Chaos, contraband delivered by drone

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This article was published 08/11/2023 (758 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

STONY MOUNTAIN — At about 6:30 a.m., one day in September, a resident in the town that surrounds Manitoba’s only federal prison stepped outside for a cigarette, only to be distracted by a droning, buzzing noise.

Reaching for a phone to dial the direct hot line to the control centre at Stony Mountain Institution, they warned guards a drone was flying over the prison’s walls.

It turns out, it headed directly to the window of a maximum security inmate’s cell, where the prisoner had managed to cut out a piece of the glass and reach his hand through to grab a package of contraband it delivered.

Inside the cell, it’s alleged, the inmate placed the piece of window back in the hole, secured it with toothpaste and covered it with a photograph to hide it from guards, who soon searched the cell.

“They’re still going through it — there was everything. We don’t know if it was all from the one (drop) or multiples. There was marijuana, there was tons of cellphones, there was (Bluetooth headphones), there was steroids, there was tons and tons of meth and tons of fentanyl,” said Union of Canadian Correctional Officers local president Justin Kelsch.

The union is raising the alarm over what it calls a skyrocketing drug and contraband trade within — and over — the walls of Stony Mountain Institution. Violence between inmates and against officers largely flows out of disputes over its internal black market and other drug-fuelled tensions, union officials contend.

Corrections officials are on track to seize $10-million worth of drugs and other contraband from Stony Mountain — the most significant year to date and about double from 2022, said Kelsch.

“We need the service to step it up, to protect us and to give us what we need for some tools,” UCCO western regional president James Bloomfield said in a prison visiting room Tuesday.

Kelsch and Bloomfield said the bulk of the drugs, knives and contraband cellphones smuggled into the prison some 20 kilometres north of Winnipeg are brought in using remotely controlled drones — on top of the old technique of simply throwing packages over its barriers.

A minimum of two drones are now intercepted in an average week at Stony, the union officials said.

Bloomfield, who represents federal corrections officers in the Prairies, said Correctional Services Canada needs to take concrete, immediate actions to stem the flow of contraband.

“We need technology… We are decades behind on our technology,” he said. “We have some stuff for cellphones, we have some stuff for drones but we need much better, dramatically improved equipment.”

To address the drone issue, Bloomfield said, federal officials could obtain new technology to jam cellular signals and employ simple approaches, such as netting at the facility and installing metal screens over cell windows to keep inmates from reaching outside.

Meantime, Bloomfield thinks federal corrections should also restrict road access to the prison site to prevent people from driving onto the property late at night to potentially throw packages over the walls.

The union officials said Correctional Services Canada, as a federal department with rules surrounding public procurement, has been slow to address smuggling with even interim measures.

CSC spokespeople did not comment by end of day Tuesday, but have recently told the Free Press preventing and reducing contraband and illicit items in its prisons is a priority.

“There are a number of tools available that are used to prevent the flow of drugs into our institutions. These include intelligence investigations, searches of offenders, visitors, buildings and cells using non-intrusive search tools,” a spokesman said last month, adding inmates found with contraband are subject to institutional discipline and possible criminal charges.

The CSC spokesman also said at the time the federal department continues to research and introduce new technology to help detect drones, as the remotely piloted aircraft technology evolves.

At Stony, the union officials said increased access to illicit substances has increased violence, with stabbings and slashings commonplace.

“It didn’t used to happen every day,” said Kelsch, who has worked at the prison for 15 years. “The violence is no longer a small little beating, it’s more that these guys want to kill each other… and it’s all to do with the drug trade.”

Bloomfield argued with the amount of drugs and tensions surrounding them, inmates are not able to access the resources meant to help them rehabilitate, as corrections officers regularly lock down areas to conduct searches or following violent incidents.

“We want them open, we want them out doing their jobs. We want them getting their educations, we want them being productive within the institutions,” Bloomfield said.

“Right now, the focus for the majority of the inmates and all of the officers is drugs and violence… That’s where we need help.”

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca