Sing Sing probed over reports of brutality

Federal prosecutors are investigating allegations that corrections officers at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y., orchestrated beatings during a prisonwide search in November, sending at least seven prisoners to the hospital and more than 20 others to a medical unit.

A flood of officers, including special teams from other prisons, converged on cells over at least two days, ordering prisoners to strip to their boxer shorts and then punching and kicking them and slamming their heads against walls or floors, according to affidavits by 26 inmates who are part of a lawsuit filed Jan. 31 against New York state.

The allegations are buttressed by hospital records and a separate interview with Shamel Capers, a former Sing Sing inmate who is not part of the lawsuit and gave a firsthand account of violence that occurred just days before he was released.

The prisoners in their sworn statements describe one officer holding a man’s arm against a radiator, burning him, and another officer twisting a prisoner’s wrist and thumb and threatening to break his hand. Another prisoner describes how he was blinded for days after being pepper-sprayed while he was handcuffed.

“Every part of my body was burning, like nothing I ever experienced,” the prisoner, Vincent Poliandro, said in his account.

Bruce A. Barket, a lawyer whose firm filed the lawsuit in the State Court of Claims, said it reported the allegations to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which he said was investigating along with the FBI.

Barket said federal investigators have interviewed at least seven prisoners represented by the firm.

“This was nothing short of a planned attack on incarcerated men by correction officers,” Barket said. “Worse, it was approved of and overseen by high-ranking officials in the prison.”

He added, “In our view, staff and supervisors engaged in criminal conduct, and should be held accountable. The suit seeks $1 million in damages for each prisoner.

The U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI declined to comment on the investigation.

Thomas Mailey, a spokesperson for the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which runs the prisons, said in a statement that the agency cooperates with all investigations, but does not comment “to ensure the integrity of those investigations.”

The department said it has 21 of the special Corrections Emergency Response Teams, known as CERT, based in correctional facilities around the state that conduct facility searches, among other tasks. Many of those officers who participated in the incident at Sing Sing wore black tactical gear with visors, according to the affidavits and Capers.

A spokesperson for the union for state corrections officers said the organization had no comment.

Sing Sing, a maximum-security prison opened in 1825 on the Hudson River, is about 30 miles north of New York City and holds about 1,400 inmates, the corrections department said. The facility is perhaps best known as the former home of the state’s execution chamber, where more than 600 people went to their deaths in the electric chair.

According to the affidavits, the beatings occurred largely on Nov. 9 in a housing area known as A block, and the next day in B block, when the prison was on lockdown.

Most accounts begin the same way: A prisoner is ordered to strip and carry his mattress out to be scanned for contraband. The prisoner is then directed to return to his cell and face the back wall, with his hands touching the wall above his head.

Then the beatings begin, the

affidavits say.

Brian Johnson said five officers entered his cell about 8 a.m., kicking and punching him and causing him to fall. As one grabbed his genitals, another put his head against the rim of the toilet, with his dreadlocks inside the bowl. An officer then grabbed him by the hair, he says in the affidavit.

Johnson was taken to Montefiore Mount Vernon Hospital, where he received pain medication, a CT scan of his back and an X-ray of his heel, his affidavit says.

Six other inmates were taken to the same hospital, the affidavits say.

Prisoners said they were accused of disobeying orders even though they say they never resisted.

Aaron Jackson said he stripped and faced the wall. “I complied. I said nothing,” he said.

Officers then began punching his head, back and genitals — “It felt like they were all trying to get blows in,” Jackson said. “They kept saying, ‘Stop resisting’ and ‘This is our house.’ ”

Later, as he was led in handcuffs to the medical unit, CERT officers “took turns” punching and kicking him, he said.

Danielle Muscatello, a lawyer

at Barket’s firm, said about 20 prisoners who signed affidavits were cited for infractions in connection with the incident. Of those, she said, nearly half were found guilty and transferred to other facilities, including two near the Canadian border.

In the case of one prisoner, Sean Davis, a hearing officer did not believe the allegations.

Davis said three officers hit him with fists, feet and batons. He was cited for infractions like “assault on staff ” and “refusing direct order,” records show. At a hearing, a sergeant testified he had observed Davis in his cell and in the medical unit, and that the allegations were untrue.

“The evidence and testimony provided clearly shows that the incident that is described in misbehavior report is not accurate,” the hearing officer wrote Nov. 18.

Muscatello said she first learned of the beatings at Sing Sing from the mother of Anthony Grigoroff, a prisoner whose appeal she is handling.

When she visited Grigoroff a few days after the incident, she found him with a black eye and still appearing shaken.

He had heard that 60-70 prisoners were assaulted in the incident, Muscatello recalled. She asked him to provide her name to any prisoner who wanted to contact her, and soon she was hearing from the mothers and relatives of other prisoners with similar accounts. “Family members just kept calling,” Muscatello said.

She and a colleague began visiting Sing Sing and taking sworn statements from the men.

They also attended their clients’ interviews with federal authorities investigating the incident.

Many of the prisoners who have joined the lawsuit still have years to go on their sentences.

But Capers, 25, is represented by different lawyers and said his assault occurred just days before he was ordered released by a Queens judge who found he was wrongly convicted in a murder case for which he had already served eight years of a 15 years-to-life sentence.

“He was an innocent kid trapped behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit,” said Elizabeth Geddes, a lawyer with one of the firms representing him.

“When he finally reached the end of that very dark tunnel, officers decided to brutally beat him for no reason.”

Capers, in the interview with the New York Times, said he complied with orders to strip to his boxers and place his hands high on the back wall of his cell before four officers and started beating him, and stomped on him after he fell. One, he said, bent his hands back.

“One officer is screaming, ‘Break something — break something on him,’ ” Capers said.

He said that as he was led handcuffed behind his back to the medical unit, he was punched again, in the face, upper torso and stomach.

Capers said he did not try to defend himself, so that he would not incur a new charge that would imperil his release, which happened Nov. 17.

“I really wanted to get home,” he said. “I didn’t move an inch to even resist.”

Dave Sanders/New York Times Shamel Capers, who was wrongly imprisoned, said he absorbed a beating from Sing Sing correctional officers so as not to endanger his release.