Four months into Devon Brown’s tenure as director of D.C.’s troubled jail, a public official already is calling for him to be fired.
A June 3 jailbreak has implicated at least one of Brown’s guards and outraged residents of the tony neighborhood around the jail.
Sources say that Joseph Leaks and Ricardo Jones walked away from the jail wearing guards’ uniforms given to them by a corrections officer. And the siren that was supposed to alert neighbors to an escape never sounded.
Facing an angry crowd in the Hill East neighborhood last week, Brown tried to explain that the “issues” plaguing the jail predated him or stemmed from a lack of funding.
His answers have alienated the very people who brought him into the job.
“I found it totally unacceptable,” Sharon Ambrose, D-Ward 6, told The Examiner on Friday. “He kept making excuses.”
Brown is scheduled to testify before the Judiciary Committee today. But Ambrose, a member of that committee, says she has already had enough.
“I’m going to talk to Ed Reiskin and ask about getting a new jail director,” Ambrose said.
Reiskin is the deputy mayor for public safety and justice — and Brown’s boss.
Other members of the committee who were at the Hill East meeting also were turned off by Brown’s presentation, but they stopped short of calling for his ouster.
“He obviously knows his business,” said Kathy Patterson, D-Ward 3. “I just wish he could have given us some more information in the time he had.”
Brown’s spokeswoman, Beverly Young, said her boss takes full responsibility for the escape.
“But there’s some external things going on,” Young said. “He wants the public to recognize that corrections is a vital part of the public safety community.”
In that, he has some support from neighbors in Hill East.
“I think Department of Corrections is the ugly stepchild in the law enforcement community,” said Neil Glick, the Advisory Neighborhood commissioner for Hill East.
Glick says Brown should be given some time and resources to patch up the jails. But he also says the District isn’t using the resources it already has to keep people informed about what’s happening in their neighborhoods.
He cites not only the siren’s failure, but also the refusal to use the “reverse 911” system, which sends out automated messages to residents.
“We have the jail on one end of the neighborhood and Capitol Hill on the other end,” Glick said. “We need to know if we should lock our doors and bring our kids inside.”
SHow me the money
D.C. Jail’s operating budget, fiscal 2001 to present:
» 2001: $213 million
» 2002: $126 million
» 2003: $102 million
» 2004: $119 million
» 2005: $125 million
» 2006: $133 million
» 2007: $138 million
