yep, let it soak in, they will always beg to come out.

If you inject some Vaporized OC (Safariland) it wont be long before they will be trying to get out.

A 2 way sysytem like on all new windows that can open both ways

Put a hinge on it that can be used to open the door outwards

We had a simular issue with our doors, and several other prisons also. The inmates could either jam something into the door to stop it from opening, or they would put something on the botom track and actually make the door dislodge from the frame. These are slinding doors. An officer actually came up with the solution. They welded about 3 inch wide peices of metal at the top, bottom, and sides of the doors, both inside and out. The metal would slide over the edges of the door frame blocking the inmate from jamming things into them. Just by chance, it also served in helping stop some of the gassing that was going on through the sides of the doors.

Also, if you doors have food ports, we use OC on inmates refusing to come out of their cells, either with a canister with a wand, or by dropping gernades that blow when they hit the ground.

The problem with the steel doors (like our linear section) is they were made in 1939 and you can’t even get parts to fix them. These old parts of the jails need to be demolished and replaced with modern doors and facilities. We did add onto our facility two years ago with two 48 bed podular housing units which are the state of the art design in safety and room. The POD housing system is eventually going to replace all of the steel bar jails in county prisons, state prisons will no doubt always have bars.

Glad they had fear in their eyes…. I couldn’t hold mine open long enough to see much of anything.

But on the original topic I agree with Mick. Sounds like the design of your doors is seriously out of date or just plain bad. The sad fact is inmates have nothing but time and given enough of that and motivation they can always find some way to screw with everything around them. I’ve seen doors and cuff ports jammed up with everything from paper to matresses. Best thing is just try to figure out how to make it the most difficult for them to sabotage it, and have a good plan of action in place for when they do, i.e. OC, halagen tools, cell buster, etc…

I have heard that rattle too many times. I was involved in an incident when two AB’s stabbed a black inmate 47 times in the chest. Still to this day am amazed the inmate survived. He was worse after the stabbing than he was before. Belive me, he was mouthy before he was stabbed. He instigated the assaulted with racial slurs to the AB’s. It only took me about 20 seconds to respond to the incident. Hard to believe a person can get stabbed that many times in that short amount of time. That was in the early 90’s. Only Supervisors carried OC then. All security and Unit management staff carry OC, upon certification, on duty now. Has cut down the Use of Force 100 fold. The first time we deployed FOX was in J-2 (the hole), as Irisjh Assassin said. Inmates and staff in our gyms were gagging and throwing up. Gotta understand, the gyms are at least 300 yards from J-2. Was amazing the calming effect and the fear in the eyes of the Inmates when they smelled that.

Absolutely the most potent pepper spray on the market. Fox just makes it about impossible to subdue an inmate while they are being sprayed, its just so potent and lasts for over an hour in the air even when we ventilate with fans and open windows.The SSgts are allowed at our jail to carry a small knife (concealed of course) to cut down inmates or get into cells. On one backup call if the SSgt didn’t have the knife the inmate would be dead. He hung high on the top of the bunk and had the sheet double-knotted around the door. We went into his cell, pulled him down and it was really a very close call because he was not breathing properly at all. Its one of those times you hear the “death rattle” when a person is about to die, something you will never forget believe me.

Ugh… I remember that first fox incident. Deployed in J2 and made me gag and snot clear up in front of the chow hall doors. It did work wonders though, nobody really wanted to continue acting stupid once the black and gold can came out after that.

A Lt., crisis negotiator, camera operator and 5 man SRT would respond to this type of incident. I would let the CN talk for 5 minutes while my SRT got their minds right. All on camera of course. Then we would get the cut down tool (Seat Belt Cutter), I would order the Inmate to take down the barricade, if unsuccessful, line up the team and tell the negotiator to kick mud. At this time I would introduce around 40 grams of FOX MK-9 fogger 5%, 5million SHU, give a few minutes to cook, then cut down the barricade and let the SRT do what they do best. Usually resulted in a Medical Round Trip for the Inmate. All pertinent paperwork was completed and never had any problems with the Use of Force committee. Everything done by the policy. Didn’t have but a few my last 2 years there. Word gets around quick. Inmates on the other side of the prison would be throwing up from the smell of the Fox. Didn’t make us feel real good either. Very effective. The seat belt cutter slices right through the sheets. Use it mainly to cut down Inmates who hang theirselves. Has a plastic handle and is shaped like half a U with the cutting edge on the inside. Hard for an Inmate to get ahold of. One of my fellow Lt’s did have an extremely idiotic Inmate try to grab it and got a finger cut off.

stop issuing books! its apparent thats what they will use them for… reading is a privelage and can definately be taken away when it comes to security breaches. If they want to read then they need to pass on the word to stop this foolish non-sense. Its funny to the inmates that it takes so many officers to just get the door working again and its now a game. good luck!

“get em before they get you”

Most of the time when our inmates blocked a door they used sheets and towels and tied the door shut with several knots. The only way we could enter was to cut the sheets or towels with a sharp knife (which in an of itself is a safety issue). The problem with the old linear part of jails with the steel doors and locks made in the 1930’s is that there are no replacement parts as the businesses closed years ago. Most of these metal sliding doors can be slammed back by the inmate and once that is done you have to “crack” the door using the handle in the vest to release it and then re-lock the door. Anytime these doors are blocked you need to call for backup and have plenty of COs to secure the block and open the door. This is especially paramount if the inmate inside the cell tries to hangup.

This hasn’t happened in our facility yet but word of this design flaw has made it to the State Prison and I’m being told it is becoming common knowledge with the inmates there. My administration is attempting to be pro-active in avoiding this problem at our facility. We tried it on a couple of our doors and it is indeed a real problem. Has anyone heard of any solutions?

I think that this is the same thing as “pennying” someone’s dorm room door shut that you are describing. This is how to get around that. If I am wrong, it will still work on some styles of cell doors.

You need to have a haligon, or a decent pry bar, to wedge between the door and jam AT THE LOCK. Pry so the door pushes IN, so you can release the pressure against the bolt. Then cycle the bolt. It takes a little practice, but you will be busting in in no time. It also doesn’t hurt to pry UP on the bottom of the door. Make sure that you have less lethal cover available for the haligon operator.

Fogging him out with O.C. works most of the time.

Sounds like a bad design on the doors. The fact the the inmates are now aware of how to jam the door so easily means that a major re-think of that design. And that I assume is way above your pay grade. The only way to prevent this is to deny the inmates any books thick enough to bar the door.

I wrote this on a earlier post but thought I’d make it it’s own topic. A big problem we have run into is people barricading themselves into their cells. Yes into, sounds dumb I know but if we can’t get them out we are very hesitant to use force due to the fact if something happens we can’t get to them. You say “wait it out”, but the problem goes beyond that, now we’d have a pod out of service, not to mention they basically are showing we are powerless to control. Explanation on how they are accomplishing barricading: Our cell doors are metal and are hinge doors,some have pass thrus in the middle of the doors, but the less security units don’t have them. Our locks are a single rolling locks located about the middle of the door. The lock rolls out from the wall when the door is shut and secures the door. The inmates are pushing the doors out and using books to jam in their side of the door frames causing the doors to exert pressure against the locks making them not roll back into the wall. We found that 3 big guys pushing on the doors makes the locks begin to rotate and after a long struggle they will open, with lots of force. Not very tactical and defiantly a hardship on the officer sacrificing shoulders against metal doors. Any thoughts or experience of defeating this type of behavior?