This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Kingman, Arizona • A third disturbance within four days broke out Saturday in a private prison in Kingman, authorities said.
Units with the Arizona Department of Public Safety and the Mohave County Sheriff's Office were helping the Department of Corrections with the unrest at Arizona State Prison-Kingman, The Arizona Republic reported (http://bit.ly/1HEwUyT).
The Department of Corrections says it was asked to assist with a prison riot. Mohave County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Jody Schanman tells the newspaper that units were called out but could not elaborate on the specifics of the situation.
Inmates in the Hualapai dormitory are "again refusing to comply with directives this afternoon," Andrew Wilder, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said in a statement.
Wilder said that "additional staffing and response teams are on site, and positive progress is being made."
Local law enforcement officers are providing security around the perimeter of the prison, he said.
On Friday, about 700 inmates at the prison were moved to new locations after disturbances on consecutive days left their housing units uninhabitable.
Nine corrections officers suffered minor injuries in the incidents at the prison, which has had a long history of problems. No inmate injuries were reported. The first disturbance occurred Wednesday at a minimum-security unit, followed by what he described as an unrelated riot Thursday night at a medium-security unit that took several hours to quell, Wilder said.
In 2010, three inmates escaped from the prison after a woman in a getaway car threw cutting tools over the fence and they broke out. The inmates went on a violent crime spree that included the murders of an Oklahoma couple during a camping trip in New Mexico.