19 INMATES MOVED IN BID TO BUST DRUG RING

Md. Prison Group 'Too Influential'

With a massive show of force to deter any outbursts, prison guards and
state police yesterday removed 19 inmates from Maryland's maximum security
House of Correction in Jessup to break up a network that officials said was
dealing drugs and bootleg liquor in the 1,200-prisoner institution.

Under the guise of conducting an emergency drill, hundreds of correctional
officers, armed with stun guns and tear gas and accompanied by attack dogs,
swarmed through the fortress-like prison. They seized the 19 inmates during
a cell-by-cell search for weapons, drugs and other contraband. There were
no reports of violence or injuries.

By early afternoon, a dozen handmade knives and a small quantity of drugs
had been confiscated, officials said, with more expected as the sweep
continued through the century-old building. Inmates flushed drugs down
toilets as search teams approached, officials said.

Three correctional officers also were stopped as they came to work when
special ion-scan machines at the prison entrance detected illegal drugs on
their bodies. They were ordered to undergo urinalysis, and they could face
dismissal and criminal charges.

The 19 inmates, who were strip-searched, handcuffed and placed in waist
chains and leg irons, were taken by bus to the Maryland Correctional
Adjustment Center 20 miles north in Baltimore, the state's toughest lockup,
known as Supermax. They will be held there temporarily, officials said,
then transferred to other prisons, possibly including some in other states.

"We're trying to cut the head off the snake," said George Brosan, deputy
secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, who
was present for the prison sweep, along with other high-ranking officials.

He said that prison authorities, who can transfer inmates if they perceive
a security problem, wanted to disperse the 19 to minimize their ability to
remain in touch and exert control over the House of Correction or any of
the state's other 25 prison facilities.

Brosan and Acting Commissioner of Correction William Sondervan told
reporters at a briefing that the inmates, most of them serving long
sentences on murder and armed robbery convictions, were exerting an
internal grip on the institution, fostering illicit activity, from drug
smuggling to manufacturing homemade liquor called "jump study." Officials
said they were also investigating reports of prostitution involving female
prison employees.

"They weren't running the place," Sondervan said, "but they were too
influential."

"What we had to do," said public safety department spokesman Leonard Sipes,
"was to take action now because the possibility somewhere down the road is
that it would have gotten out of control."

Signs of the prisoners' mounting influence, other officials said, included
evidence that the inmates were intimidating some guards and protecting
others in exchange for favors.

Recent inmate drug-testing at the House of Correction, according to a
prison report, showed 13 percent of the total population had given positive
urine samples -- almost quadruple the rate among the state's 22,000
inmates. The figures suggest, officials said, that drugs are reaching a
large number of inmates with the complicity of a small number of guards or
other employees.

Yesterday's operation was secretly planned for weeks by a handful of top
corrections officials. Concerned that the sweep could trigger widespread
anger and violence, officials clamped tight "lock-down" conditions on the
inmates, many of them veterans of recent uprisings in Jessup and other
state prisons.

Timing of the action -- begun early on a Saturday when there typically is
minimal prisoner activity and movement -- was a key component in the
planning. After the prisoners finished breakfast at 7 a.m., they returned
to their cells and dormitories for a routine head count. Once there, they
were kept locked up, and the search for weapons and other contraband began.

The crackdown was part of a continuing criminal investigation in the
institution, which includes the expanded use of federally funded anti-drug
hardware, such as video cameras and night vision devices, as well as new
high-tech equipment donated by Bell Atlantic to monitor inmate telephone
calls.

Said Sondervan, "We've sent a message: Drugs will not be tolerated."