[PRISONACT] Gap in Surveillance Tape at Issue in Abuse Suit by
Sandrine Ageorges
Gap in Surveillance Tape at Issue in Abuse Suit by New Jersey Inmates
By JOHN SULLIVAN
The New York Times
TRENTON, June 20 - A surveillance videotape, shot with the jerky
intensity of a police reality television show, has raised troubling
new questions about a 1997 prison lockdown in which more than 600
inmates claimed they were beaten by guards and the state did nothing
about it.
The tape, shot by an internal affairs investigator monitoring events
after the fatal stabbing of a guard by a prisoner at Bayside State
Prison in Cumberland County, shows a handcuffed inmate being moved by
guards.
The inmate claims the guards threw him down a set of concrete stairs
in a scene that is missing from the video. The State Department of
Corrections denies any abuse took place and said the camera's battery
died during the missing segment of tape.
The video is the starkest piece of evidence to emerge so far in a
case involving hundreds of witnesses along with boxes of written
reports. It is also the first item that raises the possibility that
someone may have tried to hide what happened during the lockdown.
That possibility has led the corrections commissioner to take the
unusual step of requesting a new investigation by the attorney
general.
Surveillance videos are supposed to be continuous, with no breaks
from beginning to end, according to the Corrections Department's
policy. The internal affairs officer recently told his superiors that
he stopped taping because the camera battery died, but they have not
been able to find any written report attesting to it.
Last week, Corrections Commissioner Devon Brown formally asked
Attorney General Peter C. Harvey to investigate the gap in the video
to find out whether the tape had been altered. Neither Mr. Brown nor
Mr. Harvey would comment on the investigation.
The tape was one of dozens delivered to United States District Court
in Camden as part of a lawsuit that 600 inmates filed against the
state claiming that widespread beatings followed the murder of a
guard in July 1997. A single inmate was involved in the killing, but
the inmates claimed they were beaten indiscriminately during the
monthlong lockdown that followed. The state has denied the claims.
Commissioner Brown reviewed the video after receiving questions about
it from The New York Times. Mr. Brown, who did not take office until
years after the lockdown ended, instructed his chief of internal
affairs to investigate and referred the tape to the attorney general.
In April, after guards came forward to say they witnessed beatings,
Mr. Harvey announced that he was reopening the state's criminal
investigation into the lockdown. Department of Corrections internal
reports written at the time of the lockdown also advised of
widespread abuse.
The video, which was made two weeks after the guard's murder, shows a
team of guards talking through a cell door with an inmate who is
holding a footlocker on his shoulders. The guards forcibly remove him
from the cell and drag him along a metal catwalk.
They pull him headfirst down a metal staircase until his shoulder
wedges against a stair halfway down. One of the guards then steps on
the inmate's groin and shoves down with his foot, rolling the howling
inmate over. The inmate tumbles down the rest of the stairs.
Then the guards carry the inmate toward a door that opens to a second
set of stairs leading to a courtyard outside.
At that point, the video stops. When it restarts, the guards reappear
carrying the inmate across the courtyard.
The inmate claims the guards threw him down a set of concrete stairs
leading from the cellblock to the courtyard. His lawyers say the
inmate's diaphragm was herniated so badly that he needed surgery.
"They threw me from the top," the inmate said in a deposition last
year. He said he landed face down on the concrete sidewalk.
Ronald Randall, the internal affairs senior investigator who made the
tape, told the chief of internal affairs recently that the camera
battery died as the guards approached the second staircase, according
to a state spokeswoman. He said that he managed to replace the
battery just after they passed the stairs.
Mr. Randall declined to speak with a reporter. The chief of internal
affairs, Debbe Faunce, interviewed Mr. Randall, according to the
Corrections Department. Chief Faunce originally recused herself from
the Bayside investigation because she is married to the man who was
warden at Bayside during the lockdown, according to Chuck Davis, a
spokesman for the attorney general's office.
The former warden, Scott Faunce, has been named as a defendant in the
prisoners' lawsuit. Corrections officials declined to respond to
inquiries about whether they felt any conflict still existed.
Corrections officials said Mr. Randall never spoke aloud on the tape
to note that the battery died, which they said was a violation of
department procedures. Mr. Randall said he had filed a written report
on the malfunction, the officials said, but the department has not
been able to locate the report.
Forensic video experts are divided on how difficult it could be to
determine whether the Bayside tape has been altered. Bill Krone, an
expert from San Mateo, Calif., who provides analyses for legal cases,
said it is possible to tell whether a videotape stops because the
camera stopped or because it was edited. Mr. Krone also said analysts
should be able to tell whether the tape at the Corrections Department
is the original or a copy.
Robert Walker, manager of the forensic video section at the Criminal
Justice Institute of British Columbia in Vancouver, said it would be
easy to tell whether an original tape was later edited. But he said
it could be hard to determine whether a tape stops because it was
purposely shut off or because of a malfunction.
Retired internal affairs officers interviewed for this article said
equipment used by the department was often old, and mechanical
breakdowns were not unheard of. However, they said internal affairs
officers are supposed to make written reports or notes on a video log
whenever such breakdowns occur. A copy of the video log, obtained
under the state Open Public Records Act, does not show any notation
about a break in the tape.
Three retired internal affairs investigators said in recent
interviews that the department's procedures require internal affairs
officers to continuously tape any inmate transfer involving physical
force.
"Once you turn the tape on, you cannot turn it off until everything
is over with," said Monica Baylor, who retired in 2001 as the
principal investigator at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for
Women, in Clinton. "I would tell the officers, `Once I turn this on,
I can't turn it off.' "
The tape serves as an insurance policy for both the guards and the
inmates, she said. Each prison's internal affairs office is supposed
to keep the tapes carefully cataloged and stored under lock because
they may be used as evidence.
If a tape suddenly stopped without explanation, she said, it could
raise serious questions about what happened during the missing period.
"You just don't turn it off," she said. "People would say: `What
happened in those minutes? What did you do to that inmate?' "
Copyright 2003 The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/23/nyregion/23PRIS.html
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