Hawaii public safety director briefs lawmakers on Maui jail riot but won’t release report

KAHULUI >> Public Safety Director Nolan Espinda briefed state legislators Tuesday on the findings of an internal investigation into a March riot at the Maui Community Correctional Center, reiterating much of what the public already was told in the days following the uprising, which caused more than $5 million in damage to the jail.

He said the riot was caused by overcrowded conditions and inmates who were frustrated by broken phones, little recreational time and no- contact visits.

The public, including correctional officers who showed up at the hearing, likely won’t get the full account of what happened that day, however. Espinda said he would not release the final report to the public, though will allow legislators to privately view a copy of it at the department’s offices when it is finalized.

Meanwhile, conditions at MCCC continue to deteriorate. There are 167 correctional officer positions at the jail, but only 54 officers are showing up for work regularly, according to figures Espinda provided to legislators.

There are 36 vacant positions and 22 correctional officers who are out on workers’ compensation. An additional 55 guards have been granted leave under the federal Family Medical and Leave Act, which allows employees to take 12 weeks of leave within a one-year period.

For context, there were 83 guards who were showing up for work on a regular basis in May, according to department figures. Now there are just 54.

Maui guards have warned that the conditions put both officers and inmates at risk.

Espinda acknowledged that it’s affecting morale at the jail.

“In places like Maui where they are just deathly short of staff and deathly overcrowded, rightfully so, staff is frustrated,” he said.

The two-hour briefing before members of the Senate Ways and Means Committee and Senate Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs Committee was held at the University of Hawaii Maui College. About 60 people attended the meeting, many of whom were staff and guards of the Maui jail who afterward expressed frustration with the ongoing poor conditions at the facility and lack of transparency from top officials within the department, including Espinda.

Guards took to text- messaging state Sen. Rosalyn Baker of Maui during the hearing whenever they felt Espinda wasn’t providing accurate information, complaining at one point that he was inflating the number of female guards available to oversee female inmates.

Riot

Espinda said that the riot began before 3 p.m. when about half the inmates in one of the modules of the Maui jail began staging a peaceful protest. All of the inmates had been locked up four to a cell in cells that were designed to hold just two people.

A supervisor told the inmates they had 10 minutes before lockdown.

“The investigation indicated that the facility was not prepared at that time to enforce that ultimatum,” said Espinda.

He said within 10 minutes inmates began covering windows in the module, destroying furniture, breaking sprinkler heads and flooding the module. An inmate lit a roll of toilet paper and other combustible products on fire and threw them into the guard station, forcing officers to abandon it.

It took about three hours to evacuate the inmates to the recreational area where they were held until 3 a.m. before being returned to their cells. A riot also broke out in Module A, and it had to be evacuated. Inmates in the other two modules began breaking windows, but Espinda said guards were able to contain the situation.

Espinda said all the phones had been broken the day of the riot and the day prior. They were fixed the day after the riot, and Espinda said that if they had been fixed earlier, the riot may not have happened. But ultimately he said the major cause of the riot was overcrowding.

There have been improvements to the jail since the riot, said Espinda, including vector control and fixing the doors, which inmates could open. He also said video cameras had been installed in all of the modules. Before the riot, none existed.

There is no video footage of the riot. While there was a hand-held camera used when guards tried to contain the riot, he said the memory card is missing. It’s not clear whether there was ever a memory card in the camera when the officer began using it.

Espinda said the report will be used as a basis for disciplinary procedures against correctional officers, investigations into workers’ comp cases and likely in lawsuits against the department in explaining why it wasn’t possible to release the report.

State Sen. Clarence Nishihara, chairman of the Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs Committee, said after the hearing that he believed the department should release the report to the public even if it needed to be redacted in parts.

“I think they are entitled to it,” said Nishihara. “I think they need to know.”