AFGE Takes on the Bureau of Prisons

I'm at a press conference right now where the American Federation of Government Employees is launching an all-out assault on the Bureau of Prisons for failing to address safety issues faced by prison guards. John Gage, AFGE's president, just said:

"We have lost all faith in the BOP management. We think their whole understanding of the mission of the bureau is outdated, it's wrong. They care more about public relations than they do the safety of our officers. We are taking our case to the Attorney General; we believe it is his responsibility to correct this situation immediately, and that would be by removing Mr. Lappin, as well as, for heaven's sake, give us the simple tools we have been requesting: vests for our officers to wear in dangerous posts, as well as some non-lethal weaponry such as tasers, pepper spray, or batons. It's incredible to us that the bureau is making this a labor dispute, that they refuse to give these basic, common-sense tools to our officers. We feel, in the Rivera case, if these simple things we are asking had been granted, he would be alive today."

They're working with the lawyers for Jose Rivera, a 22-year-old prison guard who served two deployments in Iraq as a member of the Navy, who was killed by inmates in the prison where he worked on June 20,2008. The family wants $100 million from the Bureau. AFGE wants officers to be able to wear stab-proof vests and carry pepper spray, tasers, and batons in high-risk facilities.