The news came out today that Governor Martin O’Malley, who is on a trip to the Middle East, has expressed interest for running for president in 2016. This comes as no surprise to anyone over the past couple of years. He was a Democratic surrogate present in Tampa for the Republican convention last summer, where he was reportedly wasted at a bar.

O’Malley says he will think about it and reflect on it later this year. Other potential candidate mentioned in the article are Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joe Biden, and Andrew Cuomo.

O’Malley is visiting Israel, Jordan, and the Occupied Territories as part of his trip. He will attend Sunday Mass in Bethlehem.

Just yesterday we learned about a prison scandal affecting the O’Malley administration back here in Maryland. I’ll let a tweet from Luke Russert be my lead-in.

O’Malley hates “The Wire” comparisons but yeah… washingtonpost.com/local/thirteen… #CharmCity

— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) April 24, 2013

From the article in The Washington Post:

More than a dozen Maryland state prison guards helped a dangerous national gang operate a drug-trafficking and money-laundering scheme from behind bars that involved cash payments, sex and access to fancy cars, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Thirteen female corrections officers essentially handed over control of a Baltimore jail to gang leaders, prosecutors said. The officers were charged Tuesday in a federal racketeering indictment.

Additional details of the federal indictment reveal that:

According to the indictment, members and associates followed directions from the ranking BGF members in BCDC, especially inmate Tavon White. On January, 5, 2013, White explained in a phone call:

“This is my jail. You understand that? I’m dead serious…. I make every final call in this jail, … and nothing go past me, everything come to me…. Any of my brothers that deal with anybody, it’s gonna come to me. You see what I am saying? Everything come to me. Everything. Before a mother-f—– hit a n—– in the mouth, guess what they do, they gotta run it through me. I tell them whether it’s a go ahead, and they can do it or whether they hold back. Before a mother-f—– stab somebody, they gotta run it through me…. Anything that get done must go through me. ”

Tavon White summarized his position in a conversation with correctional officer Adrena Rice on February 11, 2013:

“I told them worker men that they had to step down off the worker men spots or they was getting hit…. I hold the highest seat you can get… My word is law…, so if I told any mother-f—— body they had to do this, hit a police, do this, kill a mother-f—–, do anything, it got to get done. Period.”

One quick clarification before I continue – the facilities mentioned in the articles and indictment are all state-run facilities that just happen to have the name Baltimore City in their names.

More on Tavon White:

White allegedly had long-term sexual relationships inside BCDC with four correctional officers, Jennifer Owens, Katera Stevenson, Chania Brooks and Tiffany Linder, impregnating each of the four officers at least once. Owens had “Tavon” tattooed on her neck and Stevenson had “Tavon” tattooed on her wrist. All four officers allegedly help smuggle contraband into BCDC and related facilities. White allegedly gave Owens a diamond ring and provided luxury automobiles to Owens, Stevenson and Brooks. The indictment includes many overt acts in furtherance of the racketeering enterprise. For example, in November 2012, correctional officer Jasmin Jones allegedly stood guard outside a closet in BCDC so that correctional officer Kimberly Dennis and inmate Derius Duncan could have sex. Corrupt officers also warned BGF inmates about law enforcement operations. For example, Brooks and Linder allegedly notified White when they learned about upcoming canine scans and jail cell searches. The affidavit specifies two occasions in which warning calls to White were intercepted: December 21, 2012 (from Brooks), and January 6, 2013 (from Linder). White then used his cell phone to spread the word to other inmates.

Gary Maynard, Maryland Secretary of Public Safety & Correctional Services, is lauded in the U.S. Attorney’s press release for his cooperation in the investigation when he was approached.

From the WaPo Article:

“It’s totally on me. I don’t make any excuses,” said Maynard, who was appointed by Gov. Martin O’Malley in 2007, when the prison system was experiencing a spate of inmate violence and corrections officers’ complaints of staffing shortages. “We will move up the chain of command, and people will be held accountable.”

As mentioned in the WaPo article, prosecutors said that the facilities were “‘completely inadequate to prevent smuggling’ and lacked ‘effective punishment.’”

The mentioning of the problems when Maynard took office might be a way to try to soften the blow, but he has been in charge around six years now and there are obviously still major problems. Maynard has served in prison jobs in Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Iowa in the past. He was made director of the S.C. Department of Corrections by Governor Jim Hodges after his predecessor was fired in a scandal that included sex by inmates assigned to a work detail in the governor’s residence as well as corrections officers having sex with notorious child murderer Susan Smith. Maynard also served as Adjutant General in Oklahoma.

The buck ultimately stops on the desk of Governor Martin O’Malley. As the Post points out:

It comes at a sensitive time for the Democrat, who is weighing a 2016 presidential bid. Aides have said that part of O’Malley’s political pitch would be his record as a “performance-driven” manager of state government. “We have zero tolerance for corruption among correctional officers, and we will continue striving to make all correctional facilities as secure as they can possibly be,” the governor said.

I wonder what kind of StateStat metrics they can track for corrections officers impregnated by inmates or all the other corruption catalogued in the indictment? Maybe another one for how many cars are purchased by inmates for bribing corrections officers?

State Senator Lisa Gladden, a Baltimore Democrat, has questioned why female officers were used to guard male inmates. Maynard brushes those concerns off.

Another question, where has the Maryland Republican Party been while all this is going on? Other than State Senator Joseph Getty of Carroll County saying this is “a pretty harsh indictment” of O’Malley’s corrections policies, I can’t find much other GOP response.

I will be exploring those issues in a later post.

UPDATE

A union official told WBAL.com the following:

Barry says the gang problem is “very strong” in the prisons because the administration will not let the officers control the facility. He says inmates seem to have more rights than the corrections officers who are hired to guard them.

Barry says it is safe to say the inmates are running the asylum. He says there are examples of inmates assaulting officers who then fight back and the officer gets charged with assault or excessive force. “An inmate can spit in an officer’s face, the officer who is human reacts and the officer gets disciplined,” says Barry.

He also says the detention center is like a “Club Med” for the inmates because the administration refuses to enforce the regulations against the inmates.

Barry suggests that there be fewer female corrections officers guarding male inmates in those prisons as a way of helping with the problem. He says the intensive training that is needed to do the job correctly has been cut and rookie officers are training each other.