Jail beat over Garner vid
THE MAN who filmed Eric Garner’s death says he’s been beaten by correction officers in a prison near the Canadian border and tossed into solitary confinement in retaliation for the video.
A letter from Ramsey Orta dated Oct. 16 says he was roughed up by correction officers at Franklin Correctional Facility that day and taken into isolation. He said a nurse was uninterested in taking a report of the abuse.
“I fear for my life in this facility and can’t take the ongoing abuse anymore, please help me!” Orta wrote in the letter shared with the Daily News by his lawyer.
A state Department of Corrections official declined to comment on Orta’s allegations, saying the Office of Special Investigations is looking into the incident at Franklin and a prior alleged incident at Fishkill Correctional Facility.
Orta, 26, pleaded guilty in Staten Island court to drugs and weapons charges last year, resulting in a four-year sentence. Authorities said they caught him selling crack, heroin, oxycodone and marijuana in the Staten Island park across from where Garner died. Orta was busted with a gun in a separate incident.
Orta has long said the arrests were retaliation for his video of Garner repeating “I can’t breathe” while locked in an NYPD chokehold on July 17, 2014.
Orta said in his letter from prison that five to seven correction officers were involved in moving him to solitary. One of them “shoved my face into the wall very hard and started to pull my hair from behind and began to slap me on the right side of my face a few times,” he wrote.
During a pat-down, he said, the same correction officer “grabbed and pulled” his genitals twice. Orta says he was then slapped again.
Orta’s attorney, Andrew Plasse, said his client believes he’s being targeted by a correction officer who once served as a police officer. The correction officer, Orta said, is retaliating against him for the Garner video.
“He’s constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure nothing happens to him,” the lawyer said.
Orta was thrown in solitary for a “tier 3” infraction typically linked to contraband or fighting, Plasse said. Orta hopes to be out of solitary by Thanksgiving.
Plasse asked that the correction officers mentioned in the letter not be named for fear of retaliation.
Orta’s ordeal behind bars began shortly after he was sentenced, according to papers obtained by the Daily News. He served time at Fishkill Correctional Facility before being sent to Franklin Correctional, just 10 miles from Canada.
A notice of claim filed by Plasse says Orta was duped in December into trusting an inmate at Fishkill. The inmate lured Orta into an ambush where he was slashed, the legal papers say.
The attorney said he is still preparing a lawsuit over the incident to be filed in the Court of Claims. The notice says Orta will seek $10 million for the slashing.
Orta has at least five ongoing lawsuits against the city stemming from his frequent run-ins with the law — most while participating in protests.
His most recent suit, filed last month, says he was wrongfully arrested at an anti-police-brutality demonstration in September 2016. The lawsuit notes that Orta is the only person at the scene of Garner’s death who has gone to prison.
Orta’s opinion about whether filming the Garner video was worth it frequently changes, Plasse said, adding that his client badly misses his two young kids.
“He paid a heavy price for (the video) — assuming he’s correct about all of this retaliation — and it’s hard to not perceive it as retaliation,” Plasse said.