Prisoner transport
Tabatha Wethal
Word count: 2,053
HEADLINES?
Planning a point of advantage in prisoner transport
A safe (and low-liability) transport scenario
DECK: Designing with officers in mind adds up to safety
Every time you take a commercial flight, you’re given a bit of prisoner transport advice that has possibly slipped under the radar. It’s understandable if you’ve blown it off, since it’s part of the routine instruction from flight staff that falls somewhere just before or after the unnecessary description of how to buckle a lap belt.
In the event of an emergency, passengers are advised to secure their oxygen masks before helping others, because in order to assist anyone in their care, they must first be safe themselves. Likewise, officers and companies serving law enforcement say officer safety is vital to a safe (and low-liability) transport scenario.
“We are constantly looking at new equipment that can make the cars better, safer, give the officers more room or a tool that will make their job easier or safer. Because that’s really the key when we’re designing our cars is … how we can make it so the officer can do their job?” says San Jose, Calif., police fleet manager Officer Christina Cebrian.
That’s a concept that companies have kept in mind when designing their prisoner transport solutions, from backseat transporting systems, to a new specialty prisoner vehicle, to the simplicity of where the belt is mounted. Keeping subjects who are in custody safe from harming others and themselves while en route or in holding are also key to protecting departments’ liability, especially in a post-Freddie Gray world.
Multimillion dollar civil settlement
This spring, the topic of transporting prisoners made national conversation when a Baltimore man died days after he was injured riding in the back of a police van in Maryland. On April 12, 25-year-old Freddie Gray was under arrest in a police transport when he suffered a spine injury, Baltimore media reported. He died a week later. Criminal charges against six Boston officers connected with the incident were still underway as of press time, but the Associated Press reported in early September that Gray’s family received a more than $6 million civil suit settlement with the city of Baltimore.
“I have a hard time fathoming not just cities but any department having to pay out millions of dollars in settlement fees because of something that happened to a prisoner because of something that was overlooked or because they weren’t safe,” Pennsylvania Officer Matthew Planer says. Planer is co-owner of a company that’s developing a prisoner restraint to simplify temporary prisoner holding and he hopes to reduce liability.
“I’ve heard stories of prisoners chewing through (other chair restraint) straps. It took two officers to hold the person down and in the meantime they’re getting kicked and I’m thinking, ‘Why does it have to be that difficult?’” Planer says.
In a position of advantage
Planer put his more than two decades of law enforcement experience to work in developing and designing the Police Innovations LLC restraint chair.
“As with any confrontation or interaction, we (officers) want to be in a position of advantage,” Planer said, describing his product prototype, the Supplemental Prisoner Adjustable Restraint chair. “And having them (prisoners) seated gives the officer a psychological and physical advantage. That’s the basis of why we came up with this idea.”
Planer says he’s a patrol sergeant at a 10-man department, and over the last 23 years working in Pennsylvania, he’s had people in his custody become combative, break police equipment and attempt to cause physical harm.
“Throughout the years, I’ve personally experienced taking prisoners back to the office, they’re taking out windows in the car, they’re breaking equipment in the car,” Planer said. “You put them in an office, they’re hurting others and themselves.”
Planer and his business partner formed Police Innovations and designed the Supplemental Prisoner Adjustable Restraint to eliminate buckles, straps or the need to remove and replace cuffs before and after transfer.
“The release tabs (and) the restraint bars are up and behind the prisoner’s head so they can’t reach them,” Planer says. That positioning also keeps the officer from being physically vulnerable to injury by the in-custody subject.
The Police Innovations chair resembles something you might see on an amusement park ride, with a bucket-type seat on a pedestal and a metal restraint bar that comes across the body from above to secure the subject. A subject who is already cuffed in front or behind can be seated in the chair that is mounted in the back of a transport van or in a department office area that doesn’t have holding cells.
Planer said many smaller departments in Pennsylvania don’t have the space or funds to create a holding cell area. He wanted to create an option with an economical footprint that limits the prisoner’s movement, to protect the prisoner from him- or herself and others.
“There are times when we do take prisoners back to our office for processing or questioning. So they don’t always go back to the county processing center,” Planer says. “It’s just an unsafe position to be in, depending on what kind of actor you bring into the environment.” The restraint chair would allow officers to seat them in the chair and pull the bar over top of them.
Planer said in one instance years ago, a subject who was being held briefly at the department office trashed the room, throwing equipment (like typewriters, at the time), books and at one point an officers’ gear.
“That could have ended very badly. Fortunately, it hadn’t,” Planer says. “At that time we had no holding cell, no restraint chair, we had a simple armchair that was in the office.”
He had to call for another officer to come help, which created another inefficiency.
“Right there is manpower for two for one guy to (be able to) do his job,” Planer adds.
Other companies serving law enforcement offer similar chair restraints, like the AEDEC Pro-Straint Restraint Chair, which offers a cross-torso double buckle restraint and a leg and wrist securing system for violent or combative prisoners.
Planer said he had one Supplemental Prisoner Adjustable Restraint chair prototype in mid-November with plans to have his and other Pennsylvania departments pilot the system as he and his partner roll out more devices.
