Corrections officials routinely failed to properly investigate alleged abuses, watchdog says

Corrections officials at three state prisons routinely failed to properly investigate alleged abuses in 46 cases, including at least two where video showed officials attacking inmates without any visible provocation, the state comptroller says in a report released Thursday.

The department’s investigators failed to interview witnesses in 22% of the cases and lost key evidence in 13% of the 46 cases that took place between 2018 and 2022, the comptroller said.

“Often these investigations were not real investigations,” said acting State Comptroller Kevin Walsh. “Some investigators were clearly just going through the motions. It’s also possible some were using their positions to protect one of their own and prevent accountability.”

Only two corrections officers were disciplined as a result of the 38 complaints investigated by the comptroller that included a corrections officer.

Walsh’s office said a culture of silence among law enforcement officials, poor training of corrections investigators, and shaky department policies contributed to the investigatory lapses.

It said the department should reopen investigations into the two assaults, which occurred at Bayside State Prison, and probe investigators’ handling of those incidents to see if discipline is warranted or more training is needed.

The department should retain an independent monitor to review its investigators’ cases, expand an internal audit that started in August 2022, and increase transparency of its internal affairs investigations to grow public trust, Walsh’s office said.

Daniel Sperrazza, a spokesperson for the department, said corrections officials have “worked tirelessly” to restructure its internal affairs unit, called the special investigations division.

“Significant changes have been implemented over the past three years to establish prison and cultural reform at all levels and units within the agency,” Sperrazza said.

Security footage of Bayside prison in Leesburg released alongside the report shows an officer repeatedly punching an inmate who made no visible provocations.

The officer claimed the inmate had threatened to hit him, but corrections officials never interviewed multiple witnesses who could have confirmed that, Thursday’s report says. He was never disciplined, while the inmate was placed into solitary confinement for 30 days, the report says.

Separate footage from the same facility shows a corrections officer pepper-spraying an inmate who also made no visible provocations. Disciplinary charges against the inmate were later dismissed, and the officer faced no discipline, according to the report.

The comptroller’s investigators found scant evidence of a thorough investigation. It is unclear whether officials even reviewed the facility’s security footage, and a corrections investigator asked leading questions of the officer that the comptroller said seemed designed to exonerate him.

Corrections investigators within the special investigations division also did not properly maintain case paperwork, failed to interview officers, inmates, and civilians who witnessed alleged abuses, and deprived inmates of thorough and fair investigations.

In the pepper-spraying case, paperwork did not even include a description of the incident, saying only that a corrections officer had called an emergency code, Thursday’s report says.