Social Justice

FishKILL Vigilantes

Who watches the watchers? Despite all of the violence experienced by prisoners at the hands of correctional officers

Published

9 years ago

February 12, 2016

In April 2014, Samuel Harrell was sentenced to 8 years in the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (NYDOCCS) for one count of Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance in the 3^rd Degree, a non-violent, Class B felony. He started his sentence at Clinton Correctional Facility, but in January of 2015 he was transferred to Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, N.Y., a medium security mental health facility. In 2010 Sam was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, his family and friends all noticed a change in him, never signs or acts of violence, but when he was not on his medication he suffered from erratic behavior, delusions and paranoia. His wife Diane Harrell said he would go through the house and turn over family photographs, fearing that they were staring at him. He would also think the television was talking to him.

Samuel Harrell

The day of his death, Sam was in a state of deep depression. Ibrahim Camara said he found Harrell, whose nickname was JRock, sitting alone, watching television and asked him what was wrong. “I said, ‘Is it your mom, family or something?’“ He shook his head yes. Mr. Harrell’s mother died that past November in 2014.

Samuel Harrell’s wife, Diane Harrell.
Photo: Ignacio Acevedo

Off of his medication and even after the proper authorities inside the prison were notified of his condition by people on the unit with him, it still went untreated and ignored.

On the night of April 21, 2015, around 8:30 pm, he slipped into a delusion and told an officer that his wife and sister were outside waiting to pick him up and he needed to leave, according to one witness affidavit.

No one was waiting outside for him and he still had years left on his sentence, but he would never get a chance to finish that sentence and go home to his family. That night, Samuel Harrell, 30 years young, was killed by the “The Beat Up Squad.” A rogue gang of correction officers known for inflicting pain and terror, every prison in New York State has a similar faction.

Officers say that they called for medical and mental health assistance, but no one answered. Soon after another witness reported that two more officers arrived. “ I believe JRock panicked after seeing all those officers surrounding him,” the witness wrote. “JRock jumped up and ran.”

“I could feel the walls shaking…”

Mr. Camara was in the dayroom watching the Boston Celtic and Cleveland Cavaliers playoff game when he heard a commotion out in the hall. “Me and other inmates, we hear the walls shaking, boom, boom, boom, boom,” he recalled. “Somebody opened the door up and looked outside, and said, “Yo, that’s JRock they got out there.”

According to 19 signed and sworn affidavits, Harrell was not armed, he was not drunk or under the influence of drugs. He was not aggressive, did not use abusive

Family, friends,and supporters gather outside Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, N.Y., on October 21, 2015 to mark the 6 month anniversary of Samuel Harrell’s death. Photo: Erik Jensen

language, and did not make a single threat. An officer handcuffed Sam then threw him face first onto the cold, hard floor. He jumped on his back and landed a knee square between Sam’s shoulders, then proceeded to punch him in the face. Witness accounts say that Harrell never resisted. Outnumbered twenty to one, the officers threw punches, kicks, and screamed “You f**king n**ger!”

“They were jumping on him like a trampoline,” recalled Edwin Pearson, a witness that watched everything from a nearby bathroom.

“I saw officers kicking him, jumping on his head multiple times and screaming, ‘Stop resisting,’ even though he was handcuffed already and I didn’t see him moving.” Mr. Pearson has since been released after serving two years on a weapons charge.

Mr. Camara said inmates were surprised that Mr. Harrell, who was over six feet tall and weighed 235 pounds, did not try to fend himself. “People was mad, I was mad,” he said. “You’re a big guy and you literally let these people kill you.”

While Mr. Harrell lay lifeless on the floor, officers would walk by, kicking and hitting him, Mr. Camara said.

Most of the witnesses could identify the officers by last name only. On a database of New York State employees (SeeThroughNY.net), there are several guards that match the Fishkill officers named in the witness affidavits as being directly involved in the encounter. Thomas Dickenson (named by 10 witnesses), John Yager (10), Officer Michels (9), Bryan Eull (5), and a white woman only known as “Ms. B” (4). Also identified was the ranking officer at the scene Sergeant Joseph Guarino. Sergeant Guarino confirmed he was present that night but would not comment.

Four witnesses wrote that they heard Sergeant Guarino order officers to throw Mr. Harrell down the stairs.

Samuel Harrell was then dragged and thrown down a flight of stairs. Lucas Renfrow, a witness, reports seeing him “bent in an impossible position.” “His eyes open, but they weren’t looking at anything.”

