ALBANY – Momentum is growing fo🌊r a bill that would make it much harder for convicted killers like Richard Matt and David Sweat to obtain street clothes and manipulate civilian employees to aid in prison escapes.
Assemblyman James Tedisco (R-Glenville) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would ban violent felons convicted of murder, kidnapping and rape fr♚om getting their hands on civilian clothes.
It would also prevent the state’s most violent convicts from interacting with civilian employees who are not tr🌠ained law enforcement officers.
Tedisco wants to do away with both privileges, which he believes helped Matt and Sweat escape from a maximum sec𒐪urity pris🔯on in Dannemora on June 7 and blend in since then.
“These are individuals who are not only the worst violent felons. Th🐎ey’re very bright and they’re very smart,” Tedisco explained🥀.
The propo🎉sal was prompted by Sweat and Matt’s escape from Clinton County Correctional Facility.
The d♎uo are considered extremely dangerous and have not yet been found.
“Their good behavior to get in the honor block to provide them with these privileges was only done so they could escape and wreak havoc and b💃e a danger in our community,” Tedisco said.
The proposal would also apply to killers like Lemuel Smith, a serဣial killer who terrorized the Capital District by in the 1970s and went on to൲ kill prison guard Donna Payant in 1981, Tedisco said.
Like Matt and Sweat, Smith demonstrated good behavior just long enough to ga𓆏in access to a chapel and kill Payant, the state prison system’s first female correction officer, believed to be his sixth victim, in Greenhave🌸n in 1981.
At 73, he is still locked up and consider🔴ed extremely d🌌angerous.