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GROWING TENSION
AN UPRISING, THEN A RAID
The boredom and frustration felt by the offenders boiled over
on Feb. 9, 2005, when more than 300 officers clad in riot gear and
armed with billy clubs and pepper spray began to assemble before
dawn.
At sunrise, they descended on the cluster of concrete buildings
tucked into the sprawling prison compound that houses the treatment
center. Their mission: Restore order.
Conditions at the center had deteriorated so badly that a lockdown
was under way to force the men to obey orders from the state fire
marshal.
Dozens of offenders refused to leave the yard, where they dragged mattresses
from their dorms and draped sheets on extension cords running from buildings to
television sets outside.
Minutes after storming the center, police confronted men who were
brandishing broom handles. In one dorm, officers had to call for
reinforcements and shoot bursts of chemical agents into the air
to regain control.
The raid was a culmination of events building inside the facility
for many years.
When the center opened in Martin County in 1999, there was nearly
one staff member for every man -- a ratio recommended for secure
mental health facilities.
But, after the center moved to Arcadia in Central Florida in 2001,
the population quadrupled while staffing levels failed to keep pace.
With the growing number of men, came problems.
Calls to the DeSoto County Sheriff's Office -- including sexual
battery and assault -- increased nearly 20 percent since 2003, the
first full year of data available.
By 2004, the men outnumbered employees more than 2-1, a disparity
so lopsided that many guards felt inclined to let bad behavior pass,
according to internal documents and interviews with several workers.
"As long as they are happy, we let them go," one staff member
told corporate officers from Liberty Behavioral Health during a
tour of the facility in July 2004.
According to an internal memo obtained by The Miami Herald, Liberty's
officers described fights breaking out between drunken offenders,
bikini posters hanging in the rooms of sexual offenders, and a facility
where "residents appear to have the run of the cafeteria." In one
packed dorm, men outnumbered staff members 45-3.
To this day, Liberty has had difficulty attracting and keeping
staff members because of stressful working conditions and because
Arcadia's labor pool is so small, according to state investigators.
With few resources, there is little training to help employees
deal with violent sexual offenders who feel they have nothing to
lose. Until last year, staff members at the center received just
one week of computer-based training. Liberty says employees now
get two weeks of training.
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