Bad blood behind bars Critical incident reports illustrate a climate of worsening animosity at the overcrowded Headingley Correctional Centre By: Erik Pindera Posted: 12:00 PM CST Friday, Dec. 29, 2023

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This article was published 29/12/2023 (654 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The inmate pulled aside the towel he used to cover his jail cell window to swear at the “old man” corrections officer walking through the range.

The jailer laughed it off, at first.

“I’ll skin you alive and peel your face off,” the Headingley Correctional Centre inmate then told him.

The officer was no longer laughing. The Jan. 24, 2022, exchange was escalating — the reason for which was quickly becoming clear.

Three days earlier, Manitoba RCMP major crime investigators arrested Robert Jeffrey Morden, then a 43-year-old Headingley corrections officer. Morden was charged with criminal negligence causing death and failing to provide the necessities of life following the February 2021 death of inmate William Ahmo.

Ahmo, 45, an Anishinaabe man from Sagkeeng First Nation in on remand while awaiting trial, died days after a violent encounter with the jail’s tactical response team. A racist joke triggered a three-hour standoff that ended with a heavily restrained Ahmo uttering “I can’t breathe” at least 21 times.

Fast forward to Jan. 24, 2022, and the inmate has already made his determination of Ahmo’s death and Morden’s guilt. He took his cellmate hostage and threatened officers, telling them he would make weapons before demanding a transfer to the jail in Brandon. The standoff lasted five hours. The tactical team was deployed. The inmate was removed from the cell and relocated elsewhere in the jail.

The highly charged incident was uncovered in corrections officers’ reports obtained by the Free Press.

In the wake of Ahmo’s death, the Free Press sought to find out how often similar events occurred behind bars and filed a freedom-of-information request for all critical incident reports for Headingley from 2022. All told, the province released nearly 800 pages of internal documents detailing 76 incidents — ranging from the standoff to fistfights between inmates to vandalism and verbal abuse.

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The events on Jan. 24, 2022, began to unfold shortly after 5 p.m. Guards heard loud banging from the cell housing two inmates. Efforts to talk to the one making threats were rebuffed.

“I don’t give a f—, I’m going to the pen. You don’t know what I could do,” the inmate said, who was in Headingley waiting to be transferred to a federal penitentiary.

“You guys killed one of my own. So, f— you. You are nobody. I can take you, all of you. I will hurt anybody, a guy or a girl. I’ll f— you up.”

The standoff lasted several hours, with the inmate taunting repeatedly, throwing water from his cell and threatening to kill guards as well as his cellmate, before making good on a boast to fashion a weapon out of his cup.

He made repeated reference to the death of an inmate but did not refer to Ahmo by name, according to the documents.

A shift manager called for senior jail officials to make their way to the institution, had a command post and staging area set up for negotiators, and asked for the corrections emergency response unit (CERU) to prepare.

Officers shut off the water to the inmate’s cell and covered the windows of other cells in the sub-unit before the deployment of the CERU — a team of corrections officers armoured with shields and helmets with thick plastic visors. At 9:55 p.m., the tactical team “extracted” the inmate who was being held hostage.

By 10:12 p.m., the team had removed the hostile inmate, relocated him elsewhere in the institution and, later, retrieved the jailhouse weapons he’d made.

The reports include virtually no specific details on how the CERU extracted the inmate and his hostage. However, if the tactics were similar to the unit’s response to Ahmo in 2021, the guards would have piled into the cell and onto the inmate, using their bodies to pin him before cuffing and shackling him.

In Ahmo’s case, Morden and other emergency response team members placed a spit sock, which is a mesh hood to prevent the transfer of fluids, on his head and strapped him into a restraint chair, before removing him.

The Crown alleged Morden ignored Ahmo’s repeated pleas that he couldn’t breathe until it was too late. An unresponsive Ahmo was hospitalized and died a week later, with the provincial medical examiner deeming his death a homicide.

Whether Morden’s actions were criminal remains before provincial court Judge Tony Cellitti, who heard evidence during a September trial but has not yet issued a verdict.

