Prison Teacher Accused in Weapons Plot : Violence: Acclaimed instructor is suspended from his job after revealing to officials that a knife was hidden in classroom.

A highly acclaimed teacher at Lancaster State Prison has been suspended from his job under suspicion of helping inmates make weapons, even though he apparently alerted guards that a razor-sharp knife was hidden in his classroom.

James Attensil, 36, who struggles with manic depression, was recognized as the disabled state employee of the year in 1994 and named teacher of the year at the prison in 1993.

“James does not need to tell people he cares about them because it is obvious by his actions” says the nominating letter for another award, written by Rebecca Fisher, supervisor of prison academic instruction.

Attensil admits that he is not blameless in this affair, acknowledging that his trust in an inmate clerk led him to break prison rules and even withhold vital information from corrections officials.

That said, he finds it ridiculous to be a suspect in a weapons manufacturing case.

“It’s the correctional officer mentality,” Attensil said. “They think everybody is lying about everything. They think we were all in on this together.”

Prison officials declined to comment except to confirm that Attensil is under investigation.

Before he became a prison teacher, Attensil coped with a mental disorder that would hurl him soaring into euphoria, plunge him into suicidal despair and, at one point, lead him to seek refuge in a mental institution.

But he gained control with the help of medication and, nearly three years ago, began teaching inmates at the Lancaster prison, the first academic teacher to work at the 4,000-convict facility that opened in February 1993.

From the beginning, Attensil felt he had something in common with prison inmates.

“I know what it’s like to be looked down on,” he said in a phone interview. “I’ve had my life fall completely apart and I have seen that you can take a tragic event and make something out of it.”

Attensil particularly tried to make something out of Johnny Placencia.

Placencia, 23, is doing 15 years to life for second-degree murder, a stabbing at a party in East Los Angeles when he was 18. He told Attensil that he is innocent and someday wants to do delinquency prevention work.

Placencia was appointed to a teaching aide position and three months ago became Attensil’s chief clerk.

The engaging, talkative inmate was always doing something extra: cleaning up the classroom, making coffee, grading papers.

Attensil also went out of his way for Placencia, breaking the rules by giving the inmate soft drinks and allowing him to take paper and pens back to his cell. He even let the prisoner borrow a wristwatch with a remote control device for changing television channels.

But the relationship was jolted early this month.

On Dec. 7, an inmate informed Attensil that a prison-made knife had been hidden in his classroom inside an old roll-up movie screen.

Attensil says he alerted corrections officials that day and a razor-sharp 9 1/2-inch shank was found. Later that day, acting on their own tip, officers again searched the room and found steel scrap for making weapons hidden above the screen, and the next day found another prison-made knife in the same screen, says Attensil.

An informant told Attensil that the weapons culprits were an inmate named Oscar “Flaco” Gonzales and--the shocker--Placencia.

A memo written by Attensil on Dec. 11 backs up his story that he informed corrections officers of the original tip that a knife was hidden in the screen, but indicates that he reported only Gonzales as a suspect.

“I turned in one name,” said Attensil, “I didn’t believe [Placencia] could be involved in it.”

Subsequently, another informant told Attensil that Placencia was involved and the teacher became more and more suspicious as he recalled that his clerk had frequently asked permission to run errands to adjacent vocational classrooms where there were tools capable of making weapons.

On Dec. 13, he confronted Placencia, but the inmate denied any involvement and advised Attensil to stay out of the matter.

A day or two later, Placencia asked Attensil to take two letters outside the prison to be mailed. This is forbidden. For security reasons, all letters must go through official channels. But Attensil said he thought that the letters might reveal information about the weapons plot.

Attensil took the letters home over the weekend and read them. One was from Placencia to Gonzales, who was being held in special administrative custody, seeking information about the weapons probe.

The other was from several other inmates addressed to convicts at another prison.

Attensil took his information to prison authorities Monday. The next day, he was sent home on paid leave.

Attensil says he feels betrayed by Placencia, but is not bitter.

“I could see it as betrayal,” he said, “but in his eyes, he saw it as prison life. I was there and he thought he could use me and I wouldn’t catch on.”