Gangs, lack of guards spark riot for 6 days at Texas juvenile prison
Spurred by boredom, gang conflicts and anger over a lack of guards, teens at a North Texas juvenile prison rioted for six days, assaulting officers and one another during a mass disturbance that boiled over during a football game.
The outburst at Gainesville State School, a scandal-plagued Texas Juvenile Justice Department unit 60 miles north of Dallas, came weeks after facility supervisor Mike Studamire was fired for vague reasons.
Following the November disruption, the facility went into lockdown, four other top officials were fired, and the agency shuttered the unit’s budding equine therapy program, according to interviews and internal documents. Use of force and pepper spray spiked at the understaffed lockup, which one employee described as so chaotic that the riot didn’t even stand out.
“Our staff was in control of the facility at all times,” said agency spokesman Brian Sweany. “Since these disruptions, we have worked hard to address those issues that led to these events and have worked closely with staff to ensure that the campus is moving forward and enacting the agency’s reform agenda.”
The turbulence comes barely a year after a new executive director took the helm, hoping to clean up an agency still reeling from a 2017 sex abuse scandal in which multiple officers were accused of having or trying to have sex with teen-
age inmates. Since then, multiple officers have been terminated in other incidents, and this month local police arrested a guard who allegedly assaulted her boyfriend — the facility’s security chief — during a Super Bowl bash held in on-campus officer housing.
To union officials, the persistent difficulties stem from low pay and a lack of officers.
“The ongoing and escalating problems in TJJD are directly tied to the turnover and the loss of experienced staff in the agency,” said Seth Hutchinson, vice president of the state employee union. “The turnover is higher than any other state agency, the injury rate is higher and the pay for a juvenile corrections officer is barely above what you can make at Buc-ee’s.”
Mass disturbance
The six-day riot started on the evening of Nov. 29, according to state records. The next night, the disturbance grew, and while some of the youth were off-campus representing the Gainesville Tornadoes football team in a state semi-final game, up to a few dozen of the teens left behind launched an apparently pre-planned mass disturbance.
Youth in multiple dorms embarked on a coordinated effort to set off the fire alarms, blowing dust into the smoke detectors to automatically release the door locks, officials said. Then they ran around the sprawling campus and caused disruptions. A quarterly report from the Office of the Independent Ombudsman references staff assaults, inmate assaults and destruction of property.
The “disruptive behavior” continued through at least Dec. 4, causing a “major campus-wide disruption of facility operations.”
The reasons for the riot boiled down to three things: gang-related conflicts, boredom and a desire to protest over “issues on campus,” according to the ombudsman report.
At the most recent count, 26 of the unit’s 165 inmates — or 15 percent — were considered documented gang members, according to Sweany. A current employee, however, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions, described the facility as the “Wild West” with an ongoing uptick in gang activity.
It’s not a new problem. Earlier last year, an ombudsman report noted an increase in inmate-on-inmate assaults “attributable to gang activity and youth vying for leadership positions within the various gang factions.” During a site visit over the summer, officials spotted youth openly using gang signs and handshakes.
In addition to the gang conflicts, according to the ombudsman report, the lack of activities and “extended confinement in rooms” contributed to the disruption, along with a desire to protest “case management issues,” failure to respond to concerns and staff shortages that negatively impacted life on the campus. At the time, the unit was about 30 percent understaffed, officials said.
In a written response to the report, the department acknowledged a “lack of consistent structured programming” and said “the youth were confined to their dorms for a larger portion of the day than is optimal.”
The response also noted plans for training in January to help staff “properly engage” with the juveniles and offer more trauma-informed recreational activities. The department spokesman confirmed that training has since occurred.
Though he pushed back on describing the chaos as a riot, Sweany did not dispute the report findings, saying it presented a “reasonably accurate depiction” of the disturbances.
Fallout
After the riot, the unit went on lockdown and officials temporarily sent in additional tactical team members from other units. Top brass implemented new rules mandating that all teens be shackled to go to the bathroom at night within their dorms. It was an effort to prevent them from setting off the fire alarms, which have since been fixed, Sweany said.
Within a week, four other unit officials were fired: assistant superintendent Deidra Reece, manager of security Cathryn Hudspeth, dorm supervisor Carl Motley and programs and services manager Ron Stewart. In a statement, the department’s executive director, Camille Cain, framed the terminations as part of her broader reform efforts.
“In the year that I have been the executive director of TJJD, I have sought to implement positive reforms throughout the agency, and my number one goal will always be the health and safety of the youth in our care,” she said in an emailed statement. “I believe that these staffing decisions will have a positive impact on both the youth and the employees and allow us to effectively implement the initiatives that are happening all across TJJD.”
None of the terminated employees could be reached for comment.
In the days after the riot, Cain and top executive staff toured the facility, and the Office of the Independent Ombudsman — the watchdog office charged with agency oversight — launched a review.
This year, officials shuttered the equine therapy program begun in 2018. Originally an initiative endorsed by the agency’s previous director, the program started over the summer and grew to roughly a dozen children, who bonded with two horses and some pigs under therapeutic supervision.
Cain “wants to make sure that direct supervision of the youth is the number one priority, and she hopes to restart the program as soon as it makes sense from a staffing standpoint,” the spokesman said in a statement.
The horses, both rescue animals, are set to stay on the campus until they can be returned to the ranch from which they were adopted.
Though the population is the lowest it has been in years, the use of force and deployment of pepper spray are both up, according to the most recent data. Over the summer and into the early fall, those figures stayed relatively consistent with 2017’s numbers. Then in November, youth-onyouth assaults more than doubled to 82, the use of restraints rose from 76 to 142, and officers used pepper spray 43 times — up from 18 the year before.
It’s not clear how much of those increases are due to the disturbance, only two days of which fell in the month of November. More recent figures were not immediately available, but Sweany noted that decreasing the use of pepper spray has been a “high priority.”
The Super Bowl arrest
In addition to turmoil involving inmates, this month local police arrested a guard who allegedly assaulted her boyfriend — security chief James Bickham — during a Super Bowl bash held in oncampus officer housing.
In the lead-up to the Super Bowl, Bickham used his state email to invite a group of other employees over for a game-night party at oncampus housing, just outside the facility fence, Sweany said. During the bash, Bickham’s girlfriend, Jessica Cruz Williams, was arrested after she allegedly assaulted him and caused serious injuries, according to the department spokesman.
Although officers are permitted to have alcohol in campus housing outside the fence, Williams was suspended in light of the arrest. She could not be reached for comment, and it’s not clear whether she has an attorney or if she has been formally charged.
This isn’t the first time the facility has struggled with allegations of bad employee behavior in recent years, according to a Chronicle review of public records. In addition to the cadre of guards fired amid the 2017 sex abuse scandal, that same year two officers were fired for punching teens, and others were terminated for failing a drug test, smuggling in a cellphone, not bothering to check on youth, and not showing up to work for days at a time, among other reasons.