one who was coordinating the bringing in the other staff and also getting our checkpoints out
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:56:20
to where they need to be okay so at what point did did you ever assume command your pause is enough for me well that's that's good
Speaker 338
1:56:30
enough it was a lot of there was a lot of
confusion going on but um we were both coordinating what was going on i understand
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:56:39
coordination there are a lot of people it seems like coordinating i'm just trying to figure out who was in charge and who was making decisions to try to catch the escaped prisoner and who was making the decisions, and you paused for me. Well, ultimately, sir, it's my responsibility. Well, I understand that. You are the warden, and I appreciate you stating that for the record.
But, you know, that's some of the issues that I have and some of the issues the committee has of systemic issues and problems. that you've got a command center and and it's fluid folks are coming in and out of the room and some are doing things but everyone knowing who is making those decisions who's in charge so my last deal and then i'm gonna let these other members that are in here ask their questions at what point and who made the decision to notify local and outside agencies that we haven't escaped
that someone from inside has has escaped and arkansans are in harm's way what we
Speaker 322
1:57:52
make the proper notifications on all the law enforcement agencies we did contact israel county and baxter county but we did not contact the state police
Speaker 324
1:58:07
the person that was charged with making those notifications was pulled from the duty they were working on and it was oversight the people coming in there was communication uh confusion on that and when i say that i made the notification to my duty director which was miss coclosure and when the epc lieutenant come in who actually took over assigning the post and stuff like that asked the question of the captain have we made notification
he came to me and asked me have i made the notification i told him i had notified my duty
Speaker 335
1:58:49
director that was that was a uh communication breakdown so kind of one of the deals the
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:58:55
left hand really didn't know what the right hand was doing and everyone just assumed someone else had made the notifications yes sir well i appreciate your honesty
um and i'll yield to to some of the other folks that are in in the queue mr uh
mr hirst what role did the board of corrections
and or chairman magnus play in the command center were they helping were they there at all Well, Mr. Magnus did come
Speaker 326
1:59:27
to the unit. He wasn't making decisions or stuff like that in the command
Speaker 324
1:59:33
center. Okay. But he was up there to
support staff. Okay. And you have an emergency
Speaker 335
1:59:42
management coordinator? Yeah, EPC. Yeah. He's our emergency preparedness coordinator, yes. Okay. And
what role did they play in the command center in an escape?
Speaker 324
1:59:50
In escape, they're the ones who assign the post, what we call the perimeter post, escape post. They keep up with the staff members when they come in, who they are, what post they're assigned to. They take information that we have
Speaker 383
2:00:02
that we received on tips and stuff like that. We pass that along to the agencies that we need to get that to. Okay. That seems like a pretty important job.
It is. Do you feel like that was carried out effectively? Uh, somewhat. Yes. Okay. Always find way to ways to improve, right? Yeah
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:00:26
Senator Dease. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Thank you. Mr. Hurst for being
here today. Um, so Mr. Harden was a murderer rapist and One of the worst offenders in your facility. Can you help me understand? Um, it sounds like his charges were upgraded after he was moved to your facility did anything change from the time first time he entered calico rock to after his resume of offenses increased did anything change
Speaker 335
2:01:02
he was classified as a c3 inmate while he
was at calico rock our unit is a c4 maximum security unit so his class custody classification allowed him to be at that unit nothing changed on that part i mean it's he
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:01:24
was within the limit allowed at that unit so at one time this facility wasn't supposed to be holding murderers and the worst offenders but so has classification changed in the time that you've been over calico rock
no okay no so i i was i was told that um over the years that these worst offenders really shouldn't be held at this facility are you saying that that we can hold
more and more of our worst offenders at your facility what
Speaker 335
2:01:56
i'm saying is that unit we have a classification system custody classification system the north central unit is
Speaker 324
2:02:03
classified as a c4 unit anybody with a c4 custody writing can be housed at that facility right
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:02:11
i think what i'm getting at is um
with with lack of supervision and and i understand there were breakdowns and issues but but with some of our worst offenders um and dangerous prisoners they're not scheduled to go to north central they're they're supposed to go to facilities like varner is is that a general good statement no okay no so the inmates that are at varner they could be housed at north central and just be just as fine if they are c4
Speaker 383
2:02:43
custody class they can't right so if they're elevated
then they go to varner right if they elevate to a
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:02:53
c5 they can be sent to a super max is that the understanding i'm trying to make sure i understand so when we look at our correctional systems across the state we've got some folks that think that we should just add more dollars and expand calico versus look at looking at building higher degree super max facilities and to me that this sounds like we don't want to send the worst of the worst offenders to your facility we need to make sure
that they are correctly identified and classified and send them to the right facilities so just so clear we shouldn't be sending do you believe we should be sending inmates like harden
despite what his classification on paper says do you think he was correctly assessed
Speaker 335
2:03:41
to your facility until this escape inmate harden since the time he's been incarcerated 2018 has no disciplinary infractions he has never been a problem to staff or other inmates his custody score allowed him to
Speaker 324
2:03:55
be at that facility that's that's the way the system is
Speaker 438
2:04:00
set up in your opinion he had not been a problem up to this
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:04:06
time in your opinion do you believe his background in law enforcement and knowledge in that field made it easier for manipulation or break down any of the policies or or communication with with employees on your site can you say that again please in your opinion do you believe Harden's background in law enforcement and knowledge in that field made it easier for
manipulation and breakdown in policy or communication with your employees? I don't think
Speaker 324
2:04:37
it assisted him in getting out. I think it would have assisted him on the outside because he would know what our procedures are being former law enforcement. I'm sure he has been in a situation where he has chased, you know, felons
Speaker 335
2:04:50
trying to catch them, he would have knowledge of all that. But I don't think that helped him get out.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:04:57
We have some members that believe our next step should be to expand Calico Rock,
and the things I've heard today, I don't believe that's the right direction. Senator Deese, let's stay on the. Okay, thank you. And then more clarity on the command center. Why did it take 12 days if he only went a mile and a half? Why did it take
Speaker 324
2:05:20
12 days to find him? Because he hunkered down into the woods. He didn't move. We had no reports of any stolen vehicles. We had no reports of any break-ins at houses or hunting sheds, no stolen cars.
We made numerous sweeps through the woods, and we felt like he was in this one area around Moxican Creek, and I don't know if everybody's familiar with that, we
Speaker 383
2:05:44
felt like he was in that area, and that, in fact, is where we did find him.
Speaker 324
2:05:51
He didn't move. He didn't break into anything. He didn't steal anything. He laid out there in the woods and just stayed in one place until we actually had someone walk up on him.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:06:05
Who walked up on him? The Border Patrol officers. And one more time, on authority, when an inmate escapes, is it is it still the warden that's that's tasked on on the recovery on on the manhunt or does another agency take
over at a certain time how does that work well we use our use
Speaker 338
2:06:25
our staff initially on that now the way the border patrol got involved was we asked for their assistance
Speaker 383
2:06:30
we also asked for the fbi's assistance so for fbi you said okay yeah we all we asked for
Speaker 324
2:06:39
that assistance they don't normally they don't just come in and take over we asked for their help
Chair
Unverified
2:06:45
and they have more resources than than we do
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:06:48
you ask for their help at a certain point yes because you just hadn't found them or is there a is there a timeline that
Speaker 324
2:06:55
well they have they have more resources than we have such as airplanes with the you know
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:07:04
the heat seeking and stuff like that okay and then the last question um the the individuals that were let go i believe we were told two individuals that were fired for policy breakdown um i've heard different roles described
about um the individual in the kitchen um that he's an officer that he's a food service guy that he is um kitchen staff are they is that person responsible for security of harden yes and so they are an officer they're not they're not just a vendor they're not a they're trained officer for security they're required to go through the same training academy as an officer
Speaker 324
2:07:37
who'd be working a shift okay they go through the same training thank you for that
Speaker 453
2:07:45
senator bryant thank you mr chair i think
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:07:51
senator d he's probably got most of my questions answered but i just wanted to follow up for some clarity because when this first happened i think
the number one question that came out of my district which is where um officer harden or citizen hardest hardest hardened committed these crimes and where the you know the families of the victim still reside and had to deal with the terror of thinking he was coming back that way the question
most asked is is alluded to what senator d said is why does somebody with a 30-year sentence for a murder and a 50-year sentence for rape have access to daily chores and duties and not put put in an eight by eight box where he probably deserves to be and you know my initial response to them was more you know we have a duty to protect him and if he's in a facility as a former law enforcement officer you know he may end his life may end quicker than they wanted that the state wants it to not
necessarily the victims families but I think the I need to understand is Calico Rock is classified as a minimum medium maximum security facility how many of your inmates that you know of that have 80 year sentences serve in your facility with crimes like these that have access and duties to portions of your prison that they have the ability to escape because i i would assume to say somebody with a 10-year sentence that's on good time with one six
to be served is less likely to search for that out than somebody with an 80-year sentence that has to serve half and is already in their mid 50s that will most likely die in
that prison do you know how many of those prisoners under your care meet that
Speaker 335
2:09:33
description i don't know the number off top of my head i know that we try to assign a work detail for each inmate
Speaker 322
2:09:39
who is physically able that that keeps them busy that keeps them out of trouble it gives them a purpose i understand what you're saying about the in a
Speaker 383
2:09:50
cell locked away but you know that someone with
that much time on their hands they need they need a purpose in life they need to be able
Speaker 324
2:09:58
to do something besides sit there and look at the walls and him working in a in a position in a job he could have been anywhere it doesn't necessarily have to be in the kitchen he could have been inside a building as a barracks porter or a shower porter or a hall porter it could have been anything like that he just happened to be
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:10:16
in the kitchen it isn't and i'm just trying to gather i've not been to calico i've
been to varner and cummins and wrightseville but i've not been to calico
do you mix minimum maximum and medium security prisoners together do they do they share the same living quarters do they how do you how do you isolate a maximum security offender from
a medium or minimum security offender the way we the way
Speaker 334
2:10:39
we have that set up is we house people
Speaker 335
2:10:42
by their job assignments if you have people assigned to like a regional maintenance crew then you will have everybody in that barracks will be
Speaker 322
2:10:51
on regional maintenance the kitchen crew we keep them all
together in one barracks we don't look at the we don't
Speaker 324
2:10:58
look at the charges stuff like that if they're assigned in that position when we try to group them together that makes less movement inside the facility you don't have people coming from all over the unit to one you know to to uh go in the kitchen go to work you've got them all right there together it limits the movement you know we try to control the mass movement as much as very
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:11:23
possible so what makes a maximum secure requirement different from a minimum secure requirement in your facility
Speaker 421
2:11:29
well if he's if he's maximum that just that just means that we have to be particular about
Speaker 383
2:11:45
where his custody rating we look at that on job assignments now I
Speaker 324
2:11:52
wouldn't take someone that's a class 4 C4 maximum security inmate and assign him to the front office we look at that stuff
there's no So there's no distinction really between how we assign them on the jobs as long as it fits their medical class and what they can do and also on their history. If you've got somebody that is disrupted, assaults staff, attacks staff, attacks other inmates, I mean, certainly you're not going to put that person in a kitchen setting or a laundry setting to where they have access to tools
or other things that they could harm somebody with. It depends on what that person does. This inmate never had the first disciplinary infraction until this. He had been, and I'm not going to say a role model inmate because I don't want to use that term, but he had been an inmate that had followed the rules up
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:12:55
to that point. So as a warden, you're comfortable with what in essence was a life sentence being served for an inmate to have in essence
a well be it and a you know incarcerated life but
a normal life and not serve down at cummins varner which is likely where he'll serve the rest of his life which is where his family thinks he should have deserved and that's that's not on you that's on a policy that the state needs to look at as far as you know i can see what the previous testimony was he got sent to a parent unit at calico because he had one murder charge 30 years to serve half plus good time two years later he's pleased guilty and gets a 50-year sentence for rape you know in my view at that time if not before he should have been sent and put in a box down at Cummins Varner but looking forward if you had that inmate come back to your facility
with the level of access that you grant them based on albeit good behavior but serving a life sentence inside your facility would you request that they get transferred out or would you attempt to satisfy that requirement if he meets the criteria to
Speaker 383
2:14:00
be at that facility he can be at that facility okay that's not that's not something
Speaker 324
2:14:05
that i decide or determine if he is a if he
Speaker 415
2:14:09
is a c4 and below inmate he can be housed there okay now one last question so i've
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
2:14:17
been like again cummins varner they've got i've
not been to calico do you have electric fence all around your entire facility no i guess that's my that's my concern looking as just the policymakers when you have somebody with murder and rape guilty convicted that they're in a facility that's where I'd put a low-level sex offender because they're going to have two different outcomes and I think we need to look at as a state to move those regardless of their status as a good behavior we need to put like-minded offenders and like-minded facilities
so that's all thank you Mr. Warden don't do you see why that's a major problem that there's no distinction in how they're treated based on their classification do you set that policy at your facility i do
Speaker 334
2:15:05
not that policy is set by who that policy is in our ars and our ad's and it's set by the uh is
it set by the department or by the board by
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:15:20
the department by the director okay warden warden hearst you said you were hired and you took over command of
of calico on 7 26 of 24 yes sir uh how long have you under been under the employee of department of arkansas department of corrections 41 years 41 years uh is that um in what capacities and what roles over
Speaker 383
2:15:43
those 41 years? I started in August 24th of 1981 as a CO1 operational officer.
Speaker 335
2:15:50
I rose through the ranks to field sergeant, ship lieutenant, building captain,
chief security major, and deputy warden and now warden. And deputy
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:16:00
warden, were you at this facility as deputy warden or were you somewhere else as deputy warden? No,
sir, I've been at nine different units. Nine different units, and so 41 years of consecutive employment under the Arkansas Department of
Speaker 338
2:16:14
Corrections. Not consecutive. I left for two and a half years in 2013.
Okay. Thank you. Do you know how much
this costs the state of Arkansas and the local governments and the federal government?
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:16:28
I do not. I don't have that total. I'd like you to get that for us. Okay. Thank you. Senator Gilmore. Thank you. And I'll give him a second to write some notes and then we'll ask the questions
All right, warden, yes, sir. Thanks for being here you said you left for two years and 13 was
that by choice two and a half two and a half sir no sir what was the
Speaker 383
2:17:17
circumstances i was terminated why failure to follow up
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:17:20
on investigation okay thanks for that answer um have you seen uh mr harden's risk needs assessment have I seen what Mr. Harden's risk needs assessment I have not does it exist
Speaker 324
2:17:35
that would not be something that I have that I review I mean I know his risk needs assessment is I'm sure done by mental health staff it's but that is somewhere somebody looks
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:17:49
at it I'm sure it is we have it we have that I don't
Speaker 438
2:18:00
know okay i mean i don't it's not something that i have something that i look at okay but if it
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:18:06
but you would know if it exists presumably it's it exists
okay that answers it i don't i don't know and and so who's your who
do you directly report to william strong okay and is and where is he located is he in little rock north little rock rather or pine
bluff okay we've had a lot of conversation about confinement and doing
assessments of inmates do you think classification assessments are accurate that it currently exists as for the custody scores or is that if that what is that what
you call them do you have do you have classification assignments yes we classification does the custody
Speaker 335
2:19:04
scores they do the okay and so we okay so we do that is what
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:19:09
you're telling me yes it's computerized and that's based
Speaker 324
2:19:14
on what it's based on the inmates time and his crime okay his disciplinary history things of that nature so presumably it's
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:19:26
based on a assessment of their risk their needs and whatever if it's plugged into that system yes it's plugged
Speaker 315
2:19:37
into that system that's that determines their custody score. And so we
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:19:41
evaluate an inmate when they come in the door? Yes. At intake? Yes
at the Washtenaw River Unit. Okay and do y'all ever re-evaluate them? Such as? Once they get to your particular institution do you ever re-evaluate an inmate
Speaker 367
2:20:01
at your facility? We do an orientation on each inmate that comes in.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:20:07
We do a medical orientation on a medical evaluation. Okay okay. So my understanding, um, there's not a, there, there was been some discussion about classifications.
The board recently approved that. Are you familiar with this? What
Speaker 322
2:20:29
they recently approved. I'm not directly familiar with it, but you know, if it's a classification change or change in the policy, it
Speaker 335
2:20:36
comes down through the channels. Yes. Okay. um
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:20:39
how does that normally come down through the channels it usually comes from the
Speaker 335
2:20:44
central office there is a person there that's designated to send out all the new policies okay all the revised
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:20:53
policies do you know who that person is not off the top of my head no okay but they send you
Speaker 400
2:21:12
the policies yes okay is that through email how is that normally email yes okay okay thank you Representative Rose. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Warden.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:21:27
We did a back and forth a little bit ago about whether
security footage had been followed up on prior to the escape, on whether or not policies and procedures were violated by other staff and whether this would be systemic or not at
Calico Rock. With that in mind, the two employees who were terminated, were
they terminated specifically because a prison break took place
because they violated the policies and procedures, or were the violations of the policies and procedures fireable offenses? They
Speaker 335
2:22:06
were terminated because they didn't follow their post orders, their directives on performing
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:22:15
their job duties. Have you in any way, shape, or form since that took place investigated whether other employees had done the same thing prior to that escape or since?
