Computer "glitch" opens all cell doors of max security wing at Florida prison (VIDEO)
Posted by: Jon Ben-Mayor on 08/17/2013 06:06 AM [ Comments ]
A prison monitoring system allegedly suffered a computer glitch which resulted in the control panel shutting down and all cell doors opened; allowing prisoners in the maximum security wing of Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami, Florida to run rampant and then the shanking attempts began...
But a surveillance video released this week suggests that the doors may have been opened intentionally — either by a staff member or remotely by someone else inside or outside the prison who triggered a “group release” button in the computerized system. The video raises the possibility that some prisoners knew in advance that the doors were going to open.
According to a written account obtained by Wired from one of the guards, the incident occurred around 7:04 p.m. just after a shift change. A guard who identified himself only as Officer G. Summons in the report, said he had just relieved another officer for a break at 7 p.m. when “the control panel shutdown and all cell doors opened.” At that point “all inmates came out of their cells.” Officer Summons called for backup, and at 7:07 p.m. the guard he had relieved a few minutes earlier, along with a second guard, entered the booth to assist. Other guards began corralling inmates back to their cells.
But according to the video, not all of the inmates exited their rooms, as Summons reports. As soon as the doors opened, surveillance cameras captured one prisoner in particular immediately leaving his cell, as if he had anticipated the door opening, and walking down a passageway toward another prisoner, with whom he reportedly exchanged a shank or homemade prison knife. They and two other inmates then closed-in on 27-year-old Kenneth Williams, who leapt over a second-floor balcony railing to escape his would-be assailants and suffered a broken ankle and fractured vertebrae in the fall.
Within minutes after the doors opened, guards report that they were in the hallway yelling at other inmates to remain in their rooms as they attempted to secure the area and lock the doors.
The assailants were reportedly rival gang members of Williams. He and a twin brother allegedly lead a violent drug gang and are believed to have ordered a hit against a rival in December 2008 that resulted in a 10-month-old boy being killed in the spray of gunfire. Two teenagers were convicted of the boy’s murder, and Williams and his brother were arrested for allegedly threatening one of the key witnesses in the case. Williams is scheduled to go to trial next week on the witness tampering charge.
In his own account of the prison incident, quoted here verbatim, Williams writes: “I was seting in my cell room 9111 when the door’s open and I seen 4 inmate come in 2 my room with something in there hands at the sometime I had something to but I jump off the 2th floor becuz I was scary for my life. I want 2 know why the door’s keep open.”
The control panel for the system generally features a group-release button that allows guards in minimum-security facilities to release inmates simultaneously for a head count, the Herald reports. But it’s generally not used in maximum-security settings, since inmates are kept one-to-a-cell and aren’t allowed to interact with one another in common areas.
It’s not the first time that an apparent glitch with the release occurred. A month earlier on May 20, the group-release feature also got mysteriously activated. Officers said at that time, as well, that they had not pressed the release button, which raised the possibility that one of them might have activated it accidentally. Unfortunately, no surveillance camera was installed in the control room to determine if that occurred. So as a precaution, technicians added a security feature that was supposed to prevent accidental activation. Any time a guard touches the release feature now, a prompt is supposed to appear onscreen asking the guard to confirm the intention to open all of the cell doors.
But this didn’t appear to help a month later when the problem with the doors recurred.
According to a written account obtained by Wired from one of the guards, the incident occurred around 7:04 p.m. just after a shift change. A guard who identified himself only as Officer G. Summons in the report, said he had just relieved another officer for a break at 7 p.m. when “the control panel shutdown and all cell doors opened.” At that point “all inmates came out of their cells.” Officer Summons called for backup, and at 7:07 p.m. the guard he had relieved a few minutes earlier, along with a second guard, entered the booth to assist. Other guards began corralling inmates back to their cells.
But according to the video, not all of the inmates exited their rooms, as Summons reports. As soon as the doors opened, surveillance cameras captured one prisoner in particular immediately leaving his cell, as if he had anticipated the door opening, and walking down a passageway toward another prisoner, with whom he reportedly exchanged a shank or homemade prison knife. They and two other inmates then closed-in on 27-year-old Kenneth Williams, who leapt over a second-floor balcony railing to escape his would-be assailants and suffered a broken ankle and fractured vertebrae in the fall.
Within minutes after the doors opened, guards report that they were in the hallway yelling at other inmates to remain in their rooms as they attempted to secure the area and lock the doors.
The assailants were reportedly rival gang members of Williams. He and a twin brother allegedly lead a violent drug gang and are believed to have ordered a hit against a rival in December 2008 that resulted in a 10-month-old boy being killed in the spray of gunfire. Two teenagers were convicted of the boy’s murder, and Williams and his brother were arrested for allegedly threatening one of the key witnesses in the case. Williams is scheduled to go to trial next week on the witness tampering charge.
In his own account of the prison incident, quoted here verbatim, Williams writes: “I was seting in my cell room 9111 when the door’s open and I seen 4 inmate come in 2 my room with something in there hands at the sometime I had something to but I jump off the 2th floor becuz I was scary for my life. I want 2 know why the door’s keep open.”
The control panel for the system generally features a group-release button that allows guards in minimum-security facilities to release inmates simultaneously for a head count, the Herald reports. But it’s generally not used in maximum-security settings, since inmates are kept one-to-a-cell and aren’t allowed to interact with one another in common areas.
It’s not the first time that an apparent glitch with the release occurred. A month earlier on May 20, the group-release feature also got mysteriously activated. Officers said at that time, as well, that they had not pressed the release button, which raised the possibility that one of them might have activated it accidentally. Unfortunately, no surveillance camera was installed in the control room to determine if that occurred. So as a precaution, technicians added a security feature that was supposed to prevent accidental activation. Any time a guard touches the release feature now, a prompt is supposed to appear onscreen asking the guard to confirm the intention to open all of the cell doors.
But this didn’t appear to help a month later when the problem with the doors recurred.
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