Published in the High Desert Advocate in the 6/28/18 Edition
The Ely Nevada State prison warden, Timothy Fillson, retired suddenly this past Monday, June 25th, 2018. That same Monday afternoon, he got a visit from the Director and Deputy Director of the Department of Corrections for the State of Nevada. There were rumors of grand theft, larceny and other financial issues.
In the May 3rd edition of the High Desert Advocate, the Advocate in “Who Is At Fault For Supermax Murder?” broke the news that Timothy Fillson, warden for only a year and a half at the Ely state prison, might have been the indirect reason for the slaying of an inmate, Sergio Chen. He, the warden, had installed a reduction of the officers hours to save money to impress the Nevada Director Department of Corrections and the Nevada Governor, changing the minimum standard and in effect creating a more dangerous situation. He wanted to show that he could save more money than anybody else.
But on that same day that the murder of Sergio Chen occurred, the Director of the Nevada Department of corrections was talking on NPR how there were no problems regarding excessive use of overtime.
But the morale on the staff was then very poor, and officers were leaving their jobs, but the prison was not hiring experienced people.
Usually, regular peace officers start their job after they have completed eight weeks of training, and they have learn effective prison guard skills and are Peace Officer Safety and Training (POST) certified. But the warden was hiring young men who just turned 21, and correction assistants who just turned 18, and putting them to work before the minimal training was completed, and they were asked to do similar tasks as the more experienced ones. It created an atmosphere of total unprofessionalism and reduced the morale of the long term officers.
There were no policy of the operation that required absolute consistency of the units and shifts. Some officers even said that the new warden “acted like the rules didn’t apply to him, just because he was the warden, like in the old movie Shawshank Redemption”. The Advocate was also told that he took in his office death row inmates and that the secretaries were scared because those were high security. They also said that the warden pinned the event of the day of the murder on another officer. That this warden Fillson only gave verbal orders and required his subordinates and his assistant, the associate warden, to implement his orders, without questions.