Designing with officers’ well-being in mind
Cebrian, who’s been an officer for 15 years and manages the San Jose PD’s approximately 300-vehicle fleet, says anything can happen when an officer is taking a prisoner into custody and on the road. She says several years ago she was injured on the job while walking a prisoner to the patrol car. She had to take the suspect to the ground to control him and in the process, injured her knee, putting her out from work for several months.
“Subjects, when we contact them in the field, you don’t know their condition,” Cebrian says. “Obviously the well-being of the prisoner is a big concern, because that person is now in your care. (Maybe they were) originally cooperative and you get halfway down the freeway, and they decide they don’t want to go to jail. They become combative.”
A few keywords plugged into YouTube pulls up many videos of prisoners thrashing, kicking out windows, banging their heads, and in a couple videos, the prisoner pulling a firearm out in the backseat. Predicting the subject’s behavior is difficult, so taking precautions is a better bet.
That’s why companies like Washington-based Setina offer transport seat adaptations that fit over the vehicle’s original seats but adapt the seat with recessed space in the seat back to accommodate handcuffed arms.
In vehicle transports, the key commodity is space, and companies that build protective products for prisoner transport say keeping interior real estate in mind is important to thinking of the officer’s safety first.
Pro-gard Products says that 47 years since it developed its first police vehicle partition, it’s still putting the officers’ well-being in the forefront of its designs.
“Given that the cabin size of vehicles has diminished over the past few years, locating the partition for optimal officer comfort can minimize space in the prisoner compartment,” Pro-gard’s Brand Manager Andrea Moore Moore says. Moore says Pro-gard takes the prisoner compartment size into consideration after “we've ensured that we've maintained the officer's comfort.”
Taking into account how many hours officers spend in a cruiser during a shift, the company says its Prisoner Transport Partition is made to install far enough back to maintain full travel of the original-equipment manufacturer’s driver seat and substantial recline. That’s to keep officers comfortable throughout their 6 to 10 hour shifts.
Design details as simple as color are also more than meet the eye. Moore says, for example, the charcoal gray finish of Pro-gard’s partitions, seats and floor pans was chosen to brighten the interior of the compartment but to also help officers spot contraband and other items left behind by prisoners. Pro-gard’s Outboard Seat Belts mount the belt with its male clip resting door-side to keep officers from reaching around a prisoner, and they’re blue for better visibility against the company’s gray interior products.
Similarly, Setina’s Center Pull Seat Belt System eliminates the need for the officer to reach across the suspect when belting, which reduces the officer’s vulnerability and contact with the suspect.
Increased space aids the officer when loading and unloading prisoners and makes for a more comfortable transport for the prisoner.
In the Pro-gard partition, “removing any obstructions from the base of the partition we eliminate counter-leverage points that prisoners often take advantage of to forestall the loading/unloading process,” Moore explains.
A 2015 specialty vehicle
Months before Freddie Gray was injured during transport in April and put a spotlight on prisoner transport considerations, Ford Motor Co. was working on a specialty vehicle to secure multiple prisoners and if necessary, in different partitions in the same vehicle.
In late September 2014, Ford added another vehicle to the Police Interceptor sedan and an SUV that replaced the popular Crown Victoria that Ford ended production on in 2011. The 2015 Ford Transit Prisoner Transport Vehicle can carry up to a dozen prisoners in up to three compartments, depending on the preferences of the agency. Ford worked with Havis Inc. on configuring the passenger compartment of its 2015 Ford Transit van for prisoner transport and offers the van in three roof heights, two wheelbases, three lengths and four body styles.
In March, Pennsylvania-based Havis Inc. announced the single, double and triple-compartment inserts for other transport van manufacturers including Chevrolet, Ram, Nissan NV and Sprinter models. Safety features such as emergency exit hatches and heavy-duty slam-latch doors automatically lock the compartment when the door is shut. Non-slip benches with slightly raised dividers and grab straps help prisoners stay safely seated during transport. Options include a video system surveying the compartments, door alarm, underbench storage and an intercom that lets officers hear inside the compartment and speak into the compartment with a push-to-talk communication option. Havis says the insert is designed to protect officers while loading, transporting and unloading prisoners. The outfitted vans can also transport barricades, cones, bikes or large evidence.
Setina's not just considering the human officers' safety, but the furry members of the force. In August, Setina released a system to help K-9 teams accommodate for partitioned prisoner transport in an SUV. Setina says its Ultimate K-9 II adapts two-thirds of the rear seat for a K-9 partner and partitions the other third for a prisoner. That means the same vehicle can safely carry a K-9 partner and the prisoner without compromising safety thanks to design.
‘It all adds up’
“I’ve looked at a lot of law enforcement agencies’ cars and how they have them set up for ergonomics,” Cebrian says. She says fleet managers should be looking at how to set up the vehicle so officers can focus on driving and doing their job.
“I think that a lot of other agencies don’t take the time to make sure that their cars are set up the right way. Should it really be there or should it be somewhere else. It all adds up to being an officer safety issue. Those kinds of things are big deals to me.”
To ensure safety, officers must be safe in order to protect others.
“If you keep in mind that you’re building these cars for the efficiency of the officer’s job,” Cebrian says. “It’s going to affect the officers, the subjects and the public equally.”
