Courts and Law New York City

Guard, ex-guard arrested in 2012 death of Rikers inmate

June 10, 2015 By Larry Neumeister and Jake Pearson Associated Press
Rikers Island. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File
Rikers Island. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File
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A current and former Rikers Island correction officer were arrested in an inmate’s 2012 beating death and a third guard has already pleaded guilty in the case after a federal investigation revealed the guards in the nation’s second-largest jail system conspired to lie about what happened, authorities announced Wednesday.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced the arrests of former guard Brian Coll and current guard Byron Taylor in Ronald Spear’s death following a federal investigation that began when state authorities decided not to bring charges.

“Rikers inmates, although walled off from the rest of society, are not walled off from the protections of our Constitution,” Preet said at a news conference.

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The investigation showed how the guards worked together to thwart investigators who tried to learn how the 52-year-old inmate, who was awaiting trial on a burglary charge, was killed on December 19, 2012, according to a description of the case in a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.

Spear was held face-down on the jail’s floor in view of fellow inmates shouting, “They’re kicking him!” and “They’re killing him!” according to the criminal complaint written by FBI Agent Vanessa M. Tibbits.

She wrote that witnesses said Coll struck and kicked Spear repeatedly before kneeling on the floor next to a moaning Spear, lifting his head, and saying, “Remember that I’m the one who did this to you,” before dropping his head on the hard floor.

The FBI agent said a corrections captain told investigators that Coll asked in a phone call about six to eight months after Spear died whether he should get a tattoo of a teardrop on his eyelid, a symbol that investigators say members of street gang’s use after a gang member kills someone. She said the same captain was told by Coll after the state court case ended without charges that “I beat the case.”

The complaint said two guards were cooperating in the probe, including former corrections officer Anthony Torres, 59, of New Rochelle, who has pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit obstruction of justice and filing a false report.

Coll, 45, of Smithtown, was charged with depriving Spear of his rights, obstruction of justice, filing a false report and conspiracy while Taylor, 31, of Brentwood, was charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Authorities say Taylor helped restrain Spear and then lied about his role.

New York City settled a lawsuit last year for $2.75 million stemming from the death, which was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner’s office. Lawyers say Spear complained that guards retaliated against him for contacting lawyers about his kidney disease treatment.

Attorney Samuel Braverman said lawyers “will defend Mr. Taylor vigorously and cross each bridge as we get to it.”

A lawyer for Torres declined to comment while a lawyer for Coll did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

New York’s 11,000 daily inmate jail system has come under increased scrutiny over the past year after the deaths of two seriously mentally ill inmates at Rikers Island and other problems.

Subsequent investigations by the news media, city investigators and lawmakers have drawn attention to the jails, whose problems Mayor Bill de Blasio has said were decades in the making and will not be fixed overnight.

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NYC Dumps For-Profit Health Provider for Jails 

New York City is dumping the private company that delivers health care in its jails after a year of scrutiny over high-profile deaths of mentally ill inmates and a city probe that found the company hired felons and provided questionable care.

Corizon Health Inc.’s contract, which is set to expire Dec. 31, won’t be renewed and instead the city’s public hospital system will run medical and mental health care for the roughly 70,000 inmates who pass through Rikers Island and other city jails every year, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.

“We have an essential responsibility to provide every individual in our city’s care with high-quality health services — and our inmates are no different,” he said in the statement before a planned Wednesday news conference.

The announcement comes as city Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters revealed the findings of a monthslong probe into the Brentwood, Tennessee-based company, the nation’s biggest for-profit correctional health provider, which has been under contract with the city since 2001.

A company spokesman hasn’t responded to a request for comment. Company officials have previously said they try to give the best possible care in the jails, which is a notoriously difficult task given the wide range of health problems inmates often face, many even before they come into custody.

Corizon, and Rikers, have come under increased scrutiny since a series of reports by The Associated Press revealed the horrifying deaths of mentally ill inmates in recent years, including one who an official said “basically baked to death” in a sweltering cell and another who died after he was ignored for days, during which time he sexually mutilated himself. The AP first reported last fall that city officials were reviewing Corizon’s contract after a story found 15 inmate deaths since 2009 deemed medical in nature in which investigators found quality and timeliness of care was a factor.

The DOI report released Wednesday takes an in-depth look at Corizon’s hiring practices, concluding that its background checks of new hires — which in some cases were nonexistent — failed to fully account for prospective workers’ financial, criminal and professional histories, leaving them susceptible to corruption.

In recent months, DOI has arrested a Corizon nurse on charges he took bribes for smuggling alcohol and tobacco to inmates, a mental health clinician on charges he smuggled tobacco and synthetic marijuana inside a lotion bottle and, last month, a Corizon employee who had served 13 years in prison for kidnapping on charges he smuggled a straight edge razor into a Rikers facility.

The report further concluded that persistent communication problems between the Department of Correction, which runs the jails, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which oversees inmate care and Corizon, which provides the care, has resulted in pervasive hiring problems.

The Department of Correction hasn’t conducted criminal background checks of the 1,100 fingerprinted Corizon employees working in city jails since at least 2011 — a problem it didn’t discover until DOI informed them of it last year.

The fingerprints of hundreds of Corizon employees sent by the company to the Department of Correction for full criminal background checks were ignored, apparently never forwarded to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services and not run through the jail’s own inmate intelligence databases, the report found. Investigators even discovered a 1-foot tall stack of Corizon employees’ fingerprints, stuffed into FedEx envelopes, on a former top Department of Correction official’s filing cabinet.

Even more concerning is that state officials stopped accepting physical fingerprints in 2010, moving to an electronic fingerprint system, the report found.

“Conversely, Corizon has never requested the results of any background investigation on its new employees or otherwise sought to obtain a new employee’s criminal history summary from DOC,” the report found.

After reviewing the files of 185 Corizon mental health workers, investigators found that in 89 cases, Corizon failed to conduct any kind of background check at all, hiring employees whose professional licenses were suspect and, in eight cases, employees with criminal records for kidnapping, murder and other crimes.

In one case, Corizon hired a mental health clinician who disclosed in his application that his law license had been suspended for 30 months, apparently without following up on the case. DOI investigators found court officials suspended his license after discovering he “misappropriated” $1,000 in client funds and mismanaged client trusts.

That clinician, who was recently disciplined for improperly handling a suicidal inmate, was arrested last April for his role in a yearslong mortgage fraud scheme involving a partially blind, 60-year-old client.


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