Corrections to review security of Utah's jails

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Sep 26, 2007 | by Geoff Liesik

MANILA, Daggett County -- As police search for two convicted murderers who escaped from the Daggett County Jail, the state's corrections department will review its contracts with 20 county jails to house inmates.

Utah Department of Corrections spokesman Jack Ford said executive staff decided Tuesday to look at operations in county jails and to possibly remove inmates serving lengthy prison terms.

"We're going to review the counties -- their security systems and their policies and the way they operate -- in all jails," Ford said.

He added that while no official decision has been made, "I think unofficially we're planning on moving inmates with a long, long, long time to serve."

Danny Martin Gallegos, 49, and Juan Carlos Diaz-Arevalo, 27, are two of the 1,350 state inmates confined to county jails due to prison overcrowding.

Reinforcements arrived Tuesday for the 20 law enforcement and corrections officers who scoured this northeastern Utah town and parts of southwestern Wyoming looking for the two men, who escaped Sunday afternoon.

Daggett County Sheriff Rick Ellsworth said officers from the Utah Department of Corrections in Draper, Salt Lake City and Gunnison, and Sweetwater County, Wyo., are working with Daggett deputies.

The additional officers came throughout the day to aid in the search, which Ellsworth said had been complemented by a Utah Department of Public Safety airplane. Members of the prison SWAT team also joined the search, in addition to two planes from Wyoming.

"We have four teams of four to five (searchers) who have been out since 8 a.m. (Tuesday), and they're re-canvassing the entire area -- the valley here in Manila and the surrounding areas," the sheriff said.

Utah Department of Corrections executive director Tom Patterson traveled to Manila to observe the search effort, along with his deputy director, Mike Haddon; the director of institutional operations, Lowell Clark; and Steve Turley, the warden of the Utah State Prison in Draper.

Although Manila is a year-round community, it is largely a vacation destination with cabins that have been closed for the winter. Ellsworth said authorities searched every structure they could, paying particular attention to unoccupied buildings that might show evidence of forced entry.

"We're going through everything," Ellsworth said.

Ford said bulletins were sent to neighboring states and to Mexico. Investigators also were tracking down friends and family of the escapees in Utah and elsewhere to see if they had heard from the men.

In March 1990, Gallegos shot and killed Tammy Syndergaard, 18, in a South Salt Lake apartment and fired shots at two others. He was not due to appear before the state Board of Pardons and Parole until 2025. Diaz-Arevalo gunned down his ex-girlfriend, Lindsey Rae Fawson, 22, in May 2005 with a sawed-off shotgun while her son and sister watched. His next parole hearing was scheduled for 2030.

The two men were last seen by Daggett County Jail officers during a 2 p.m. inmate count Sunday. They were discovered missing during an 8 p.m. count. Ford said Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo were last seen in a fenced area on jail property.

The families of Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo's victims have criticized corrections for failing to notify them of the escape.

Ford said the agency uses an automated system -- Victim Information and Notification Everyday -- to alert anyone about changes in an inmate's status. That system, though, relies on corrections to update information about an inmate. In the case of Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo, state officials didn't have that information until they heard news broadcasts about the escape Monday morning.

"The bottom line is, it didn't get put into our database, which would have then accessed the VINE system," Ford said. "We're trying to get to the bottom of this and get this resolved so we don't have this problem again.

"While there has been some investigation, primarily right now let's get them back in custody and then we'll worry about where the mistakes were made.

Ellsworth said a community phone tree was activated in Manila and the surrounding area to spread word of the escape. The sheriff also said his staff made an effort to notify state Corrections officials about the escape at the same time he was called Sunday night, and Ellsworth personally passed the information along to a Corrections employee at the Utah Sheriffs Association convention he was attending in St. George.

In addition to the ground and aerial search, investigators are interviewing and re-interviewing inmates inside the Daggett County Jail to determine if Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo discussed plans to escape. Ellsworth said investigators also have questioned the staff members on duty at the time of the jail break.

Ellsworth said the security breach that allowed the escape has been identified and remedied.

"Because the incident is under investigation and I don't want to compromise our efforts to get these men recaptured, I can't go into much detail at this point about the escape itself," Ellsworth said in a press release issued late Tuesday. "To reveal the details of the escape could adversely affect our investigative efforts and hinder the recapture."