Speaker 335
2:22:27
I've had no reports that they had. if i
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:22:32
if i had have you done any type of investigation into whether that's happened or not i asked specifically about security footage you said no but now i'm asking have you
Speaker 324
2:22:41
done any type of investigation i'm not aware of anything like that happening and if it was brought to
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:22:47
my attention then yes i would investigate i understand have you done any investigation to
see if it has happened no okay so no no follow-up to investigate whether these policies or procedures were uh broken by other staff members correctly i mean correct that
hasn't no investigation before this right no not before um why wasn't there anybody available to supervise harden on that dock when
Speaker 324
2:23:19
he was released from the kitchen there was someone available the the person in the
Speaker 335
2:23:24
kitchen could have called the shift supervisor and asked for
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:23:29
assistance he didn't do that okay so this is
good because ignorance on my part i've heard between your testimony and chairman magnus's testimony
that there just simply wasn't somebody out there to supervise him so protocol wise it's not
that there's somebody who just is out in that area supervising it's that somebody needs to be requested he
Speaker 324
2:23:49
could have requested most of the time there's two kitchen supervisors on duty were there at this point there was only one because the one who came in in the morning shift had already left for
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:24:02
the day so if there's normally two why was there just one because
Speaker 324
2:24:07
they work split shifts we feed three times a day one comes in about 2 o'clock in the morning
Speaker 335
2:24:14
and starts the breakfast meal and the lunch meal and then the other one comes in about 10 o'clock and carries on through the evening meal so at
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:24:23
this time there's not normally two there is
Speaker 324
2:24:27
two during the course of the day but they don't what i'm saying is in the evening time that first person who came in for the morning meal had already left normally during
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:24:39
the evening time has that person already left yes okay so normally at this point of the day there's not two on duty no is
that something that should be addressed he's we still
Speaker 324
2:24:54
have the ability to have someone come in there and assist them so it's not something that should be addressed i'm not saying it shouldn't be addressed what i'm saying is you know we don't have the positions in that kitchen we have four people assigned with a kitchen lieutenant who is over all of them.
We have to cover those feeding periods all day. So is it burdensome if the kitchen staff requests somebody
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:25:20
to come down? No. No. In the process of terminating those employees,
was it ever asked why he didn't ask for somebody to come down? he
or she i don't know i didn't ask that person that so we don't know why that individual didn't
ask no um in the so the incident review that's going to take
place will they interview the terminated employees uh i don't believe so
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:26:01
the opinions or the mindsets of the employees who were terminated, who more or less broke the policies and procedures, we won't know why those things took place from this incident report.
No, not from that one. So, and I'm not, I'm not insinuating this, but it's a plausible response that an employee could say, well, every time I call and ask for help, I get
in trouble or it's bothersome or, you know, my boss gets onto my case or he makes my life miserable when I request this because it's a burden for him. We have no way of knowing
if that's the case because they will not be interviewed for this incident report. Is that correct? Correct. And you didn't – you and nobody inside your team asked those questions? I did not, no.
Speaker 381
2:26:46
Any reason why? At the time, I was wanting to know why he let him out there,
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:26:58
why he went out there. And just one more time, you haven't investigated any other employees who are in these same roles to see if they've done the same things with other prisoners or individuals on staff? I haven't at this time, no. Do you think
Speaker 315
2:27:10
that you will? I probably will, yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
2:27:20
Representative Painter. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Kind of real quick follow-off of Representative Rose's line of questioning. I think it would behoo of this state to interview those employees uh and for the incident report i really do i think we're going to miss a lot of information by not doing that but that's just me um how long did it take you to notify baxter county and isard county sheriff's office uh that you had an escape prisoner
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
2:28:01
hour two hours oh no no less than an hour i think so yes okay um how often are standard and procedures reviewed uh at calico you're talking about policies policies reviews you know if you have an updated policy does the rest of staff get that update or you have standard and procedures correct yes okay and sometimes those change how often do you guys uh update those with staff have a meeting or
so forth like that so people are all on the same page because it's clearly now we know not everybody
Speaker 324
2:28:38
was on the same page so we have we have monthly security meetings with the supervisors and policy changes and things of that nature are covered in those meetings I have a monthly meeting with all my staff they're including security and non security and discuss any policy changes that come down
Speaker 335
2:28:57
uh we go over it like that that's how we get the message down the supervisors
the shift supervisors captains stuff like that they're required to go back to the shifts during shift briefing and pass that
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
2:29:10
information along to them okay is it safe to say that has that has failed i don't think so no no okay um also
who who for just for information purposes who does the classification for an inmate yeah so who selects so if you get a new inmate say I'm there and who selects which job I'm going to be or do in the prison we have a classification committee
Speaker 335
2:29:36
that's made up of myself the deputy warden the major chief security we have medical mental health the chaplain these people are all on the committee that decides on what job that person is assigned And remind
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
2:29:52
me again, what does that committee take a look at, like for Mr. Harden's case, his criminal history and so forth like that? What is that taken to a part two? What other things taken apart for that classification?
Speaker 383
2:30:08
Well, we look at his medical status to make sure that he is physically able
Speaker 335
2:30:13
to do a job. Also, we look at the mental health status. If he's on some type of medication or something like that, he's not allowed to work outside in the sun things like that are looked at uh we look at his past history his behavior if
Speaker 322
2:30:27
he has been a disruptive or violent person then we take all that into account okay i think that's enough questions
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:30:39
for me for now warden hurst um kind
of focused on this in the past i'm
gonna go back to it again uh during the the time frame where there was a command center was there ever a time when you were not in charge outside of the time that your captain was was in charge i was there the whole time well i understand you were there the whole time um but were you in charge the whole time were you in command in that command room were you calling the shots the whole time in in that command room i was not calling shots
Speaker 383
2:31:15
the whole time i was allowing the staff that was there to do those specific jobs i was allowing them to do the job they were assigned
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:31:21
well that's what leaders do but now since you've gone there could you tell me who was in charge when you weren't in charge the captain
Speaker 340
2:31:35
who was there so it's back on the captain
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:31:37
but i mean i was there the whole time yeah was there anyone else of a higher rank other than your captain that was in charge of that command center no okay um one one final question
something i think maybe senator dees or um or someone asked has there been any communication with the victims and um and and the victim family i mean not from our not from my standpoint but as far as
Speaker 472
2:32:00
you know has there been any communication back to
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:32:02
to the victim's family i'm not aware of any but that I wouldn't be privy to
Speaker 355
2:32:07
that all right well thank you sir okay members seeing that
we've made it all the way through the queue and he's still sitting in his chair he didn't get up
and just walk out we do have food coming for everybody in the room and all the witnesses that are still here graciously waiting to visit
with us but warden hard and I want to thank
you for coming more than Harden sorry Hurst I apologize it's okay did somebody
else say something oh Matt rep grows you want to ask another question the warden go
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:32:54
for it through this experience I was just curious from a leadership perspective what have you and your
team learned through this that that will be beneficial moving forward
Speaker 335
2:33:07
to check and double check to make sure that we've date we've taken care
Speaker 322
2:33:12
of things that need be taken care of that we've followed our policies and procedures what
Speaker 324
2:33:22
we're looking at now is this inmate was
assigned to that kitchen area for seven years he worked in that same job for that long period time and that's way too long so that's something that we're going to focus on and look at to see we don't need someone that gets that comfortable because in the period of time like that staff gets comfortable with people you lose that perspective of security
Speaker 326
2:33:46
first and that's something that we can't do. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
2:34:05
Representative Payne. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Let's real quick. Did you say earlier in your statement that you did not contact state police first? No, we didn't. Okay. When did, how far into the When you realize the escape printer, how long was the time did you take to
Speaker 335
2:34:25
contact state police? We found out that we did not contact them. They learned of it through the other
Speaker 322
2:34:31
agencies and arrived at the unit on their own.
Speaker 500
2:34:36
Okay. Is there a reason why? There was a miscommunication on the
Speaker 322
2:34:40
notification process. Is that in the standard and procedures that
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
2:34:43
you guys have, is to contact state police? It is in the procedures, yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. With that, thank you
for coming and talking to us. And we're going to stay for some chicken sandwich if you want, or
you can hit the road. Two and a half hour drive.
All right. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Members we will wait for just a minute while we're waiting on our next witness, which is Dexter Payne and then we'll get going again
Unknown speaker
2:35:39
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. would both introduce yourself and you can be recognized if you would you're
welcome to make a statement then if you wouldn't mind going through kind of a course of events of the day of the escape and you can follow through with what happened afterwards what actions you took the department took the the prison and the warden took the other agencies that got involved you can be as detailed as you want um and then we'll open the floor up for questions but we do appreciate you both being here yes sir i'm dexter
Speaker 511
2:39:14
payne i'm the director for the division of correction
Speaker 512
2:39:17
major randy shores i'm the merchant preparedness
Speaker 513
2:39:21
coordinator for the division of corrections yes sir mr chair uh on may
Speaker 515
2:39:26
25th at approximately 3 53 uh 2 53 p.m uh inmate grant harden uh was assigned to the north central facility in calico rock he was assigned as a 1c inmate as a kitchen worker that day he was working in the kitchen and he asked the food service supervisor if he could
go to the back dock and clean the chemical cage up so that that food service employee allowed inmate Harden access to the back dock to do so, to clean that cage up. However, when inmate Harden was back on the back dock that day, he changed into a makeshift uniform. He carried a cart with a box and a makeshift
ladder made out of pallets. walked to the gate at that time he stood at the gate officer let him through the first gate and let him through the second gate and of course there was a violation of our policies and violation of uh just common good security practices as he let him out so uh during that day once i was notified of these things i began making uh notifications i notified the board i spoke
with Secretary Wallace, our radio room. So we just start getting our process in place to recapture Inmate Harden once he had got out the second gate. Our K-9 teams searched, ran a track, trying to find Inmate Harden with our dog teams, and we were unsuccessful at that point. So we searched, we set up a perimeter, we opened up a command center. From that point, we started making notifications of different agencies for assistance
and helping us to recapture him without success. But eventually, we ended up catching him after a long, drawn-out period of time. We've got him back in custody, and he is now housed at the Varner Supermax facility. Since that point, the staff, the initial staff that allowed him out of the kitchen, disciplinary action has been taken on that person, as well as the person in the tower who actually popped the button and opened the gates.
And right now what I've got going on, we've referred this matter, Internal Affairs is looking in it. We also have a critical incident review, and this all will be also investigated by state police. So right now that's basically where we're at. Once we get our critical incident review completed, I am very sure there will be some changes that we'll be adding things to several policies within the Division of Correction and the Department of Correction.
But today that's where we're at. I'm hoping to have our critical incident review completed within the next couple of weeks. It's taken a little longer than we thought. The person actually overseeing that incident review had some health issues and was out for a period of time, but he's back and he's working hard trying to get that incident review completed so we can see exactly what we've done wrong and how to fix what we've done wrong and
Speaker 516
2:43:02
make sure that to the best of our ability it never happens again.
Speaker 512
2:43:07
And I'm sorry, sir, would you repeat your name? Major Randy Shores,
I'm the Emergency Preparedness Coordinator for the Division of Corrections. Would you like to add anything
to that? No, sir, that pretty much sums it up. Okay, then we'll open it up for
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
2:43:34
questions. I've got Representative Crawford. You're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for being here, and Mr. Dexter, thank you for always answering my calls.
Yes, ma'am, you will. Helping me with my constituents. It was said that there were no cameras on the back dock at the kitchen. uh are there other areas that do not have surveillance cameras that people could get out inmates could get out and plan an escape well our perimeter fences uh have
Speaker 525
2:44:09
cameras but this area of the back dock there are areas inside of institutions
Speaker 515
2:44:15
that you know camera we want camera
coverage for for the entire deal i would love that however uh unfortunately we do have blind spots at times that we don't have cameras we try to identify those blind spots and utilize things such as mirrors things of that nature but we do not have cameras in that spot and there are several locations that we we do need additional cameras and we're actively seeking
Speaker 516
2:44:40
funding and things to get our cameras updated and more adequate at our facilities how
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
2:44:46
much funding do you think that
Speaker 530
2:44:48
would take the last estimate that we we have done and that was from an outside corporation I think it is Verdicta cameras was was somewhere in the in
Speaker 532
2:45:03
the process of about 30 million for the entire state okay well let's
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
2:45:09
look at something different yes ma'am it was
it was a lot how much would it take just to feel the areas that are not being filmed like the back
Speaker 530
2:45:20
dock? Like the back dock. And say if we looked at that department wide and we audit this during our security audits and that's all noted to have someone come in and just add to our existing camera system in the neighborhood of probably around five million to get
Speaker 512
2:45:39
all the blind spots covered at the different institutions across the state i want to
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
2:45:44
break in just since representative crawford went down this line earlier in testimony they said that from the guard tower you could see that back dock so you
have you have something better than a camera you've got human eyes yes and there's very little activity on that back dock so you you've got a guy in the tower with a rifle watching watching those perimeters that that can see that all the time and that tower's staffed and
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
2:46:15
manned 24-7. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for interrupting my questions, but I just wanted to know what it would take because as we all know, there's not enough money
to staff who you need to staff in any area in the state. But I was trying to look at the things that would bring comfort to those people who have people who are inmates that they fear would come after them to where we could possibly make it more secure for
the community. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Senator Dees.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:46:58
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Director. This is just kind of for my clarity. It always takes me a minute to get my head around the different layers and departments and roles so director of division of corrections how does that team how do you interact with the board of corrections and what is the authority ranking
and conversation like for policy and procedures on facilities like calico rock
Speaker 515
2:47:29
the ranking structure i report to
the Board of Correction. I also report pretty much to the Secretary also. So as far as policies, we have different layers of policies. The Board of Correction actually does what we call administrative rules. They basically take care of those. And what I try to do is build administrative directives off of those rules. And I try to make them more specific to the facilities and things of that nature, whereas the administrative rule basically gives me an overlay of exactly what we need to do and what our focus should be.
But I try to tailor it specific to the Division of Correction and
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:48:12
the facilities that we have. Is it fair to say that you're the implementation of the policies that are made by the board? Is that a good summary? Yes, sir. okay and
then with with major with the emergency management system how do you and your team and your division how do
you come into account with these divisions i assist with the coordination of all
Speaker 532
2:48:36
the emergency plans the special operations the the special emergency teams
assisting the units with writing their emergency plans for certain emergencies and i answer directly to the director um i i guess firsthand supervise all the sttg which is the gang unit uh and the narcotics canine unit for the department thank you for the
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:48:57
clarity on that and so now double clicking deep dive into the event um we have reference of our command center that gets set up and our leaders rallying together to get a plan and will you help me understand what
what what that room was like and what was going on who had authority uh
Speaker 532
2:49:19
what what information was getting passed out um we follow national incident management system uh ICS incident command structure uh it's some of our naming is a little different uh like our ultimate commanders and then our operations chief and our financial chief logistics chief and they are made up by the unit warden the unit deputy warden they take on those roles the director and the the management staff
the management team from the department the director staff operate as the emergency operation type center if you're familiar with neilms to assist that commander on the ground with anything that he needs logistically financially or in the process of making another plan for a certain operation my role in that is to assist him in coordinating span of control joint information and working with the other outside agencies as a liaison so you said commander so that the
commander would be the authority in the command center yes during the manhunt yes sir that would be your that would be your unit warden that would be the warden is the commander yes sir he is the ultimate commander of the unit that that has the issue he is the ultimate
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:50:31
command so but you also said that um your team reports to the board of corrections yes sir so if the board of corrections were
in the command center would they have authority no sir they uh the
Speaker 515
2:50:43
ultimate can't commander would be the warden at all times at all times okay just making sure i understood the
Speaker 532
2:50:50
there is no change of command unless of course uh the commander is relieved of duty uh and that would that would take the director to relieve relieve someone of duty
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:51:00
so in this instance um Was the warden in authority in the command center, and it was never relieved of
Speaker 539
2:51:07
duty? Never relieved of duty except for a
Speaker 532
2:51:10
break to sleep. That's the only time that there was ever a change of command committed. But Warden Hurst was the ultimate commander for the entire operation. So if there happened
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
2:51:20
to be a board member in the command center, the warden would still be authority?
