An informational picket permit was revoked Thursday morning at Magnolia Plaza in The Villages as guards from the Coleman federal prison tried to issue a warning to area residents about dangerous understaffing.
The union tried to set up in the morning for the informational picket which was announced several weeks ago, when a representative spoke out at meetings of the Wildwood Commission and Sumter County Commission.
As the prison union attempted to set up tents for what been planned to be a daylong event, law enforcement quickly descended on the scene and wrote “revoked” on the union’s permit.
However, union members were able to speak with many residents who were invited to spin a roulette-style wheel used as a prop.
The prop had a serious message – who would you want as a neighbor?
The prison union takes issue with the fact that Colette Peters, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, won’t call inmates “inmates.” She calls them “neighbors,” said Union Advocate Joe Rojas, who has worked in federal prisons for 28 years.
The wheel represented the chance that prison staffers take every day when they have “neighbors” such as the 8,000 inmates at the prison. Those “neighbors” include serial child molester Larry Nassar notorious for years of abusing girl gymnasts, a Somali pirate and many of the nation’s most-hardened criminals. Last year, a mob hitman walked away from a halfway house at Coleman.
The union is warning of the dangers of understaffing at the prison. Staffing levels are so low that Father’s Day visitation was canceled, because there simply weren’t enough guards.
“They don’t realize how dangerous it is. We might start seeing some ugly stuff,” Rojas said.
He pointed to The Villages’ new Middleton school campus scheduled to open this fall.
“That is going to be very close to the prison,” he said.
For years, Villagers living at the southern end of Florida’s Friendliest Hometown have complained about hearing announcements from the public address system at the prison.
