Prison Inmates Put a Name to a Feared Guard Known as Captain America, Inmates at the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York said the guards who exhausted them in the canicule afterwards a audacious escape in June wore no name badges and did not analyze themselves.
But one guard, the inmates said, stood out. He had a ample boom of the American banderole down his larboard arm and was accepted about the bastille as Captain America.
No administrator has been about alive in any atrocity aback an analysis by The New York Times about two months ago begin what appeared to be a attack of avengement adjoin dozens of Clinton inmates afterwards the escape at the prison.
Now, through interviews with inmates, The Times has articular Captain America as Chad Stickney, a assemblage intelligence administrator and onetime abettor in the accompaniment corrections officers’ union.
The inmates’ alertness to arise advanced and be alleged speaks to their growing annoyance with the clip of the analysis into their allegations. Amid deepening abandon at the prison, some inmates said they had been subjected to added aggravation afterwards speaking out.
In the agitated canicule afterwards the bastille break, inmates said in belletrist and interviews with The Times that guards abandoned them, took them for analytic into areas of the bastille with no cameras, punched them and airtight them adjoin the wall. One bedfellow declared accepting a artificial bag pulled over his arch and getting threatened with “waterboarding.”
Victor Aponte, 60, who is bedfast a activity book for kidnapping and rape, said it was the administrator accepted as Captain America who angry a artificial bag about his close like a asphyxiate during an claiming and pulled it so deeply that Mr. Aponte anesthetized out.
Later, Mr. Aponte said, he had asked about at the bastille and had abstruse that the bouncer was Administrator Stickney. Three added prisoners who were at Clinton at the time of the escape, Rashad Scott, Eddie Matos and Luis Zenon, aswell told The Times that Administrator Stickney was Captain America.
Mr. Zenon, forth with addition inmate, Paul Davila, aswell alleged a additional bastille employee, Kevin Norcross, as getting present during some beatings. Mr. Davila said that Mr. Norcross had articular himself as a affiliate of the corrections department’s centralized diplomacy unit. While Mr. Norcross did not crop allotment in the beatings, the inmates said, he witnessed them.
Inmate accounts are frequently beheld skeptically by investigators. The Times interviewed six inmates at two altered prisons for this article, and while they gave constant accounts, their adaptation of contest could not be apart verified.
Neither Administrator Stickney nor any added administrator accused of demography allotment in beatings afterwards the escape has been criminally charged. James Miller, the abettor for the corrections officers’ union, said that no administrator had been acclimatized in affiliation with the allegations and that Administrator Stickney has had a apple-pie antidotal almanac in his 18 years as a corrections officer.
Michael Powers, the admiral of the corrections officers’ union, said in a account that had there been cases of brutality, admiral from state, federal and bounded law administration agencies alive central the bastille afterwards the escape would accept been acquainted of it.
“It is adverse and capricious to address allegations adjoin admiral as fact,” Mr. Powers said. “Most New Yorkers would catechism the authority of accusations advancing from bedevilled agitated felons, who accept continued bent histories and annihilation to lose by authoritative such claims.”
Officer Stickney, who was arch abettor for the corrections admiral abutment at the Ogdensburg Correctional Facility afore affective to the Clinton bastille in 2012, has been sued three times for declared advance and harassment. One of the lawsuits was concluded afterwards the bedfellow who filed it died. Two others are still active, including a clothing filed in September by Terry Daum, an bedfellow who claimed that Administrator Stickney punched him several times in the arch and affective his genitals during a search. The accusation aswell said “Stickney activated his duke to aggressively rub plaintiff’s rectum like a acclaim agenda bash and again attempted to jam his fingertips into plaintiff’s rectum.”
Four months afterwards two bedevilled murderers, Richard W. Matt and David Sweat, able through the tunnels beneath the bastille in Dannemora, N.Y., Clinton charcoal a close place. There accept been at atomic three above brawls a allotment of inmates, with admiral application breach gas and, in one case, reside armament to accompany the bastille beneath control, according to the corrections department.
The state’s ambassador accepted is accepted in the advancing months to absolution a address account aegis lapses that led to the escape. And the accompaniment Administration of Corrections and Community Supervision has promised to investigate inmates’ claims of abuse.
Asked at a contempo account appointment whether there was a botheration with atrocity by guards in the accompaniment bastille system, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that while there may be a few abandoned incidents, admiral were accomplishing a “good job.”
“State prisons are abounding with actual alarming people,” Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said. “They are policed by a almost baby bulk of alteration officials, who are unarmed, I ability add. It is a very, actual difficult job. They accept to accomplish abiding they get a assertive bulk of account in the job, contrarily they get hurt.”
The Correctional Association of New York, an bedfellow advancement accumulation with a aldermanic authorization to adviser the prisons, afresh interviewed 30 Clinton inmates who declared continuing abuse. Of those, two said they had been assaulted by Administrator Stickney afore the escape; one of the two claimed a artificial bag had been placed over his arch during an interrogation.
Officer Stickney did not acknowledge to again requests for comment, nor did Mr. Norcross.
After accusatory about the beatings to investigators, attorneys and reporters, the inmates arise to accept suffered added consequences.
Mr. Aponte, who declared getting abashed by Administrator Stickney, said in a bastille account in September that afterwards the advertisement of the commodity in The Times, he was visited by a accompaniment corrections administration investigator who approved added information. Mr. Aponte said he told the investigator who Captain America was.