Speaker 532
2:51:25
And does everybody know that? Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah, they would be there just, of course, as advisors or in a role
Speaker 400
2:51:40
to observe. Thank you. Representative Rose. Thank
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:51:46
you, Mr. Chairman. Director Payne, thank you for taking time to spend your evening with us. Yes, sir. Doing some Q&A, and I appreciate that. Uh, is, am I correct that, um, your initial experiences with, uh, corrections was serving
as a correctional officer? Is that correct? Yes, sir. That's correct. You feel like that gives you unique perspectives and insights as you've risen through the ranks to
where you are now? Yes, sir. I do. Um, there's been a lot of discussion, uh, this evening, this
afternoon with the classification of Mr. Harden as a prisoner. Um, with you recognizing the, uh, the distinct insights
that you have as having been a correctional officer, are there any policy and procedures in place that would have put Mr. Harden in
a different category, having also previously worked as recently
as 2017 as a correctional officer in the Arkansas department of corrections? that's
Speaker 515
2:52:45
a tough question but uh he was he at north central unit i think he was properly housed there north central is is probably the best staffed facility that we have in arkansas uh it's as of today i think it's fully staffed uh it's probably the only facility that i have that's fully staffed
So, and we can house what we call C4 maximum security inmates at that facility. So, yes, sir, I think that is a facility he could have been housed at. He had shown us nothing inside the facilities to say that he was a discipline problem. He didn't have any disciplinary reports the entire time he was
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:53:33
like to just kind of reiterate the question, is there a
policy or a procedure in place
for when you house a prisoner who has a background in correctional employment? No, sir. That does not address specifically correctional employment
Speaker 515
2:53:49
backgrounds. No, sir. Do you think that that should be taken into consideration? Yes,
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:53:53
sir. Is that something that you'll take into consideration moving
forward? Yes, sir. I have another question along
this line, but I don't want to forget something else that was very interesting to me.
We talked a lot about the disguise or the resources and materials that he used with the ladder building and all these things, and I kept seeing this box, and maybe it's been revealed, but what was in the box? What was the box for? Did you ever discover it?
Speaker 554
2:54:31
Was it supplies? Was it how he survived? Yes, sir. From my understanding, he had a bag in that box that had supplies in it. That's why he had that
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:54:42
box. Okay, follow up. Do you believe that it's in the best interests for Calico Rock, but also other prisons across the state,
to investigate whether other employees at that location had failed to follow policies and procedures in the days
and weeks leading up to that prison escape. Yes, sir. We want to get
Speaker 515
2:55:03
to the bottom of exactly what happened. And if we can determine that there was other policy violations up to that point, yes, sir, we need to address them. We had
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:55:14
just spoken with the warden previous to this, and it had evidently not crossed his mind or did not rise to the level of importance
to look at the security footage from the previous weeks of whether anybody had not had verification when exiting those back gates and to not check kitchen footage from the previous weeks on whether or not other prisoners had been let out onto this back dock by other employees working either in the kitchen or at that guard tower. Um, would that seem like something that should be done? Yes, sir. Okay. Um, I'll yield back
for now, but I appreciate, uh, your responses and the attention to that matter. Thank you. Thank you,
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
2:55:56
Mr. Chairman. Representative Fainter. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, director Payne, you said that, uh, it was
a food service employee that he let him out to clean the chemical cage or something like that is an employee of the department of the prison
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
2:56:19
prison at that time so with that person when when they do that do they let when they let harding out is it do they does the tower get notified that somebody procedure wise hey letting a prisoner out on the
back uh dock there does the tower get notified how does that work
Speaker 515
2:56:38
how do they know sir what What should have happened, he shouldn't have allowed him out there by himself. If he allowed him outside, he should have been there with him to make sure he did what he was supposed to do and then brought him
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
2:56:50
back in once he completed the task. Did that employee – I assume you interviewed the employee. Yes, sir. Did that employee ever say
how many times they let an inmate or harden out? No, sir.
Speaker 515
2:57:03
He did not say how many times throughout his career he had done so. So we do know that he let him out this time after being told that he should not. You know, he had to sign for a staff meeting, minutes, and they were told not to allow inmates
Speaker 516
2:57:23
outside the back door without staff being present.
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
2:57:25
Gotcha. How often do the standards and procedures, I asked the warden this too, I want to ask you how how often do the procedures and standards get reviewed by
Whether that's the warden or other staff members On a basis at least annually annually. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Mr Senator Gilmore
Speaker 564
2:57:45
Direct pain good to see you. Good seeing you too. Thanks for being here.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:57:55
Yes, sir What was there a unified command established on site it at Gallico? When you say
Speaker 567
2:58:02
unified, are you talking about with additional other law enforcement agencies? Yes.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:58:07
Yes, sir. Okay. And I know it didn't happen immediately because it took some time. We've already established it took some time to realize he was missing and all that. But when was that
Speaker 532
2:58:21
established? Any idea? I arrived on the scene. I think I got notified somewhere around 4.15 that afternoon. And, of course, it's almost a three-hour drive up. By the time I arrived around 7 o'clock, that unified command was coming together. We already had representatives from local law enforcement there.
State police were there. The perimeter, for the most part, had been set. And, of course, you had local authorities and the state police on that perimeter doing the roadblock. So sometime before 7 for sure. Okay. So who all was a
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
2:58:56
part of that, generally speaking? And you may have covered some of this, but I'm sort of rehashing it a little
Speaker 532
2:59:04
bit, I think. Normally, it does vary from the location to the prisons across the state because some prisons are very rural areas.
I think Gould has two police officers, so they normally don't send anybody to the command center. Everybody can understand that. But for the most part, you usually have the local authorities that are there, which would be the local PD or a constable. then you would have a representative from the county, then you would have somebody, of course, from the state police. As things expand and you start to expand your span of control, it's not uncommon to have the FBI or the U.S. Marshals come in to assist also.
They'll have representatives in and out as they come in to assist us. And you always have a representative, of course, from the Emergency Operations Center, whether it's a deputy director or the chief deputy director or the director himself that comes into the operations center. So that's usually what makes up the biggest part of the unified command.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:00:08
Okay. So they're tracking, we have tracking dogs and teams on site at Calico.
Yes, sir. And those were deployed, I presume. Yes, sir, they were. But I presume
Speaker 532
3:00:20
there were weather, rain and other things, factors involved. They ran a track approximately, and I'm just going to say approximately maybe a half a mile before the rain hit. Right at the road crossing, the rain hit very hard, and when I arrived on the scene, the lieutenant, you know, briefed me. And he said, this is where I lost it, Major. So we devised a plan, of course, to take our inner perimeter and tighten our inner perimeter down.
And at that point, the Arkansas State Police drone team was already there. My drone team was en route and got the two drone teams up and put them up to start trying to clear the areas to the east and the west
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:01:03
of Moxcan Creek. Okay. Who handles the – are these – I presume these are certified folks to handle the dogs and track the dogs. Yes, sir. Okay, and they care for the dogs. Yes, sir. Okay. And is that the standard across all corrections at every prison
that has a tracking dogs yes sir we
Speaker 532
3:01:24
have uh four tracking and what we call pack dog teams these these are full-blown pack dog teams have it up to maybe 40 dogs and that's the teams with the horses and the full-blown deal north central is a little unique in the aspect that they are only a leash dog team and that's because of the terrain up there running at night time we'd run a horse off side of a cliff somewhere so they have always had a leash dog team that operates one dog on a
leash uh normally with three handlers i've got a leash dog team at north central got one at pine bluff and then
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:02:01
we have one at newport and i presume with
all these teams that inmates have zero contact with with the
Speaker 532
3:02:09
dogs uh no sir we do have inmates that work inside the dog kennels Those inmates are highly classified as far as looking at their background, their jacket. They're disciplinary free, and they do come out.
And they only do pen cleaning, some feeding, and a little bit of the handling, but not near as much. And that's across the system, right? Yes, sir.
Speaker 576
3:02:35
Okay. Except for the narcotics dogs. My narcotics
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:02:39
dogs are different. Handlers handle them. Yeah. Um, okay. I appreciate that. I do want to touch on, um, classification. Um, and I
know director, you're probably familiar with classification study that was voted on, um, by the board. I believe that was may 29th, uh, which was a few days after the escape. Is that correct? Yes, sir. That's correct. Okay. Um, what, what
Speaker 528
3:03:05
do you anticipate that being?
I anticipate it to basically compare our
Speaker 515
3:03:11
classification system in Arkansas to other classification systems around the country and possibly bring us information that we can improve our classification system if possible. I think we have a pretty good classification system, but you can never be perfect. You can always improve and do better. Help me
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:03:32
with your current classification. what are you all looking at when you make a classification?
Is that based on intake, what they're assessed at intake, or is that based on what?
Speaker 557
3:03:47
So it's based on basically his entire file. You know, we look at a number of things.
Speaker 515
3:03:53
We look at his age. We look at his or her length of sentence. We look at his program needs. We look at numerous deals and characteristics. His gang affiliation. there's a long laundry list of things that we we actually look at okay all right um mental
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:04:13
evaluations yes sir okay and those are done where are those done is that done at washita
Speaker 569
3:04:19
where is that the initial one is at washita but i mean
Speaker 515
3:04:24
throughout time you have people that sometimes uh their
Speaker 557
3:04:27
mental health fails 10 years you know after being in prison so we do evaluations at every unit. Who
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:04:34
does that? You have trained personnel, I presume? Yes, sir. We have trained
Speaker 515
3:04:39
mental health personnel and licensed staff. At each facility to
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:04:44
reevaluate if need be? Yes, sir. Okay. I'll get back in a
few things. Yes, sir. Have you not heard the Blake Shelton song? You're going to have red-haired blue ticks all through
the south. Yes, we're not careful. What kind of training is provided to department employees, and is it on an annual basis regarding escapes and the response to those escapes? Yes, sir.
Speaker 530
3:05:14
It is in the annual training and the annual emergency preparedness training. Annually they have to go through eight
Speaker 532
3:05:21
hours of training. um so inside that the office the basic officer is uh is basically briefed on what his or her duties would be at their grade at that at that time in the emergency preparedness system of course for a lieutenant it's different than a co1 it's different
Speaker 530
3:05:41
for a sergeant um and what they're what they would be expected to do during an escape
Speaker 532
3:05:47
what kind of drills do you complete
or do you compete complete drills the every unit has an emergency preparedness uh coordinator that's like myself but they work directly for the warden at the unit uh and they do complacency drills monthly uh these complacency drills can consist of anything from taking a piece of paper and sticking it in a fence that says hold in fence here call me when you find this or to the point where we run full-blown drills to the point where we lay a track, run the dogs, the whole nine yards.
It just depends on what the complacency is we're looking at that month. The management team of the unit, including the warden, is advised of that, and then the emergency preparedness coordinator develops the plan and operates it. Once a year, every unit is required by policy to interact with the outside agencies, that being the local police, the sheriff's department, or whoever is there, even the fire department.
We have fires, too. We have to do drills on that. So once a year, they have what's called a full-blown tabletop or drill where everybody comes in, they disseminate the plans, and they talk to one another, see who's new, or they will have a full-blown
drill all the way out. So the two employees that I understand to be have been terminated. They had been with that facility apparently three and five years respectively. Yes, sir.
Do you know when their last complacency review was? Because that, I mean, we got the definition of complacency there, right? Yes,
Speaker 532
3:07:29
sir. And that would be the, you know, that would be in that complacency drill for that month. uh were they actually on duty when the epc had that drill that we would have to go back and look at that to see if they did get that monthly but the epcs rotate that
so if they didn't get it this month they probably got it the month before i'm sure
they did so do you know if there were any reports or infractions that were reported regarding inmates being let into areas they
shouldn't be alone or um the perhaps the guard tower i'm surely this wasn't the first time he'd let somebody out who he thought was an officer without and and obviously it wasn't the only time harden was allowed to be in that back dock by himself so were
Speaker 532
3:08:16
there any previous in the the complacency drills after they do them and they do the paperwork on them and they send they do send them up to me i don't recall ever seeing that being noted on a complacency drill that's another
job of the epc is to do that paperwork and he becomes uh kind of the overseer of the drill to see what went good and what went bad i don't never or i don't recall seeing that on any of that
complacency paperwork and so to your knowledge the um emergency preparedness coordinator for each unit was was he in the control room and performing his function he was uh lieutenant cross
was there uh doing what the epc does okay thank you very much representative rose i'm sorry while you hold
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:09:02
on a second while you were in that line on those drills so it's just to make certain i understood what you were saying uh that really nothing came of those drills as far as as a finding or an area that we needed focus um are did or were there have there been results that led to corrective actions from those complacency drills so how how did they go did they go well uh there's always things that
Speaker 532
3:09:30
on what the complacency drill it can be as simple as
an inmate not clearing a metal detector for this month he didn't clear the metal detector how did the staff uh respond when the inmate didn't clear their metal detector and then that is documented by the epc and then it of course it's sent back to the shift commander for review um and then the of course appropriate discipline is taken from there through the progressive discipline and our policy um i don't recall any discipline you know in the few months coming up to that to this happening
I'm going to jump back in here sorry representative Rose along those lines it's been said several times today that this was a obviously it was complacency but it was a failure to not implement policy that we had on the books but it seems much more systemic to me when you've got possible classification issues possible communication issues then you have what what appears to be a habit of breaking policy I mean the fact that he was able to get the materials that he needed
over whatever span of time it took him and then carry out those acts I don't know if there are I mean I don't know if the department does searches of of these of these even inventories of that room I believe if I heard correctly there is a policy to inventory that supply room where he was in yes that wasn't happening right so the guy at the gate and I've said this before if if everybody else had done their job it wouldn't matter but there seems to be a whole string of these violations and it doesn't just
stop with those two individuals so you know I'm glad to hear that there are complacency drills going on for whatever reason that wasn't effective at this unit. Correct. So, okay. Representative Rose. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:11:26
Have the terminated employees, are you aware of the terminated employees been replaced? I'm pretty sure they have. I'm pretty,
Speaker 585
3:11:36
but you know, it takes the time. They've got to go through the training
Speaker 515
3:11:41
academy first before they can actually come to the facility. So at North Central, as I stated
Speaker 516
3:11:46
earlier, they're pretty much fully staffed, so I'm pretty sure they've hired somebody to replace
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:11:53
those employees. And I was going to ask, were there any employees who were promoted into these positions following the
terminations? You know what I'm saying? So I don't know how you rank them, but you've got Tower Guard A, and now he's been terminated. Is there another
employee who could have been elevated to that position
or did you have to hire somebody specifically as that exact same position so so what
Speaker 515
3:12:20
we have what we do every day we assign officers to different posts to post different posts so once once he was removed uh terminated from that post we assign another officer there but basically what we do is is rehire somebody else they go to the training academy but somebody's going to be covering that tower until we can rehire, you know, get them out of the training academy and get them into the facility.
So they're not there yet, I'm sure. That's what I was
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:12:47
going to ask is if we could request just notification or information letting
us know if those two terminated employees have been replaced yet or if there is an employee windfall in the interim. Okay, yes, sir. I'll find out. Are you aware or do you know or can you find out if any other employees were reprimanded,
disciplined, demoted due to this prison escape?
Speaker 515
3:13:14
Not at this time. There have not been. We're still in the process of doing our critical incident review.
Speaker 551
3:13:22
Once it's complete, we should know better if we
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:13:28
need to do additional
disciplinary action. We discussed at length with both Chairman Magnus and Warden Hurst the uh i believe that there are an annual uh audit or or review inspection security audit
it seemed like there was two different ones right there's an annual and then there's maybe something that takes place monthly and
both were discussed yes there's a vulnerability assessment done okay that's what it was yes and then and so have you reviewed the
the previous annual inspection and then the the previous several maybe month inspections prior to this escape to see if there were any findings that would have suggested there were failures or
Speaker 530
3:14:11
weaknesses yes sir the vulnerability assessments i have i also review those monthly for the units and there was
nothing documented on that vulnerability assessment security audits sir we do security audits annually And,
Speaker 532
3:14:23
of course, that's the day of the security audit. There was nothing noted on that day for last year's security audit. So, go ahead, sorry. Other than the fact about the cameras and the other blind spots that had been noted, it's been there for a while. So,
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:14:45
with that understanding, do you believe that something more intensive should take place?
