In Illinois, a Warden Tried to Repair an Abusive Jail. He Confronted Loss of life Threats.
The handwritten letter arrived days earlier than Christmas 2022. “THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ISSUE!!!” it started. “PLEASE HELP.” Signed by 14 individuals incarcerated in one of many highest safety federal prisons within the nation, the letter was an pressing warning for jail officers: A number of corrections officers have been making an attempt to bribe prisoners to assault the warden and one in all his captains.
Three males stated officers “provided to poorly tighten their hand restraints” in the course of the warden’s walk-through “in order that the inmate can simply slip his hand restraints and perform a bodily assault,” according to the letter. Guards had provided the boys further meals trays and different favors, and promised to not injure them after the assault. The lads wrote that officers have been indignant about adjustments by the brand new warden.
Thomas Bergami had taken over the Thomson penitentiary in western Illinois 9 months earlier — tasked with fixing a jail the place five prisoners were killed lately and the place more than 120 people have reported severe abuse.
A second letter delivered quickly after the primary made related claims, and stated that officers steered somebody stab the officers. An investigator from the Bureau of Prisons interviewed a few of the males who signed the letters and located the knowledge they supplied “pretty constant,” according to his report. However as a result of “none supplied particular dates or occasions of the allegation,” the agent wrote, he “couldn’t affirm nor refute” their accounts. Bergami, who retired this summer season, stated in an interview that the officers on that unit, who had been taken off their posts, returned to work days later.
“When the regional director referred to as me and stated, ‘Nicely, they seemed into it and put these guys again on their submit,’ I am like, ‘Are you freaking kidding me proper now?’” Bergami stated. “My workers have been saying to stab me and the captain. I’ve received to fret about our security.”
Bureau officers didn’t reply to questions concerning the letters and the investigation. The explosive allegation is amongst a number of incidents that Bergami and his former high deputy at Thomson recalled in latest interviews with The Marshall Undertaking and NPR, detailing what they described as a tradition of abuse and impunity on the jail.
Their accounts, along with interviews with different Thomson workers and dozens of inside bureau paperwork reviewed by the information organizations, depict a jail the place officers have been unable to fireplace guards they thought-about harmful, the officers’ union resisted administration’s efforts to carry workers accountable, and different managers on the company undermined their efforts to make change.
Bergami stated he realized from his first day at Thomson, the place greater than 1,400 males are held, that the jail had an “monumental downside with inmate abuse,” together with falsifying costs in opposition to Black prisoners and preserving males in painful restraints for days. The perspective of workers there, he stated, was “the worst I’ve seen in 31 years” working in corrections.
When Bergami arrived, Thomson was dwelling to the “Particular Administration Unit,” a program meant for essentially the most disruptive individuals in federal custody. However the unit was racked by violence: The Marshall Undertaking and NPR published an investigation final yr into a number of deaths on the jail and accounts of utmost mistreatment.
The Bureau of Prisons closed that unit in February, involved over the misconduct there. The jail has since been transformed to a low-security institution. However in accordance with present workers and households of individuals incarcerated there, the abusive environment persists.
In an announcement, Randilee Giamusso, a spokesperson for the bureau, stated the company is working to handle worker misconduct, and that “growing significant change all through the company will not be one thing that occurs in a second.”
Jonathan Zumkehr, president of the union that represents officers at Thomson, rejected allegations of mistreatment there. “I’ll disagree 100%. That did not occur,” he stated. He criticized Bergami for “blaming workers” for incidents that occurred beneath his management. “We’ve got nice workers at Thomson,” Zumkehr stated. “If anyone dedicated any of these horrible acts, we would like them held accountable.”
Damon Jackson was one of many males who signed the primary letter warning Bergami. In a cellphone interview, Jackson recalled officers providing an MP3 participant or further meals, telling his cellmate, “If one thing occurred to the warden, they gonna maintain him.” After the letter, Jackson stated the investigator spoke to a couple individuals who signed it, however to not him. “We by no means heard nothing again after that,” Jackson stated.
