Anthony Rollins, a former Anchorage Police Department officer who was found guilty of sexually assaulting five women while he was on the job, has been transferred from an Alaska prison to a federal penitentiary, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate tracking system.
Rollins is now serving his 87-year sentence at the United States Penitentiary Tucson, Ariz. The former cop is in protective custody, said Kaci Schroeder, special assistant to the commissioner of the state's Department of Corrections. She declined to offer details into the transfer but confirmed that Rollins was moved from Alaska.
Schroeder would not say why Rollins needs to be protected but said oftentimes it's because of an inmate's infamy, or simply "who they are," such as a former police officer. Generally, inmates are placed in protective custody to keep them from harm, either from outside sources or other prisoners.
Fewer than 20 Alaskan prisoners are housed Outside, Schroeder said. They're imprisoned at various institutions and have been sent away due to their notoriety. The state houses some of the federal prison's inmates as well. The prisoner swap comes with no extra cost to Alaska because the state pays the prisons for Alaska prisoners and vice-versa.
But Alaska Department of Corrections Commissioner Ron Taylor told lawmakers on Monday during a hearing before the Legislature's Joint Judiciary Committee that housing an inmate costs the state about $146 per day, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported. Inmates at high-security federal prisons cost about $93 per day, according to an Urban Institute study.
The Tucson penitentiary is a high-security institution for male prisoners located 10 miles southeast of the Arizona city. It also includes a satellite camp that houses minimum security inmates.
Upon its opening, the federal correctional complex's executive assistant told the Arizona Daily Star that the prison houses violent inmates -- men convicted of murder and other serious offenses, and who have a history of violence, both before and after their lives behind bars.
Rollins was accused in 2009 of forcing six women to perform sex acts or sexually touching them while he was on duty in 2008 and 2009. A jury convicted him of sexually assaulting five of the six victims. In April 2012, an Anchorage Superior Court judge sentenced Rollins, whom the judge described as "a rapist in blue with a badge."
Rollins shares the concrete confines with other famous law enforcement inmates, such as Louis Eppolito, a former New York City cop convicted of participating in eight mob-ordered killings, and Anthony Villavaso, a former New Orleans policeman convicted of civil rights violations in 2011 in connection with the Danziger Bridge shooting, during which police killed two unarmed residents six days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.
Contact Jerzy Shedlock at jerzy(at)alaskadispatch.com. Follow him on Twitter @jerzyms.