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Kamloops correctional officers rally outside KRCC to protest workplace violence

Victor Kaisar
Oct 17, 2019 | 3:50 PM


Kamloops correctional officers rally outside KRCC to protest workplace violence

A recently retired jail guard says there needs to be changes made before a guard is killed after being assaulted by an inmate.

Bill Neal says he was off work for a year and a half after he was assaulted by an inmate in 1997 at the Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre (KRCC).

“I went down to what they call a muster room and I had to assist with a nurse down there on an inmate that was supposedly having a seizure,” he told NL. “She gave him some kind of a sugar thing and she looked at me and said, ‘he’s not having a seizure’ and then all of a sudden he turned around and just started kicking my leg.”

Neal says he had a couple of surgeries on his lower leg while he was recovering from the injury.

“I kind of went from there and came back to work to the same place,” he noted, saying that things seem to be getting worse for officers working at the KRCC. “What I hear from friends of mine that still work here, say, ‘yes, it’s definitely gotten worse and the biggest thing seems to overcrowding and understaffed.”

Neal, who retired in January, was one of about 50 correctional officers and supporters who gathered today outside the KRCC to speak out against the workplace violence they face.

BCGEU Vice President of Correctional Services Dean Purdy previously told NL there have been 14 staff injuries in Kamloops so far this year – something that was represented by a display of shoes at this afternoon’s gathering.

“They see everything from really bad inmate beatings, hangings, slashings, vicious assaults with edge weapons, shanks, overdoses,” he said outside the KRCC today.

Purdy says that prior to 2001, the inmate-to-staff ratio in BC’s correctional facilities was 20:1. He now alleges it is as high as 72:1, with the radio being 40:1 in Kamloops, something both Purdy and Neal says needs to change.

There are meetings that have taken place between the BCGEU and the province’s Public Safety Ministry, with more meetings planning, including one with the minister Mike Farnworth this fall.