Captains' Stories Shaky
Toss Brutality Rap, With Reservations

By REUVEN BLAU

An Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings judge last week recommended dismissing charges against two Correction Officers and Captains who allegedly used excessive force against a teenage inmate who refused to enter his cell during a jail lockdown.

JOHN B. SPOONER: 'Credibility extremely weak.'

OATH Judge John B. Spooner noted that the Correction Department's case against the officers relied on the testimony of Miguel Rodriguez, the inmate who was injured, and Christopher Perez, another inmate housed directly across from him.

Contradictory Claims

Mr. Spooner said their credibility was "extremely weak" and noted that the inmates' accounts of the Dec. 15, 2005 incident contradicted one another, even as he expressed suspicions about how truthful the Captains had been.

The department was seeking to fire Captains Joseph Cicino and William Menge and Correction Officers Michelle Winchester and Nicole Ingleton for using excessive force and subsequently submitting false reports about the confrontation, which occurred in the adolescent protective custody housing area of the Robert N. Davoren Center.

The officers all said that the dispute started after Mr. Rodriguez's unprovoked attack on Officer Ingleton, who was trying to get him to return to his cell. According to their account, he cursed at her, and then grabbed her shirt and slapped and punched her.

In response, Captain Cicino ran to help her and exchanged blows with Mr. Rodriguez, wrestling him to the floor. Captain Cicino testified that during the confrontation they tumbled, striking the sink, bed frame, and radiator.

Overcome by Spray

Captain Menge said he too came to help, but was overcome by the chemical spray, which was used to restrain Mr. Rodriguez. Officer Ingleton activated her body alarm to call a department probe team, which helped control the situation.

During the fight, Officer Winchester was unable to view much of what happened because she was in a vestibule nearby that was locked down after the altercation started. But she said she was able to hear what was going on.

Mr. Rodriguez denied starting the fight. He said that everything began after he complained about having to go back into his cell an hour before the regular lock-in, but he maintained that he returned without incident. According to his testimony, his complaining angered the officers, who he said threatened to retaliate against him later.

Mr. Rodriguez said roughly 15 minutes later Captains Cicino and Menge burst into his cell asking him why he was "assaulting" one of the officers. They then began hitting him and the probe team also later joined the attack, he said.

In the adjacent cell, Mr. Perez testified that Captain Menge actually entered his cell while Captain Cicino went into Mr. Rodriguez's cell. Mr. Perez said he noticed that Officer Ingleton's shirt was popped open and Captain Menge asked him if he was involved.

According to Mr. Perez's version of events, Captain Menge dragged him out of his cell and ordered him to crouch to his knees to prevent him from seeing what was happening to Mr. Rodriguez.

Doesn't Believe Inmate

Judge Spooner noted that both the officers and the inmates offered very different versions of what occurred. The OATH judge pointed out, however, that Mr. Rodriguez denied ever striking Officer Ingleton "even though the injury report established that the officer had a visible bruise on her chest." That injury "significantly discredited the inmates' story," he added.

Mr. Spooner also detailed the timeline of events, which he concluded was compatible with the account offered by the officers. "The timeline is decidedly inconsistent with Mr. Rodriguez's account of a 10-to-15-minute beating at the hand of the Captains," the 17-page recommendation stated.

The decision noted that both the inmates were convicted felons. Mr. Rodriguez, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident, had been convicted of robbery and for the sale of illegal drugs. He was also diagnosed as schizophrenic and as having an attention disorder. Mr. Perez was serving a sentence for assaulting a Police Officer, robbery, and selling drugs.

Notably, however, Mr. Spooner also said that there were a "multitude of credibility problems raised by the testimony of the four respondents." He noted that there was evidence that Officers Ingleton and Nittoli's reports used similar language, which indicated that they were written together.

Captain Implausible

"Officer Winchester's testimony, too, raised a number of puzzling questions," Mr. Spooner said.

He pointed out that she never activated her own body alarm while she was stuck in the vestibule. "When asked why she did not do so, she repeatedly stated that her priority was to help the other officer, declining to acknowledge that, locked inside the vestibule with no means of reaching the officer in peril, activating an alarm might have been her only way to offer assistance," Mr. Spooner said.

Captain Menge's account also raised questions, the decision continued. "He never offered a plausible explanation as to why he interrupted his other duties to follow some 20 feet behind Captain Cicino, without even letting the other Captain know he was doing so," the recommendation stated.

The attorney for the department pointed out during the hearing that Captains Cicino and Menge both made dramatic changes in their facial appearance, with one shaving his head and the other growing a bushy mustache. "Such a parallel shift in prominent facial features in a case in which inmate identification might be critical seemed suspicious," Mr. Spooner said. "Neither Captain had a convincing explanation as to why both effected these simultaneous changes."

He added that the likely motivation was to confuse the inmates in identifying which was which. Mr. Spooner, however, said that didn't change the facts of the case.

'Unethical or Worse'

"While such practices are, at the least, unethical and, at worst, dishonest and in violation of rules regarding candid and independent reporting, they do not, in the absence of other credible evidence, make it more likely than not that the employees are guilty of the offense they fear they may be charged with," he stated.

The recommendation was forwarded to DOC Commissioner Martin F. Horn, who has final authority in disciplinary matters.

Ronald W. Whitfield, the president of the Correction Captains' Association, hailed the decision. He noted that Captain Merge was three months away from retiring when the incident occurred. "The department was overzealous," Mr. Whitfield asserted. "They had a person who devoted 20 years of service. They tried to take his job away from him. This took up a lot of time and money for a not-guilty verdict."

He noted that the department lost a similar case against a group of Captains in 2005. "I'm hoping that this and the previous cases will help the department take a look at the penalties that they want to be imposing," he remarked.