Corcoran State Prison

The responsibility of every news organization is to dig deep, weigh all sides of an issue and then present an unbiased, objective story. By this standard, The Times’ recent series on Corcoran State Prison is an abysmal failure.

As Gov. Pete Wilson’s chief spokesperson, and someone who spent considerable time cooperating with The Times on the Corcoran series, I am astounded that the newspaper would falsely and irresponsibly allege a governor’s office “whitewash” regarding the California Department of Corrections’ investigations at Corcoran, allegations based in part on the comments of mid-level investigators who had absolutely no contact with our office. While I believe those individuals are honorable men--and, yes, fully entitled to their opinions--opinions are no substitute for fact; they must be supported by evidence.

The real story here is not a governor’s office “whitewash” as The Times described it, but a Times “blackout”--the unexplained omission from California’s largest daily newspaper of all the facts, documents, interviews and statements supplied by the Wilson administration, evidence that directly contradicts the Times’ key assertions pertaining to the administration’s management of Corcoran State Prison.

One might ask why The Times failed to report the following:

* Responding to reports of wrongdoing at Corcoran, Gov. Wilson put in motion a two-track investigation, one by the Department of Corrections and the other an independent probe by the attorney general--hardly the actions of someone involved in a “whitewash.”

* The Department of Corrections investigates allegations of staff misconduct wherever they occur and was conducting investigations of misconduct at Corcoran long before The Times wrote a single word on this topic.

* Officer Richard Caruso, upon whom The Times has relied heavily, was disciplined in 1991 for assaulting another staff member, and was again the focus of an internal affairs investigation in July 1994 before he went to the FBI with his story. Caruso has admitted that he feared disciplinary action for the 1994 incident, which involved shooting an inmate who had complied with orders to stop fighting.

* Contrary to The Times’ allegation that Caruso was the target of retribution for going to the FBI, the Department of Corrections consciously chose to put its review of the Caruso shooting incident on hold to avoid any perception of retaliation.

* The Department of Corrections, as required by state law, has reported every shooting that resulted in death to the responsible local law enforcement agency, including the Kings County district attorney’s office.

* The federal probe was not focused on only one shooting death, as The Times insists. An October 1994 letter from the FBI to the Department of Corrections asks the state agency to “refrain from conducting any further investigation regarding the shooting death of inmate Preston Tate and the ongoing pending civil rights inquiry at Corcoran State Prison, which is focused on possible excessive use of 37-millimeter rubber ammunition on inmates by Corcoran correctional officers.” Clearly, this request relates to multiple shootings and multiple officers, not just a single incident.

* The Department of Corrections put its own probe on hold to oblige the request by the FBI. Subsequently, the department’s chief deputy director informed the FBI that the department would reinstitute its probe because the legal window for disciplinary action against staff was about to close. The department looked into staff application of the integrated yard and shooting policies, staff misconduct and allegations of interference with the federal probe. This investigative team received carte blanche to assemble the necessary personnel and resources to successfully complete such a review. At no time did the governor’s office direct the probe, select the personnel or interfere with the manner or content of the investigation.

*% Rather than interfering with the federal probe, the Department of Corrections provided the FBI with hundreds of thousands of documents on more than 300 inmates, as well as the names, home addresses and phone numbers of every single department employee (correctional officers, administrators, clerical staff and medical personnel) who had contact with Corcoran’s Security Housing Unit from its opening in 1989 through 1994. Those documents ran the gamut from daily movement sheets, cell/bed move forms and housing unit logs to computer data that would indicate if tier stacking through cell assignments of known enemies, or the arrangement of staged fights, was occurring.

* When the Department of Corrections found evidence of misconduct, employees were reprimanded, demoted, suspended and fired. In all, the department took 32 disciplinary actions against staff as a result of investigations into allegations of inmate abuse and other incidents of wrongdoing at Corcoran.

* In the Dillard rape case, the Department of Corrections investigated the incident and referred all information to the local district attorney’s office, which declined to prosecute. The department has since referred this case to the attorney general for review and, if warranted, prosecution.

* Allegations that the Department of Corrections chose not to compel officers to talk with investigators ignores statutory law, case law and labor agreements that guarantee correctional officers’ specific rights regarding representation and the compelling of testimony during an investigation. For instance, any officer who reasonably believes that he or she might say something that would implicate him or her in misconduct is entitled--by law--to have a representative present during an interrogation.

* Allegations that Corcoran was out of control or in a “meltdown” are flatly false. A review of Corcoran’s Security Housing Unit exercise yards from 1993 through 1996 found that 95.8% of the integrated yards ran without a single incident, and there has not been a single fatality since June 1994, remarkable feats for a facility housing California’s most dangerous criminals.

* In the 1970s, one out of every 1,200 inmates was killed by another inmate. A decade later, after Corcoran’s opening, the death rate fell to one out of every 3,300. And during the 1990s, with both Corcoran and Pelican Bay in operation, only one out of every 11,400 inmates has been killed by another inmate.

* The Department of Corrections has initiated a comprehensive, independent review of shooting incidents that have occurred at Corcoran to evaluate whether they complied with departmental policies and to ensure that they were investigated thoroughly.

Those are but a few of the facts missing from The Times’ series. Also omitted was any mention of the administration’s cooperation with this newspaper. We made a blanket offer to The Times to provide all public documents and to facilitate interviews with the department and governor’s office staff. We arranged multiple interviews with staff. We proactively called Times reporters to inquire about their information needs. We even offered and arranged for reporters to tour Corcoran and other prisons to better understand how Corcoran functions in the overall management of California’s inmate population. Is that a “whitewash?” Hogwash!

At the start of The Times’ investigative series, some people in the administration surmised that the story would convey a single, predetermined point of view. We rejected that notion; we thought The Times was above that. Indeed, we were assured that the report would be balanced. I guess we got snookered, for nowhere was it reported that this administration has improved overall prison management, revised and strengthened policies and punished staff wrongdoing, all within the confines of a federal investigation.

SEAN WALSH

Deputy Chief of Staff

to Gov. Pete Wilson