“His body came down head first,” Renfrow said.” “What I seen was his eyes were open. He looked at me and I froze until an officer ( CO Eull) came up and grabbed me by the neck and slammed me in the corner… telling me if I say something I would be in the same trouble (Harrell) is.”

“Harrell came rolling sideways down the stairs,” witness Mr. Martinez wrote, adding that he had a “bedsheet tied all around his body and he was in mechanical restraints.”

Sergeant Joseph Guarino, called for medical attention since Harrell was unresponsive. No CPR was administered. No form of resuscitation was attempted. Harrell’s body was placed in a wheelchair, covered with a torn white sheet, and wheeled away. A porter was called to clean up the blood. “His feet were in black socks, I saw [them] scraping the floor.” Another witness said. There were no surveillance cameras in the area, and corrections employee’s acknowledge there are only a few in the whole facility.

Family, friends, and supporters walk with lit candles from Beacon High School to Fishkill Correctional Facility.
Photo: Erik Jensen

Through the years, Sergeant Guarino, 60, has been sued several times by prisoners accusing him of brutality. One case was settled by the state in 2012 for $60,000 and another in 2011 for $65,000. In a 2011 deposition, he said inmates typically filed around 30 grievances a year against him.

According to records from the ambulance service, a call came in reporting a possible overdose at the Fishkill Correctional Facility at 9:16 p.m.; the ambulance team arrived there at 9:30 p.m. and reached Samuel Harrell at 9:34 p.m. “Staff reports that pt. (Harrell) was possibly smoking K2 synthetic marijuana and became very aggressive, shortly after he went unresponsive and into cardiac arrest,” the records state. No mention of the assault. The Orange County Medical Examiner’s Office later performed the autopsy and found no traces of any illegal drugs in Samuel Harrell’s body. Only anti-depressants and nicotine. He died of cardiac arrhythmia, they ruled his manner of death a “homicide,” caused by “physical altercation with corrections officers.”

The following morning after Mr. Harrell was brutally beaten to death, at 7:30 a.m., Harrell’s sister, Cerissa Harrell, received an anonymous phone call from an inmate in Building 21.

“He called me and said, ‘Sam got hit the night before and they took him. He hasn’t been back and nobody has heard or seen from him,’ ” Cerissa said.

“You could hear the franticness in his voice,” she recalled.

Half an hour later someone from NYSDOCCS called to say her brother was dead.

From left: Jeff Golden from Beacon Prison Action, Samuel Harrell’s wife Diane Harrell, and Erik Jensen. Photo: Erik Jensen

No officers have been held accountable for Samuel Harrell’s death. Quite the contrary, witnesses who still had to serve their time at Fishkill were the ones who were punished. Many have been placed in solitary confinement and threatened with violence. Their mail and phone calls cut off after speaking with Harrell’s lawyers, family, and reporters.

The Correctional Association of New York, a 171 year old inmate advocacy group with a legislative mandate to inspect New York State prisons, published a report documenting “harassment and provocation” by officers working in building 21 on the 3-11 pm shift, in 2013. This was the same location and the same shift where Samuel Harrell was beaten to death. Both acting NYSDOCCS Commissioner Anthony Annucci and Fishkill’s Superintendent William J. Connolly, who resigned 3 months after Harrell’s death, were briefed, but no action was taken.

On September 9^th of last year, Harrell’s family traveled from North Carolina, Texas, and Kingston, New York to hold a news conference. They stood in front of the cameras and microphones in matching shirts with a picture of a smiling Sam in front of angel wings. The shirts read, “Celebrating the life of Samuel D. Harrell, III.”

The father who just lost his son addresses the gathering of supporters and reporters.

From left: Sen. Bill Perkins, Samuel Harrell’s father Samuel Harrell Sr., Attorney Jonathan Moore, and Samuel Harrell’s uncle, at press conference in Manhattan this past September. Photo: Harrell family

“Every day I wake up and thank God for another day.” He speaks about the physical, psychological, and emotional pain. The grieving, the memories, and imagining what his son must have been feeling when he took his last breath.

“The senseless behavior shown by the correctional officers was inhuman,” Samuel Harrell Sr. said. “He was handcuffed, this was a criminal act.”

“I’m his father,” his voice cracks with emotion before he is almost finished, “I feel like I should have passed before him. I’m burying my son.”

