Manatee County Jail put inmates in danger near Piney Point, Florida ACLU lawsuit says
The American Civil Liberties Union is accusing Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells of mismanaging the safety of his staff and jail inmates by keeping most of them within the Piney Point flood evacuation zone.
In a new lawsuit filed Tuesday morning, ACLU lawyers and the Manatee County Public Defender’s Office criticized Wells’ evacuation plans. After announcing that inmates would be safe at the jail, the sheriff’s office backtracked Sunday evening and said that 345 of the facility’s 1,066 inmates would be sent to a different facility.
The list of people approved for transfer was ultimately whittled down to 267 “low-risk” inmates, the sheriff’s office confirmed Monday.
The inmates were relocated to a correctional facility in Polk County after testing negative for the novel coronavirus, the sheriff’s office said.
The threat of a flood came from a giant pond of contaminated water at the Piney Point former phosphate processing plant. The jail was included in an expanded mandatory evacuation order on Friday after engineers said they believed that pond could collapse at any time.
More than 300 homes in a roughly one-mile radius were also ordered to evacuate.
Since then, emergency efforts have been taken to drain that pond’s contents into Tampa Bay. Public safety officials in Manatee County lifted the mandatory evacuation order Tuesday afternoon after updated inundation models showed a lower risk of flooding.
“The fact remains that the jail was in the mandatory evacuation zone, so whether it was going to be 20 feet or a couple of feet, flooding potential was there,” said Jacqueline Azis, a staff attorney with the ACLU. “Even just a couple feet of flooding presents a dangerous situation for the jail.”
The lawsuit alleges unsafe conditions along with cruel and unusual punishment. In a Tuesday evening interview with the Bradenton Herald, Wells said the lawsuit was meaningless and stressed the safety of the facility.
“It’s frivolous. It’s based upon misinformation and it holds no merit,” Sheriff Rick Wells told the Bradenton Herald. “I don’t know what they are implying but they obviously have different information than what’s out there and is the truth.”
“It’s a Category 4 hardened building,” Wells added. “It’s a safe shelter. We deal with this type of emergency any time there is a storm.”
The jail has never had to be completely evacuated in previous emergency situations — such as hurricanes and other major storm events. During Hurricane Irma in 2017, additional personnel were allowed to use the jail to shelter in place.
“We were well prepared to move the inmates if we had to,” Wells said.
Flood projections at the time predicted at most a foot or two of water at the jail in the event of a breach.
But the ACLU argues that many of the inmates never needed to be in possible danger.
“We thought it was conflicting. You have a mandate from the county that it’s unsafe while at the same time it’s ostensibly perfectly safe to be in the jail that’s in the evacuation zone,” said Benjamin Stevenson, another ACLU staff attorney. “Those ideas seemed to be contradictory.”
“Many of the individuals in custody at the jail simply don’t need to be in there in the first place,” Azis added. “They are only in custody because they cannot afford their pretrial freedom.”
Initially, the sheriff’s office had no plans to move inmates from the jail as the Piney Point crisis began to unfold. Instead, the sheriff said all 1,066 inmates could be moved to the facility’s second floor in the event of flooding, along with all jail staff and medical equipment. Lower entrances to the jail were protected with sandbags on Friday.
The decision to keep inmates in the jail with potential danger looming spurred a small protest on Friday outside of the Manatee County Emergency Operations Center as well as an outpouring of concern about the situation on social media.
A couple dozen people gathered at the southeast intersection of U.S. 41 on Tuesday evening to protest that all the inmates at the Manatee County jail were not evacuated. Protesters also demanded the end of the phosphate mining that led to this situation.
“No more coal. No more oil,” they chanted. “Keep the phosphates in the soil.”
Alaina Martinez, founder of the Leaders Rights Organization in Sarasota, participated in the protest because of the “humanitarian issue” with the inmates, she said.
“It shows that the lives of the inmates are not valued,” said Martinez, who noted that if residents were evacuated, “then the same standard should be applied.”
The ACLU’s petition asked a judge to find that the sheriff’s office’s decision to keep inmates in the jail was unconstitutional. Lawyers also sought the judge’s permission to release the inmates in custody or transfer them to another secure location.
“I guess they wanted to move (1,066) inmates, which is never going to happen,” Wells said.
This story was originally published April 6, 2021 at 7:47 PM.
