i'll see you here in an hour. coming next is "america tonight". [ singing ] [ singing ] [ ♪♪ ] on "america tonight" - giving final honours to the fallen and forgotten. >> it's our way of healing, maybe not ourselves, but our family members or maybe they know somebody that didn't come home and it's their way of honouring them "america tonight"s michael oku with a story of one californian man determined to honour and pay tribute to

america's veterans baltimore - behind bars and beyond belief. the gang leader who proclaimed "i am the law." >> we had a woman fixing meals, and one smuggling him personal matters he could have for him. that's the tip of the iceberg. a look behind bars and how they are fixing what is called one of america's most corrupt gaols. thanks for joining us i'm adam may sitting in for joie chen. we begin in baltimore, a city in turmoil. a month after rioting following the death of a man in police custody, protesters are turning their anger towards the prison system. demonstrate juniors are outrage -- demonstrators are outraged over plans to build a gaol for youth. it will cost $30 million, while

the maryland governor is cutting education. some baltimore youth are being how farred in the main gaol along -- housed in the main gaol along adult offenders. i went inside the baltimore detention centers, where gang members claimed to take control in a corruption scandal. >> reporter: does the location of the center play into the corrosion. >> i think it place a vital roll. >> reporter: until now ralph has never talked on national tv about what he witnessed as a supervising corrections officer at the baltimore city gaol. >> people from the neighbourhood become correctional officers and inmates. >> an institution overrun with sex, drugs and corruption. >> reporter: what happened? >> it blossomed out of cell in 2004 when they started hiring atos that was kind of crazy, how can you put an 18-year-old

that does not have any experience in live and you put him on the section of 120 inmates, seasoned inmates and expect that nothing is going to happen to that wild. -- child. >> reporter: maryland's experiment hiring female and male officers as young as 18, was intended to address a shortage of applicants willing to take low-paying jobs. critics like johnson, who wrote a book about the gaol say it backfired, younger cos were inexperienced, untrained and vulnerable. >> the veteran inmates, they was licking their chops, seeing an innocent 18-year-old, and they would eat them alive. they would manipulate them have sex with them they would bring things in and it became a money making matter. >> reporter: the gangs were making money inside the gaol? >> they were making a tonne of money, it evolved.

>> following a multiyear veification involving -- investigation, 22 were indicted allegations that they were helping prison gangs run drugs. more than a dozen members of the black guerilla family gang bgf and associates were indicted. the largest conspiracy prison case history. >> more than two dozen correction officers indicted. what were they doing for the bgf gang. >> they were smuggling in marijuana, heroin crack, opening grills so gang members could be attacked and they did run the gaol because the cos empowered it. they couldn't have done it without them. >> u.s. attorney rod resentheme

oversaw 40 convictions in the conspiracy. >> a lot of people assume when you put people in gaol it solves the problem, isolating them. that's not the problem. they have shiftworkers coming in and out. and kitchen workers and maintenance. that is the problem. it is not an island to itself. >> reporter: how did what happened inside the gaol affect greater baltimore and life outside the area. >> if you put them in a gaol you have not solved the problem. >> baltimore has a high violent crime rate in america, leading to crowded gaols, where prisoners can serve years before heading to a permanent prison allowing problems to take root. where are we headed now? >> we'll take you down to the receiving section. >> reporter: this detention center was guilt before abraham lincoln took office. >> it's the oldest working gaol

we know of >> reporter: oldest working gaol in america. >> pete is the deputy secretary of provisions. a few years ago this retirement commander was hired to run the baltimore detention center but realised the corruption went too deep. >> when i came here i don't now how to make this clearer, the facility didn't feel right. >> at what point were you motivated to call in the feds. >> we had a choice to make. we could have done nothing, or do something. we those to do something. we had a dangerous facilityie leer. we had a facility jeopardizing the life and safety of not just inmates, but the people we asked to come to work every day. >> the 3-year case reveals inside the gaol one inmate in particular, tayvon white was in

charge of the widespread black guerilla family gangs. in wire taxes he proclaimed "this is my gaol i'm the law." what was his life like in the prison? was it as lavish as reports indicate. >> it was probably - he had it better. >> reporter: how so. >> he could have sex any time he wants. he had one woman fixing him home cooked meals every day. a woman smuggling him personal pills that he could take for himself, or wine and he was never searched at the city gaol. he wasn't allowed to be searched. he had phone calls, pretty much everything that he wanted. plus while incarcerated in '09 to 2013 he brought five vehicles a black mercedes a white mercedes a lexus and another car, and this is while he was incarcerated.

