POCATELLO — A Wednesday night riot involving up to 27 inmates at the Bannock County Jail forced the sheriff to reroute all incoming county 911 calls to other agencies so that every deputy under his command could respond to the detention center.
Bannock County Sheriff Lorin Nielsen during a press conference at the jail on Thursday said tensions among inmates because of severe overcrowding inside the jail caused the riot.
The incident began around 8 p.m. and the unrest ended around 10:30 p.m. when several heavily armed Bannock County sheriff’s deputies were deployed against the rioting inmates. The inmates immediately surrendered, authorities said. Deputies and jail guards then spent the next couple hours cleaning the inmates’ cells.
“We were back to whatever normal is at about midnight,” Nielsen said.
No one was injured during the riot, and no jail guards were in danger or held hostage during the incident, Nielsen said.
The sheriff said the riot involved one primary instigator — an inmate awaiting transfer to state prison who damaged the sprinkler system inside his cell. This caused severe flooding to his and several adjacent cells, Nielsen said.
“He was very aggressive, kicking the door and demanding to be let out of his cell,” Nielsen said about the instigating inmate.
The flooding then spurred 22 to 26 other inmates to intentionally flood their cells by stuffing clothing and other foreign objects into the toilets in their cells and flushing the toilets, Nielsen added.
“We put the whole unit on lockdown and the sergeant on duty asked for backup,” Nielsen said.
“We called all of our officers that were in the field to come to the station and the other agencies handled our calls while that happened.”
The sheriff said the riot remains under investigation and was captured in full by the jail’s video cameras. Nielsen is not yet identifying any inmate involved in the riot, but he said the primary instigator will be charged with felonies for causing the incident and it’s likely other inmates will be charged as well.
Those inmates who are charged will be identified once those charges are filed, Nielsen said.
The riot occurred in the maximum security section of the jail. That section houses about 85 of the jail’s 315 inmates, Nielsen said. The jail was designed to have a maximum capacity of 270 inmates.
“We know our jail is being pushed to the limits and our population is being pushed to the limits,” Nielsen said. “We are critically over capacity and we are really having a tough time finding places to put these inmates.”
All the inmates involved in the riot were adult males, authorities said.
Nielsen said jail officials are in the process of determining a dollar amount for the damage caused during the riot.
Repairing the damage will be logistically difficult, Nielsen said. Most of the inmates whose cells are damaged are still in those cells and the sheriff said there isn’t anywhere else in the jail to house them while the damage is being repaired.
The primary instigator of the riot has been moved to an administrative segregation cell inside the jail’s booking area that is under 24-hour watch, Nielsen said.
During the press conference, Nielsen said he was pleased with the response of his deputies and he thanked the other local law enforcement agencies for assistance taking the county’s emergency calls during the riot.
“I’m proud that we took the time and didn’t rush into things,” Nielsen said. We waited until we had the manpower and the backup to be able to handle it.”
Nielsen also expressed concern for the state’s growing incarceration crisis.
Nielsen said that in his 22 years as sheriff this is the third time inmates have rioted inside the Bannock County Jail. Unless something is done regarding the state’s skyrocketing number of jail and prison inmates, Nielsen said he expects more disturbances like Wednesday night’s riot to happen in the future.
“Right now we have a correction crisis in our state,” Nielsen said. “The time-bomb is still ticking. And we need some help.”