Bredesen promises to better equip corrections officers

“That is something that I am going to look at. To see how we can get the proper equipment into the hands of the people,” Bredesen told reporters after delivering a speech to an education conference.

“I took that away as a to-do from this whole experience,” the governor said.

Veteran officer Wayne “Cotton” Morgan, 56, wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest when he was fatally shot Aug. 9 while escorting inmate George Hyatte from the Roane County Courthouse in Kingston.

His partner, Larry “Porky” Harris later told The Associated Press the officers stopped wearing the old vests issued their unit because the vests were too bulky. He said the officers had been waiting for weeks to be measured for new ones.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, which represents corrections officers in Tennessee and around the country, plans during a convention Saturday in Albuquerque, N.M., to call for federal corrections officer safety legislation in response to Morgan’s death.

“When a department mandates a policy and a procedure for our officers to follow, we should have the equipment that is necessary to follow through with that policy,” said Mike Marette, the union’s assistant director for corrections.

Bredesen said he talked with corrections officers about the problem while attending Morgan’s funeral last Friday in Wartburg, near the Brushy Mountain Correctional Complex where Morgan had worked for 28 years.

“I became aware of the issue of the vests, which apparently are not adequate from the sense of fitting people,” Bredesen said. “That might have had a different outcome had he been wearing one.”

However, Harris has suggested Morgan still might have been shot somewhere else if he had been wearing his vest. Jennifer Hyatte, who police say jumped the guards to free her husband, seemed determined “to shoot both of us,” said Harris, who was able to return fire.

Amanda Sluss, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Corrections, welcomed the governor’s statement. “It is great news for the department. We will definitely work with him,” she said.

“It is an issue that we have been looking into since April, trying to get an inventory of what our equipment is and what our needs might be. And that process is ongoing,” Sluss said.

The Hyattes were captured on Aug. 10 in a motel in Columbus, Ohio, and face an extradition hearing Friday to return them to Tennessee to face first-degree murder charges.

“I suspect they will be back here pretty quickly,” said Bredesen, who sent the extradition request to Ohio earlier this week.