>> reporter: more shocking - inside gaol he fathered five children with four correction officers. one of them katera - she smuggled in drugs, drove a fancy car and had his name tattooed on her wrist and helped him run bgf business. she was convicted of racket earring. >> reporter: she walked out on a break, went to her car, picked up contraband and came in is that possible today? >> it shouldn't have been possible then. the fact that we watched her leave, and watched her return through our surveillance suggested that supervisors were not doing their job. >> nationally there's a head line every week. "america tonight" attempted to quantify the problem. we discovered no one is tracking it. the u.s. department of justice told us they don't have information on criminal charges filed against prison guards. this comes as the u.s.

incarceration rate has more than quadrupled since the 1970s. >> what do you think we would find if we did a research study and tried to quantify this nationwide. >> based on what you saw play-out in baltimore. >> i think you'd find the general problem of smuggling contraband is a nationwide problem. we are really about preventing violence crime in the streets. we need to focus attention on what's while the inmates are behind bars. since a baltimore schedule gaol has gone through an overhaul. dozens were fired, retired or quit. >> have you used the camera system to intercept contraband. >> it is used for everything staff performance, cannes roe band. >> the gaol invested millions in new technology better cameras and a system blocking outgoing

cellphone calls. >> what is the impact of shutting down the cellphone communication. >> folks that are incarcerated use cellphones to intimidate witnesses. we stopped supplied contraband intimidate staff. cellphones are a way to continue the criminal enterprise. >> since the federal indictments maryland created a prison corruption task force. it investigates other claims of corruption. how do you think prison corruption is feating our society. >> in urban america, i do know that the communities are extensions of the gaol and face versa. there's not a lot of deterrent in going to prison. you have cable tv you have access to sex, drugs, the whole nine yards. actually it's exacerbating the problem. for decades inmates released

from the baltimore gaol have seen this sign as they exit the facility. now it takes on a whole new meaning. last week two more baltimore correction officers were suspended. this time they are accused of looting a 7/11 during the riots. gaol protesters are planning acts of civil disobedience demanding the government scrap plans for the facility. the government says the 60-bed youth gaol will offer better classrooms medical services and recreation areas. >> up next - black box warning - a tool used to fight cancer could be spreading it. a controversial procedure now has the federal bureau of investigation's attention. and later - honouring the fallen heroes. "america tonight"s michael oku uncovers a story of a man making

sure our veterans are not forgotten. hop on the "america tonight" website. could gold medallist boxer sharisa shields repeat in rio. learn more at aljazeera.com/americatonight

welcome back in our fast-forward, it was touted as a new safer way to remove fibroid tumours, cutting risk and recovery compared to a full hysterectomy. that device ended up with a black box warping the strong -- warning, the strongest there is. sara hoy meets a patient

battling cancer spread by the procedure that was supposed to help. >> reporter: it is the last place amy reed a successful boston annas thesologist and mother of six expected to be, in a hospital ward as a cancer patient. accompanied by her husband, a boston heart surgeon. what the couple discovered is that during amy's surgery, in a minimally invasive hysterectomy the surgeons used a morse illator to mince the f.b.i. roids into pieces. the procedure, she says spread the hidden cancer cells. >> you can see tissue chunks dripping down. it's not a refined procedure. >> reporter: amy says he was never informed or consulted about the use of morcellation had she known, she wouldn't have allowed it. >> i did not know initially, it's not something they tell you when they say your surgery went

well. they didn't say your surgery went well and we shredded things up. i learnt they were morcellated, and the chance of occurs meaning the disease coming back was in the ballpark of 80% because of how they handled the consumer in front of me. >> 80%. >> 8-0. if it came back i knew i had life expectation si of two years. >> my wife was hit in a way as a surgeon, i recognised it as a catastrophic hit. if you disrupt a cancer in someone's body you upstage from a stage 1 to stage 4. >> reporter: he is channelling his grief into a campaign delling anyone that will listen -- telling anyone that will listen that there's no place for morcellation inside women, anyone with undetectable cancer fast-forward to who knew what and when. it's reported as to whether johnson&johnson, the largest

maker of the device knew that it would spread uterin cancer. "america tonight" talked to amy's husband. he confirms in the fbi interviewed him. we reached out. but they said they could not comment. >> next - remembering our fallen heroes especially those without a family to call their own. meet a man who is often the lone mourner at military funerals. and tomorrow on the show. we continue our indepth coverage from baltimore, with a look at what is behind a month of bloodshed. >> i think that the cops are not as aggressive as they were. because they are afraid to put their hands on people why police officers say they are afraid as the city sees a spike in homicides. that's friday on "america tonight". this is the one... >> we haven't got it yet...