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The circumstances surrounding Ahmo’s death and the court proceedings against Morden offer a rare glimpse into incarcerated life past the gates and behind the bars of Headingley Correctional Centre, Manitoba’s largest jail.

The last time the veil was lifted was in the aftermath of the 1996 riot, a violent, bloody siege that left dozens of inmates and corrections officers severely injured, and the complex heavily damaged.

The jail, which opened as Headingley Gaol in October 1930, is rated to hold 549 men but currently houses 697 as of Dec. 4.

Of those, 201 were serving provincial sentences, 12 were awaiting transfer to federal penitentiaries, while the majority — 484 — were on remand, meaning the courts had yet to deal with their cases. The majority of the inmates are Indigenous.

The hundreds of pages obtained by the Free Press provide additional insight into what happens behind Headingley’s bars.

The written reports are laid out, for the most part, in clinical language by all the attending corrections officers — from those who were designated to videotape the interaction to those who physically restrained the inmates.

The incidents range from the mundane to the violent — from smearing mashed potatoes over a surveillance camera to repeated vile threats to rape a female corrections officer as the inmate showered.

There were fistfights in the showers and broken windows in the common areas. Bored inmates fiddled with fire alarms, others walked around dazed as the result of ingesting homemade alcoholic brew.

Specifically, according to the Free Press analysis, there were 34 fights between inmates or attacks on other inmates. There were 21 incidents of vandalism — such as smashed TVs or broken fire sprinklers. Inmates hurled insults at officers or other inmates 26 times. Inmates fought with, attacked or significantly threatened violence to officers 19 times, while jailhouse weapons were found in seven of the incidents. Officers found contraband in just three incidents, while they suspected inmates had used contraband intoxicants in two more.

The reports don’t typically outline events leading up to the incidents, but there are clear patterns on how they were dealt with.

Corrections officers used “physical force” against inmates in 39 of the cases, pepper spray in 10, and “mechanical restraints” — handcuffs or shackles — in 70. Mounties from the Headingley RCMP detachment were called in to assist four times.

Typically, the documents show, officers will cuff an inmate and escort them from the scene, often strip-searching them, before they’re relocated to another part of the jail.

The inmates were almost always punished; discipline was doled out in 65 of the 76 incidents. That typically included a fine of around $100-200, or a spell in disciplinary segregation, otherwise known as solitary confinement, or a loss of recreational privileges.

In at least 33 of the incidents, inmates were sent to segregation, the documents show.

And the critical emergency response unit? It was hardly deployed — only four times in 2022.

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To those who have been on the inside — both corrections officers and inmates — the documents just scratch the surface.

A longtime Headingley corrections officer, who has been granted anonymity as he is not authorized to speak publicly, said the number of fights was likely double, while the number of threats and insults to staff would number in the thousands, if every slight was reported.

And a man who served a 10-month sentence at the jail in 2022 — the latest in a string of convictions and remands that saw him locked up in Headingley for about 15 of his 43 years — said the numbers the Free Press compiled were “very light” compared to his experiences.

The contraband numbers alone seemed laughable, said the man, who requested anonymity as he works toward rehabilitation, after a long life of criminal offending largely stemming from addictions and childhood trauma.

Fighting, too, is commonplace, with at least two a week in every unit he has ever been in.

But whether an incident is reported on paper depends on several factors, including where it occurred, how severe the beating was and if the victim needed medical attention, he said.

“If you’re in general population, so long as there’s not a lot of blood, they’ll tell you to lock up, 24 hours in your individual cells,” he said.

“If you’re in the dorms, or protective custody, it’s taken as an ‘Oh my God, this just happened.’ You both go to the hole, disciplinary action, you’ll go in front of the (disciplinary) board, which is usually more time in the hole… One person is usually moved to another unit.”

The corrections officer said inmates are adept at covering up beatings and many inmates don’t report fights out of fear of being labelled a rat.

“If they just fight with body shots, they don’t report it and they go into the cell,” the officer said. “We obviously don’t have cameras in the cells — sometimes you can get lucky with camera angles, where you can kind of see fists being thrown, but you’re not going to see who’s doing it.”

