Huffington Post: Nevada: The Shooting Gallery

This is a featured story in the Huffington Post Highline, Dec. 2015, about guards using shotguns in the prisons run by NDOC, and the deadly results this practice brings with it.

AUTHOR: Dana Liebelson, ARTIST: Corey Brickley

Guards inside prisons shouldn't have guns. That's pretty much an accepted fact. Except in Nevada—and the results are mayhem and death.

In the solitary unit at High Desert State Prison in Nevada, the guards usually follow a simple practice: Never let two inmates out of their cells at once, because you never know what might go wrong. The prison is a massive complex less than an hour from Las Vegas, surrounded by electric fences with razor ribbon and then miles of brush and gravel. In “the hole,” as the solitary unit is known, inmates are isolated for around 23 hours a day—sometimes because they’re being punished, sometimes for their own protection. One evening last November, a 38-year-old corrections officer named Jeff Castro was supervising prisoners as they took turns in the shower cage when two inmates were released into the corridor at the same time.

Andrew Arevalo was a heavily tattooed, round-faced 24-year-old who had been convicted of stealing two paint machines. Carlos Perez, who was four years older, was serving time for hitting a man with a two-by-four and was due to get out of prison in March. Even though they both had their hands restrained behind their backs, they started trying to fight. To Steve McNeill, a prisoner who was watching from his cell, it looked pretty funny: two guys in T-shirts and boxer shorts yelling at each other, clumsily kicking at each other's shins and then backing away. “Neither could affect an effective offensive,” McNeill recalled. “It was like some awkward and quirky dance, then 'BOOM.'”

About 30 feet away, another officer was manning the control room—a trainee named John-Raynaldo Ramos. His job was to remotely open the cell doors from “the bubble,” the glass room overlooking the floor. The elevated booth is equipped with a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with 7 1/2-birdshot—the same tiny pellets that sport shooters use to blow apart clay pigeons and that hunters use to kill birds and rabbits. The windows of the bubble, which are reinforced with security bars, can be opened to aim a gun through. “Get on the ground,” Ramos ordered the two men.

...

Jackie Crawford, who served as Nevada's director of corrections from 2000 to 2005, also pointed to the state’s historically low staffing levels. She described an instance when inmates were fighting under a gun post at High Desert, but the officer was too close to fire on them. One inmate was seriously injured and subsequently died, she said. However, she added, “You can’t control inmates just with gun towers or other uses of force. There needs to be treatment, training, education and meaningful work programs.” The warden of High Desert when Perez was shot, Dwight Neven, defended the policy emphatically in court in June 2015, testifying that it protects officers. The law, he said, allows “my officers to break up even a small altercation in the dining hall with whatever level of force is necessary.”

Read the rest here.

John Coldwell passed away - read his letter and learn about his care for others!

We learned that John Coldwell passed away on October 2nd, 2014.

John was a member of NV-CURE and a prison activist.  He recently won a case in the 9th Circuit invalidating the NDOC policy of no cataract surgery for a person blind in only one eye. He will be missed.

Please read this letter from earlier this year received by NV-CURE from John Coldwell.  This letter reflects the type of person John Colwell was to us.  Thank you for reading it.

Newsitem from Kolotv

A 67-year-old prisoner at Desert State Prison in Indian Springs has died.

Nevada Department of Corrections has confirmed that inmate John Colwell, NDOC #33742, died of a chronic medical condition at the High Desert State Prison. Read more here.

Suicide at HDSP because of Lack of Medical Care for Chronic Pain

We received this letter anonymously, which shows an alarming issue: 

Truman Walker asphyxiated himself by hanging, on Friday November 8th 2013, in High Desert State Prison (HDSP), Nevada, because he was afforded no proper medical care, that is supposed to be necessitated by the State of Nevada (Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC).

According to a written noteleft behind explaining his medical situation and supposedly now in State's evidence, Truman Walker was in such physical pain that he was forced to take his own life.

The most common response inmates receive from medical doctors, nurses and staff is that there is no treatment offered for chronic pain. Furthermore, HDSP does not even diagnose the cause and/or source of the pain.

In the past ten years this complete indifference to medical attention has been ignored year after year, death after death, with no accountability.

Anything you could do to assist Truman Walker's family in knowing the truth of his situation would be greatly appreciated. 

See here for the original letter.

HDSP BOOK DRIVE!

ATTENTION: The following are the North and South drop off points for books for the NV-CURE High Desert State Prison (HDSP) soft cover book donation drive.
NORTH: Gale, Reno, NV, telephone 775.335.7773 (9:00 AM until 4:00 PM Only - Weekdays).
SOUTH: Kim, 702-378.1217, call and arrange for drop off or pick up.
Alternatively, drop off at NV-CURE Office, 540 E. St. Louis Ave., Las Vegas, NV (9:00 AM until 4:00 PM ONLY - Weekdays)
We still have not obtained approval from the NDOC for the book donations. However, if you recall, it is a long process. We look to have approval in the very near future.
PLEASE - get the books together and get them dropped off. We are counting on you all to gather at least 1,000 books. GET BUSY. Thanks for the help. The guys inside will appreciate it.
Very Best to All