A prison cell block in Kansas was taken over by rioting inmates.
A group of inmates at a Kansas prison took over a cell block and began destroying property and set off fire extinguishers in a disturbance that stretched from Thursday afternoon to early Friday, a corrections department spokesman said.
All inmates in the “C” cell house at the Lansing Correctional Facility were secured and accounted for by about 1 a.m., Randy Bowman, executive director of public affairs for the Kansas Department of Corrections, said in an email.
No injuries were reported, but details about how the incident ended were not immediately clear. Officials were expected to provide an update Friday.
As many as 50 inmates were involved initially when the disturbance at the facility northwest of Kansas City began about 3 p.m, Bowman said.
By evening, about 20 inmates were out of their cells, Bowman said in a phone interview Thursday evening. He cautioned then that it was a very rough estimate.
The inmates were “just tearing up anything they can get their hands on in the unit,” Bowman said at the time.
The inmates and disturbance were confined to the cell house, and staff monitored the situation via video.
All staff got out of the unit safely and a corrections response team was in place. “If they don’t escalate to fires or violence, we’ll wait them out,” Bowman said Thursday evening.
The cause of the disturbance at the medium-security housing unit was not clear, and an investigation would be done to determine what prompted it, Bowman said.
COVID-19 cases have been diagnosed among inmates and staff at the prison since last week, and on Saturday, the entire facility was placed on restricted movement, he said.
As of Thursday morning, 14 staff had tested positive and were at home, and 12 inmates had tested positive and have been placed in a medical isolation unit, Bowman said.
One inmate who spoke by phone with NBC affiliate KSHB of Kansas City suggested that concerns over coronavirus and masks were at least part of the reason for the unrest, but the inmate also said there was frustration about not being able to shower.
“They’ve broken everything that could be broken, except the bars because you can’t break the bars,” the inmate in the cell house, who was not identified, told the station.
It appears as if the government sent in a small army of riot police and got back control of the prison.
What’s nuts about this is that this situation has not even treated as a big news story because of the continued virus hysteria. Usually prison riots are major news, but not in this new environment we are living in.
This type of thing is going to become increasingly common though. Not just prison riots but riots in general. People will be rioting everywhere for all sorts of different reasons.
