Last June, two men accused of murder smashed a window in the warden’s office and checked themselves out of the D.C. Jail in a daring, mid-morning jailbreak.
At the time, Department of Corrections Director Devon Brown promised city residents that discipline of the guards implicated in the escape would be “severe and prompt.”
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A year later, none of the 11 suspended corrections officers has been charged with helping Joseph Leaks and Ricardo Jones escape, including the two veteran guards Leaks said left him unsupervised on a cleaning detail and even hid the extra clothing the duo wore during their getaway.
Because both inmates were accused of murder and numerous other felonies, including shooting a security guard in North Carolina, they should have been kept under maximum security. Why they weren’t is a question the Corrections Department has yet to answer.
As Examiner staff writer Bill Myers reported Monday, internal jail documents he obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that sections of a surveillance tape considered key evidence in the escape are missing. Meanwhile, eight of the suspended guards have filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement, claiming they were made scapegoats by jail officials.
Five more inmates were “mistakenly” released from the jail during the past six months. The latest incident on May 1 involved a convicted carjacker who was freed during transport — before he even got to the jail. Corrections officials blamed the usual “paperwork problems” but have never satisfactorily explained how 21 people managed to escape from the jail since 2000. That’s three jailbreaks a year. Some were undoubtedly due to human incompetence, but there are troubling signs that also point to an inside job.
Jail officials claim they sounded the alarm promptly to alert nearby Hill East residents of Leaks’ and Jones’ escape at 10:40 a.m., but neighbors insisted they did not hear the siren until 5:30 p.m. that evening. There are also persistent reports that guards routinely allow contraband to be smuggled into the jail — or even smuggle it in themselves.
The jail’s systemic problems are similar to those faced by other agencies still struggling to emerge from the Barry-era nepotism and cronyism that forced the city to submit to the humiliating Control Board. Years of looking the other way while city employees broke or ignored the rules have now come back to haunt District officials, who are finding out the hard way that undoing the damage is a lot harder than preventing it in the first place.
