With attacks on two Corrections officers weighing on their hearts, state prison employees held signs in wind and rain in Port Angeles and Forks on Wednesday to protest safety conditions at Clallam Bay and Olympic Corrections centers.
Up to 22 Teamsters protesters picketed in Port Angeles on Lincoln Street in front of the Goodwill Industries store, while up to about a half-dozen picketed at the Forks Transit Center Park & Ride, said Greg Bellamy of Port Angeles, a protest organizer.
Eight other sites
Sponsored by Teamsters Local 117 in Tukwila, protests also were slated for eight other locations across Washington.
The sites included Monroe.
That’s where Monroe Correctional Complex Officer Jayme Biendl, 34, was killed Jan. 29, allegedly by a male prisoner already serving life without the possibility of parole while Biendl, a female, was working alone in the chapel.
The protests lasted from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., but those arriving early did so only about 12 hours after another Corrections officer was injured, this one from Walla Walla State Penitentiary at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
The male officer was stabbed in the face allegedly by a mental health offender who was subdued with help from an inmate who put the attacker in a sleeper hold, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Belinda Stewart told the Peninsula Daily News on Wednesday.
Everyone involved in the incident was treated and discharged from a hospital, Stewart said.
The cruel coincidence of protesting safety conditions little more than 12 hours after a colleague was injured wasn’t lost on Corrections Officer Cris White.
At about 10 a.m. Wednesday, he carried a placard that urged “safety, dignity and respect for state Correction workers” as a buffer against rain-spiked wind that swept across Lincoln Street.
The climate of violence Corrections officers work in is “crazy,” said White, a Clallam Bay Corrections Center employee for eight years.
“That’s the world we live in every day away from our families to keep the community safe,” said White, father of three boys ages 9, 10 and 11.
‘Nobody knows’
“If we are not out here, nobody knows.”
Union members have complained that staff are too often left alone in solitary posts, leaving other staff to informally check on their safety when they get the chance.
They have said more surveillance cameras are needed.
There also is “a tendency on the part of DOC management to minimize or ignore staff safety concerns,” Teamsters Local 117 Communications Coordinator Paul Zilly said Wednesday in a statement.
Despite his agency being the target of the protests, Eldon Vail, secretary of the Department of Corrections, said in a statement that “the information pickets today help raise public awareness about the potentially dangerous job Corrections staff members face each day to help make the public safer.”
It’s time for Corrections to make the job less dangerous, suggested Bellamy, who works at Clallam Bay Corrections Center.
Help raise awareness
“With what happened [Tuesday] night, man, they need to start putting in safety measures for us,” he said.
Biendl’s spirit “is living with us,” Bellamy added. “If she’s looking down on us, she’d be proud.”
A team from the National Institute of Corrections reviewed this week the circumstances and conditions surrounding Biendl’s death.
That review will conclude today, Stewart said Wednesday.
The team will brief Gov. Chris Gregoire on Friday and issue recommendations by March 19, Stewart said.
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Senior staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
