Union declares victory in prison lawsuit

PALMER — The union representing the state’s corrections officers says its president was “completely vindicated” in a settlement reached in his lawsuit against the department.

“As many or most of you have already heard, Association President Randy McLellan got his stripes back, is being made whole for the wages and benefits lost due to the demotion, is being made whole for a separate 96-hour suspension which has been overturned, and his court case has been resolved. This universal settlement was reached just days before the demotion arbitration was set to begin,” reads a letter to the Alaska Correctional Officers Association’s membership that the organization’s business manager, Brad Wilson, penned and posted to union’s website.

The lawsuit, filed in January, alleges that supervisors targeted McLellan, a sergeant at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility, for retribution that included a demotion, reprimands and an “unprecedented” re-training that included pepper-spraying McLellan and the shift of officers he supervised. Officers are routinely pepper sprayed during training but never during re-training.

The retraining came after McLellan pepper-sprayed a combative inmate to get him to quit kicking a door open as officers were attempting to lock it. In addition to the re-training, McLellan was suspended, which the union said also was reversed as part of the settlement. Another suspension — for not distributing mail during his shift and then telling supervisors their hunt for something to reprimand him for was “pathetic” — also was reversed.

“By unjustly attacking Randy for using (pepper spray) when its use was appropriate and necessary, Management sent a dangerous message which could cause others to hesitate and result in someone being unnecessarily injured,” Wilson wrote.

The union says that McLellan will be transferred to Hiland Mountain Correctional Center women’s prison in Eagle River as part of the settlement.

As to why management was gunning for him, the union says that McLellan had gone on television saying there was a lack of clean laundry and thus an increase in rates of infectious disease at Mat-Su Pre-Trial and he was instrumental in fighting off an attempt to do away with week on/week off shifts in the department. Fights over work shifts are ongoing at the department and have progressed through arbitration to the state’s Superior Court with regular updates posted to the union’s website.

The first part of 2014 has been a rough for the Department of Corrections, starting off with McLellan’s lawsuit and progressing through reporting in Anchorage media about what seemed to have been preventable inmate deaths and then a ruling from the state’s highest court in April that the system has a duty to protect inmates from each other.

Earlier this month, Stephanie Cravens, 24, an officer at the Palmer Correctional Center, was charged with receiving a bribe, promoting contraband and official misconduct. According to Alaska State Troopers she had conspired with Michael Freeman, 30, to get drugs and a cellphone into the facility. Freeman was charged with bribery and promoting contraband.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.