From today’s Lincoln Journal Star:

State prison employees file civil rights lawsuit
November 17, 2010
By Lori Pilger
Lincoln Journal Star

Four black prison guards at the Nebraska State Penitentiary filed a lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court alleging the prison is a racially hostile work environment and administrators have failed to address their concerns.

Jaryl Ellis, Michael Hunter, Tiffany Johnson and Paul Zeiger, all of Lincoln, say in the suit they have been subjected to racially offensive comments and discriminatory actions while working at the prison.

“The racially charged environment at NSP is so severe that no reasonable person … should be expected to endure it,” their attorney, Jefferson Downing, wrote in the suit.

They are suing state Corrections Director Robert Houston, Deputy Director Frank Hopkins and penitentiary Warden Dennis Bakewell and Associate Wardens Cathy Sheair and Joseph Staley.

Downing said the comments and conditions the four have had to endure are unacceptable.

Over the past year, he said, it has become common practice for non-black staff and supervisors to make racially charged comments as black employees come in for the first-shift roll call, saying things like “looks like the back of the bus is here,” “smells like fried chicken” and “the hood has arrived.”

He alleged a corporal told one of the guards this summer he hates “how blacks act” and if they were in a group he would “shoot them all,” and that prison staff directed racially offensive words and comments at inmates that humiliated and embarrassed them.

Downing says the four reported their concerns to a lieutenant and a sergeant in August, and to prison management a month later when nothing was done. The response was disappointing, he said, and didn’t follow the prison’s policy in addressing workplace harassment.

He described the response in the lawsuit.

* Despite a policy that ensures confidentiality, word spread among staff and inmates that they had complained of a racially hostile environment after Sheair began an inquiry in October. Two of the employees’ vehicles were vandalized in the parking lot, and one of the guards was told they had better “watch their backs.”

* Later that month, they were called to a meeting with Bakewell and the associate wardens and waited two hours in a room with a picture on the wall of a black man picking crops. One snapped a picture of it with a cell phone.

* When the meeting started, they say, Bakewell said it was the first he had heard of any racial problems at the prison and he didn’t like to get involved in the issue. He said he was going to split them up and transfer them to different facilities within the Department of Correctional Services, but they objected.

* On Nov. 10, they met with Houston, Hopkins, Bakewell and Sheair and were told it would be difficult to take action to stop racially offensive comments, and that the most that could be done was to note inappropriate behavior in employment files.

Downing said it reached a point they didn’t think the institution was taking steps to address the problem, which led to the lawsuit. In it, they seek a judgment declaring the prison’s actions unlawful, an injunction to keep prison management from subjecting them to a racially hostile and intolerable work environment, and damages.

The four hope to improve the culture of the institution, he said, and while that may not happen overnight, it’s not happening at all now.

“If we can speed things along that would benefit not only our clients but also future employees of NSP,” Downing said.

Corrections spokeswoman Dawn-Renee Smith said the department had not officially received the lawsuit late Wednesday afternoon.

“Once we do we will respond through the appropriate channels,” she said.

But, Smith said, the department “has strong policies and practices that uphold equal treatment for all employees.”