Jackson and the others have been moved to different prisons after the Particular Administration Unit closed. He stated officers “felt just like the warden was too tender, was too pro-inmate. They wished to get him out of the best way so they may proceed beating inmates and run the jail the best way they wished to run it.”
Bergami was the warden of a medium-security federal jail in New Jersey when bureau officers requested him to run Thomson. He employed Denny Whitmore, one other 30-year veteran of the federal jail system, as his affiliate warden. Once they arrived at Thomson in Spring 2022, they have been shocked by a few of the workers’s practices.
Company coverage prevented Bergami and Whitmore, who additionally retired this summer season, from talking publicly concerning the jail with out authorization whereas they labored there. They stated they felt that reporting the abuse at Thomson to their superiors on the company blocked their own advancement opportunities, so that they selected to retire as a substitute.
Each stated once they arrived they have been distressed to see officers stroll individuals in shackles backward down the steps, one officer on every arm, and a third controlling the prisoner’s head. Bergami wrote to his superiors that he had by no means seen that technique in any operations handbook and that he discovered it harmful and pointless. Bergami and Whitmore stated workers additionally would transfer prisoners throughout the yard in freezing winter climate with no footwear or coat on.
Additionally they noticed guards routinely use “black field” handcuffs, meant just for essentially the most harmful transfers, to maneuver individuals in low-security custody. With this system, the chain connecting the cuffs is roofed by a tough plastic field that additional restricts motion.
Bergami stated he ordered workers to cease utilizing the black field handcuffs, and to vary how they transferred individuals. However some officers pushed again. One officer “was speaking about how he was going to make use of the black field anyhow, even when not approved by the administration,” a workers member wrote in a June memo that Bergami supplied to The Marshall Undertaking and NPR. “I noticed [the officer] to say, ‘that f—– motherfucker in cost,’ when discussing Warden Bergami,” the memo continued, utilizing a homosexual slur.
From the start, Bergami clashed with Zumkehr, the union president, who Bergami stated inspired workers to flout bureau coverage. A number of memos and emails element their antagonistic relationship.
In interviews with native media, Zumkehr stated that Bergami’s “ever-changing insurance policies and procedures” put workers in danger, and called for his firing. “In latest months we’ve had an abundance of great incidents which happened beneath the Thomas Bergami management,” Zumkehr wrote in a July 2022 letter, saying that managers have been “inserting the hard-working workers in limbo.”
Officers at Thomson maintain a person in a four-point restraint, with wrists and ankles secured to limit motion.
Bergami stated workers additionally continuously used “four-point restraints,” a tactic meant as a final resort. Individuals in four-points are splayed spread-eagled, with every of their limbs shackled to a nook of a mattress. Individuals incarcerated at Thomson reported being held this fashion for hours — or days — at a time. Many stated they weren’t fed or allowed to make use of the toilet, forcing them to put in their very own waste. “It is actually akin to a torture chamber,” one lawyer told The Marshall Project and NPR.
Bureau policy says four-points are meant as a uncommon and short-term intervention, when they’re “the one means accessible to acquire and keep management over an inmate.” The warden has to approve their continued use. Involved the restraints have been being overused, Bergami stated he started requiring workers to videotape checks on individuals who have been chained down. When he watched a few of these recordings, the boys in shackles have been compliant — making the four-point restraint pointless, Bergami stated.
“He was cool as a cucumber,” he stated of a prisoner. “It didn’t add up.”
Zumkehr stated that workers have been following bureau guidelines when utilizing four-points. “How will you say that my workers are torturing inmates once they’re following the bureau coverage?” he stated.
Some restraints have been utilized so tightly they left scars, which prisoners referred to as “The Thomson tattoo.” Bergami requested medical workers for a depend of how many individuals there had this harm. They discovered over 90 individuals with the scars.
In a September congressional hearing, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois referred to as the circumstances at Thomson “beautiful” and “sickening.”
Bergami stated he tried to fireplace no less than three officers who have been discovered by inside investigators to have abused individuals of their custody, however his superiors blocked him every time. One of many officers Bergami stated he tried to fireplace was named in two separate lawsuits alleging he slammed two prisoners’ faces into the concrete ground, knocking one unconscious, in accordance with courtroom information. Neither individual suing had an lawyer, and each instances have been dismissed. Efforts to achieve the officer have been unsuccessful.