If if it didn't reveal these vulnerabilities and we're seeming to see that there is a maybe there was a pattern of behavior that had taken place that led to this this escape. Is there something more intensive that would have revealed the vulnerabilities? And I think it was you, Director Payne, said this was more related to
a personnel issue, not a policy issue. But is there something more intensive instead of just continuing to do the same thing? Oh, any
Speaker 530
3:15:25
time there's any escape or any emergency in the department,
Speaker 532
3:15:29
if we can diagnose that there was a vulnerability in our system somewhere, that next security audit for that next facility, you can bet there's an emphasis put on that vulnerability. Before I take a security audit team out to do security audit, I discuss with Mr. Payne and of course the directors, the management team of the agency is there anything special that you really want me to put some emphasis in
and they will tell me you know and if there has been an emergency if there's been a fire in the laundry hey Major make sure that we're checking those vents in the laundry that there's nothing in there stopping them up so when you get to the vulnerabilities that are there we're constantly look into the to those and we are constantly reviewing um our audit instruments that put our auditors on to that next vulnerability um this one here you know you you had a personnel
issue that allowed this to happen and uh we're in that people business you're always going to have that human element that's there. Could we have done better with a different deal there for the vulnerability? I'm unsure of that with the personnel pushing the button. Thank you for that response
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:16:57
and I think I'd like to follow up with I am not a prison security subject matter expert but
I would strongly urge once again to take into consideration moving forward
maybe to an even greater degree the background of prisoners who specifically have worked in law enforcement and correctional facilities having a background around prisons and jails and those types of patterns of of work and knowing the the inner workings of jails and prisons and those kinds of things. Um,
moving forward, what is, uh, the department going to do, uh, to restore maybe morale and accountability for all the correctional
staff at Calico rock? Because on a number of
levels, this has to be devastating, concerning. Um, what are you guys doing to just kind of restore or, um, you know, re-implement, re-implement morale for the employees and also accountability? Well, basically what we do,
Speaker 515
3:18:00
you know, like I said before, North Central is a pretty unique facility with us because they're pretty much fully staffed. Once we get the critical incident review completed, we can just see exactly what we need to do. Unfortunately, I'm not there today. I don't have all the information I need to, but our human resource
department, we have employee assistance programs. If they got questions, we have open door policies. So, if they need help or any type of assistance or we feel that the morale is just weighed down behind this, you know, we're there for them. But most of our staff understand, hey, we have a task. We have a job to do. And, you know, it's a heavy task because we've got 18,000 inmates inside, you know, our fences. And, hey, they don't want to be there.
So, our job is to keep them in there. And they pretty much understand that. But anything we can do for them, we'll
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:19:00
definitely be there to help them. After this follow-up, I will yield to my colleagues here. I
asked the warden if there had been a line of questioning to the terminated employees what led to their decisions on some of these things, what their mindset was, and if the – and I'm losing the proper terminology here, but the incident review.
if they were going to be interviewed, and I asked the question along the lines of the kitchen employee, do we know his or her mindset of did they not call for an additional supervision of prisoner Hardin on the back dock because that was an issue, right? Were they kind of reprimanded if they had to ask for assistance? Was that a problem? And nobody knows because nobody's asked those questions. Was he afraid to ask for assistance?
Was the tower guard concerned that if he asked for verification that he'd get a slap on the wrist because previously that had happened? None of those questions had been asked in the investigation. From what I understood, none of them were going to be asked after the fact because they've already been terminated. Does that line up from an investigation standpoint for you guys? Shouldn't those lines of questioning take place with those employees, whether it's
before they're terminated or because at this point, how are we supposed to get those answers? Right.
Speaker 515
3:20:25
And I think the food service employee just didn't follow policy.
He just chose not to follow policy. He had signed saying that he understood that he couldn't let anybody on that back dock unsupervised. He knew that. So he chose to do wrong. The tower officer, he did, when we questioned the tower officer, he did explain that he was a little upset by being moved to a different post that day. He initially started that morning in restrictive housing. One of our other employees became sick, and this employee replaced that person in the tower.
And I think he was a little upset by moving posts that day, and I think he just became complacent. Well, I appreciate
Speaker 301
3:21:10
that. And I guess the— Representative Rose? Yes, sir. I'm going to move on and we'll put you back in the queue. No, you're
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
3:21:19
good. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Representative Painter. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, Calico Rockett's kind of in a rural
area, but I've been there many times, driven through Iuka there, that little cut through between Calico and Pineville there.
there's resident houses and stuff that are there still how are those residents notified or were they notified that there was an escape prisoner there because some of those houses especially on that backside yes sir or next or right
Speaker 493
3:21:46
across the road from your fence that the actually
Speaker 532
3:21:50
knocked on the door okay and who did that we did you did okay once once my team hit the ground with the SUV or the ATVs we went from house to house all the way down at Yooka Road. We couldn't cross
Moxican Creek there that night because it was flooded out. We ended up but believe it or not the next day we did cross and went on down doing our house to house that we would normally do and checking on all the residents and making contact. How far is that perimeter that you do the door knocking? We went all the way across Yooka where it comes all the way to Pineville. I think those people probably got to Well, they brought us some cookies and stuff too, but I think they kind of got tired of seeing us
because we kept that pretty hot. And then, of course, all the way, I guess that's – is that five? Yeah. That comes back around. Yeah. All the way from where it comes out there at Pineville and comes all the way back around on Highway 5, all the way back to the entrance of the unit. That was our – that was kind of our perimeter. Okay. And, of course, most of our focus was right there at Moxican Creek. just did not even though we didn't have the sign to tell us that he was there we focused on
Moxigan Creek so we just did not believe he crossed that creek and could get away from that we did have a sighting the first night way down Moxigan Creek we went in there with the game and fish and it was really flooded out pretty much ruled out that that he didn't make it that far that night so we knew he was still close so we just we just kind of circled in on that area around a yucca road yeah thank you thank you mr. okay members moving forward
if if you would be so kind
as to stick to maybe two questions and then jump back in the queue well then we'll make sure
everybody gets a chance to ask their
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
3:23:56
questions senator johnson senator dees mr. chair just a quick question it took 12 days to find them
Speaker 532
3:24:06
what's what's your quick thoughts on that why it took so long um Um, weather, uh, terrain, um, equipment, training, uh, that was, that was the big thing.
Um, when, when director asked me, uh, what do we think about the Bortac? We had the Bortac, uh, solution. Uh, my answer was yes, immediately. Uh, can I get them here tomorrow? Because, uh, I had worn out my team. I'm talking I've only got 20 guys, let's say, that's really trained in that type of terrain to go in there and do that. And then, of course, with the equipment that I had and the weather,
we were worn out. So they brought different equipment to bear. They brought some nice toys, and we linked up with them, and that's how that was done. How did he survive that long? I
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
3:25:00
mean he he actually from initial from the
Speaker 532
3:25:03
initial point of it he found a way to get out of the weather the first night I think he was in like a cave or overhang and then he was able to find some structure out there that he could get into and food supplies he was able to take all
that from the facility when he escaped he he did have some peanut butter sandwiches that he took from the unit with him and he surfaced on that till he got hungry and then once he got hungry and and the weather got hot it got it went from it went from hypothermia to we're sweating and once he got hot he had to move and that allowed more tax equipment to locate him. Okay but there was no other help or supplies
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
3:25:48
that he was able to get anywhere else that you're aware of? Not that
Speaker 515
3:25:53
I'm aware of. No and I interviewed him and I asked him basically you know how did he basically survived food-wise, and he told me that he had eaten blueberries, even bird eggs, you know, the whole time. He was
Speaker 557
3:26:05
there, worms, and things of that nature, trying to survive for those days. Thank you. Yes, sir. Senator Gilmore. I'm looking to see how many
Speaker 190
3:26:19
other lights are lit up, because I've got a few. Are we holding to the two questions?
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:26:25
Thank you. Fair enough, and I'll yield. All right, Director, you may
have already answered this question. When did you get to the North Central unit? I
Speaker 515
3:26:41
got there the next day. The initial group that went, Major Shores, my Chief Deputy Director, Deputy Director Strong, as well as Secretary Wallace. So I stayed and made the notifications from Pine Bluff.
Speaker 193
3:26:57
Okay. And when you say you made the notifications,
Speaker 515
3:27:00
what does that include? I notified the Board of
Speaker 557
3:27:03
Correction, notified Secretary Wallace. I've had to contact the radio room to send out our – do our notification checklist. They also change in our electronic offender management system. They change them over to escape. And when they do once they do that in
Speaker 515
3:27:20
our system, it sends out emails to everybody notifying Notifying them that we do have one that has escaped
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:27:27
Okay, and so Were you the one Who's responsible for notifying state police? State police should have been
Speaker 515
3:27:37
noted local the state police in Is it County should have been notified by the north central staff? Okay, and that's the process
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:27:44
procedure protocol or whatever it's called Yes, sir. Okay. All right. What's the highest level custody that you have for an inmate? C5. C5. And this inmate was a?
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:28:02
a C3. He was a
C3? Yes. Okay. All right. That's interesting. So the Calico Rock facility is classified as a?
Speaker 515
3:28:13
Medium maximum security. It can hold C4s. we do have some C-5s there due to a classification issue we have with a certain crime. So that's something that we've been
Speaker 557
3:28:27
trying to get addressed
with our electronic offender management system. Okay. Should he have been
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:28:33
classified higher? Yes. Okay. What should he have been
Speaker 552
3:28:42
classified as? More than likely a C-4. Okay. And what prevented that? a glitch in that eoma system that electronic is that fixed now no sir it's they're
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:28:53
working on it okay any timeline on when that'll be
Speaker 515
3:28:57
fixed no sir don't i don't know uh this is outside vendor
marquee that does our system okay anyone
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:29:06
else in the queue okay then i don't want to take all the questions. All right, I'll get back in after this
one. Classification, typically, so for a custody level
that's a five, is that usually sell by themselves or what? Not necessarily sell by themselves.
Speaker 557
3:29:28
They don't have to be sell by the sales. Okay, so not a single man sell? They don't
have to be we'd like we'd like them uh but hey unfortunately i don't have enough sales to
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:29:43
house all of the c5 well i understand that okay i'll i'll withdraw and i'll uh
Speaker 179
3:29:55
get back in senator johnson thank you for being patient for my two questions i went and got
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
3:30:01
me about to eat so So my two questions, one of them is for Mr. Shores, and the second one is for Mr. Payne.
Mr. Shores, kind of following what Senator Gilmore asked, is the emergency preparedness coordinator, Mr. Cross, is he the one that is responsible for a notification for the state police? he would assist the ultimate commander with
those notifications what's the ultimate commander
Speaker 532
3:30:32
i had never heard that's the warden the warden normally there is a notification officer that
is assigned the the commander would assign a notification officer and that officer would normally work
for lieutenant cross okay i i think
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
3:30:50
the warden wasn't notified until 3 20 i think he was let out at just after two so and and in that case
Speaker 530
3:31:03
whoever the duty officer was whether that be the deputy warden or the major one
Speaker 532
3:31:08
of them would assume the role of the ultimate commander they
have the same powers as the ultimate commander in that
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
3:31:17
in that role all right uh director pain my question for you is do we have any other wardens in any other units that have been fired or relieved of duty previously besides the Warden Hurst so you're asking if I have
Speaker 515
3:31:41
any other wardens that have been relieved of duty and came back
to work for us in a warden capacity yes sir No, sir, not that I'm aware of. No, sir.
Thank you. Okay, I'm going to let everybody know now that there is food out in the hallway. Everybody here has been provided for, so you're welcome. We're glad you're here, and we appreciate you. Members, individually, if you want to slip out, I think Representative Beatty.
Speaker 515
3:32:16
Can I add to that last question, please? Yes, sir, there is one other warden that was relieved of duty and
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:32:35
came back that's an award. Yes, sir. okay uh director pain um i heard um i guess it was on one of
the tv interviews your your comment that um you had a personnel problem not a policy problem uh do you still stand by
that as your assessment of what happened as personnel failed and there's not a systemic or a policy issue or concern at the Department of Corrections? So the statement that I made
Speaker 515
3:33:02
based off that was pertaining to this incident at the North Central Unit. At the North Central Unit I had two employees who done the unthinkable. One letter they made out on a back dock by himself and I had one to open a gate uh i think that is uh i think if i had the best policies in the world if that if i
had these same employees who chose to do wrong i think i would have been in the same situation
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:33:36
because they they made a choice so my my other question is as as in your role as director of this this portion this agency uh your assessment of how um i mean it was easy to identify the two employees that made bad decisions yes that were the failure um what other assessments outside of
those two employees have you looked into as far as a higher level of accountability um from the other officers the lieutenants the the captains the warden and the folks that were involved there calico that had a hand in this because ultimately as the warden said sitting at the table ultimately it was his responsibility and he was mad enough to stand at sit at that table and make those comments so in in your capacity as the director um what what have we learned from this what actions
are we going to move forward with um and um you know just the termination of two employees That doesn't solve the problem. Yes,
Speaker 515
3:34:39
sir, I agree. We're doing, as I said before, we're doing a critical incident review. That's going to help. That's going to enlighten us to the problems we actually have and what we need to do to fix those issues. So once that's complete, I will definitely know more. I do agree that there's probably other issues, but once we complete that review, I'll know more.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:35:03
I know definitely. And then my last point, again, is based on your
observation and the time you were on site, the warden was the man in control the entire time and calling the shots in the command center during this time that we were looking for Harden. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you. Senator Gilmore. And let
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:35:29
me know if someone else gets in the queue, please.
So, sorry, I'm going to do maybe some rapid fire, and I've got a couple other questions too. Do we know how he made the uniform other than he used a marker to
Speaker 515
3:35:47
dye it? Yes, sir. We know that he did use a marker to dye it. We do know that he used what appeared to be a Bible cover to make a makeshift badge. He had paper in it and he had a button inside of it to make a makeshift badge. We know he'd done that also.
We know that he utilized an apron to make the vest that went over the uniform. He utilized a kitchen apron to do that. So far, that's all we know that he utilized. So that being the case, work
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:36:20
with me here for a second. how does all that happen unnoticed and and y'all are the corrections experts i'm not and this is just a legitimate like question to help me understand how do you dye a uniform i would
assume if you're dying a uniform in a sink in a prison your hands probably get ink on them i would assume that if you're cutting things out to make that's going to be noticeable i'm assuming that if you're taking an apron out that's going to end up coming up missing work with me here how does that happen i mean i think the thing that was stated in earlier testimony was the stars aligned that's a lot
Speaker 554
3:37:03
of stars i agree a lot of stars uh the badge part was simple i'll start there
Speaker 515
3:37:07
simple the inmates have bibles uh they have personal bibles and you like making that badge was pretty simple the button uh appeared to come off clothing to me it was a big uh white button What was the button made
Speaker 80
3:37:20
of, do you know? Just a button, like a
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:37:24
plastic button. Okay, so it wasn't a soup can lid? Oh, there was a soup
Speaker 515
3:37:28
can lid there, but the button was on top of the soup can lid. Oh, okay. Well, I don't want to say soup can lid. There was a metal lid, and the button was on top of it, yes.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:37:39
All right. You were going
Speaker 515
3:37:43
to continue with some of the others? Okay, yes. The clothing, he appeared to have used Sharpie pins to dye that clothing. And I think he took several, several months to actually do that. And he found him a good hiding spot, from my
Speaker 557
3:37:59
understanding, from talking to him. He found a hiding spot under a trash can, at the bottom of a trash can, with another trash can on top of it.
He found him a hiding spot to hide that
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:38:17
stuff. Where was that? That was on the back dock, the kitchen,
Speaker 515
3:38:21
the back of the kitchen. A lot of things happened on that back dock, including building a ladder. Oh, yes, sir. He took that wood and built
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:38:32
a homemade makeshift ladder. Yes, sir. But you see where I'm going. There are a lot of things that took place that he did unnoticed and unawares of the staff. Yes, sir.
And I don't know how – I mean, I don't think it's – I don't think you can blame just two people for that. Can you? Do you really think this came down to two people? I understand Buck stops with the guy that pressed the button to open the gate because that's your fail safe, right? Yes, sir. But what about all
Speaker 515
3:38:59
the things that led up to that point? Yes, sir. That's what I'm saying with our critical incident review. Once that comes out, there may be additional
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:39:06
action taken. That's going to be – look, so I'll just make this request to chairs. chairs i'd love to get that report whenever it's made available and maybe we have
another opportunity to do this because i think hopefully that's going to tell us a lot no one else in the queue i'm gonna cut in on you just
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:39:23
to slow it down you know i had a constituent that just text a message earlier and since we're on this side something that they're wanting to know at home their folks are watching and they want to know how often do we let someone out that gate with a wagon that has state property on it an employer or not that's rolling a wagon out with the box on it that roll out rolls out that gate how often does that occur
Speaker 554
3:39:48
not often not often at all and and that's what i'm saying in this case here with him being
Speaker 515
3:39:55
uh it's an employee error uh that employee that he shouldn't have let anybody out that gate on the weekend we were doing this was on the weekend we didn't have a sally port officer there no one should have went out that back gate it's also doing visitation no one should have been released out of that back gate yeah and well representative
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:40:19
Rose has hit several times the the review of the camera and the footage to see you know we're saying that it doesn't happen or it shouldn't happen but without review of those those cameras and those tapes
Speaker 628
3:40:37
but we will review yes sir the warden mentioned that he really didn't have any plans to so
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:40:46
out senator Bryant thank you mr. chair and just to follow on the speculation was
that there was workers in the kitchen and it looked like it was a craftsman
or a construction worker leaving but previous testimony was the employee that hit the button thought it was a guard can you elaborate on was there construction going on at that time to where it would warrant a guard or a construction individual with a makeshift ladder and what might be a tool or a reason to be there that might have come in earlier or was it the guard i'm
Speaker 515
3:41:20
conflicted on what the no sir to my knowledge there was no reason for anyone to be going out
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:41:26
that gate on that day no sir so it wasn't there's no construction going on in the premises nothing I'm aware of did you interview him on why he met
Speaker 515
3:41:39
built a ladder and push the cart yes sir I did he once he told me basically once he got to that gate if the officer didn't open the gate that he was gonna
Speaker 536
3:41:45
attempt to Climb the fence with the ladder. Okay. Thank you. Senator Gilmore.
