‘Jack’ed up, Part 1

Late last week, Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson (D) announced that independent experts will review policies and procedures at the county detention center. The American Correctional Association and the National Institute of Corrections will be doing a top-to-bottom assessment of the county corrections system. The Washington Post says that the ACA will be receiving $25,000 for their trouble while the NIC, which is within the Justice Department, is doing the assessment for free.

I apologize if I am not excited about this. A review of the county detention center is coming after the worse case scenario happened (I would argue that an inmate dying while in custody due to a another human being as a very bad situation.) There should have been a review BEFORE the worse case scenario, especially after Alfred McMurray Sr., the county corrections director, was fired.

McMurray was fired after a series of incidents in the last few months, including:

• Four guns and their holsters going missing during an inventory check of the jail’s armory.
• Two inmates being in possession of handcuff keys.
• Two corrections officers suspended and accused of bringing cell phones to inmates.
• Two female corrections officers accused of inappropriate sexual relations with inmates.

This is another in a long line of examples of Johnson not understanding criminal justice in Prince George’s County. Let’s look at three biggies over the last decade.

In September 1998, Gilberto Hernandez, a Salvadorian immigrant, was assaulted by a group of teenagers near the Laurel Centre Mall. Based on news accounts at the time, two of the five teens accused were part of the Laurel High School football team.

News outlets also reported that then state’s attorney Johnson interviewed the accused assailants and not the two brothers of Hernandez. He later dismissed the findings of the police investigators who believe it was a botched robbery attempt and instead proclaim that the attack happened for no reason at all. That action prompted an investigation by the FBI for civil rights violations.

Let’s fast forward to 2005 when it turned out to be the bloodiest year in the county since the early 1990s. What does Johnson want to do to control crime…shut down apartment complexes! When he made the announcement in January of 2005, Johnson didn’t even know which ones he was going to target. He eventually names 22 complexes later on. By the end of that year there were 169 homicides, breaking the 1991 record of 154 killings. Johnson’s campaign against apartment complexes did not make a dent into the crime problem.

Two years later, Johnson decided to go after nightclubs. He ordered nine clubs, including a Knights of Columbus lodge in District Heights, closed after there were 11 homicides in as many days. Two of the homicides were linked to clubs that were slated for closure. After a lot of legal maneuvering, and a temporary injunction filed by one of the clubs being granted by a judge, Johnson backed off and clubs upgraded their plans. The homicide total for 2007 in Prince George’s was 144.

In the Hernadez case, Johnson should have done everything possible to at the very least solicit help from an interpreter, whether it was in his office, a police officer or an A.S.A. from another county. As far as the apartments and nightclubs, that is a two way street where Johnson should have reached out and worked with the owners of the properties and clubs respectively. I am sure the owners do not like the stigma of being a crime haven being attached to their businesses. His Eliot Ness-like actions were simply impulse reactions designed for the media, not for making genuine inroads to solving the problem.

Those three major incidents in the past decade, along with this latest faux pas involving the prison system shows that Johnson is clearly clueless and incompetent when it comes to criminal justice.

Crime is not the only incident where Johnson has shown his incompetence.

To be continued…

kennyburns@marylandpolitics.us