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Breach of Security at the Westmoreland County Prison
Posted 07-12-2000
Due the fluid state of affairs at the Westmoreland County Prison, by the
time you read this article, more news may have occurred with relation to our
serious breach of security. Recently, the Pennsylvania State Police and
Attorney General’s Office jointly uncovered inmate Ronald Whethers allegedly
running his illicit drug business with the assistance of one of our
corrections officers. Both were arrested and removed from our prison. The
investigation is ongoing, so we don’t know if others will be arrested.
The Commissioners and Prison
Board in no way want to interfere with the investigation, so we are in a
holding pattern before conducting our own review of operations to determine
how such a serious breach of security could occur. Without a doubt, changes
must be made and some have already been implemented. We are making all
personnel go through metal detector security checks. Also, we are randomly
searching several employees each shift to determine if contraband is being
brought into the prison. Before, only visitors to the facility went through
security. We will also implement random drug screening for all prison
employees. Currently, all new hires are tested, but once someone was working
they didn’t face any random testing.
The attorney General and
State Police investigation will focus on criminal matters related to the
Whethers affair. Our investigation must be broader and focus on how we carry
out our mission to safeguard people awaiting trial and people sentenced to
county jail time (usually less than two years). We need to look from top to
bottom at our policies and practices to find out how such a problem could
occur. We are inspected regularly by the Bureau of Prisons, but often those
inspections are one-day checks that look only at the surface of our
operations. We need to probe beneath the surface to see if we can change an
environment where apparently a real breach of security took place.
The whole Whethers affair is
unsettling and very disappointing. First of all, the fact that a person
already with a federal life sentence for drug dealing had been housed in our
prison for FIVE years is problematic. He was being housed at our prison
waiting trial for a murder that occurred in Monessen years ago. The Attorney
General wanted him close by for convenience when he had to appear in court.
Mr. Whethers threw up a series of roadblocks from firing lawyers, to
threatening other lawyers, to asking for continuances of his trial. Now we
have an understanding of why he wanted to stay in our prison. Even with a
criminal of his cunning, we should have been able to hold him without
incident. There is simply no excuse for what allegedly has happened.
Unfortunately, events like
this one cause suspicion about all of the good people that work at our
prison. It causes people to look at their co-workers differently and for
everyone to wonder who else (if anyone) is dirty. We will deal with any
problems identified when we conduct our own investigation and work
diligently to restore respect to our prison. The vast majority of employees
there are good, honest people and they deserve to do their jobs in an
environment free from any taint of illegal behavior.
It will take some time for us
to address all of the concerns brought out by this incident. We must have
the patience to allow the criminal investigation to be carried out. It may
reveal problems that are not yet known. Also, we want to enlist an outside
agency to conduct a comprehensive security audit that will help us chart a
course of action that hopefully will minimize any possibilities of security
breaches from occurring again. No one wants to rectify the problems at our
prison more than the Prison Board and Warden. |