Speaker 301
3:41:56
And he's left. Representative Painter. Just real quick. Did he say, how many times did we know that
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
3:42:05
he went back there? I mean, if he's doubling trash cans and putting the uniform back there, I mean, that takes, in building this stuff, it takes a little time. I mean, couldn't have died it
Speaker 515
3:42:19
was his that was his work assignment. That was his his actual job assignment was to take care of that chemical cage, so He probably was back there
Most every day of the week Got you. Okay. Thank
you. Yes, sir So Our inmates searched after they have their job assignments after they carry out their tasks Yes, sir. So that's policy. So that obviously
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:42:51
wasn't happening either? Yes, sir. That's correct. Okay. Senator Gilmore? I'm back. Thank you. Sorry about that. Was he injured? Did he injure himself at any point?
Speaker 554
3:42:58
Are you aware of? Not to my knowledge. I think the weather
Speaker 515
3:43:05
and the bugs and things like that got him in. because he thanked us for medical, taking care of those bug bites and
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:43:14
things. It's a good thing he wasn't over in the Delta, right, Senator Thompson? Talk about the warden for a second. How long have you been director,
Speaker 557
3:43:27
remind me? Since July of 2019, so six years.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:43:30
Okay. So were you aware that he had been fired previously? Yes, sir. And you're aware of the circumstances of why? Yes, sir. Okay. So I think we already established there's one other warden, right? Is it common that we rehire people once they're terminated? Yes, sir. It just depends
Speaker 515
3:43:54
on the reason for them being terminated. Yes, sir. Okay. So there was
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:43:58
no issues, and I don't know all the circumstances.
as I know some of it, but there's no issues in your mind that prevented him from doing his job, his duty, any issues
like that? No, sir. Okay. Final question,
and then I'll yield. When were victims notified, victims of Mr. Harden or inmate Harden, when were criminal Harden, when were they notified? I don't know.
Speaker 620
3:44:31
I don't know the exact time. But they would have
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:44:36
been at some point per protocol? Yes, sir. So
Speaker 569
3:44:39
you're fairly certain that happened? Yes, sir. As long as we had the victim information,
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:44:46
yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. Senator Bryant. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I realize you all were sequestered on previous
testimony, and I had to step out when you first sat down. I asked the question of the warden how many inmates at that level, C3, C4 level, were serving what in essence was a life sentence even though he was he had a 30 year and a 50 year
half time it's 40 years for a 50 plus year old uh inmate it was ultimately gonna probably be a life sentence uh minus some good time and i guess my question is as we move forward look at policy having an inmate that is a c3 or c4 that is a long-term um resident of that facility at what point do we look at it and say this is too high of a risk even though we are a maximum level prison because we can take these type of inmates we're
housing them where low-level offenders are as well and we've got a supermax and a max down there that has like-minded individuals that rape and murder and are just we don't want back in society and won't come back to society we made the early on decision to put him in his parent unit then he had subsequent charges that increased you know how long he's gonna stay and no changes were made I made the assumption that it was because he was a former law
force officer if you put him in Cummins and Varner he probably wasn't gonna survive you'd have to put him in an eight-by-eight box his family of the victims think that's where he should have been all along and some of them assume that's where he was all along so they were surprised to hear that he was you know serving in a kitchen along with low-level offenders not getting the full experience of what he likely should have deserved so moving forward the question is policy-wise are we looking at actually putting those level offenders in a in a in the situation which they
got themselves in and deserve instead of having them scattered at different facilities that do not have the you know million volts running around it with you know constantine wire across it yes sir
Speaker 565
3:46:49
we definitely will be reviewing that unfortunately if I had more sales
Speaker 515
3:46:53
I could put put more people you know in those situations in the c5 facilities but yes sir we'll definitely be looking at moving people around we've already started looking at that that north central list already okay so do you know
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:47:10
if there's any of those level offenders in Calico currently or was in May Harden the only one that really rose to that level yes sir there are and I don't mean c4 but i mean like maximum ultimately what accounts to a life sentence there's no reason for them to try to be on good behavior and stay because they're never going to leave the facility even with parole eligibility are any of those level offenders at calico or do we have them at
Speaker 608
3:47:38
varner yes sir there there are some other inmates that
Speaker 620
3:47:40
may have the same uh charge that in made
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:47:43
Hardin head yes sir that may never get out or they serve in 30 years in their C4 but they'll be eligible for parole in 15 so
it makes maybe a little more sense yes I'm just trying to make sure we're reviewing that an inmate with the mindset
of I'm never leaving so I am going to occupy a hundred percent of my time with how do I escape a medium maximum but really really of a medium minimum facility because that's where they're
Speaker 525
3:48:11
housed yes sir we will definitely we're definitely reviewing them we've already started reviewing
Speaker 515
3:48:14
those to place them somewhere else unfortunately Varner has a capacity as they have a limit also so and we've we've getting a lot a lot of inmates in now with longer sentences for violent crimes so you know spaces you know an issue for sure yes okay I don't see anybody else in the queue gentlemen
thank you very much for being here today for waiting and for sharing your
knowledge with us yes sir thank you for your time yes Colonel Hager want to get out of here?
Conway's calling you? Well, if now's not a good time, if you'd introduce
yourself for the record, and then you're welcome to make a statement or open it up for questions, that'll be
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:49:29
up to you. Good evening, Mr. Chair, committee members, Secretary Mike Hager, Department of Public Safety, and I'm also Director of State Police, and I'll just make
myself available for questions. Okay, members, we've
Speaker 179
3:49:46
got Senator Blake Johnson. Thank you, Secretary. So is it called a
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
3:49:51
commander over like troop a true, you know, is it, is that what you call them? Yes, sir. That's correct. Have you got any of those commanders that were rehired
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:50:06
after being fired as a trooper? I'm fairly confident. No,
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:50:14
thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the previous testimony was state police was not active on early in the, in the announcement, like local, local enforcement was, but state police was not.
Do you, do you have any recollection on where you would fall in the priority list if one of these incidents occurs as far as for your own policy manual, where you would prefer to be at? We would prefer to be notified immediately. Yes, sir. Um, and your state police is keeper. The a wins system, correct? Uh, Adam. Yes, sir. Adam is keeper. They wins, but state police have primary control over its permissions. I think that technically Adam. Okay.
Speaker 453
3:50:53
Do you know if the department corrections utilizes that system at all?
Honestly, off the top of my head, I do not. Okay. I guess my
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:51:02
thinking is, is that something that maybe future conversations will have that somebody
has the ability to utilize a, I'm just curious that a wins was utilized prior to the state police coming on board where state police received that information over the airwaves versus being notified through the proper
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:51:22
channels right if they are a customer of a win and they are operating on that uh that system we probably still would not have known that because there's
several a win customers that are all operating on different channels so we'd still be uh relying on
them to notify us either by phone email terminal message something like that okay
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:51:43
okay um okay i'll I'll ask Department of Corrections if they utilize AWINSA. Colonel Hager, are the state
police doing an investigation to the events at Los Central? Yes, sir, we are. Okay. Do you know when that report will be released?
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:52:03
I just spoke with Major Rhodes before the meeting started, and this is a rough estimate. She thinks conservatively 30 days. It's possible that it will be sooner than that. investigations tend to grow as you do interviews that spawns another interview and another interview yeah and then sometimes you have to follow up based on information that you've received and do a follow-up interview of one you've already done so um it's hard to say for sure but um when it's
ready will you please provide that to the committee yes sir send it to colby he'll get it to us yes sir. Representative Bainer? Oh, he's out. Are
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
3:52:44
you out? You are. Thank you. I appreciate
you, Colonel Hager, being here. Right here. I'm sorry. There's a substation of state police outside the prison, correct? Yes,
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:52:52
sir. Troop I is located in Harrison. So what is that used for? It's just the headquarters for
the Troop I Highway Patrol personnel and also the company special agents have an office there as
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
3:53:04
well. Would that be utilized if you guys were notified quick to
operate out of, or where would you guys operate when you guys
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:53:12
got on the scene? Well, it's a communications hub for Troop I, so that notification would go to Dispatch Center at Troop I, and then they would make the appropriate notifications to the Highway Patrol personnel. Last question. How long did it take for you guys to get notified? That's part of the
investigation that we're doing, and there is a timeline on that, but I don't know that answer off the top of my head. Okay, thank you. sir colonel
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:53:40
hager um you arrived on site at what time did you arrive at calico i actually did not
go to calico until the wednesday following the escape so on the wednesday when
you arrived and just based on your observation i know you've got an investigation going on but your your time there and um and your personal observation are there any insights that you would like to share with the committee um of who was in control and in command in that command center or would you rather wait until the report comes out that's going to
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:54:19
be a focus of the report is
that that coordination so yes or if you wouldn't mind i'd rather wait until that's fair Thank you. Thank you, sir. My bad. I didn't know the
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:54:37
chair had left. Senator Gilmore, your ten questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I'll take it easy on
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:54:44
the good colonel. He has been sitting out here a while, and he has an investigation that's ongoing, so I won't put him on the spot in that regard.
But you do have an investigation ongoing. Yes, sir. Um, we've heard the timeline investigation. Can you give us the scope of the investigation? Yes, sir.
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:55:02
Uh, we are looking to see if any laws were broken first and foremost, uh, if there were any policies violated and if there were any procedures that were violated. Okay.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
3:55:14
Uh, I know I can speak for the committee in the sense that we anxiously wait that report of that investigation and look forward to you coming back here and speaking freely and
fully as to what that bears out and so I think I think we can expect that yes is that correct yes
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:55:35
sir thank you colonel just just one follow-up question along those same lines on the investigative report is it customary for state police to do these
type of investigations on a prison escape there's always an
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:55:50
aspect of an investigation that will be done into the criminal uh, nature of it. Uh, but governor Sanders, uh, requested that we do this, um, pretty early on,
um, just for the nature of everything that was going on. She just wanted a third party investigation to, uh, to look into
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:56:07
this. Thank you, sir. Yes. Uh, Senator Bryant. thank you
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:56:15
just to follow up on looking at we put your your dps hat on as we look to see how the shuffle the deck if something like this were happening again do you see a role where dps takes command of the situation i'm just i'm
wondering does doc personnel as they get trained do they go through alita do they do the same things that we train our state police or highway patrol or local law enforcement in order to be at the doc or do they have separate training where it makes more sense that
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:56:51
dps gets more active early on yes they there is a separate level of training there yes sir they the doc has two different academies is my understanding i'm very limited in my knowledge of doc and their operations but
My understanding is they have a Department of Corrections Academy and an ACC Academy, and it is a different level of training. Yes, sir. Okay. I guess I look at it
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
3:57:12
like we can fund prisons and we can fund law enforcement, and we put law enforcement in with the
prisons, and that budget gets shrunk to put the bars on the doors versus putting boots on the ground. If we've got boots on the ground, fund them and have them as a backup resource. Yes, sir. As those conversations
go on, I'd appreciate input. Thanks. Representative Rose.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:57:34
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We've discussed this, and you've been in the room with some of the previous
witnesses, and I was just curious if you could speak to it from a state police perspective. What was the delay time in communication from when other agencies were notified to when state police
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:57:54
was notified? Yes, again, that's part of the investigation that there is a very specific focus on the timeline, but I don't have that available right now. but that there is a very specific timeline that's being formatted.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:58:07
So if you're able to, if you have the latitude to, there was a delay. Yes,
that's correct. Okay. And I guess there's a scope of the investigation that you're not able to discuss at this time. Is there anything that you can discuss that state police might have been able to implement or act on quicker had they been notified at the appropriate time is there anything that you can share at
Mike Hager
Unverified
3:58:35
this time honestly there's i've been briefed along the way with the investigation but for the integrity of
the investigation i'd rather not just because again with the interviews that are taking place that do kind of span out into follow-up interviews um sometimes they innovate or information changes um i don't want to do anything to you know to harm the integrity of the investigation right now knowing that this is public so i would rather not suffice
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
3:58:59
to say there was a breakdown in communication it at first glance it would appear that way yes sir okay all right uh thank you for your time thank you sir
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
3:59:14
colonel we appreciate you coming and sitting
through the testimony it's been kind of late and we appreciate you honestly in the job that you do for the state when if you have no other comments we'll let you we'll let you leave and take that nice leisurely ride home. And we're going to call Secretary Wallace. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
4:00:56
secretary wallace i think we've got tawny coming um too so if you want to um
wait until she gets here that'll be fine introduce yourself you have opening statement or comments you can
make those uh and we can wait until she gets here if that's what you'd like to do thank
Speaker 661
4:01:25
you mr chairman i am at your pleasure whichever you would prefer if you want me to
go ahead and get started rock and roll okay thank you mr chairman lindsey wallace secretary of corrections um i appreciate the opportunity for us to come and visit with you all today um so i will i think um what i was asked to do was prepare sort of a summary of what the events were as as they happened with me and I will say the first thing on Sunday May 25th 2025 at approximately 4 p.m. I received a call from Director Payne that inmate Hardin had escaped
via the sally port and a makeshift officer's uniform pushing a cart of some sort out towards the garage at the back of the facility. He had been left unattended on the back dock by a kitchen officer and that allowed him to kind of venture out, if you will, unattended and ultimately make his escape. I arrived at the unit around 10 p.m. that night and remained at the unit until about
3 p.m. the next day. For the entirety that I was there that night and the next day for almost the two weeks time frame that followed, we spent a lot of time at the unit assisting escape efforts alongside many other Department of Corrections employees, members of federal, state, and local law enforcement. We examined as much information as we could possibly get our hands on relative to inmate Harden, including his contacts inside and outside the prison, his job within the facility,
staff contacts, and everything. And if you guys will give me a little leeway, I would like to say publicly thank you for all of the law enforcement effort that was involved in this. It was truly appreciate it and I've said it to all of them before but I wanted to publicly say it now um so in preparing this I just wanted to kind of touch on some of the key things that I discovered that were important to me to point out to you all as we were going through this since the initial escape to date we've been investigating the events that occurred the state police are handling the criminal investigation we referred that over and I'm
not sure where they are on that but our internal investigation is still ongoing multiple staff and inmates have been interviewed. Two staff members have been terminated for policy violations that contributed to the escape. What we do have continuing right now as part of our internal investigation is a critical incident review. A multidisciplinary team comprised of staff with experience in corrections, security, emergency preparedness, legal. Ms. Rowell is on that committee. Investigations and just general administration of department policies. They
are going to conduct and review and identify policy and any sort of procedural issues that and come with recommendations for improvements to the department. A few things that I noted from my experience was that it was staff complacency not staff shortage that was a contributing factor to this escape. Harden was repeatedly allowed unsupervised access to the back dock by a kitchen officer despite prior warnings to staff. A tower officer saw him in
an unofficial uniform but didn't question or stop him prior to him exiting via the sally port and staff it appears failed to track his inventory and his movement which allowed him to accumulate materials that facilitated his escape. One of the main things that I've seen and I believe we need to make improvements on our policies um our secretarial directive on incident notifications and unit level emergency procedures need clarification so that we do a better job
um eliminating conflicting instructions so that whoever needs the notifications get them in a timely fashion um to that end and i know miss rowell is here and going to address some policy concerns i believe we need a dedicated policy person that can provide an ongoing continual analysis of policy for the department and ensure better better accuracy and to help us track all of those things and if i if i may i see the red lights i'm just going to pause here and take
Speaker 664
4:05:49
questions or or yield back to you mr chair i'm going to
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
4:05:53
cut in you said a designated policy person yes i mean i thought part of that we'd already taken care of that for a designated policy person and that was a staffing position that doc had that the legislature provided for you we did create a policy position
Speaker 661
4:06:11
you all did it's been i can't remember do you remember how long ago as we authorized that position it's probably been probably two years yeah um and
Speaker 670
4:06:22
we haven't been able to fill that position it's still in existence we just
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
4:06:28
have not filled it why have we not been able to fill that is lack of qualified candidates or is there some other impediment that's stopping that and preventing that
Speaker 661
4:06:37
from happening um no sir that was one of the positions that was created under the former secretary and we there were there were several positions that were filled and that was one that um the board of corrections they one of the Positions we did fill was a programs position, but it was after I came with a plan and kind
of a solid discussion with all of the division directors that that was a necessary position. We have some lower level staffing positions that kind of shepherd policy for the divisions, but it's nestled under one of our staff attorneys right now instead of having kind of a head or an administrator of policy for the
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
4:07:17
whole department. so not putting words in your mouth the positions there legislature provided for it it was an
approved position but board of corrections said we're not going
to fill that position is that what i heard you say in an indirect way unless i had a
Speaker 661
4:07:34
plan of how that would that would work and bring that to the board and talk through that with the directors and make sure we were all on the
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
4:07:43
