FBI PICKS UP A PRISON PROBE SOME SAY WAS STIFLED BY UNION

CRESCENT CITY - After a federal court denounced Pelican Bay State Prison as
an instrument of wholesale brutality In 1995, California officials pledged
to reform the supermaximum penitentiary.

A fresh team of state investigators was brought in with one charge: to stop
the abuse of inmates and root out rogue guards.

But just a few months into the job, the internal affairs team was stripped
of its investigative powers when it tried to pursue a group of officers
suspected of setting up stabbings, shootings and beatings of inmates,
documents and interviews show.

The warden cut short the probe, and the investigators then found themselves
the subject of repeated investigations by the Corrections Department.

Instead of being allowed to finish a wider probe that might have uncovered
a far-reaching conspiracy to brutalize inmates, team members say they were
only able to gather enough evidence to convict one guard earlier this year.

The FBI is now investigating the same officers who were under scrutiny by
the internal affairs unit.

"The department pulled our teeth," said Captain Dan Smith who headed the
internal affairs probe. We were ordered not to go down certain paths, and
our ability to finish the job was taken away.... The department let us down
and it let itself down."

Del Norte County District Attorney Bill Cornell whose office oversaw the
criminal probe at the isolated North Coast prison, agreed.

"The union was able to close ranks and prevent the internal affairs unit
from completing its investigative task," he said. "It was a difficult in.
investigation to begin with, and when you add in the political influence
that the union wields, the task became incomprehensible."

Officials with the Corrections Department, the union and the Wilson
administration deny that the probe was derailed because of union pressure.
Lawyers for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association say the
union did nothing more than stand up for the rights of the accused officers
and point out deficiencies in a slipshod internal investigation.

"The theme that the big bad union interferes with state investigations is a
theme I reject," said Ron Yank, a San Francisco labor lawyer rep-resenting
the union. "How about another theme? 'The Department of Corrections grows
too fast and has inexperienced investigators who end up delivering a shoddy
investigation.'"

But interviews and documents show that the investigators conducted a
complex criminal and administrative probe in a professional manner. After
winning the trust of key witnesses, the Internal affairs unit was
prohibited from pursuing several officers suspected of brutality. The team
encountered some of the same roadblocks that later stymied state
investigators who attempted to uncover set-up rapes and other alleged
crimes at Corcoran State Prison. The prison guards union has contributed
generously to both major parties over the last decade including nearly $1.5
million in direct and indirect donations to Wilson, a Republican.

The union, which has also backed Democratic Gov.-elect Gray Davis, has
gained sufficient influence to emerge as an almost equal partner in the
state's $4 billion-a-year prison system. With the union looking over its
shoulder, documents and interviews show, the Corrections Department has
been timid in pursuing brutal guards - even when such reforms have been
mandated by a federal court. Since 1994, the FBI has twice taken the
unusual step of investigating a California prison, rending to the state's
inability to police its own

The federal civil rights probe at Pelican Bay has found evidence of an
inmate murder and stabbings allegedly engineered by veteran officers
seeking control over their prison yard, according to federal sources
familiar with the probe.

Federal prosecutors won't say if the union has emerged as a target in the
case. The union has been under scrutiny by federal authorities examining
brutality and cover-up at Corcoran.

In the summer of 1995, spurred by the federal court ruling to clean up
Pelican Bay, the newly assigned internal affairs team began digging into
the prison's dark corners. The team soon uncovered evidence that a handful
of officers was directing a group of inmates to stab and beat other
inmates, many of them convicted child molesters. The officers, it was
alleged, were rewarding their inmate cohorts with extra time outside their
cells, fast-food burritos, Jack Daniels whiskey and silk underwear for
conjugal visits,

But a few months into the investigation, the union began to file complaints
about the honesty and work methods of the Internal affairs team.

Warden Steve Cambra responded to the complaints by ordering the
investigators to stop tracking oclown any evidence that led to the suspect
officers, according to interviews and documents. Union officials went to
greater lengths - even violating state law, according to a Corrections
Department probe - to have the case thrown out and the internal affairs
team disbanded. The union president and vice president at Pelican Bay
conducted an unauthorized inquiry into the internal affairs unit itself,
trailing the team's movements. The union's complaints over the next 18
months prompted the Department of Corrections to order repeat probes-half a
dozen in all-of the internal affairs team.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski