From the Houston Chronicle, Associated Press, CNN, Austin American-Statesman:

Texas governor Rick Perry today suspended admissions to a Texas institution for people with disabilities after learning of cellphone videos that police say show residents being forced to engage in “fight club” battles.

The governor also authorized the emergency installation of video cameras in the facility, which houses 376 residents and employs 877 workers.

The investigation of Corpus Christi State School comes as the legislature is considering increasing oversight of the state’s 13 institutions. The federal Department of Justice last year reported that negligent and abusive care in the institutions violated residents’ civil rights; it cited 53 deaths linked to preventable conditions at the institutions.

Police learned of the fights when someone gave a cell phone containing videos of the brawls at the Corpus Christi State School to an off-duty officer on Friday, police Captain Tim Wilson said by phone from Corpus Christi.

… “It appears that the workers were using clients as some sort of fight club,” Wilson said. “I’ve been in police work for 30 years and I’ve never seen something like this. These workers are exploiting them for their own entertainment.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 8:25 pm and is filed under abuse, criminal justice, law, law enforcement, neglect, NOT2BEMISSED, Texas institutions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.