FL: Prison gaurd opens fire on FBI agents

[Christina Marie]

2 people killed in Fla. prison shooting
By BRENT KALLESTAD, Associated Press Writer
Last Updated 8:04 pm PDT Wednesday, June 21, 2006

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - A furious gun battle erupted inside a federal prison Wednesday when a guard opened fire on FBI agents who had come to arrest him and several others on charges of having sex with female inmates in exchange for money and contraband. Two people were killed and another was wounded.

The dead were the guard and a U.S. Justice Department investigator. A prison employee helping with the arrest was hospitalized.

Six guards in all had been indicted Tuesday on charges they had sex with the women by bribing them with money and contraband in a scheme that went on for two years. The contraband was not specified but could include drugs and alcohol.


When FBI agents and Justice Department investigators arrived at the prison Wednesday to arrest the men, one of the indicted guards shot a federal correctional officer, said FBI spokesman John Girgenti. He said the officers fired back.

The guard fired with a personal weapon, wounding a Bureau of Prisons employee who was assisting with the arrest. Agents from the Justice Department's inspector general's office returned fire, killing the guard. A Justice Department agent was killed in the exchange. It was not immediately clear who fired that fatal shot.

"These agents were out just trying to do their job, trying to do an arrest in a very controlled situation, and it just didn't come down exactly as planned," FBI agent Michael Folmar said.

Federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Carla Wilson said the prison had been locked down.

Officials did not release the gunman's identity, but lawyer Tim Jansen said the dead guard was Ralph Hill, his client. The slain Justice Department agent was identified as William "Buddy" Sentner, 44, who formerly worked for the Secret Service before joining the inspector general's office in 2002.

The identity of the survivor was not disclosed, but he was reported in stable condition. Folmar said the man should fully recover.

Folmar declined to discuss details until an FBI team set to begin work Thursday completes an investigation into the shooting.

Jansen said Hill's behavior was "totally out of character" for the Air Force veteran. "He had no criminal history or issues of violence in his background," Jansen said.

Hill, 43, had voluntarily supplied a saliva sample after authorities began investigating the sex-for-contraband scandal in November, Jansen said.

A woman who answered the front door at Hill's home declined to comment.

The detention center houses mostly men who are being processed before entering the prison system and is part of the Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution. A low-security prison for female inmates is next to the detention center. Together the men's and women's units house 1,445 inmates.

Guards are prohibited from bringing personal weapons into prisons but are not screened the way visitors are, Wilson said.

In addition to the sex charges, the guards were accused of threatening to plant contraband in inmates' belongings or have them sent to other institutions farther from their families if they reported the illegal activity.

According to the indictment, the guards showed inmates information about themselves and inmates on the prison computer system to prove that their threats were real. It said the guards switched assignments to arrange trysts with inmates.

The five other guards entered not-guilty pleas in federal court and were scheduled for a bail hearing Thursday. They were charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, witness tampering, mail fraud and interstate transportation in aid of racketeering. If convicted, they could face up to 20 years in prison.

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[Christina Marie]

Ex-Inmates Say Prison Sex Abuse Rampant
By BRENT KALLESTAD
ASSOCIATED PRESS

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -

Former inmate Ashley Turner was not surprised to hear that investigators had raided a federal prison to arrest guards accused of having sex with inmates. She said she was pressured by guards at the same facility.

Wednesday's raid set off a deadly shootout when one of the guards pulled a handgun on federal agents. But the confrontation also raised new questions about whether men should be assigned to guard women's facilities.

Turner said she never had sex with the guards at the Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution, but they coerced her to strip and touch herself sexually. She said other inmates would have sex with guards in exchange for cell phones, money and marijuana.

The sex-for-contraband scheme had been going on for years, she said, and involved more than the six guards who were indicted.

"That list should probably be three times longer," said Turner, who was released in 2004 after serving slightly more than three years for bank fraud. "These are just the ones who hung around long enough to get arrested."

Authorities said corrections officer Ralph Hill, an Air Force veteran, had smuggled a gun into the prison and opened fire as FBI agents and Justice Department investigators arrived.

Hill, 43, and Justice Department special agent William "Buddy" Sentner were killed in the exchange, and a prison employee helping with the arrests was wounded.

The shootings put a spotlight on the chronic problem of male guards having sex with inmates at federal, state and local institutions.

Just two days earlier, nine former guards at a juvenile facility in Indianapolis were charged with having sex with female detainees as young as 13, and there have been other allegations throughout the country.

In a 2004 study of more than 2,700 correctional facilities for men and women, charges of sexual misconduct by employees were made in all but one state prison surveyed by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. Similar accusations were made against more than two of every five local jails.

From fiscal years 2000 to 2004, the Justice Department opened investigations of 351 people accused of sexually abusing federal inmates.

"The bottom line is that women in correctional facilities should be guarded by women," said Alison Parker, acting director of the New York-based U.S. Human Rights Watch. "Men have been assigned to inappropriate tasks in inappropriate locations, for example: Male corrections officials guarding women where they take showers."

Dr. Roger Guthrie said he was fired from the Carswell Federal Medical Center in Forth Worth, Texas, after he complained about the sexual abuse of prisoners, which he said was rampant.

"There is no such thing as consensual sex with an inmate," Guthrie said Thursday. "It's rape. And it's still going on."

In the Tallahassee case, in addition to bribing the inmates for sex, the guards were accused of threatening to plant contraband in their belongings or have them shipped to another facility farther from friends and families if they reported the illegal activity.

"Sometimes an allegation doesn't mean that person is guilty," said Mike Marrett, assistant director of corrections for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 63,000 corrections officers nationally.

The surviving five Tallahassee guards have all pleaded not guilty.

Turner, who now lives in Rome, Ga., said she knew all of the indicted guards.

"One is known as "the Rev," she said. "He's a minister away from the prison. He was very, very bad. He'd pretend to be ministering with the girls."

She said she is still troubled by what happened while she was imprisoned.

"You don't get over a place like Tallahassee overnight," Turner said. "It's not doing the time, but it's what happens to you when you're there trying to do the time."

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