He referred to a recent brutal attack on an inmate in a gang unit that likely devolved from a power struggle. The victim suffered multiple broken bones in his face and a fractured skull. As many as 15 inmates ganged up on him.

The inmates cranked up the volume on television sets, while one played a guitar loudly. As officers conducted security checks, inmates attempted to obscure their view.

The attackers, the officer said, mopped up the blood, but ended up reporting the beating themselves after they realized the victim was unconscious.

Whether an incident is reported also depends on which officers responded, the former inmate said.

“If they’re older staff, the old-school goons, the old culture, if they can get away with it — not reporting it and doing the paperwork — it’s just fine,” he said.

“A lot of guards, the older ones, you’ll tell them what you think to them, and they’ll tell you the same thing back and leave it at that. The new ones, they’ll write you up — it’s more disciplinary action… Their primary goal, the philosophy now, is inmate care.”

In the documents obtained by the Free Press, corrections officers reference “physical force” frequently in their notes but include few details of what it entails.

The former inmate said once an officer announces over their radio a fight is occurring, others rush to the area.

“It usually takes them 25 seconds, maybe 30 seconds until the guards have swarmed. There’s 20-plus, and they’ll physically tear you apart and they’re not gentle about it at all… They pull them apart. It depends on which culture they come from, and it depends on the person. Sometimes it’s rough, it’s real rough: knee on the neck, smushing their face into the hard floor with their gloved hand, restrained heavily by six or seven corrections officers,” he said.

“Usually, when they come in in force, the officer who called the code will say ‘It’s this guy, he’s the one’ and he’s the one who gets the treatment. That’s not to say the one who took the beating gets much better, but it’s usually a little lighter on him.”

The former inmate has never witnessed a CERU response specifically, but he has seen the tactical officers, which he likened to a SWAT team without guns, run in formation past his cell.

“They’re very intimidating,” he said.

The corrections officer said staff use physical force as a last resort.

“We’re not just going in like a bunch of cowboys. You’re ordering through the bars: ‘Get on the ground’ or ‘Lock in your cell’, whichever way we can contain them. Usually, if everything goes smoothly, they’ll just comply,” he said.

But that dynamic is changing, he said.

“It’s getting crazy, lately. Guys won’t lock in, which means we can’t go in, which means that if there’s a fight happening, or a beating happening, that guy’s taking a filthy licking. Ten seconds can be the difference between a hospital stay or a couple cuts and bruises,” he said.

“It used to be we’d walk in and tell them to break it up, and there might be a few extra punches, but they’d comply. Now, you’ve got inmates who aren’t even involved who start beaking at us.”

The officer said the public has a misconception of what’s required to keep the facility safe, for both inmates and staff.

“We’re taking abuse every day, and still coming back, we’re giving them care and custody,” he said, adding he and many others have suffered mentally from the work, with many diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It’s not like the Shawshank Redemption (the Oscar-winning movie starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins) where we’re all walking around with batons and threatening them and beating them. It’s not like that at all, we’re not thugs… We’re like the parent, the social worker and the correctional officer.”

Response policies to incidents have changed since Ahmo’s death, he said, the most significant being a curtailed use of the restraint chair, a device where the subject is strapped in a sitting position.

Moreover, the officer said, staff now fear using force similar to what they would have in the past out of fear of potentially facing criminal charges. He added some staff have left supervisory roles out of concern about making the wrong decision.

Winnipeg criminal defence lawyer Theodore Mariash pulled no punches when presented with the Free Press data, saying it is a clear indication corrections and the broader justice system is failing.

“The inmates are in there for criminal behaviour and everything described there is more criminal behaviour — is there any evidence there that the criminal behaviour is being corrected simply by being incarcerated? I would say, the fact that crimes are being committed in jail is a black eye on the system,” Mariash said in a recent interview.

“The failure is punching you in the face and what are we doing about it? More deterrents, more jail. Is it working?”

Michael Weinrath, a criminal justice professor at the University of Winnipeg and academic who has extensively researched corrections, including at Headingley jail, takes a more moderate tone, saying it’s a reflection of society.

