Hospitalized Prisoners Guarded 24 Hours a Day

              (Times photo by Ken Acklin)
Patrolman Tommy Willis watches stretcher patient
Hospitalized prisoners
guarded 24 hours a day
By DON WAITT
Of The Times Staff
Any hospitalized person who is
arrested on a felony charge or due to
be charged with a felony is guarded
by a police officer every day, 24
hours a day.
Whichever law enforcement agen-cy
makes the arrest — whether it's a
sheriff's office, a city police depart-ment
or a state agency — must
supply the guard.
The man charged in the Oct. 20
shooting death of Shreveport Patrol-man
Thomas Glen Tompkins, has
been under the eye of a Shreveport
patrolman since he entered LSU Hos-pital.
Rookie officers were assigned
guard duty when the man was in the
intensive care unit, Maj. WA.
Beckett Jr., patrol commander, said.
As he recovered veteran officers
were assigned guard duty.
"The more able he (the patient) is,
the more experienced guards we
use," according to Beckett.
The conditions in each case will
determine what type of guard duty is
be extended, Beckett said, explain-ing
that police officers guard pa-tients
throughout the year. A
Shreveport officer and a Bossier City
officer guarded two armed robbery
suspects Wednesday until the sus-;
pects were released from the hospi-tal
and booked into jail.
The police officers are taken off
their regular shift and given the
guard duty. "That just puts us anoth-er
unit short on the street...we have
had occasions through the years
where we were guarding more than
one prisoner," Beckett said. One
patient charged with the murder of a
Shreveport patrolman was guarded
for more than six months.
If an officer needs to leave for
dinner or because of an emergency,
another police officer or supervisor
will relieve him. A police guard will
be in the patient's room at all times
or just outside the room with the door
shut.
The purpose of the police guard,
Beckett said, is to protect the pa-tient,
to keep him from escaping and
to keep anyone from trying to help
him escape.
Guarding a patient charged with
the murder of a fellow officer offers
a few extra problems.
Each time a new guard is sent to
the suspect's room the police officer
must read him his rights and have a
witness sign the rights card. Any
information the suspect may give out
can be used against him in court.
Beckett called it "dotting the i's."
Also, shift supervisors must
carefully pick the police officers that
will be given guard duty. Relatives
or close friends to the slain officer
are not given guard duty.
Though LSU Medical Center has
armed police officers, licensed in
Baton Rouge, they don't guard the
prisoners brought in for treatment.
Spokesman Mac Griffith said the
hospital's police officers are not re-sponsible
for the confinement of the
prisoner. "The security and confine-ment
of the individual is the respon-sibility
of the agency bringing the
individual to us," he said.
If the hospital police did offer the
service the staff would have to be
increased tremendously, he said.
The hospital police officers' prima-ry
duties are to assist individuals at
the hospital with problems that may
occur, to protect the staff, employees
and patients and to provide security
for the medical center itself.
The hospital imposes no rules on
the police officers sent to guard the
patients, Griffith said, as long as
their actions don't cause any prob-lems
with the patient's health.