NM PRISON RIOT | “Warning Signs”

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Monday on NBC.

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US. Marshalls.

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All-new Line of Fire. The thrilling new crime drama.

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The world sees us as heroes, but they don't know what the job really costs.

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One family of federal agents.

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It's one thing to put yourself in danger.

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It's different when it's your family.

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Balances duty to their country.

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An assassin is still out there. Stop.

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And each other.

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How do you protect the world and the people you love at the same time?

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Every case hits home on Line of Fire. Monday on NBC.

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Confusion and mistaken identity can cause, and have caused, problems since the dawn of time. Depending on the setting and the circumstances, the problems might be minor or deadly serious. Even in a prison yard, when the stakes are always high, and the inmates in the yard and the guards on the catwalks above are always on edge, cases of confusion and mistaken identity don't always cause serious problems. But on a hot summer afternoon in August, they did.

That afternoon, the guards on the catwalks above the exercise yard were more anxious than normal. The prison's senior lieutenant, 61-year-old Richard Moroney, was on duty that day. He was a 34-year veteran of the Corrections Department, and he was looking forward to retirement. He said later, We were concerned. For some time, we had all been concerned about this trouble that was brewing in the prison. You could feel it in the air. You knew something was brewing, but you couldn't tell when it was going to happen.

That day, it happened.

Leroy Dewar, a 23-year-old inmate who had been in prison for four years for second degree robbery, was goofing around with a friend at one end of the exercise yard. Leroy had just returned to the yard after a seven-day suspension because of violations of the rules.

Leroy and his buddies seemed to be doing something close to shadow boxing, maybe bouncing around, throwing relatively harmless slaps and punches. But some of the guards, who were about a hundred yards away, thought the two inmates were fighting. A guard shouted through a bullhorn for Leroy and his friend to stop. When Lieutenant Maroney looked over, he couldn't tell if the inmates were, in his words, fighting or fooling. Either way, they didn't stop when ordered. With the benefit of hindsight, that was another small, seemingly inconsequential problem. The guard who shouted at Leroy and his friend to stop, mistook Leroy for another inmate. So the guard yelled the wrong name, and Leroy and his friend didn't realize the guard was talking to them.

Lieutenant Maroney confronted Leroy and tried to move him from the yard. In an act of defiance that most of the guards remembered as a first, Leroy forcibly refused. He pushed or lightly punched the senior lieutenant. Leroy said he hadn't done anything wrong, and he wasn't going to be punished. The confrontation drew the attention of the other inmates in the yard. Many of them crowded around Maroney and Dewar, and several shouted that they would not allow Dewar to be taken. For a few tense minutes, it looked like a riot might erupt, but it didn't. The guards stepped away, and the crowd dispersed.

But that evening, when the prisoners had been locked down after dinner, a group of guards hauled Leroy Dewar out of his cell. Leroy shouted and kicked and fought as the guards dragged him past the other cells in his cell block. Guards also removed Ray Lomori, an inmate who was accused of trying to instigate violence during the confrontation in the yard.

Inmates near Dewar and Lomori yelled and threw objects out of their cells. All the prisoners knew that Dewar and Lomori were going to housing block Z. HBZ, as it was known at the prison, was the segregation and isolation unit for troublemakers. Inmates firmly believed that those who were taken to HBZ would be beaten by the guards. The next morning after breakfast, the riot that had threatened to erupt the previous day did erupt.