“In the city, we have a lot of violence, we have a lot of gang-related violence, we have a lot of fights over territory and things of that nature, and we have vandalism and graffiti — so in some respects, it’s not surprising that we also see that in Headingley,” Weinrath said.

“That’s not to let the institution off the hook, you have to identify people, put them into programs, your staff are hired to deescalate situations first and not resort to physical coercion until they absolutely have to.”

The incident reports don’t shed much light on failings within the system — such as inmates placed in the wrong units, whether all de-escalation efforts were utilized, the need for additional programming — or indicate if it’s simply the price to pay in an overcrowded jail where people’s emotions boil over.

The Free Press tried to find out how Headingley is addressing the violence, but the province refused to make the jail’s superintendent available for an interview, citing unspecified security concerns.

Instead, the province took several days to provide a vague one-paragraph statement, which said the corrections department has policies about how its jails function, how its corrections officers respond to incidents and that it reviews major incidents, as well as training and policies.

The corrections officer, who has worked at Headingley for well over a decade, said the numbers, while underreported, are still reflective of a typical year.

“The last six, seven, eight years, the violence has gone through the roof,” the officer said.

He believes the issues are tied to a waning respect for authorities in society at large, the methamphetamine crisis and the resulting psychological issues among heavy users, and fewer repercussions for inmates who act out.

“I don’t see any signs of things getting better. You’re seeing — like that beating, the 15-on-one — you’re seeing things like that way more often. Way more violence, lashing out more and more often. It’s not every inmate but it’s definitely more common. It feels like it has gotten progressively worse.”

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Shortly after being named justice minister following the NDP’s provincial election win in October, Matt Wiebe visited Headingley and other jails to meet with staff about corrections issues and the work they do.

“When it comes to the challenges within Headingley, I think the numbers (the Free Press) presented bear out some of what we’re hearing from those front-line workers, and that is that this is a challenging place,” Wiebe said.

The minister said he sees potential in the corrections system, adding his government hopes to enhance current initiatives such as the Winding River Therapeutic Community and the Assiniboine Treatment Centre, which provide addictions programming and sex-offender programming, respectively, in communal settings at Headingley.

He sees spiritual-care programming and healing lodges playing a bigger role in the corrections system in addressing criminal offending and said his government is considering additional restorative justice initiatives to divert some offenders from jails.

“We want to ensure that our justice system holds people accountable for their actions, but we also want to be able to offer that path forward toward rehabilitation that most folks understand is a part of the reality of why people interact with the justice system to begin with,” Wiebe said.

Mariash, the criminal defence lawyer, said programming like Winding River and Assiniboine must be drastically expanded, if the corrections system has any hope of curtailing the cycle of criminal behaviour.

“Do we save a few pennies now, or do we try to prevent as many people as possible from becoming career criminals while we still can? Intervene while they’re still young, while there’s still some reasonable medical prospect of rehabilitation, because also, the older they get, the less employable they become and less educable they become — can’t teach an old dog new tricks, especially if you’re never given an opportunity, a shred of decency, anywhere in your life,” Mariash said.

The Headingley corrections officer said larger societal issues must be addressed, too.

“It goes outside the jail — you have good inmates who are not necessarily bad people, who have an addiction. You’re not going to cure that addiction; you’re not going to force someone to get better (in jail),” he said, adding a program that diverts certain offenders to long-term rehabilitation could likely help ease the system.

The former inmate said most of the public, and many justice system workers, simply don’t understand what drives criminal behaviour — pointing to trauma and addiction.

And once released, prisoners have few options.

“Maybe you served your time but then what do you do? Maybe you had something going on going in, maybe you had a place, but all your things are gone now, you don’t have a place, your job is gone, hell, your supports are likely gone too,” he said.

“So, what do you do? You go back to crime; you go back to addiction. You go back to what you know — you default.

“They need some sort of second stage, there needs to be a system in place. Right now, they drop you off at the nearest bus stop and they give you a bus ticket, and that’s all that’s required of them. You’ve served your time, maybe you’re on probation, maybe you’re on parole — but that doesn’t serve anybody.”

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca