Rectums, petting zoos and indifference to death in the state’s prisons

A union official made his demands for Gov. Katie Hobbs clear Friday morning: fire Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry Director Ryan Thornell immediately, fire his deputy director John Barcello and immediately end the current “override” policy that allows volatile mixing of inmates. 

In a nearly half-hour-long press conference that went from rollicking to deadly serious, Carlos Garcia, Executive Director of the Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association, spoke frankly about the life-and-death stakes of current policy in Arizona’s prisons. 

“This is gonna continue until a staff is dead or more inmates are dead,” he said. “The inmates are reaching out to us. I’ve never in my entire career in working corrections have inmates approach me and go, ‘We need your help.’”

The Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association is the largest law enforcement employee association in the state with more than 1,700 members in the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry. He denied that politics played a part in the timing of his press conference — just days before Election Day. He said he organized for a much simpler reason.

“I don’t want more people to die,” he said. 

He warned of a grim outcome if the governor doesn’t meet his demands.  

“More inmates are gonna die and they are dying,” he said.  “No one’s talking about it. More staff will continue to get beat up.”

Garcia provided a collection of videos from inside prisons that showed incidents of unprovoked attacks to prove his point. One, which was leaked to ABC15 in August, looks like video from a found-footage horror film. The officer desperately negotiates for his life with an inmate who sabotaged him with a series of blows to the face without warning. At one point, the violence plays out with his lens smeared with his own blood. After he talks his way into getting his keys back, he sprints for his phone to report the attack. As he does, a giant glob of blood and gore splatters onto his desk.

In another video, an officer is swarmed by a sea of inmates in orange jumpsuits in the yard. In a third, an inmate is approached out of nowhere and smashed in the face repeatedly before he calmly gets on his stomach and surrenders to a team of officers rushing to aid their colleague. Another shows doctors working on the face of a disfigured officer who was ambushed by inmates.

Garcia described Hobbs as indifferent to his and the union’s pleas to intervene before more corrections officers are violently assaulted and inmates end up murdered. 

“She doesn’t care,” he said of Hobbs’ response to his repeated pleas for help. “Complete silence.”

Liliana Soto, Hobbs’ spokeswoman, challenged Garcia’s characterization of the crisis in the state’s prisons in a written statement: “Governor Hobbs inherited a prison system that had been neglected and mismanaged for years. She appointed Director Thornell to restore security and accountability in our prison system.”

Soto said that is precisely what Thornell has done.  

“Under Director Thornell’s leadership, ADCRR has taken significant action to bolster safety and reduce violence, hiring hundreds of new officers this year alone, deploying body-worn cameras across its facilities, increasing oversight in high-risk areas, implementing aggressive contraband interdiction measures, and more,” Soto wrote. 

Soto said Hobbs has no intention of caving to the union’s demands and will not be firing Thornell. 

“The safety and well-being of our correctional officers is our top priority,” she said. “Governor Hobbs remains confident in Director Thornell’s leadership.”

Instead of a productive dialogue with the governor’s office, Garcia said he has been frustrated by the administration’s obstinacy. He has accused the governor of abusing her power by starting an investigation into the leaks of videos of assaults on officers. The investigation is intended to intimidate him and his officers. He said that Thornell is deeply unqualified for his position. He unfavorably compared Thornell, who previously worked as Deputy Commissioner of Corrections for the state of Maine, to a petting zoo keeper who is now out of his depth here in the Grand Canyon State. 

If an inmate is behaving, he should be rewarded, Garcia said. But if they are acting violent they should not be mixed with the other inmates.

“You can’t turn around and say, ‘I’m going to override you anyway. You’re a lion I’m going to put you in with the bunnies and the sheep,’” Garcia said. “He’s from a petting zoo in Maine; he worked with DUIs and old guys in Maine. And now he comes into our system and thinks the lions and the lambs are going to get together?”

By Thornell insisting on administering the “override” policy, he is refusing to acknowledge the culture in prison where mixing different populations can be seen as a provocation to the inmates – as a challenge to their manhood and their reputation in the institution, Garcia said. 

He pointed out the savage murders of three inmates convicted of crimes against children inside the Cimarron Unit of the Arizona State Prison Complex-Tucson on April 4, 2025. 

Ricky Wassenaar confessed to the killings of Saul Alvarez, Thorne Harnage, and Donald Lashley in an interview with a reporter. Wassenaar was already notorious. He is serving 16 life sentences for murder and for his role in one of the longest prison hostage situations in American history, according to prison officials.

Wassenaar characterized the killings as doing “society a favor.” He regrets only killing three inmates. His goal was to kill seven. He said he acted properly because the normal rules of the outside world don’t apply in prison. 

Garcia said more of these grim outcomes will happen if nothing changes. He said he is prepared to go to war with the administration to achieve his goals. 

“I will get more attorneys, and I will get a shigazzle of investigators and I will shove them so far up their rectums,” Garcia said, using a word he made up for “a lot.” “I swear to God they’re not going to shit right for a month.”

Morgan Fischer contributed to this story.