GREENHEAD — The Florida Department of Corrections is investigating three deaths at a Washington County state prison and a fourth is being reviewed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
The investigations are part of a statewide probe of prison deaths requested by DOC Secretary Mike Crews.
Wednesday, the DOC announced that five prison guards at Northwest Florida Reception Center near Greenhead were arrested for allegedly stomping on a handcuffed and shackled inmate last month and a sixth —- a captain —- was also charged with taking part in the attack and lying about it.
By Friday evening, 11 prison guards were arrested and fired this week for allegedly abusing inmates in separate incidents at two Florida prisons.
Guards in Washington County allegedly knocked a prisoner, who had been gassed with chemical agents, to the ground face-first and jumped on him while he was handcuffed and his legs were restrained and then tried to cover it up, according to probable-cause affidavits accompanying arrest documents.
The Wednesday arrests came less than a month after Crews initiated a statewide house-cleaning prompted by news reports that officials had covered up deaths of at least two inmates and amid accusations of widespread brutality within the prison system.
Sgts. William Finch, James Perkins, Robert Miller, Christopher Christmas and Dalton Riley were charged with felony battery on an inmate at the prison in southern Washington County. Capt. James Kirkland, accused of getting the sergeants to lie about what happened, was charged with official misconduct. Crews also fired the workers, according to a news release issued by his office late Thursday.
According to the affidavits about the Aug. 5 incident, the five prison workers were taking inmate Jeremiah Tatum, 31, to the cold-water shower after he had been gassed with chemical agents. It is unclear from the reports what prompted the gassing, or who ordered the use of chemical agents.
Videos showed that Tatum —- who was handcuffed with his hands behind his back and whose legs were restrained, “thus preventing the inmate from protecting himself” —- was “slammed face first to the concrete floor” by Finch and Riley, according to the arrest documents. According to the affidavits, Christmas and Perkins jumped on the back of Tatum’s legs while Miller pinned his head to the ground.
In sworn statements to inspectors, four of the guards said that Kirkland told them he “wanted Tatum taken to the ground” as the inmate was led to the decontamination shower shortly before 11 p.m.
“Captain Kirkland would make an audible noise and/or state that Inmate Tatum spit on him. The escorting officers were to then force Tatum to the ground,” the complaint reads. All five later said that Tatum never spit on anyone.
After the attack, Kirkland ordered Finch to write up accounts of the incident saying that Tatum had spit on him, according to the allegations. The other four officers said they did not write or sign the reports. The five underlings “aided in concealing and covering up Captain Kirkland’s illegal order to commit a malicious battery,” according to the arrest records.
Meanwhile, five guards at Lancaster Correctional Institution in Gilchrist County were arrested for battery on an inmate. According to probable-cause affidavits, officers Earl Short, Stephen Nygard and Julious Riley and Sgts. Robert La Puma and Brittain Williams are accused of punching prisoners in the face.
According to the documents, La Puma and Williams allegedly pulled inmate Kristopher Sanchez off of his bunk on April 16 and “began to simultaneously strike him in the face with their closed fist” while asking Sanchez if he had brought weapons and contraband into the unit. Williams also kicked Sanchez in the head with his boot, and La Puma then kicked him in the head and upper torso area, according to investigators.
Short is accused of slapping and striking four inmates in the head on separate occasions between Dec. 30 and Jan. 14, according to probable-cause affidavits provided by the Department of Corrections.
Nygard and Riley slapped five new inmates in the head “because they didn’t move fast enough” during exercise drills at the Trenton institution on Dec. 30, according to the probable-cause affidavits.
Meanwhile, four Department of Corrections investigators are suing the agency, saying they’ve been punished for calling attention to a cover-up about an inmate’s death. The whistleblowers claim they started an investigation into allegations of prison-guard misconduct at Franklin Correctional Institution near Carrabelle in 2013. That investigation revealed that an earlier probe into the 2010 death of an inmate “was false and misleading.”
On Tuesday, the day before the Northwest Florida guards were arrested, Disability Rights Florida sued Crews and Wexford Health Systems, a private vendor that provides health care services to prisons in the southern portion of the state, alleging that torture and abuse of prisoners, including Rainey, had been ignored for years.
But the firings don’t go far enough, said Florida Justice Institute Executive Director Randall Berg, who represents prisoners in lawsuits against the corrections department.
“The culture hasn’t changed,” Berg said.
Department leaders have for too long ignored a multi-generational pattern of abuse, Berg said, and firing low-level workers won’t fix that.
“Crews needs to make certain that everyone from the top down is going to be held accountable. It’s not filtering down to the rank and file and it’s being ignored,” he said.
Crews has handed over investigations into at least 85 unresolved prison deaths to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which was already delving into nine mysterious inmate deaths.
The FBI is also reportedly scrutinizing Suwannee Correctional Institution, where an inmate-led riot injured five prison guards in October. The April 2 death of inmate Shawn Gooden at the facility is one of those being examined by FDLE.