same page yes so in your opinion would that having that person in that position would that have prevented this from happening or would this have how would that have helped this situation well i
Speaker 661
4:07:56
think there's a human element at play here with this um with this escape that i don't know
that a policy person to help kind of shore up policies would have been able to prevent but i think in terms of the notification piece of things it certainly could have streamlined it as i've been looking at the directive on notifications there's some inconsistencies and it's confusing even me reading it it is it is very confusing sounds like a checklist would have helped well there is a checklist but it confuses a little bit with some other policies so i i think having somebody that can you know look at things from
Speaker 673
4:08:28
a top level all the way down would absolutely
help with the policy discrepancies thank you i'm i'm
Speaker 287
4:08:33
gonna yield senator gilmore thank you mr. chair let's do
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
4:08:44
two questions and get back in yes sir thank you uh i want to pick up there because i think
if i remember correctly that was a protect act policy was that was that part of the protect act if i
Speaker 676
4:08:56
remember the policy position may i allow mr tony ral chief legal counsel so yes it was one
Speaker 677
4:09:01
of um a handful of positions that was created for
protect act implementation after the 2023 legislative session thank you um we've
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
4:09:08
had a lot of conversation about classification we've had a lot of conversation about and so i'm i'm going to pick up where i've asked these questions again one of the things that that i've asked previously to other people is there was a study um i don't know if you know what i'm talking about but there was a study i think that was to be looked at um related to classification where are on that um
Speaker 661
4:09:32
i asked the board of corrections initially i brought a proposal to them um in
march of this year and it has been approved by the board of corrections i think at the may meeting um miss rowell is in the process we're doing it with an existing contractor who has studied our population projections for years but we're having to make an amendment it's a cost neutral amendment but we're having to make an amendment to the policy so it's in it's in process it just has not she's already gotten some of the data because like i said she's an existing contractor for us so she has access to that
Speaker 664
4:10:04
stuff but the actual study study itself it's in process but we haven't
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:10:08
made the amendment to the contract yet okay my two questions i'll get in the queue senator bryant thank you mr chair yep following on with senator gilmore these seem repetitive but
as things come out of previous testimony so the inmate was sent to his parent unit 2018 from a conviction of murder 30 year sentence class Y felony halftime served 15 years he's out
he is a level C3 level C4 understand y'all have to take an account where people go how long they're going to stay all the nuances that go into y'all's industry of the work two years later he plays guilty to rape gets a 50-year sentence class y felony halftime served he's now in the 40 years minus time previously served so he's still got roughly 34 years left on a sentence he's at calico rock at any time during that i don't know if you what your role was back in 2018 i believe
Speaker 682
4:11:16
you're with the department i was with the sentencing commission at that
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:11:21
time but we've studied about this a lot i am just i i think um as the representative of the district of where this and where these murders and rapes occurred and where the victim's family members still live you know the the main thing they get is why why is somebody that did these crimes in what is really a medium security prison and not in a a by a box where he belongs and that's their that's their interpretation they have lost family and if the reason is we have to
protect him from the inmates that would know he's a former law enforcement officer you know there may be some latitude there but at what point should we have looked at this and said this is not a good fit he might be a a good prisoner has zero violations but the the crime the punishment is not fitting the crime yes he's incarcerated but he's with low level offenders he's not getting the full wrath of the system that's what their main main concern was with this so i guess the
question is do we have any other offenders like this in our medium or low level facilities at that classification and are we considering relocating them to a more suitable
Speaker 670
4:12:33
place i'm gonna let tawny take part of this and i might
Speaker 676
4:12:37
piggyback after she starts um so the answer is that we do have um and in the packet that
Speaker 677
4:12:42
you all got and there's an administrative directive uh 19-39 and if i can have a little bit of latitude um we did look in a lot to his classification um i wrote down his last three classification actions just to get an idea of
the score and i went through and hand scored it myself um so the first thing is in that policy there are some override reasons where you know you can be technically scored as a C5 and there can be an override to justify putting you at a lower or higher level and sometimes that is appropriate. I'm not in operations of prisons so I don't think I'm well qualified to make the determination about whether it was or not but I will say that it was irrelevant in this instance
because he was misclassified right in 2019 um he was showing as a medium security inmate um so he got 25 points for having 20 plus years remaining on his sentence that's where our threshold is um that was correct on all three of his most recent classifications um i've not figured out exactly what happened here but he only got 10 points for the severity of his offense when he should have had 15 um he got zero points for a prior violent offense and our system will
automatically capture that if the term of the prior violent offense has been satisfied and they come back on a new sentence um but there is a provision in that policy that requires there would be some manual checking um and as y'all all know uh this was a unique situation where he was convicted of the homicide and then found guilty of something you know that had occurred 20 years prior so there should have been 20 points there there were zero points there disciplinary reports play into this there can be a pretty big swing on just based on their
disciplinary action in his October of 2019 classification he was minus five points because he hadn't had any disciplinary action now he's at positive 16 for that section so you can see there's a really big swing there escape history went from zero to 20 he had zero appropriately in 2019 because he hadn't tried to escape we've got some stability program factors he's negative four on all of those felony detainer he was correct on and then sex offense and that's sort of a big one I cannot explain except that it was put in after and there was no element of checking
by a human to see if this was appropriately done he did not have 20 points for a sex offense doing any of those things appropriately would have gotten him to a c5 classification and would have at least alerted the people at the unit that they needed to be looking at whether he was appropriately placed there so that's not to
Speaker 661
4:15:29
say that he would have automatically been moved they would have looked at him to make a determination by they i mean i think deputy director strawn or whoever it is it's over the centralized classification would take a look at
and see if there was a reason for an override but yes if the appropriate classification had been done initially after that second conviction then it would have at least triggered a review by someone beyond just the unit now whether he could have one stayed there or ultimately come back because for all intents and purposes he's a pretty well he was a pretty well behaved offender he could have wound back up there
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:16:09
I don't I don't know okay so just two follow-up questions are we looking what makes a maximum security prison a maximum security
Speaker 677
4:16:19
prison um i am not a hundred
percent certain on this let me see at the very beginning i think of this policy it says it it's
Speaker 661
4:16:30
at the end on page 11 of 12 of that policy that she's talking about it has institution custody levels there and it talks about the type of facility open open dormitories with relatively blue low security perimeter or the lowest level the highest level is inside or outside cell construction with a secure perimeter and arm coverage type of inmate long-term non-conforming or extreme escape violence risk are the type of offenders that and that custody score goes into
all of that senator bryant that's in handout c2 on page 11 of 12 no that's fine and let
me jump in real quick here so who is responsible for that classification system i
Speaker 677
4:17:08
guess it's a computer program um so the classification system was most recently amended in 19 2019 um it is built in partially to our offender management system some of it is automatically done um but some of it is there anybody that looks at that regularly um that is probably more of an operations question
um i can tell you legal doesn't look at it
Speaker 661
4:17:33
regularly the policy itself is developed by the division of correction um and there are classification um units at the units there are classification officers and a committee at each unit and then there is a centralized classification person um who falls under one of one of the division directors that reports to director pain um i don't know with which the cadence that there is a continual review at that level um i know that certain actions like what she talked about becoming out of class
for certain things it does throw up a trigger but beyond that there is supposed to be an annual review of offenders at each facility where they have a new photo taken where they will have their classification check to make sure it's accurate and that committee at each
unit is made up of like the warden and other members of
the corrections okay and then that other committee reports to the department of division of corrections yes sir yes the central committee
yes okay and so they're supposed to meet on a regular basis or hopefully they do it's one
Speaker 661
4:18:37
person that reports up to the division um the deputy director for the division of correction yes okay senator bryant i apologize
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:18:48
yeah i think i just i'm just trying to get a little more clarity if i'm at if i walk into varner are most of those inmates going to be c4 c5 or are you going to have
Speaker 661
4:18:58
some c2s mixed in so i think varner has a mixture they have some open barracks um then they have the varner super max as well so i i couldn't tell you without doing a complete
rundown of of precisely what that makeup is who all's there but you would have some of every
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:19:13
classification so it's not it should not ever be assumed by the population yeah they're all correct that if you murder and rape you're not automatically going to go be put
Speaker 661
4:19:24
in the in the box not necessarily there's there's overall institutional the way the classification study is designed or the classification policy is designed, my understanding of it is that it takes all these things into consideration because you may have someone who's not necessarily
incarcerated for a violent offense, but they come to prison and they are a violent offender that necessarily due to all of their disciplinary infractions, all the things that they're doing when they're incarcerated gets them to the point that they need to get to a maximum
Speaker 692
4:19:54
security facility so is it age all of those things is it senator bryant you're way over
Speaker 636
4:20:00
your two questions so is it and i'll be done
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:20:03
i won't get back in the queue so is it reasonable to assume that whenever he got the subsequent 50 year sentence and that would have been keyed in correctly he
would have at least been re-evaluated and potentially sent to a supermax a
higher security higher security facility okay and is that system or is that process being looked at yes and look not only look forward but looked in the rear view to make sure we are not subjecting ourselves to this in another population one of the ways
Speaker 677
4:20:34
that we're being proactive because this classification study is going to take time our research and planning team you know if we're aware that there's a problem at the secretary's level one thing that we're able to do is build business object reports where we can kind of see how long has it been since somebody's
classification score has been refreshed i mean it logs in our system every time so we know that that Mr. Hardin hadn't had an actual refresh of his classification score since 2019. So we are working on building some reports so that we can say, hey, everybody's score needs to be reassessed
Speaker 661
4:21:06
at least once a year. We had a meeting to that effect with our offender development, our offender management development team this week, talking
Speaker 664
4:21:13
about the very thing with that deputy director that's over classification. Yes. Senator Johnson.
Speaker 179
4:21:19
So, Secretary Wallace, how many wardens do you have in the Department of
Speaker 661
4:21:28
Corrections? Twenty-plus. We have some varying degrees, some Warden 1s, Warden 2s, Deputy Wardens
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
4:21:37
security facilities. Did you realize today that 10% of your wardens were fired previously before they became a head of your units?
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
4:21:50
statistic sir thank you so we have some colleagues that
are serving in federal prison and those those colleagues if they don't move those colleagues of that of ours or do something with them they're gonna end up running the running the prison uh so in am i wrong so uh this this job apparently he had done it for seven years he was there longer than the uh the person who was overseeing him which was
there apparently i can't remember one of them was four years one of them was two and a half years or three years, whatever, he was there longer than the people who got fired for his observation. So, I mean, every year to two years, that job classification needs to change. And, I mean, or you've got to shuffle them into units is my opinion in this thing. So thank you guys for being here.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
4:23:02
Thank you. I'm done. Senator Gilmore. Thank you. So, previous testimony, we found out that Warden over North Central had been fired back in, I think, 2013 and rehired. Were you aware of that? Of course, this predates you as
Speaker 661
4:23:23
secretary. Maybe. I think I, yes, I think I was aware of that. Okay. I don't know
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
4:23:29
to what degree, though. Okay. And, of course, he doesn't report to you, correct?
Speaker 661
4:23:34
No, sir, he does not. He reports to? director pain and he reports to direct who
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
4:23:46
does director paying report to the board okay but not you uh i mean we work together but no technically he does not report to me okay yeah
there's i think there's a lawsuit about that or something i understand um latitude mr chair thank you we keep saying two people two people were fired two people clearly and i asked this question
previously yes if someone had that person had not pressed the button and opened the gate that's the firewall that was the last like yes he'd still be there but there are a lot of things that led up to this and it's not it's not something i think that you can just blame two people i think there's a lot of things that need to change refreshingly you're the you two are the first to sit there and say that you're looking at all the other policies and you are uh you know looking at what needs to be changed i don't think i heard anybody else before you say that so i'm going to
ask a question that i think maybe you may or may not want to answer do you think that this comes down to two people or do you think there's a lot of other things that
led us here because dying the clothes i making the badge building the ladder all these things happened i don't
Speaker 661
4:25:00
know how they went unnoticed um so i think the ultimate he walked out of the facility yes that came down to bad decisions on two two officers parts um i think there were things um just from talking to
to folks from talking to the inmate himself um there when i said there was staff complacency there was staff complacency and by that i mean the unit was fully staffed but people moved they shift around to different um different jobs there are post orders for the jobs an an idea that i'm not completely i don't i'm not familiar with because i haven't worked in a prison and i will concede that to to director pain that's his area of expertise but um in talking with the inmate
himself there were people that he was under their supervision in the kitchen as officers that he said in his area where he was able to kind of stockpile his stuff that he used to get out with, they were not checking it. He was under supervision by officers that in the past had. They would make him clean his things out of his cage that he had on the back dock where he stored as chemicals and inventory it as he put it back in so those folks left that job I don't know if
all of them left the unit or went to other jobs within the unit but you know we certainly need to look at cross training looking to make sure that these folks understand their job duties and are not relying on those inmates to tell them to to your point he was he outlasted all of the folks that were in that position um we need to make sure that the the staff are being properly cross trained on whatever it is that they're taking over their role in the institutions for sure and not relying on the inmates to to address what they should be doing as an officer
Speaker 677
4:26:52
and if i can just time in i don't think the secretary um will say this about herself um but she recently reorganized um and moved um one of our one of our staff members into a chief deputy director position and i believe one of the goals she has for him is to look at kind of continuous improvement um you know there's a concept that got brought up when we did lean six sigma training a while back that if you have 100 steps even if you have a 98 success rate at each of those steps
you're going to have catastrophic levels of failure um so we have to have oversight and safeguards and I think that that's something that the position she kind of reorganized will be able to help with a lot so
Speaker 661
4:27:36
there's some proactivity there on her part and and I think that the critical incident review that we are undergoing that is that is something we do after any sort of critical incident but but more broadly with all incidents we have an internal affairs investigation unit and they frequently find where we've had some sort of policy failure that led to some incident we
have disciplinaries that come out of some of those things but there's not been a direct correlation to not just ensuring the policy is correct which I think we need a policy position to do that but we also need to make the tie from whatever is found in the investigation to have led to whatever the staff misunderstandings or failure creating corrective action steps for the staff but also proactively engaging with our training academy to fix that when we learn of
Speaker 664
4:28:25
those things through this investigation ongoing investigations all the time these critical incident reviews
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
4:28:32
what outside of an escape would would prompt one of these reviews um chair this
Speaker 677
4:28:39
is um this is a process that's used for i mean a lot of incidents that would have an unfavorable outcome when we have a suicide um i've not been around for a riot but it's my understanding it would occur for a riot as well um you know a suspicious death um usually not if it's you know directly very easily attributable to drugs but um you know suicides escapes riots
um homicides inside the units anything that you know we have policies and procedures to try to prevent um one of the goals of the critical incident review committee is to look and say were the procedures followed um and if they were followed then how can we improve those policies to make sure that this doesn't
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
4:29:25
happen again do you have an estimate of how many of those reviews have taken place in the last six months um more than
Speaker 695
4:29:33
10 probably less than 20 and typically how
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
4:29:39
long does it take to complete that
Speaker 677
4:29:42
process um it varies a lot um so the process is that director pain once he has it referred to him and realizes that this is a situation that needs one of these committees um establishes the need for one um appoints members to the committee sometimes it takes a little bit longer just because of scheduling conflicts you know we kind of come from all over the state. Usually they're done within 45 days. Okay, thank you.
Ms. Secretary, can you tell us, and I think you did at the beginning, but I've forgotten already, when you were contacted after the escape
and then what was the atmosphere in the control center? Who was running things? What was going on? Was it, in your opinion, working the way it should work? what could we do to make it better can you speak to that please so i was notified
Speaker 661
4:30:36
around 4 p.m a couple minutes after 4 by director pain and then like i said i got there at 10 o'clock that
night it was my first um real incident um i didn't really know what to expect uh i had not until probably this this um past week seen a full-fledged emergency preparedness manual so i really didn't know I didn't know about all the different checklists I did not know about all of those things but when I got there the way that the control command center was set up there was a conference room which was kind of off to the side of the warden's office was on the side and then
there was a glass another conference room towards the front everybody was very helpful all of the law enforcement officers that were there our staff very you know we wanted to catch this guy but from my perspective there was lots of information trickling in and it might go to the warden's office first then it might come to the command center it might come over here to this glass office on the front first it felt a little disjointed to me but it was my first escape so I didn't know if that was the way it should work or not I talked to a couple of folks that had been
involved in escapes just because I'm trying to figure out if this is normal or or if it's it's There was lots of action. There was lots of interviews, lots of people talking to a lot of different people, and a lot of you go in here, and then we're going to go in here, and we're going to come in here. I think the communication could have been more smooth, but I also don't know the frequency with which escape drills are conducted. I'm sure it was a critical time. Everybody was nervous and whatnot, But in terms of my understanding of how a command center functions is that the warden is the ultimate commander.
