The family of Kyle Tiffee, an inmate at the Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing, Oklahoma, has filed a lawsuit against Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) over Tiffee’s death and what it calls the facility’s “lax supervision.” Tiffee and three other men were killed in September 2015 in what has been called the “deadliest incident in the history of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.” Tiffee’s family alleges that members of the Aryan Brotherhood—a notorious, nationally known white supremacist prison gang—and a group calling itself the Irish Mob (of which Tiffee was a part) engaged in a fight that the CCA knew about and did nothing to stop, even though officials knew the inmates had weapons:
The two gangs were armed with weapons fashioned from light fixtures inside the prison. CCA knew inmates were using the fixtures to make weapons, according to the lawsuit, but didn’t remove the fixtures “for financial reasons.” Even after the deadly battle, CCA left the fixtures in place.
The fight between the Irish Mob and the Aryan Brotherhood lasted no more than two minutes—but that was long enough for Tiffee to be stabbed. He bled to death after being maced by the riot squad that entered the area of the fight:
The lawsuit names Terrance Lockett as the guard who stood idly by, but Lockette disagrees with the description. [...] Lockett, when he did decide to warn his superiors that the gangs were gathering in a menacing manner, was told to “call back when (the fight) happens.”
Eventually Lockett and a nurse entered the fray to attend to a badly wounded inmate. Not long after that, the riot squad arrived and maced Tiffee—stabbed likely by the rival Aryans—while trying to break up the brief and bloody battle.
Tiffee and another member of the Irish Mob lay dead or dying; two members of the United Aryan Brotherhood were also suffering from mortal wounds.
“The Department of Corrections claims the video is exempt from the Oklahoma Open Records Act, as a ‘law enforcement record,’” attorney Spencer Bryan told The Daily Beast. But there’s just one problem: CCA is not registered with the Oklahoma Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training, and therefore is not technically a law enforcement agency.
The Cimarron Correctional Facility—like most correctional facilities throughout the U.S.—has been plagued with charges of corruption and drug and contraband smuggling. Lockett, the guard named in the Tiffee family’s lawsuit, has been charged with attempting to smuggle marijuana into the prison, and was in possession of meth in his vehicle.
Such incidents are just one of the many reasons cited in the Justice Department’s decision to end its support of private prisons. The stock of both CCA and the Geo Group, another player in the private prison industry game, plummeted after the DOJ’s announcement; but CCA took a slight rebound after a contract renewal with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for a facility in Texas.
The DOJ’s decision to end use of private prisons only affects facilities run through the federal Bureau of Prisons. ICE is a separate entity.