One report from a family member: I received a letter from my dated September 10. “We were locked down ater lunch on Labor Day, and it looks like we are going to be stay locked up for at least another week. What I have heard is that someone was taken out on a stretcher from F unit due to drugs. Administration is claiming that three staff members were exposed to drugs.
What is upsetting for a lot of us is that this is a low-security institution. Most lows are dorms and they are not normally locked down. And when they rarely are, residents are locked in their housing units, not their cells. But here, we’re locked in our cells 24 hours a day.
Another report: They took my LO’s unit outside for six hours while the COs shook them down. They took his notebook, pictures, some other personal items and 1uite a bit of food he had saved. They threw his water bottle down the toilet and stomped on an apple in his cell.
Another: I heard the shakedowns were bad this time. Staff took everything that wasn’t on the national packout list.
On Sept. 17, the men were allowed out on modified lockdown (in the unit), and allowed one five-minute call.
Quad Cities News reported that, “For the third time in a month, a staff member at FCI Thomson had to be given Narcan and was taken to a hospital after being exposed to an unknown substance, according to Jon Zumkehr, president of Thomson Federal Prison AFGE local 4070. “A staff member was doing a search at the prison, and he got exposed to an unknown substance,” he said. “We identified those drugs, and he had an adverse reaction to it. He was taken to a local hospital.”
However, inmates responded to this report this way: “We all believe [the report is] fake. The employees who claimed to have been in contact with the substance never missed a day of work and boasted about the hoax, in my presence and that of other prisoners and staff.