Samuel Harrell was only 30 years old, he was not sentenced to death, yet it was the sentence handed down on him by those who are sworn by oath to ensure the care, custody, and control of a prisoner during his sentence. His right to life was stripped by those who had no authority to claim it. The correctional officers committed an act of thievery, and it was taken in an act of archaic brutality. The self-titled Beat Up Squad do not wear name tags as required by NYSDOCCS regulations, they are nameless vigilante officers who function as an organization. Reports from prisoners go back for a decade, with details about a gang of CO’s patrolling Fishkill terrorizing prisoners.

Erik Jensen remembers his friend Samuel Harrell at a make shift memorial by the Fishkill Correctional Facility entrance sign.

The Harrell’s family attorneys from Beldock Levine & Hoffman have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the New York State Office of Mental Health, NYSDOCCS, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, as well as each individual officer involved in the death of Samuel Harrell.

Attorney Jonathan Moore said the lawsuit does not seek a specific sum in damages, and that the family has yet to hear from Gov. Cuomo’s administration. Moore said the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association (NYSCOBA), was named as a defendant “for what we believe was a conspiracy to deprive Samuel Harrell due process and equal protection under the law.”

Moore went on to say that the union conspired with officers to provide false information to the Poughkeepsie Journal. He said union representatives were at the facility and published a poster that appeared all around the prison and stated that Harrell had died because he was fighting the officers and had suffered a drug overdose.

“That,” Moore said, “is a flat out lie.”

“You would think the leader of the state would reach out to the family with some words of sympathy,” Moore said. “We have heard nothing from them.”

Dutchess County District Attorney William Grady and Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, are conducting a coordinated investigation.

“As we have said previously, no member has been placed on leave, suspended or charged as a result of an investigation,” NYSCOBA spokesman James Miller said in a written statement. He went on to say, “Rather than simply relying on allegations made by a handful of violent convicted felons, we will continue to work with our partners in law enforcement to ensure a resolution to this tragic incident.”

The lawsuit asserts that comments made by Miller to the Poughkeepsie Journal several days after

Aerial view of Fishkill Correctional Facility.
Photo: Shutterstock

Harrell’s death were false. Implying with conviction that Harrell died from an overdose.

What is the price of life? For Freddy Gray in Baltimore it was $6.4 million dollars for wandering eyes. We have become desensitized to death, but the right to breathe and live is sacrosanct.

At a press conference, state Sen. Bill Perkins, a Manhattan Democrat, announced he would introduce legislation that would provide for an independent investigation into the NYSDOCCS; overhaul recruitment and training; implement the use of independently monitored cameras at correctional facilities; and provide that a medical and crisis intervention staff be on call, among other reforms.

“There is a lesson to be learned from the tragic taking of Mr. Harrell’s life,” Perkins said. “System-wide reform is needed.”

Harrell’s family is encouraged that federal prosecutors have joined the investigation. “We are less hopeful the Dutchess County D.A. will be interested because they have received reports month after month, year after year, about violence at the prison and have never done anything,” Moore said. “Unfortunately it has taken the unnecessary, brutal and needless death of a young man to draw attention to a real serious problem in the prisons.”

Inmate witnesses are typically viewed with skepticism by investigators, but the accounts from Fishkill are very consistent and from various vantage points.

Polygraph tests are inadmissible in the court of law, but if the NYSDOCCS and NYSCOBA are as honest and upstanding as they assert to be, wouldn’t it be wise to alleviate the harsh allegations and accusations by inserting mandatory lie detector testing if accused, into their union contract agreements? All 19 signed and sworn witnesses in Samuel Harrell’s case have agreed to take a polygraph, but nothing from the other side. You would think the State of New York would want to weed out the corruption, abuse, assaults, and in this case, the murderers.

Who watches the watchers? Despite all of the violence experienced by prisoners at the hands of correctional officers, until March 2015, criminal charges have never been brought against correctional officers for a non-sexual assault on a prisoner anywhere in New York.

Cerissa promised Samuel, “We will not stop fighting for you until you get the justice youdeserve.”

Samuel Harrell’s sister Cerissa Harrell.
Photo: Ignacio Acevedo

She continued, “We ask the District Attorney to bring charges against the men who murdered my brother. I pray for those who, like me and my family, have lost a loved one at the hands of the authorities. No one should have to endure such pain. We will keep fighting until no one else will.”

The investigation into the death of Samuel Harrell is ongoing. It will be one year this April.