Major Emergency Drill Planned

For Prison

By Andrew Gorosko

Staffers at Garner Correctional Institution on Nunnawauk Road plan to conduct a full-scale training exercise this spring that simulates a prison emergency, a Garner official said this week,

At the March 4 quarterly meeting of the Public Safety Committee for Garner Correctional Institution, John Alves, a Garner deputy warden, told committee members that the drill likely will occur in late April or early May. The drill may simulate a prisoner escape, Mr Alves said.

Garner has conducted such drills in the past as way to keep its staff members trained to respond to potential emergencies at the 245,000-square-foot high-security prison.

Mr Alves said that town police and firefighters would be welcome to participate in the training exercise.

Either the LifeStar medical helicopter or the state police’s Trooper One helicopter is expected to fly in the drill, he said.

Town officials would be notified of the drill a week before it occurs, he said. Prison officials would hold a planning meeting on the training exercise before it happens, he said.

Police Chief Michael Kehoe said the town would provide prior notice of the prison training exercise to people living in the general area of the prison via the town’s telephone-based Code Red emergency notification system to alert them that it is a drill and not an actual emergency.

The state Department of Correction (DOC) and police held a major training exercise at Garner in November 2004.

In another prison matter, Mr Alves said that Garner held 666 male inmates on March 4.

In response to inmate overcrowding in the state prison system, Garner was holding approximately 50 inmates that day in its gymnasium, Mr Alves said. Those 50 prisoners are temporarily living in impromptu lodging space where their mattresses are positioned atop plastic platforms on the gym floor.

When the committee last met on December 17, Garner held 623 inmates, of whom about 40 were living in the gym.

The prisoners being held in the gym are unsentenced inmates who are awaiting the disposition of their criminal cases in the courts. The Garner gym started being used for overflow inmate housing in early November. The prisoners being held there are considered lower-security inmates compared to the overall prisoner population in the institution.

Garner is the state prison specializing in holding and treating inmates with serious mental health problems. The public safety committee meets quarterly to address public safety issues posed by the presence of Garner.

Also, farmers who are interested in harvesting free hay from the fields near Garner later this year should contact prison officials to make arrangements to do so. About ten acres are available for hay harvesting there.