Inmates await drone drops
Contraband via special delivery
A tipster tells us a drone attempted to drop contraband into an open exercise yard at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre one day last week, news that raced around the cells and ranges.
Ontario’s Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services offered one of those Kremlin-like denials — “keep moving, nothing to see here” — unhelpful in the face of this: we know it is completely plausible and already happening across Canada.
Correctional Service Canada, evidently in a sunny, open mood, reveals there were 41 drone “incidents” at federal prisons between July 2013 and December 2016.
In four of those cases, “evidence suggests” that contraband was introduced into the facility. (The federal data does not cover provincial detention centres, like OCDC.)
Hardly surprising. There are media reports all over the United States and the U.K. about drones being used to drop drugs, tobacco or even cellphones and weapons into prison yards.
In May 2016, a remarkable piece of video from a security camera in Britain showed a drone delivering a suspended stash of drugs to an inmate reaching through prison bars in London.
In Ontario, there were eight drone incidents recorded at Collins Bay Institution in Kingston during that 40-month period, surpassed only by nine at Cowansville Institution, in Quebec’s Eastern townships.
The four incidents where contraband is thought to have been introduced were at: Collins Bay, Drummond Institution in Quebec and two B.C. prisons, in Mission and at the Fraser Valley Institution for Women.
If it hasn’t already happened at the detention centre on Innes Road, it is only a matter of time.
The union representing guards has been warning of such an outcome.
“Drones, I can tell you for a fact, not just at OCDC but across Ontario, are a real concern for us,” said Denis Collin, a correctional officer and president of the local of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union that represents his profession.
“The union has brought this up. It is a clear threat to any institution.”
Collin said he could not comment on any possible security breach at the detention centre this month but pointed to the growing sophistication of drones, which can do everything from shoot video images to drop payloads and fire mounted weapons.
“It’s not science fiction anymore,” said Collin. “It’s not the drones you see that you need to worry about. It’s the drones you don’t see.”
The union is asking the ministry to consider covering or netting these open yards, he added.
The cost of drones is no longer a barrier. Websites such as Amazon have an eye-popping array of choices, from the $60 model that arrives under Christmas trees to professional versions costing in excess of $2,000, equipped with high-end cameras and cargo-loading.
In October 2016, the Kingston Whig-Standard published a story based on access-to-information releases about drone involvement in the concentration of prisons in that part of Eastern Ontario. It reported there were drone sightings at Collins Bay four times in August 2015, and two more times in the remainder of that year.
“The drop of contraband that occurred in the evening of Aug. 5 resulted in a cellphone and 180 grams of tobacco being seized at the medium-security unit of the institution,” the newspaper reported.
“Guards noticed the drop and were able to retrieve the items before inmates had access to them.”
As for how many times drones have been seen, intercepted or suspected in Ontario prisons, the ministry is clamming up.
“The ministry does not publicly discuss details of any securityrelated incidents at its provincial correctional facilities,” reads an email from media relations staffer Andrew Morrison.
Really? Setting aside this outlandish dismissal about the activities of a publicly-funded institution, he went on to offer this about last week’s reported drone sighting in Ottawa: “Any reports of a drone landing in a secure area at the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre this past week are not true.”
Who said anything about “landing”? What about drones anywhere in Ontario, doing anything near prisons?
“Won’t discuss,” again. Funny how the feds are so much more open on the same topic.
Both departments then explained all the wonderful things underway to keep inmates safe, stop contraband from entering prisons, the 24-hour perimeter surveillance, full-body scans, lockdowns and enhanced canine teams. It does not, however, appear to have stopped these attempts to deliver contraband from a controller hidden hundreds of metres away.
In November 2013, a remote-operated drone was suspected of dropping a package into the prison yard at the Hull prison. The package quickly disappeared but the guards union was quick to raise the alarm about this new security threat.
We’ve not heard the end of this. January has been chosen as the start date for one of the biggest inquests in Ontario, centred on the deaths of eight inmates at a detention centre in Hamilton. Drug access, in our fentanylfrightened times, is expected to be a focal point.
That sound overhead? More incoming, surely.