Officers’ union: ‘ACLU agreement contributed to Lt. Floyd’s murder’

DOVER — Violent offenders being “down flowed” from maximum security cells to lower security housing at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center may have contributed to the inmate uprising on Feb. 1 that left correctional officer Lt. Steven Floyd dead, claims Geoff Klopp, the president of the Correctional Officers Association of Delaware.

To be in compliance with an American Civil Liberties Union agreement adopted by the Delaware Department of Correction in 2016, Mr. Klopp said inmates known for being violent were “down flowed” to make room for inmates with special mental health needs. The lower security buildings they were being “down flowed” to included C Building, the site of the uprising, he said.

“The ACLU agreement contributed to Lt. Floyd’s murder,” he said. “A lot of those inmates shouldn’t have been in that building (C Building). They should have been in a more secure environment. What happened was that the state chose to enter into this agreement and moved a lot of the violent inmates that were housed in a maximum security setting over to C Building to make room for these mental health inmates who needed a certain type of housing to meet the ACLU requirements.”

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