Experts to study prison guard's slaying

SACRAMENTO - A panel of national and state experts will try to draw lessons from the fatal stabbing Monday of the first corrections officer to die in an inmate assault since 1996, prison officials said.

State lawmakers on Friday debated where blame should fall for the Chino prison's delay in distributing stab-resistant vests that might have saved the life of 43-year-old Manuel A. Gonzalez Jr.

That will be part of the prison system's inquiry, said J.P. Tremblay, a spokesman for Youth and Adult Correctional Agency Secretary Roderick Hickman.

Hickman asked the California Board of Corrections on Thursday to assemble national and state correctional experts to discover what went wrong.

Hickman, who also chairs the board, wants the board at its Jan. 27 meeting to appoint New York State Department of Correctional Services Commissioner Glenn S. Goord to chair the expert panel.

He's suggesting members include Joe McGrath, his assistant secretary for internal affairs; San Diego Sheriff William B. Kolender; Brian Parry of the National Major Gang Task Force; Los Angeles County Jail Commander John L. Scott; a representative from the National Institute of Corrections; and another national expert chosen by Goord.

"It is imperative that we learn all we can about this incident so that we can avoid a similar tragedy from occurring ever again," Hickman said in his announcement. The correction system's inspector general also is investigating the murder.

State Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, called this week for legislative hearings into the death. Romero this year will head a budget subcommittee that oversees corrections, and for the last year has chaired a series of hearings into widespread problems within the youth and adult prison system.

Gonzalez was stabbed three times with a homemade weapon at the California Institution for Men as he tried to calm disruptive inmates, corrections officials said.

Three members believed to be from the same gang, the East Coast Crips, were in the area and were transferred to different prisons after the stabbing. One of the inmates, Jon Blaylock, 35, imprisoned for attempted murder, was believed to have committed the murder, officials said.

Assemblyman Rudy Bermudez, D-Norwalk, a former correctional officer himself, blamed Hickman for the prison system's failure to distribute stab-resistant vests in time to protect Gonzalez.

The Associated Press disclosed Monday that the vests in the prison's warehouse had not been given to officers.

Prison officials said the roughly $500 vests had been given to guards in high risk areas and were being phased in for guards like Gonzalez who worked with the general inmate population. They said the vests must be measured and fitted individually, and the Chino prison had been shipped only about a third of the vests needed for all its 900 or so officers.