Update: Warden Suspended over Prisoner's Scalding Death
Update: Warden Suspended over Prisoner's Scalding Death
Updated: Thu 1:58 PM, Jul 10, 2014
Update: Associated Press
July 10, 2014 - 2 p.m.
FLORIDA CITY, Fla. (AP) -- The warden of a South Florida prison where an inmate was left in a scalding shower until he died in 2012 has been suspended.
Department of Corrections Secretary Michael Crews said Wednesday that Jerry Commings will be on paid administrative leave until the investigation concludes. He added that more sanctions could be forthcoming.
Crews made the announcement after a visit to Dade Correctional Institution, where Darren Rainey, a mentally ill prisoner was punished with a shower so hot that his skin separated from his body.
Commings' suspension is the first disciplinary action taken in this case by the DOC and comes after news reports found that Rainey's death was never properly investigated.
Civil rights groups have called for a federal investigation into the death.
http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/Prison-Chief-to-Assess-Scalding-Shower-Death-266573281.html?ref=281
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Florida prisons chief says wrongdoing in his agency is limited to a few
By Michael Vasquez and Julie K. Brown, Miami Herald
Thursday, July 10, 2014 2:16pm
Two years after a mentally ill inmate died in a scalding-hot shower — purportedly as part of a punishment ritual — the state's prison chief visited the Homestead-area prison where it happened, telling reporters that wrongdoing in his agency is limited to a few bad actors.
"We are going to find those bad seeds and we're going to eliminate them from being able to work in our department," Mike Crews, Florida's increasingly embattled Department of Corrections secretary, said Thursday.
Crews also announced that the warden of the prison has been placed on paid administrative leave. Warden Jerry Cummings' suspension is the agency's latest response to growing allegations of abuse and cover-ups in the prison system.
The accusations aren't limited to Dade Correctional Institution. At a prison in the Panhandle, Crews' agency is accused of retaliating against investigators who raised concerns about an inmate death. The investigators, who filed a whistle-blower lawsuit, say the Department of Corrections' inspector general — whose mission is to uncover and punish wrongdoing — did the opposite in the case of the Panhandle death.
More:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/south-florida-warden-tied-to-death-of-inmate-in-shower-is-suspended/2187971
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
News Release: Associated Press
July 10, 2014
MIAMI (AP) -- The head of Florida's prison system says he's traveling to Dade Correctional Institution for a full assessment on the death of a mentally ill prisoner left in a shower so hot his skin separated from his body.
Department of Corrections Secretary Mike Crews said Wednesday that he will meet with Miami-Dade police officials to offer assistance on the investigation.
The announcement comes several weeks after civil rights groups sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking for a federal investigation.
The groups say Darren Rainey was locked in a closet-size shower stall at the Dade Correctional Institution in June 2012 as a form of punishment. He was left unattended for two hours with scalding hot water that later measured as high as 180 degrees. He was found dead.
Same link for both short articles.
http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/Prison-Chief-to-Assess-Scalding-Shower-Death-266573281.html?ref=281
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Posted on Wednesday, 07.09.14
No answers 2 years later in Florida inmate’s death; guards paid $700,000 to do nothing
Nearly two years after Miami man Frank Smith died in a clash with guards at Union Correctional, the investigation continues with no end in sight.
By Steve Bousquet
Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
TALLAHASSEE -- Nearly two years after a state prison inmate died under suspicious circumstances, the Department of Corrections has offered no reasons for his death and 10 employees suspended over the incident are still on leave and drawing full pay.
Frank Smith of Miami was 44 when he died on Sept. 4, 2012, after a violent altercation with officers as he was being moved from a prison hospital to his cell at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford.
The Department of Corrections placed 10 staff members, including an assistant warden, on paid leave, a routine step when employees are suspected of wrongdoing. So far, taxpayers have paid nearly $700,000 in salaries to them for not working.
~snip~
Darren Rainey, a mentally ill inmate at Dade Correctional Institution in Miami, was scalded to death in a prison shower in 2012. Another inmate, Randall Jordan-Aparo, 27, died in his cell at Franklin Correctional Institution in 2010 after he was repeatedly gassed by guards as he begged for treatment for a worsening medical condition, the Miami Herald reported.
In that case, four investigators with the Department of Corrections filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit, claiming that inmates are beaten and tortured and that prison supervisors fabricated official reports to cover up Jordan-Aparo’s death, the Herald reported.
“They killed that damn kid,” prison investigator Aubrey Land told Gov. Rick Scott’s chief inspector general, Melinda Miguel, in March, according to the Herald.
More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/09/4226583/no-answers-2-years-later-in-florida.html#storylink=cpy
= new reply since forum marked as read
