‘It wasn’t well at all then and it’s not at all well now’
In the wake of the assault of several Jan. 6 prisoners and subsequent lockdown at the District of Columbia jail, United States Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) is demanding a welfare check on the inmates.
As reported by The Epoch Times, “It began without warning. A Jan. 6 prisoner had emerged from his cell without a mask. When it was all over, the jail was in lockdown and several inmates had been pepper sprayed, handcuffed, and thrown into solitary confinement. Inmate tablets were quickly confiscated, but not before several prisoners had time to send text messages, exposing the brutal truth of what happened.” Many of those messages were obtained by The Epoch Times. According to one text message, “[Expletive] just went down” at the Correctional Treatment Facility (CTF) in Washington, D.C., around 9:46 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 5.
The perpetrator of the alleged assaults was Lieutenant Crystal Lancaster, the guard in charge of the solitary confinement area known as “The Hole” at the CTF. One of the assaulted prisoners was Ryan Nichols.
According to a habeas petition (pdf) filed with the United States District Court, District of Columbia by Nichols’s attorney, Joseph McBride, Lancaster “verbally and mentally abuses inmates.” Lancaster “also oversees officers and guards who do the same, and is suspected of bringing drugs into the prison.” Lancaster, notorious among Jan. 6 prisoners and their family members for being particularly vulgar and brutal, had been banned from the Jan. 6 pod for verbal abuse and for stealing the inmates’ mail, according to the wife of one of the inmates. It is unclear why she was in the J6 pod at the time of the alleged assaults.
The D.C. facility itself has a long history of sub-human conditions.
In exclusive interviews with The Epoch Times, the wife and father of Ryan Nichols said this wasn’t the first time Nichols was abused by the guards at the DC jail. The last time Nichols was thrown into solitary confinement was in retaliation for the Habeas petition, in which Lancaster was called out for being abusive to the prisoners and for her suspected role in bringing drugs into the jail.