>> it's all or nothing... >> i've told walgreen's i quit... >> hard earned pride... hard earned respect... hard earned future... a real look at the american dream hard earned only on al jazeera america >> part of our month long look at working in america. "hard earned".

honour - it's a meaningful word that you will hear often from vietnam vet an doyle tollbetter. a man dedicating his life to those who sacrifice said for this country, especially those that died alone, unclaimed, without a family to call their own. michael oku unearths the motivation behind a man who stands up for veterans who might otherwise be forgotten. >> reporter: on every wednesday morning, every year for the past in my opinion, without fail doyle tolber. it has been laying brothers and sisters to rest here. paying tribute along with dozens

of other veterans for the fallen and forgotten. riverside national cemetery was home to 225,000 veterans. doyle, a former investigator with the l.a. county coroner's office started trips to the cemetery after he noticed the number of veterans voce bodies were -- whose bodies were unclaimed by the next of kin, and went out burial as a result. >> how can this happen why does this happen? the men and women served our country and they deserved better than that. >> reporter: he gave them better starting veterans without families. before you had this idea to honour unclaimed veterans what would happen to their remains? >> if nobody claimed them they

would be cremated by the county and the cremation is held for a couple of years, and after that they'd be taken to the county cemetery and buried at the site with a marker on it saying the year of the date of death though doyle rarely met any of the veterans in life he made it his mission to honour them in death. >> they needed to be set out here and honoured by being placed next to and with their brothers and sisters that they have served with. sounds like this is not only for these folks, but there's something kath arctic for you too. it's our way of healing themselves or family members.

maybe they now someone that didn't go home. >> at 21, doyle deployed as a paratrooper. and managed to live through the jungle ambush. like men, they left south east asia with a dose of guilt, for the yes. few years he worked in law enforcement. i don't know whether you want to talk about it, but his own mother abandoned you. being abandoned and seeing the vets abandoned. maybe it was something - maybe it was brothers and sisters. i don't know. it's something that always bothered me. it's something that bothered me

that men and women shouldn't be alone. >> since 2008 they have honoured more than 2500 veterans each memoriesed with a dog tag. >> every men and woman bought up for burial a dog tag is made with their name on it. we honour their memory in that way for now and forever. >> there's one for ron add neblis a parachuter who found his way home after the war, but lost his way. anna is his cousin they grew up together. >> he was a happy go lucky kid, full of joy, laughter. >> reporter: ronald was drafted in 1965. after he was hit by enemy fire he received the purple heart. he revived his injuries but returned to southern california a changed man. >> he had to do things in the

war that here you wouldn't have dreamed of having done. >> reporter: give he a sense of what he went through. >> he had to go and shoot, sometimes, women and children that he had no choice than to do it. >> and it haunted him? >> yes. >> back then p.t.s.d. didn't have a name. >> ronald married, but the union was short lived. >> did you see him like that on the streets. >> i couldn't. he drifted away and saw his family occasionally. he was more and more troubled and it showed. >> it made it hard for him to live with himself because of the things he had done. because of that he didn't like to be sober very much. >> nicole what is his niece, and ronald lived with her family for a short time. it didn't work out either. >> he wasn't happy. i feel that's why he took

himself out of society and decided to become homeless. he didn't feel worthy i think, to be in regular society with the rest of us you know. he stayed under the bridge on mission, behind us and... >> he lived under the bridge. >> yes, he lived under the bridge. >> a wounded war veteran ended up here 40 miles away. >> any message come back. >> seeing homeless vehicles like a lot were soldiers and veterans and people that had a hard time in life. so it reminds me to be humble and that's for sure. and i do think of him often, and i wondered what happened to him. >> ronald passed away under the bridge in august 2004. it would be four years before any loved ones learnt of his

death. and another six before he was laid in his time resting place, not far from the bridge he had made his home. veterans without family learnt of ronald's story and made him one of their own. on another wednesday morning in 2014 he was buried with full military honours, for service his -- a service his niece nicole was proud to taken. >> it kind of gave us closure, finely to know that -- finally to know that he was okay we were able to honour him. >> he hadn't just been buried he was buried with honours. >> yes, and we felt he deserved that. >> when you heard that he had been buried and honoured by the

organization what was your rejection? >> i was happy that he did have his burial the way he should have had it. >> what does it mean for you to gi that man dignity in his death. >> it gives me pride, satisfaction knowing that we gave him his final military honours that he earnt and deserved at the time of his burial. >> reporter: and there's no imposing how many other ronald's may be out there. >> there's thousands. >> if we cannot do him honour while he's here to hear the prays. let's give him homage at the ending of his days. >> why does this matter so much to you? >> they are veterans. they gave part of their life to

defend our right as citizens of the united states freedom. perhaps a head line in the paper to say our country is in mourning a soldiers died today. may he rest in peace, we are your family. [ bell tolls ] [ "last post" plays ] that is it for "america tonight", tell us what you think at aljazeera.com/americatonight. come back we'll have more of "america tonight" here tomorrow.

[ ♪♪ ] i'm david shuster in for ali velshi. on target for the short lift for president. winning by losing. the payoff for candidates with no chance to capture the white house. over the past 36 hours, two more republicans declared that they'll seek the g