More jailers charged in inmate assaults
District Attorney: 4 detention officers went too far
Four detention officers went too far during confrontations with inmates at the Oklahoma County jail, the district attorney alleged Tuesday.
The misdemeanor assault and battery charges are the latest arising from investigations into inmate mistreatment at the troubled jail just west of downtown Oklahoma City.
Two of the cases involve incidents this year, after a public trust took over operation of the jail. A third case involves an incident in April 2019 while the jail was still under the control of the sheriff ’s office.
District Attorney David Prater signed off on the charges himself.
About the 2019 incident, the prosecutor said investigators recently determined that paperwork on the investigation “had not been brought over to us.”
“They just brought it to us last week,” he said. “They were looking through some old investigations ... to see what had been closed and what hadn’t been closed. And they realized this one was open.”
In the latest incident, detention officer Frantz Desir is accused of shoving an inmate with both hands March 22 during an argument in the kitchen area of the jail.
The inmate, Dylan Buxton, was injured when he fell backward and struck
The misdemeanor assault and battery
charges are the latest arising from
investigations into inmate
mistreatment at the troubled jail just
west of downtown Oklahoma City.
his head against a metal table, according to the charge.
The argument began after the inmate refused to recheck the temperature of breakfast food, then used a “slang term” in addressing the Black officer, a trust investigator reported in an affidavit.
The inmate “stated he did not use the term in a racially driven fashion” but Desir “approached him in an aggressive manner and told him to ‘say it to his face.’ ... He did.”
Desir, 36, of Oklahoma City, could not be reached for comment. He was listed in county payroll records as still employed at the jail Tuesday.
Second incident prompts charges
Two officers were charged with assault and battery over the other incident this year.
A former senior detention officer, Antonio Padin Rivera, is accused of unlawfully shoving an inmate into a cell door Feb. 2 and then striking the inmate on the floor with his knee twice.
Senior detention officer Richard Blane Clark is accused of unlawfully pepper spraying the inmate in the face from less than a foot away.
Rivera used force after the inmate threw water in his face, an investigator reported in a court affidavit. An officer who helped take the inmate, Christopher Dixon, to the ground reported she placed her forearm on Rivera’s chest and yelled at him to stop, according to the affidavit.
Clark pepper sprayed the inmate even though “Dixon was being held on the ground” and “was not kicking, grabbing or giving any indication that he was resisting detention officers,” according to the affidavit.
Rivera, 22, of Yukon, could not be reached for comment and no longer works at the jail.
Clark, 22, of Edmond, also could not be reached for comment. He was still on payroll records Tuesday as a jail employee.
In the 2019 incident, a former lieutenant, Joseph Leroy Hedderman, is accused of unlawfully using pepper spray on a female inmate and then kicking her in the chest.
The inmate, Cait Chapman, is suing former Sheriff P.D. Taylor and Hedderman in Oklahoma City federal court over the incident.
Hedderman, 31, of Oklahoma City, was fired in 2019, according to the lawsuit. He declined comment Tuesday.
The trust has come under fire since taking over the jail July 1 because of a number of highly publicized incidents there including a hostage taking last month.
Three former detention officers were charged last year with misdemeanors over other incidents involving inmates. One former officer is accused of unlawfully punching a naked female inmate in the shower on Aug. 6.