Dennis Wagner, The Arizona Republic
Two days after the nation’s longest prison hostage siege ended, a new clock is ticking at Gov. Janet Napolitano’s office, where officials are withholding public records on security breakdowns that allowed inmates to strong-arm correctional officers and take over a watchtower.
Napolitano and Department of Corrections Director Dora Schriro have yet to provide basic information about the 15-day standoff, from the type of shank used by convicts to the hostages’ names to a question about whether captives were sexually assaulted.
“How could this have happened?” inmate advocate Donna Hamm asks on her Middle Ground Prison Reform Web site. “What steps have already (been) taken to ensure the admitted security breaches are not also occurring at other prison units?”
During an escape attempt Jan. 18, Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis inmates Steven Coy and Ricky Wassenaar obtained shanks, subdued a number of corrections officers, took a uniform, shaved, bluffed their way into the tower and took two hostages. They armed themselves with an assault rifle, shotgun, tear gas and other weapons.
Two weeks later, after debriefings of at least five of the corrections officers involved, including one hostage, neither the governor nor the prison director have fully explained what went wrong. Napolitano spokeswoman Jeanine L’Ecuyer said the governor was busy at a political event Monday evening and could not comment.
L’Ecuyer and communications director Paul Allvin, who previously imposed a news blackout based on claims that media coverage might endanger hostages, now offer other explanations as to why the state is not obligated under Arizona’s public records law to supply information about the hostage crisis.
For example, in refusing to identify the two hostages they cited Arizona’s Rape Shield Law and Victims’ Bill of Rights. After learning that neither of those measures pertains to public record requests, L’Ecuyer announced that a request for anonymity by the corrections officers’ families “is being honored by the governor and the (DOC) director.”
When asked for records concerning sexual assaults during the saga, L’Ecuyer said that information was being withheld “on advice from counsel.”
While The Arizona Republic and other mainstream American news organizations do not name sexual assault victims, the issue of whether hostages were raped during the standoff could be significant in evaluating the hostage negotiations.
Nearly all efforts to evaluate the hostage siege have been similarly stymied.
A public records request sent to the Department of Corrections on Jan. 22 went ignored for nearly a week before L’Ecuyer advised the newspaper to send an amended version directly to her. That was submitted Jan. 28. Three days later, L’Ecuyer denied instructing the newspaper to send requests to her office.
DOC spokeswoman Cam Hunter, L’Ecuyer and Allvin dealt with numerous readily answerable inquiries by saying they didn’t have answers.
For example, L’Ecuyer said she is unaware what objects were fashioned into shanks and used by the inmates to assault corrections officers. She did not know the names of four corrections officers who were attacked by the inmates when the saga began more than two weeks ago. And she did not know why authorities gave the inmates a radio on the first day of the siege if negotiators were concerned that news coverage would jeopardize the captives’ safety.
Among public documents that might be readily available, but have not be provided: