Augusta Regional Youth Detention Center Escapees – Austin’s Daily Commentary

Austin: It was the story that you first heard broke on the Austin Rhodes show a couple of days ago. Two dozen juveniles overpowered guards and escaped their units at the Richmond County Augusta Regional Youth Detention Center last month.

According to a report that was just released yesterday. Absolutely right. Great work on the Jail Report. And the Augusta Press had the story this morning online. But again, it was an issue that we were working together to uncover the details on just a few days ago.

The April 26th incident is detailed in a heavily redacted report. Greg tells us that was released under a request put forth to the Georgia Open Records law. It describes a near riot at the juvenile facility after a single youth took a guard's keys and let out over two dozen other inmates. We'll get into the details of exactly what happened during that attack this afternoon.

But the bottom line, this happened back April 26th, and we're just now finding out about it because we, the media, the Jail Report and the Austin Rhodes Show, put forth the request for the information. Absolutely ridiculous that the Georgia criminal justice system does not understand the need to release this information within a day or two of it happening, the rumor mill ran rampant. All kinds of very, very disgusting tidbits got out that I don't know what's true and what's not, to be honest with you, and quite frankly, my faith in the criminal justice system every time something like this happens is taken a little bit more to the edge.

Bad things are going to happen, folks, particularly when you deal with criminals, particularly when you deal with young people. Get out in front of a story like this. These folks should have come to the general public. Weeks ago, two weeks ago, and told the entire story instead of having the media have to busted out on them like this. Absolutely ridiculous, inexplicable, and an issue that I'll be taking up with several of our elected officials in the very near future.

Public officials want respect, and they want the public to to assist them at times of need. They need to come forth and come clean. When incidents like this happen without the media having to chase it down and literally legally beat it out of them. And that's the comment. I'm Austin Rhodes, AM 580, 95.1 FM News Talk WGAC.