I-Team: Assaults on North Carolina corrections officers increasing
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Behind the secret walls of the North Carolina state prison system, the ABC11 I-Team found there is a rise in violent assaults and deadly threats.
It's not the inmates being targeted, but the people who guard them and even their families.
A staggering number of gangs are operating inside North Carolina prisons - a total of 1000. The North Carolina Department of Public Safety says they have been threatening and attacking correctional officers if they don't get what they want.
"When the hairs on your neck stand up, you know there is usually something to worry about," a corrections department supervisor said. The 17-year veteran of the department did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation from gangs.
Prison officials tell the I-Team assaults on correctional staff are on the rise. Last year, attacks by gang members increased by nearly 100 from the year before.
But, the threat is not just inside the prison walls. Gang members warn staff the danger can go beyond to the outside as the corrections supervisor explained.
"'I'm gonna get you. I'm gonna get your family or I'm gonna get your kids,'" the supervisor said he was told by one gang member. "One time, I actually had a person tell me, 'listen don't worry. I'm not coming after you. I'm after your family.'"
The I-Team also spoke to a former leader of one of the state's top gangs who served five years in prison for armed robbery. He told us what he would say to corrections officers to threaten them.
"I can threaten somebody that you go home to," he remembered.
He said gangs attack an officer or threaten his family if they don't get what they ask them to deliver like toiletries or cigarettes.
"I've seen some guys beat like badly over a stick of deodorant, a bag of potato chips because if I ask you to do something and you don't do it, I'm taking it as disrespect to me," this former gang leader said.
He said he's been out of prison since 2012 and left the gang, but still remembers the power he felt when threatening officers whether the threat was real or not.
"I need you to think every threat is real so everything I do before that threat is to get you to believe that it can happen. So if I tell you I know where your sister lives at, nine times out of ten, I'm going to find out where she lives at."
Gang members may be locked up, but they still get their hands on smuggled cell phones which connect them with their members outside prison.
The latest figures show about 750 cell phones - or parts of them - were confiscated in prisons in 2013.
The I-Team has learned the threat extends beyond prison walls to probation officers on the street protecting us from criminals living among us.
Kim Shearon has been a probation officer for seven years. She packs a gun and wears a bullet-proof vest as she makes her rounds checking on parolees at their homes. She says she has been the target of threats.
"The threat was made several years ago to me by an inmate that they would kill myself and my family," she said.
But that didn't stop her from doing her job.
"Wherever I go, I am armed whether I am at work or whether I am at home or if I'm at Walmart."
Shearon says she's seen an increase in threats from gangs.
"They are becoming more bold, and they are not worried about being found out to be gang members. It is a badge of honor," she explained.
Frank Perry is the head of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety which oversees the prison and the probation system.
"The gang problem is growing and it has grown by a significant percentage over the last ten years," he stated.
Perry says to cut down on inmate threats and assaults, the department has created an intelligence unit which keeps tabs on inmates.
"It forms a bridge of intelligence as to what's going on inside facilities and what's going on outside facilities," he added.
"There is an assault every 11 hours, and we have got to stop that inside but also use intelligence to stop the conceiving of, and directing of, crime outside from within the prisons," he said.
Perry says the Governor's budget is calling for higher pay for correctional officers whose base pay is now $32,000. So far, the legislature has not approved that budget.
While the department of corrections works on preventing any violence to staff, prison guards still deal day to day with the reality of threats by inmates.
The corrections supervisor still remembers threats he's received from a gang member.
"We'll scare you. We'll put your worst fear in front of you. What's your worst fear? Well I know he's got kids. Let me threaten his kids. Let me threaten his safety. Let me threaten his wife," he said. "They know how to get in your head. It takes a strong character to stop them either way and to stand up to that."