That officer was “really helpful for termination” by employment personnel on the bureau and by Bergami, in accordance with the previous warden and Whitmore. However they stated different company officers overruled the advice. The Bureau of Prisons confirmed that the officer remains to be working at Thomson however declined to reply different questions concerning the case. One other staffer who Bergami stated he tried to terminate is now working at a unique federal jail.
The bureau’s regional director for Thomson, Andre Matevousian, declined to remark. Giamusso, the bureau spokesperson, stated, “the overwhelming majority of our workers are hardworking, moral, diligent corrections professionals, who act with integrity day by day and need these participating in misconduct to be held accountable.”
Bergami and Whitmore stated additionally they tried to fireplace an officer who they noticed on video throwing away prisoners’ mail, a potential felony. The company additionally overruled them in that call, they stated. The bureau didn’t reply to allegations of workers destroying mail.
“How do you root out the dangerous apples for those who’re not allowed to terminate those that have been really helpful for termination?” Whitmore stated.
The 2 former Thomson officers and a present jail worker stated the perspective amongst many guards was mirrored by a bunch who refused to put on their issued uniforms. These officers opted as a substitute for black T-shirts, many with the union emblem or the cranium emblem of The Punisher — a vigilante comedian e book character in style with far-right teams. They referred to as themselves “The Black Shirt Mafia.”
Zumkehr stated he had by no means heard workers use that phrase, however that many staffers wore black union sweatshirts, which he stated Bergami initially authorized.
Thomson officers and the union additionally clashed about what workers known as “205s”: incarcerated males who masturbated of their cells in entrance of officers as a method of sexual harassment. Employees members informed the union that jail officers have been failing to guard them from such assaults, according to a report from a web site go to by bureau workers and nationwide union workers. Union officers informed native media that there have been over 500 situations of this in 2021. This summer season, the union efficiently lobbied to go a state law in Illinois that may make repeat “lewd exposures” in jail a felony offense.
Bergami and Whitmore stated many of those stories have been falsified as an excuse to punish Black prisoners and segregate them on a particular tier for males accused of such acts. Different Thomson workers, who spoke to The Marshall Undertaking and NPR, additionally stated some staffers made up incidents. The positioning go to report additionally famous that “inmates of color are terrified of the correctional officers.” Present and former Thomson workers stated that racism was rampant at Thomson, directed towards each the incarcerated and workers members of coloration. In line with the bureau, roughly 83% of Thomson workers are White.
In an announcement, Giamusso, the bureau spokesperson, didn’t reply to particular questions concerning the sexual misconduct allegations or the declare that they have been typically falsified. She stated all workers obtain necessary variety administration coaching yearly.
Zumkehr denied that workers members made up incidents, and stated that in the event that they did, Bergami ought to have referred these staffers for misconduct investigations. “When the warden is saying all workers are faking it, we’re encouraging workers to not report this now,” he stated.
On the Senate judiciary listening to in September, bureau Director Colette Peters spoke concerning the choice to shut the Particular Administration Unit at Thomson, citing abuse and misconduct. “I too, hadn’t seen something like that in my 30-plus yr profession in corrections,” she stated.
Peters additionally informed senators that officers who engaged in abuse have been going through administrative and legal investigation. Giamusso, the bureau spokesperson, stated the company is “actively rooting out and addressing worker misconduct,” however didn’t present particulars on the standing of such investigations.
Staffers and households of individuals at Thomson stated the mistreatment continues. A number of stated the ability nonetheless felt like a most safety jail. They stated their family members have been referred to as racial slurs, denied visits or held in solitary confinement for months with little justification.
Bergami stated there’s just one approach ahead: shutting Thomson down solely.
“We do not need anybody to ever must undergo what we went via. Extra importantly, the inmates which might be housed beneath our care are nonetheless being abused,” he stated in a latest interview. “The place is the accountability?”