A group of inmates blocked entry to their housing units Friday morning at the Bristol County Jail’s main campus in Dartmouth, triggering a tense confrontation that lasted most of the day and left one of the jail’s housing units in serious disrepair.
Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux said no one was injured as a force of 200 law enforcement officers from jails and prisons across the region regained control of the facility on Friday afternoon.
“I think the fact that nobody was hurt shows that this was handled the way it should have been handled,” Heroux said at a press conference Friday evening.
The conflict began Friday morning as the sheriff’s office tried to relocate inmates from a pair of housing units within Dartmouth House of Correction, which holds about 600 inmates across all units — most of whom are awaiting trial.
The two housing units, which held about 140 inmates, were slated for renovation as part of a broader plan to reform the county jail system that Heroux announced after taking office in January. Heroux sought to outfit those units with the necessary amenities for pre-trial detainees from the Ash Street Jail, an infamous 135-year-old facility he is hoping to close in New Bedford that still houses about 80 of the county’s inmates.
A spokesman for the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office, Jonathan Darling, said the renovations also aimed to reduce the number of suicides that occur in the Bristol County jail system, which has an inmate suicide rate triple the national average for local jails, according to a recent report commissioned by the sheriff’s office.
“We wanted to move some inmates around and they didn’t want to move, and that’s what led to the incident today,” Darling said.
Inmates began barricading an entrance to their cells with mattresses and furniture. The sheriff’s staff claimed that inmates also began disassembling beds to use the pieces as makeshift weapons. Security cameras were broken, several fires were lit inside and Heroux said inmates made the floors slippery with water and soap.
Though the sheriff’s office reported no one was injured during the standoff, Heroux said that one inmate wound up with “a bloody eye.”
“That wasn’t because of the use of force,” Heroux said. “I think the person might have slipped and fallen or something.”
At around 11:30 a.m., Heroux said the inmates handed his staff a list of demands through a broken window. The list, which Heroux declined to release until investigations have concluded, included a wide range of requests: from material concerns like more barbers, television sets and lower commissary prices to programming needs and issues of justice, like reforms to how grievances are reviewed by the jail’s administration. Heroux said the inmates also demanded a personal meeting with him.
“We couldn’t accommodate all of these, but some of them we could, so I responded in writing to try to deescalate the situation,” Heroux said. “And as soon as they received the letter, they tore it up and threw it right back out the window.”
The two units where the confrontation broke out housed about 140 inmates. Heroux said as many as 80 of them were “agitated” participants in the conflict. He characterized 20 of those inmates as “ringleaders” who would be transferred to other county jails as part of their punishment. They could also face criminal charges for the property damage that occurred.
Ben Berke is the South Coast Bureau Reporter for The Public’s Radio. He can be reached at bberke@thepublicsradio.org. Follow him on Twitter @BenBerke6.