You know, obviously, he can't be there if it lasts 10 days every day of the event. But I think there is a handoff of whoever that ultimate commander is to someone else who is supposed to take the lead once
Speaker 664
4:32:40
that commander is out of the office for the time being. and so the warden was in the command
center the majority of time at least the time that you witnessed when i
Speaker 661
4:32:51
when i was there yes and i wasn't there every day um i would go where my chief of staff would come up my deputy chief of staff would come up but he was yes he was there the great
majority of the time that i was there okay and i think you mentioned a little bit ago some i don't want to say confusion but um lack of clarity on the notification process yes uh is that something that can
Speaker 661
4:33:18
be clarified yes in your department and that's something you're working on already absolutely and i after i've i've read the secretarial directive and having talked with secretary hager's staff as they were doing their investigation i was like wow this is very confusing i can very quickly fix this but then i engaged my lawyers and then we start identifying all of these
other notification checklists and i don't want to just make a change in a secretarial directive that may have some other consequence and some of these others that I don't understand because
Speaker 664
4:33:47
I wasn't fully aware of how they functioned to begin
with. And am I correct in saying that the notification process for an escape is much different from what you discussed a minute ago, the natural deaths, all the other incidents that might occur
Speaker 661
4:34:04
at the prison? So that was my, yes, that was my understanding, my understanding for a critical incident such as an escape or some other,
i don't even know what other um circumstance falls under whatever the circumstances are that that engage the emergency preparedness manual my understanding was it would it would the notifications happened at the unit level per the emergency preparedness checklist and not did not fall underneath um what the secretarial directive directed you to do under like tawny mentioned earlier a suspicious drop or you have an officer who is arrested on you know bringing something
into the facility they're not supposed to and and I wanted to make sure that I wasn't misunderstanding it so I talked with Director Payne I talked with my Internal Affairs Administrator who on those typical criminal activities that are occurring at a unit and they both agreed that I had the correct interpretation their understanding was that the emergency preparedness checklist that were in the manual would take place like the major local notifications would happen at the unit level and that was where the delay and and notifying local folks came from was my understanding okay
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
4:35:19
thank you representative rose yes sir thank you mr chairman secretary wallace thank you for your time appreciate you taking our questions uh i was reviewing uh thank you by the way for the handout c2 i was reviewing item six which is the factors that are considered by a classification committee when taking classification action do you know is that something that's documented do you do you have notations from the classification committee from when
prisoner harden was classified is that on file
Speaker 690
4:35:56
um so we have the factors that that led to his score um i
Speaker 677
4:36:02
think maybe you're talking about administrator directive 2022-19 um there's two policies that deal with the inmate classification and the one that looks through and talks about history of escapes history of violence detainers that's the one yes that list um so we would have the scoring the the raw numbers on some of those and it's kind of all over the place
sometimes when you go and click through into those screens you will see more detail and that there was an override and this is the reason that override was um entered um but
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
4:36:37
generally no there's not a lot of detail so the reason i ask as i'm
looking through and i've mentioned this previously to some of our other witnesses is that this prisoner in particular not just a law enforcement background but specifically had worked for the department of corrections as a correctional officer and there's there's a few things on here we could say that may pertain to him notoriety
employment history education history and inmate skills i'm curious if any of those metrics would catch having worked in department of corrections having been a correctional officer and if it didn't it we should absolutely as it's being corrected moving forward there should be some kind of designation or scoring in place for when a prisoner has a background in the corrections department because this prisoner worked in corrections and then escaped a correctional
facility and if they were graded accordingly we would know that but i don't know and it sounds like you guys obviously off the top of your head don't know but if it's anywhere in his file that said yeah he worked
Speaker 661
4:37:47
in corrections well we should take that into account i i completely agree and at the time um that he was found guilty of the crime i think he was relatively new in digging into his history with us and that was prior to transformation where we were all one department and so i think that was he was at a community corrections facility in northwest arkansas that
he worked at so yes still a corrections facility but i don't know what information would have been in his file in terms of that to your
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
4:38:17
point yeah and so i guess i urge this to director pain
as well but that this is something that should certainly be taken into consideration for any current prisoners and any future prisoners if they've worked in corrections the the the correction staff who works with them on a daily basis should know but should also the classification committee and be graded accordingly so that um you know the
correction officers are, you know, dealing with a full deck, so to speak, so that they're not at a disadvantage to a prisoner who, as I see on here, inmate skills, who has skills with a working knowledge of corrections. So I guess that's my urging. And would you agree that's something important to consider moving forward? Yes,
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:39:01
sir. I do. All right. Thank you, Madam Secretary. Senator Bryant. Thank you. I asked this to Secretary Hager and as Secretary Wallace, I know we've got looking at two different departments.
I know a little bit about the training that our law enforcement get through Alita. What kind of training does Department of Corrections receive to get their status to be able to monitor
Speaker 661
4:39:24
and receive inmates? So there is a basic correctional officer training academy that most of the time occurs at our training academy in England. We have satellite academies in hard-to-fill positions, so we've had a lot of success with brickies with the we've had a satellite academy for brickies
they were having staffing issues and so we created an academy over there they go through physical training they go through all of the training policies they have on the job training is it eight weeks or six six six weeks of intensive training and then they have on the job training as well we have yearly refresher courses and then as i mentioned earlier if there are issues that coming up with disciplinaries um that is one of the things uh it really started with the um the internal investigations files as i was reviewing those and we were seeing things that would lead
to disciplinaries um it became kind of evident to me that we weren't doing enough to help fix those problems so i started making people put corrective action plans when they needed to discipline a staff whether it be i'm counseling with you because i've seen that you've done something you're not supposed to do here's what we need to do to try to pull them up and and fix whatever behavior it is so that's an ongoing thing and that's something that we started doing not i don't know how a year maybe ago when i really started reviewing those files but yes that's that those
are the training opportunities that they have and anything that the wardens see or the director pain sees we have a trying to remember what the training is that's scheduled we've got several folks coming in i think it's a restrictive housing training we're bringing folks in from out of state to conduct training on managing restrictive housing environments so anytime that as we're attending conferences and talking through things that we learn from other states we'll bring those things back to the this the department as well okay so as we go
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:41:18
forward and we look and get all
the departments in the same room to kind of yes sir dissect the events is would department corrections be a would they
be looking towards a potential path towards dps or adam taking taking over a situation after a certain time point rather than keeping control just really in my mind just based on the resource availability um you said to hager you know having troop i believe they're harrison having the resources out of not only dps and adam and the state police office whereas
the department of corrections is kind of isolated in
Speaker 661
4:41:53
y'all's own facilities well and i think typically that's the trajectory of what these investigations would take but i think this got a little hairy because it lasted so long right at the department they couldn't really place him off of department property or or or you know whatever it was um that led to this and and i don't i don't want to go too far into the weeds i know there's still ongoing investigations but i think that's where it got a little bit um difficult to determine if there was a point in time when with which you
should turn it over um when we've had incidents in the past um i think it was a pretty clear trajectory off of department property where your jurisdiction would change hands but i'm not certain that the lines were that clear in this circumstance well from all accounts from the testimony
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:42:38
i think i mean it we he's got caught and i think everybody played well in the sandbox together and and had a single mission uh be good to see what comes with the clarity of of the if it happens again thank Yes, sir. Thank you.
Are there any other questions? Thank you very much. We appreciate you sticking around and talking to us. We're,
Speaker 719
4:43:05
yep. Call the next one up and yeah. Yep. Dr. Byron. Thank you.
Dr. Byers, thank you so much for sticking around to visit with us. if you'd introduce yourself for the record and if you're welcome to make an opening statement
or talk about whatever you want and then we'll open the
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
4:44:32
floor for questions um william dubbs buyers uh member of the board of correction i don't have an opening statement if you'll just i'll i'll be happy to
answer any questions you have we've had significant testimony today and so we'll go straight to senator bryant
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:44:49
yes sir thank you mr chair Dr. Byers, how much time do you have left on the board?
Speaker 730
4:45:00
I think either three or four years. I was Governor Hutchinson's first appointee, and then he appointed me the last year he was in office. Okay. So next to Mr. Magnus, you're
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:45:13
probably the ranking member? Probably. probably i'm just we
did have a lot of good testimony we had a lot of
things that are going to get found in reports and investigations completed and suggestions um sent and they'll
likely come to the board for adoption you know board being more of a part-time role just like us i'm just curious from your opinion from the things you've heard and seen the likelihood that the the board will be open to
take these the suggestions and the routes and the potential changes
Speaker 733
4:45:51
that might come down from the suggestion absolutely uh
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
4:45:57
yeah you know it's anytime uh an incident like this happens there are always things that need to be
Speaker 730
4:46:03
changed should be changed or whatever and uh i think the board is open to that and
certainly we'll we'll look at it we'll take whatever whatever precautions we need to to make sure that we'd like to think this won't ever happen again, but things like this have happened traditionally, and they tend to happen
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:46:24
from time to time. Sure. Did you ever go
Speaker 730
4:46:27
up to Calico? It's been a good one. I didn't go up there during the escape. I'm pretty familiar. I worked with the department for 39 years, so I spent quite a bit of time up there when
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:46:39
I worked for the department. Okay. And last question, is there anything that you witnessed or saw during the 12 days that brought concern or pause that you would like to have the
Speaker 734
4:46:54
committee address? No, not that I'm aware of. I know that a lot of
Speaker 730
4:46:59
people put in a lot of time and work very hard on that, and I appreciate all of them. I appreciate our employees and also all the other law enforcement agencies,
the federal and state and local, who helped. I think it was a team effort, and I appreciate that. But, no, of course, I, like everybody else, I have some preliminary information about the investigation. Of course, it's still going on. A lot of it's still going on. but there are some you know there there are some concerns that that need to be addressed and some have already been addressed personnel wise Dr. Byers
do you if there if there was one thing that you could change that you think
might have prevented the escape or might benefit the department moving forward can you name can you give me
one thing? Well, as far as policy, I think the policy was there. I don't think it
Speaker 730
4:48:00
was a problem with the policy. It was a problem with the execution of the policy. If there was one thing that I could change, it would be that Sallyport gate officer or the gentleman who was in the tower besides Sallyport not being attentive to his job. I think that was one thing, but there
were you know some back it up there were some other things too that probably need to be addressed uh the kitchen supervisor and and him being back out on the back dock without adequate supervision him being able to stow things out on the back dock uh without uh without somebody you know taking inventory i mean there are several things but i think the main thing if the question is, what's the main thing? And the main thing is the person who was in the West Tower
who opened that gate to let him out. So
are you aware that Hardin was misclassified after his conviction? And then when he received his subsequent conviction, that change in classification
was not communicated with the prison? I am aware that there is an issue with
Speaker 730
4:49:13
that. i'm not real familiar and i just only learned about that just a day or two ago and i know that that's kind of still under investigation so i am aware that there is something that needs to be
addressed there yes okay so when you when you look at that and then you realize he wasn't being supervised like he probably should have been and they weren't searching his place of where he did his work they obviously weren't searching his cell because i don't think you could build that stuff in an afternoon he was either carrying it back and forth or storing it in the storage area he was obviously outside when he shouldn't have been numerous times not just once and i find it hard to believe that this was the very first guy that the the gentleman in the tower let out without
checking his idea it'd be a i mean what a crappy day right if that was the first guy you're like yeah go ahead and it happened to be a prisoner but doesn't that seem like a much more systemic issue when you've got from the front end to the back end uh failures you can we can call it complacency which we all know it probably was but it
Speaker 730
4:50:23
was from the front end to the back end well it was i don't i don't know if i would characterize it characterize it as systemic the policy was there the laxness in following the policy i think now if you want to call that
systemic then i would agree with you there but the policy itself in my opinion if policy had been followed this would not have this would
not have happened okay thank you are there any other questions senator bryant yeah thank you mr i'll follow on just i should
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:50:56
have probably asked questions to some other doc full-time but you said you work for the department for 39 years Yes, sir. So whenever you onboard an employee and they go through training?
Speaker 736
4:51:08
Well, I was with the school district. I was superintendent of schools. So I was not on the security side
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:51:17
or even on the treatment side other than just the school. Okay. Maybe you might know the answer. How often do Department of Corrections employees review policy manuals and are subsequently almost to some degree tested on their manuals? I know there's a lot of – I mean, you can go to
a hardware store and ask where the most simplest of widgets is, and they're going to know when they say they know because they're weakly grilled about the policies of the store.
I'm just curious, does the Department of Corrections
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
4:51:46
kind of do that? Senator, I can't answer that. I don't know. I don't know how often. I know that they
Speaker 730
4:51:53
spend a lot of time in training and in staff meetings, but i don't know i don't know if there's a regular you know a regular training time
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
4:52:02
okay all right thank you any other questions do you
have any further anything further you'd like to add no sir well
dr byers we appreciate you sticking around and being willing to visit with us thank
you and i i appreciate your service as well
have a great night all right we will now bring in Brandon Tollett. We'll give him a minute. Mr. Tollett,
if you want to introduce yourself for the record,
and then you're welcome to make an opening statement, Or we can open it up to the floor for questions I'll leave that up to you.
Brandon Tall
Unverified
4:52:58
Okay. My name is Brandon tall and I'm a member of the Board
of Corrections Very good. You open for questions. Yes. Very good. Thank you members. Do we have questions for mr.
Speaker 578
4:53:12
Tala? Senator Bryan, thank you. Are you from Central Arkansas? I am How
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:53:15
long have you been on the on the board about a
Speaker 741
4:53:18
year and a half? I believe a year and a half
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:53:21
Okay, are you familiar with any of the wardens or the policies or procedures, manuals, or do you get them? I'm familiar with some
Speaker 742
4:53:28
of them. I'm still trying to get caught up. There's a lot of policies within the Department of Corrections. I am familiar with some of them, though. Okay,
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:53:36
and I guess a question that I asked Dr. Byers, who's been on the board for a while, probably be a ranking member as I think Mr. Magnus' term ends this year.
i mean i don't think this will be the last meeting we have on this issue i know there's a lot of
reports investigations still occurring and whenever they come they'll solidify into some policy changes and some actionable items uh do you know how active you want to be or how active the board will typically be in those roles uh the board uh at least from
Speaker 742
4:54:06
my standpoint we i plan on being pretty active in those roles um i do believe that the state of arkansas um deserves to have a department of corrections that does not allow our inmates to escape um and so that is one of the things that i plan on taking very serious whenever we start to look at these policies and look for
those changes that we can do to make the state safer okay and
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
4:54:32
i know what came up in testimony that classification ratings are going to be starting to be reviewed were you aware that ma hardens classification rating was erroneous
or incorrect or was not updated correctly or reviewed correctly i i was not aware of that no okay um
Speaker 747
4:54:44
i think that's all the questions i have thank you senator
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
4:54:53
gilmore thank you right here in front of you thanks for being here thanks for
your time i know it's been a long day wish that could
be helped but as you can understand we have a lot of questions and i think that's fair um and i i hope you have a lot of questions as a board member. Um, and I hope that maybe you take some time to go back and watch what has transpired today and some of the testimony that has been laid out. That being said, are you satisfied that to be two people being fired, you're aware of two people being fired, I presume related to this incident. Yes, I am. Are you satisfied that it was only two people?
