A Delaware correctional officer was punched in the face by an inmate at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna on Tuesday. That’s less than a week after a deadly hostage situation at the same facility resulted in the death of a heroic officer, who gave his life trying to quell an inmate uprising — and warning other guards not to attempt to rescue him.
“One inmate in particular was unruly and reportedly shouting again and again that he was going to kill all of the officers,” said a release by the Corrections Officers Association of Delaware (COAD) of the situation this week. “When ordered into his cell, the inmate threw his belongings into the cell and said, ‘I’m taking one of you with me.'”
“These guys are in charge of murderers, gang members, felons.”
Corrections is a highly stressful career — a point overlooked by the public.
Among occupational groups, only police experience more violent incidents at work than corrections officers do, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Working in corrections is tough. The hours can be very long and dull, interrupted by inmate eruptions that can get deadly at any second,” one Massachusetts police officer who has friends who work in corrections told LifeZette. “These guys aren’t all angels, but it is a very, very tough job that receives very little notice by the public. These guys are in charge of murderers, gang members, and felons.”
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It’s also a job many couldn’t do. “If you’re a corrections officer, you know what each day is likely to have in store: a treadmill of stress and often nastiness, in an environment outsiders rarely think about and struggle to comprehend,” according to The Marshall Project website, a nonprofit journalism enterprise that covers criminal justice issues. “But for all the power COs presumably have in their role as jailers, research shows they are authentically fearful and at the mercy of policy changes that they cannot control and often do not understand.”
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The corrections officer killed on Feb. 2 in Delaware is being remembered as a hero after he lost his life in a hostage standoff.
Sgt. Steven Floyd, a husband, father, and grandfather, used his last moments to warn fellow correctional officers not to try and rescue him.
Floyd, 47, had been taken hostage, and was found dead after the nearly 20-hour standoff.
“Even in his last moments, as the inmates attempted to take over of the building, Sgt. Floyd told a couple of the lieutenants to get out of the building, that it was a trap,” COAD President Geoff Klopp told news station WPVI.
The prisoners staged a fight to draw in Floyd, then forced him into a closet, multiple outlets reported. After releasing two other hostages, the prisoners asked for the water to be turned on for drinking. The water was then used to fill foot lockers, with which barricades were erected.
While ongoing negations took place, efforts were made to get Sgt. Floyd on the walkie-talkie to verify he was still alive. The prisoners wanted a formal apology from Delaware Gov. John Carney, and his acknowledgment of “decades of oppression.”
Hostage-takers delivered a message to a Delaware newspaper saying their uprising was a response to President Trump’s policies and what his administration would mean for the future of the prison, according to a report in The Washington Post.
“Everything that he did. All the things that he’s doing now,” they said during the second of two phone calls to the News Journal in Wilmington. “We know that the institution is going to change for the worse.”
“He [Floyd] worked overtime to put his kids through college … He loved them with all of his heart.”
The three other correctional officers who were taken hostage did not suffer life-threatening injuries, although they were severely beaten by their captors, suffering cuts, eye injuries and broken bones.
Authorities stated that all inmates who were in the building will be considered suspects — about 120 in all.
“Sgt. Steven Floyd Sr. was a father, a grandfather, a loving husband,” Klopp said days later, according to Fox News. “He worked overtime three and four times a week to put his kids through college … anything his kids or his wife wanted or his grandkids. He loved them with all of his heart.”
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Floyd was a 16-year veteran of the Delaware Department of Corrections, and the recipient of the warden’s award for outstanding performance, reported Lawofficer.com.
Lisa Ferrari is a freelance writer from Nottingham, New Hampshire.
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