those two people alone were the only ones that need to be fired and no way shape or form anything possible could anything else have happened outside of two people not doing their job i can't speak on that
Speaker 749
4:55:45
because i i don't have all the information that's a great
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
4:55:47
answer which means you're probably going to go research this i hope uh
Speaker 742
4:55:51
yes well we're waiting on some investigations to be completed we need a critical incident review that i'm waiting on and also i know the state police has conducted an investigation that i'm waiting to review as well as soon as it's complete
i will tell you that from my experience that it's never just two employees unless they willfully let an individual out and willful means that there was some actual intent to let them out that there's probably more than just two employees that that mess up there there's always ways to improve there will never be a perfect system and because there will never be a perfect system there's always things that we can improve on
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
4:56:30
well that's refreshing because you are one of i think
maybe two that have sat in front of us today and said that everybody said nope two people we fired them they didn't do their job gone how does that make you
Speaker 742
4:56:49
feel as a board member me personally i think every single person from the board all the way down to the freshest correctional officer that exists we all have an obligation um to keep our inmates in our facilities and so i don't i do not agree that it's just two individuals that have buy-in for security
or that failed that day i don't know exactly what happened and i can't i can't speak to that because i haven't reviewed the investigations yet but just from my personal experience there are usually a lot of things that lined up um there there's something called the swiss cheese method or methodology that you think of and there's a lot of moving pieces of swiss cheese and you have to have several of these incidents several failures line up for something like this to happen and so usually it's
Speaker 741
4:57:34
not one failure or two failures like i said unless somebody actually had intent to let
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
4:57:38
an individual out of our facility well again refreshing to hear thank you that's an honest answer and i appreciate it i don't expect you to know all the facts at this point um i'll just say i think a statement that was used earlier today was the stars
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
4:58:01
aligned so um thank you yeah so i'm done representative rose thank you mr chairman thank you for joining us today thank you for taking
our questions um i think i just really have one one line of questioning um we've heard from
other witnesses, including the warden, and kind of a thought process that it's not really important that any other employees or correctional officers are investigated for similar behavior as the two correctional officers who were fired. Does that make sense to not check to make sure every other employee has been following the policy and procedures? no that does not make sense at
Speaker 747
4:58:44
all we we all have an obligation to follow those policies
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
4:58:48
would you agree that it would be worthwhile to make sure that all employees are following those policy and procedures whether it be by asking them directly or
their co-workers or looking at security footage yes all right thank you so much
Speaker 392
4:59:08
senator johnson right back here so during i don't know if you were
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
4:59:13
sequestered and not hear any of the testimony but so during our questioning we found out that approximately 10
percent of the wardens in the department of corrections have been fired and rehired and this warden was one of that 10 percent do you expect the two correctional officers that have been fired to become wardens in the future since they were derelict of duty like this warden was fired for previously i can't speak
Speaker 742
4:59:53
i'll because i haven't reviewed i haven't
seen the actual completed investigation what i will say is that there's a difference in when somebody makes a mistake of the mind and when somebody makes the mistake of the heart whenever we talk about failures and in public safety sometimes mistakes of the mind can be corrected they can learn from them it would take a lot from my personal belief it would take a lot to be able to overcome the things that have happened but i don't know all the incident i don't know the total the complete investigation as of yet um and so i can't answer that correctly
if it was a mistake of the heart if it was a character flaw if there was something wrong with the character, then I would say absolutely not. We can't afford as a state to have people that make character mistakes
Speaker 179
5:00:44
in positions of leadership within the Department of Corrections. Well, we have two that are wardens that were
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
5:00:52
dismissed for cause. Now, they're ahead of our units. Now, that's either a failure on
leadership side or us as a state. That's my opinion. It's one thing to rehire them in the same position, but hiring them in a position of leadership such as that, I don't know if I could do that with sound mind. Appreciate you being here today. Thank you. Can I ask a question real
Speaker 749
5:01:20
quick to follow up? You said there were two, correct? Okay. I was not aware of that, so thank you. Senator Bryant.
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
5:01:31
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't think I phrased it like this in previous testimony, but when you think of prisons in the state of Arkansas and murderers and rapists, which
Speaker 743
5:01:46
prison comes to mind? Probably Varner or one of those that are higher security, one
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
5:01:52
of our max securities. Okay. So I guess out of the constituent area that I represent,
which is the victims' families, They were surprised that inmate Hardin has never experienced that level of incarceration
that is more affiliated with that
level of violent crime. Do you think the policy of the state should be to house like-minded, felonious, violent behavior in the same facility, at least for the first few decades of incarceration before we start to figure out where else they can go to see how they behave and react to a lifestyle that they chose?
Speaker 749
5:02:34
I think for sure criminal offenses, convictions,
Speaker 742
5:02:39
violent behavior, those things should weigh heavily on their classification whenever we look at classification. do i think that a person will operate the exact same in a prison as they do outside in normal society no my experience tells me that's not necessarily always true but i do believe that
the the the information that we typically have when somebody is is beginning to be incarcerated in a prison we know for a fact that they were convicted of a crime we know for a fact if that crime was violent that they have previous violent um tendencies um there's some other information that we collect upon um in processing but we know those two things specifically and so i do think it needs to weigh um heavily on their classification at the beginning and then it provides opportunities for them to to lower to say that they should all end up in uh every everybody that's convicted of
of murder or rape should end up in varner super max i don't know that we have the capability to do that at this point, um, within the state. Um, and so I, I couldn't speak to that directly, but I do believe that those convictions should weigh heavily in their classification process.
Senator Matt Stone
Unverified
5:04:05
Okay. Thank you. Senator stone. I was listening keenly to your testimony earlier and you said rarely is it just going to fall on two people. There could be others that could be culpable and what happened that day. You know,
When I think about a captain of a ship, he's always standing at the helm, especially in a time of crisis. It was stated earlier today in testimony by the warden that when everything blew up, for lack of a better word, he was in the situation room and he let his captain lead the charge instead of him taking personal charge. what do you think the chances of the warden being culpable in this based on that testimony
or based on his testimony i mean doesn't the ceo of any organization set the tone and if his tone is not to step up did that trickle down through the rest of the ranks of the employees i i can't speak to a
Speaker 742
5:05:00
lot of that i i didn't hear his testimony i was sequestered in a room and so I was unable to listen to his testimony. What I can say is from my experience in public safety, there are instances where you may have a person that has a higher rank, but if a crisis situation unfolds and there's a person with lower rank
that has more experience or more training in that area, not that you would necessarily give up your leadership, but you would rely on that person that has the training. I don't know if this is that situation, but that's from my experience. But I'm
Senator Matt Stone
Unverified
5:05:31
sharing with you what he said out of his own mouth. i let somebody else stand at the helm while i stood
Speaker 742
5:05:39
there okay i i would have to go back i i can't i can't speak to that i would have to go back and listen to his testimony i need to review the the um investigation when it's complete i don't first i don't foresee me personally
unless it's a situation where a person has some specialized training or experience that i wouldn't have giving up that position if i was the one that was charged
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:06:06
to take care of it thank you over here i appreciate
you staying this late sorry that you were down the line and and had to say so long um how much communication have you received from the department of corrections that have filtered up through director pain to you as a um a board member of the escape and and and
Speaker 742
5:06:26
what transpired? So during the escape, um, I was notified the day that it happened at about, um, 4 44 PM. Um, I spoke to, I believe I spoke to, um, the director the next day or in the next afternoon at some point. Um, I tried to stay in contact with him a few days. I didn't, he didn't call me a lot. He had a lot going on. Um, and so, uh, but I did try to stay in contact with him and every time that I called him he answered the phone and he was very um he was
very willing and forthcoming with information anything I asked specifically every time I would see on social media or the news that there was a there was a possible sighting one of the first things I would do is call him and say did we check on this have we reviewed this um and so he was very forthcoming with that um I um there were some other things that he shared with me that I can't share here about the way the parameters and things set up and so he was very open with me as a board member since then i haven't had
Speaker 741
5:07:26
a lot of communication with him um but that's probably more on me than it is
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:07:30
on him well and and that was kind of my question um next line of questioning
from your position uh on the board of corrections um are you taking um into account and and looking at the whole communication process and and do you have suggestions for improvement uh should this type of incident reoccur at some point and you know suggestions for improvement and things that you would like as far as flow of information areas that you have concerns about I don't I don't have
Speaker 742
5:08:05
any initial concerns because I haven't seen the complete investigation I've read a couple of reports I have a couple of questions I don't necessarily have concerns as of yet when those investigations complete I'm sure I'll have recommendations to improve on on a number of areas not just not just communication and i think that's where all
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:08:21
of us are in this room we just had some questions today was a good time to get a few of them answered we
appreciate you being here there are no further questions we'll turn you loose we really do appreciate you sticking it
out and coming in and sharing with us obviously we're available if you have questions or concerns
if we can be of assistance to you please let us
know i sure will thank you thank you thank you all right last
but not least Lana McCaslin we'll give her there she is hot dog they're on a roll miss McCaslin if you want to identify yourself for the record and you're welcome to make
an opening statement if you'd like or we can just open the
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
5:09:10
floor up for questions Lana McCaslin and I have no opening statement. So I'm here for questions. If you have any,
I don't know that I'll be able to help you much at this point. I haven't seen a full-blown investigation from the state police. I also have not seen a critical incident review. So once I have that, I think I'll be able to answer questions a little more, but you can
ask me anything. I think, and I'll start out. I think mainly what
we'd like to hear from you is your view of how the how the event unfolded what the communication with you was like and could it be improved or was it fantastic if you spent any time in the
control room if you have thoughts or concerns with how that aspect unfolded and just any any thoughts that you have about the whole situation and how it couldn't be avoided in the future well
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
5:10:03
kind of things I think that's the most important thing is that we learn from what happened and do our best to prevent it again in the future I stayed away from the control center I if I received calls the first call that I received was on Sunday at about 4 43 or 4 47 right in
there and that was from Sherry and she told us that sure she was just advising me that there had been an escape and then a short time late of course we go to our computers generally and pull up anything that we see on the news we check to see what we know about the individual and then she texts again shortly thereafter and just told us what she knew about him and then throughout that whole time I talked to Lindsay some she I'm accustomed
to seeing Lindsay daily pretty much at the office and she was up there all the time I mean she stayed up there pretty much through the whole thing so if I needed something I called her but I really tried not to bother them while they were doing what needed to be done and not get in the way um I did call I talked to Benny a couple of times to just make the the one I remember the most was I had called him because I had spoken to our communications person and he just was exhausted
I could tell and I had called Benny and said look that when I asked him the communication Mr. Rand I asked him you know how are you holding up and he told me that he had been driving home at two in the morning and from Calico Rock I'm very familiar with the drive and I told him no you can't be doing that you'll fall asleep so I called Benny and I said look we're gonna have to get you know somebody we got to get some beds up there for him at least and i don't know who else
and benny i guess took over from there but benny when i talked to him he was working outside of this area so pretty much that was it and then after they started the investigation that was internal investigation we received a part of the file and of course I read that we received on Monday a notebook about this thick and I'll just be honest
with you I've not had time to go through that whole notebook but it's really I could tell it was more of what we had gotten initially and I still have not received anything from the state police. And, and I think the critical incident review will be very telling about what we need to address as far as the, um, the policies and, and those issues. I just, I've read the policies, but I've not seen any sort of critical incident review. And it's my understanding from speaking
with, um, with Lindsay is that we're waiting on Tawny to return from vacation. And then I guess they will meet to start that process i think they're
back and that process is ongoing oh
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
5:13:17
she's back yes oh fantastic yes she was here today okay so i thought she was leaving tomorrow but
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:13:25
that's good that's good a quick question you mentioned sherry just far um i don't know who
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
5:13:30
sherry is so sherry is the secretary for the board and she is she's here oh she's she at least was
Speaker 768
5:13:38
here she works with thomas who is behind you have
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
5:13:51
a last name she does great sherry gray i'm so sorry thank you sherry gray
representative rose thank you mr chairman right here yes thank you for joining us today and thank you for um taking these questions and being patient waiting your uh six hours i think we're at now so i appreciate that um i've heard everybody um I've heard everybody along the way mention the anticipated results of the critical incident review, and we're anticipating that as well.
With that in mind, do you know who conducts that?
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
5:14:22
Well, I mean, it's internal, obviously. I would assume that the external would be the state police, but I've never seen what they're talking about. I just am told that that is the next step, and that will be where we really start looking at the policies and what we need to do. I've never seen one, so I've never been through this before.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
5:14:47
we've heard quite a bit of testimony today that look two employees failed to do
their duties they did not follow policy this rests on their shoulders they've been terminated everything else is is going to be fine now does that jive with you does that make sense does that sound like the totality of what the investigation
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
5:15:10
should reveal well whenever something like this happens you go back to the basics you go back to the policies you you know you look at everything
to try to see what happened how it happened and what we need to do to prevent it and you know to me it the two people that messed up that's just you know they're the ones that lost their job but there's a lot more that leads up to something like that I'm sure and we have to get to the bottom of it I mean obviously they they messed up you know that was bad but we've got to look at
something much bigger than that and make sure and especially you know with where we are in the units and the staffing and the situation as it is we have to be very proactive in ensuring that we are doing everything we can to keep a handle on everything and and that and that if this if something like this happens again god forbid that it doesn't uh we know that we took the lessons
that we learned from this and we tried to prevent it you can't we can't give you a guarantee that this will never happen again I mean things happen but we have to do everything in our power and you have to do everything in your power and that's why we're here
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
5:16:43
and I understand that to make sure that we learn from it and
we do better so and in
closing Mr. Chairman thank you in your position As a member of the Board of Corrections, it is your belief that we should do more or less a top-down review of how this went down, not just the two employees that have been removed, but everybody who's there should evaluate their activity, how they followed policy procedures
both before the prison break, since then, et cetera.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
5:17:12
It shouldn't just be those two and move on. Oh, 100%. But when I've spoken with the secretary, I mean, I think that that is the intent, is that we do it from the top down. I think that it's not about those two people. You know, they had to go. I mean, obviously, you don't tolerate that. You can't. I mean, going forward, they're an example. Everybody's going to learn from it. Other employees look at that.
We can't make those kind of decisions and choices and mistakes. But I do believe it's bigger than that and that we really will have a lot of work to do. Well, thank you for your
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
5:17:52
testimony today. I think you may be shocked to find out that your opinions may be in the minority of the
testimony you've heard today. But greatly appreciate it. Thank you. Your testimony is refreshing is what he's saying.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:18:07
So are there any other questions, Howard? I was just going to echo the comments of the previous two
that it's refreshing. to this is our last witnesses is should have started with her it's refreshing to end on this
note with your comments today and appreciate and thank you for service i think y'all are just tired and
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
5:18:23
ready to go home so i got lucky we're not gonna argue on that no lots of other
folks seem to think it was just those two and now that we fired them everything's gonna be okay well the board
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
5:18:33
the board will be doing our part as well to look at it from the top down very good are there
any other questions thank you so much for waiting and being patient with us and being willing to visit with us yes sir very good may I be excused
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
5:18:50
go ahead yes yeah the only other comment I have
is thanks to the staff for staying this late it's been a long day we appreciate your dedication and service and thank y'all for what y'all do for us that we are adjourned You
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Review of Communications:
1. Arkansas Public Defender Commission, Monthly report on public defender attorney positions, funding, and caseloads as of June 2025 (Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., May 2025 reports are retained in the file) [Exhibit B]
C. Investigation and Review of Prisoner Escape from Calico Rock and Review of Arkansas Department of Corrections’ (DOC) Policies and Protocols Regarding Security
D. Next Steps and Follow-Up Actions
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ALC-CHARITABLE, PENAL, AND CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS, Jul 10, 2025 | Agenda | 2 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit B- AR Public Defender Commission Monthly Report to ALC | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Speaker 2
Speaker 1
Senator Matt McKee Chair
Unverified
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
Speaker 11
Speaker 16
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
Speaker 28
Speaker 10
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
Benny Magnus
Unverified
Speaker 46
Speaker 55
Speaker 57
Speaker 68
Speaker 70
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
Speaker 79
Speaker 82
Speaker 98
Chair
Unverified
Speaker 118
Speaker 119
Speaker 121
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
Speaker 139
Speaker 141
Speaker 125
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
Speaker 161
Speaker 89
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 179
Speaker 196
Speaker 201
Senator Jonathan Dismang
Unverified
Speaker 218
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
Speaker 142
Speaker 256
Speaker 258
Speaker 261
Speaker 61
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
Speaker 255
Speaker 292
Speaker 221
Thomas William
Unverified
Speaker 316
Speaker 322
Speaker 324
Speaker 335
Speaker 345
Speaker 354
Speaker 359
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
Speaker 383
Speaker 326
Speaker 392
Speaker 188
Speaker 182
Speaker 330
Speaker 339
Speaker 319
Speaker 338
Speaker 438
Speaker 453
Speaker 334
Speaker 421
Speaker 415
Speaker 315
Speaker 367
Speaker 400
Speaker 381
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
Speaker 340
Speaker 472
Speaker 355
Speaker 500
Speaker 511
Speaker 512
Speaker 513
Speaker 515
Speaker 516
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
Speaker 525
Speaker 530
Speaker 532
Speaker 539
Speaker 551
Speaker 554
Speaker 564
Speaker 567
Speaker 576
Speaker 528
Speaker 557
Speaker 569
Speaker 585
Speaker 301
Speaker 493
Speaker 190
Speaker 193
Speaker 552
Speaker 80
Speaker 627
Speaker 628
Speaker 536
Speaker 620
Speaker 565
Speaker 608
Mike Hager
Unverified
Speaker 661
Speaker 664
Speaker 670
Speaker 673
Speaker 287
Speaker 676
Speaker 677
Speaker 682
Speaker 692
Speaker 636
Speaker 694
Speaker 695
Speaker 690
Speaker 719
Representative Lane Jean
Unverified
Speaker 730
Speaker 733
Speaker 734
Speaker 736
Brandon Tall
Unverified
Speaker 578
Speaker 741
Speaker 742
Speaker 747
Speaker 749
Speaker 743
Senator Matt Stone
Unverified
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Speaker 768