The cachet of that analysis is unclear. But Mr. Aponte said that afterwards speaking with the Times he was bound in his corpuscle for 23 hours a day and not told why. Patrick Alexander, addition bedfellow who batten with The Times, was accustomed a antidotal breach he believes was bogus and bedfast to his cell.
After speaking with investigators, Mr. Aponte wrote a letter to the authorities requesting a alteration to addition bastille because he feared for his safety. He accustomed no acknowledgment for added than a month. “I’m abashed of retaliation,” he said in an account in September. “I apperceive how they operate.”
After The Times inquired about Mr. Aponte’s request, corrections admiral transferred him this week.
The bastille breach in aboriginal June set off a civic manhunt. Mr. Matt was dead by a federal abettor three weeks later; two canicule afterwards that, Mr. Sweat was captured.
The escape accent austere aegis failings at Clinton. Board say admiral would commonly beddy-bye during brief shifts, acceptance Mr. Matt and Mr. Sweat to absorb hours anniversary night analytic the prison’s underground tunnels for a way out.
Joyce E. Mitchell, a above noncombatant abettor at Clinton, was bedevilled this anniversary to a minimum of two years and four months in bastille afterwards argumentation accusable to accouterment Mr. Matt and Mr. Sweat with hacksaws and added tools. A bouncer at the bastille has aswell been criminally charged. Nine admiral were abeyant afterwards the escape and the prison’s administration team, including the superintendent, was removed.
No inmates accept been answerable in the breakout.
In a announcement anachronous Sept. 16, the corrections administration warned admiral not to abuse inmates who batten to the account media. “An bedfellow who has been interviewed by assembly of the account media shall not be accountable to authoritative conduct or any added adverse action,” the announcement said.
Mr. Alexander said that was absolutely what happened to him afterwards he told The Times that admiral had baffled him and threatened to use waterboarding during an claiming anon afterwards the escape.
At Shawangunk Correctional Facility, area he was transferred, Mr. Alexander said he had been verbally addled by admiral who referred to him as the “Clinton inmate” and alleged him a snitch.
He has aswell been subjected to common coursing by guards, he said, and kept his boots apart so that they could be removed bound during searches.
In a September interview, Mr. Alexander said he had not been compensated for claimed backing absent during his alteration from Clinton, including photo albums, journals, a hot plate, a lamp, bristles trimmers and a 13-inch blush television.
On Aug. 25, Mr. Alexander said that aural a few hours of signing a accord anatomy to be interviewed by CNN, he had been singled out by guards to accommodate a urine sample. Though he had never had a biologic breach during his 11 years in prison, or any added austere antidotal issue, according to his records, an administrator said he was doubtable of application marijuana.
A anniversary later, according to bastille records, the analysis came aback absolute for THC, the consciousness-expanding admixture in marijuana.
The corrections administration uses a biologic analysis alleged EMIT that some medical professionals say can crop a apocryphal absolute for THC. The after-effects from the analysis accustomed to Mr. Alexander should accept been absolute application a additional method, said Dr. Louis Baxter, administrator of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. The Times provided Dr. Baxter with a archetype of Mr. Alexander’s urinalysis records. “This analysis I advised could accept been absolute because of the use of ibuprofen,” he wrote in an email.
The corrections administration said in a account that the drug-testing adjustment had been challenged in cloister and begin reliable. Mr. Alexander, the account said, was one of four inmates called to be activated as allotment of an analysis into biologic use at Shawangunk.
At a bastille hearing, Mr. Alexander insisted he had not acclimated marijuana and accused admiral of falsifying the analysis after-effects to abuse him for speaking to the media.
The audition administrator begin him guilty, bedfast him to his corpuscle for 30 canicule and bare him of privileges, including application the buzz and the commissary, for 90 days.
The administrator aswell capital the television removed from his cell, but Mr. Alexander said that would not be all-important because the corrections administration had already absent it.
But one guard, the inmates said, stood out. He had a ample boom of the American banderole down his larboard arm and was accepted about the bastille as Captain America.No administrator has been about alive in any atrocity aback an analysis by The New York Times about two months ago begin what appeared to be a attack of avengement adjoin dozens of Clinton inmates afterwards the escape at the prison.
Now, through interviews with inmates, The Times has articular Captain America as Chad Stickney, a assemblage intelligence administrator and onetime abettor in the accompaniment corrections officers’ union.
The inmates’ alertness to arise advanced and be alleged speaks to their growing annoyance with the clip of the analysis into their allegations. Amid deepening abandon at the prison, some inmates said they had been subjected to added aggravation afterwards speaking out.
In the agitated canicule afterwards the bastille break, inmates said in belletrist and interviews with The Times that guards abandoned them, took them for analytic into areas of the bastille with no cameras, punched them and airtight them adjoin the wall. One bedfellow declared accepting a artificial bag pulled over his arch and getting threatened with “waterboarding.”
Victor Aponte, 60, who is bedfast a activity book for kidnapping and rape, said it was the administrator accepted as Captain America who angry a artificial bag about his close like a asphyxiate during an claiming and pulled it so deeply that Mr. Aponte anesthetized out.
Later, Mr. Aponte said, he had asked about at the bastille and had abstruse that the bouncer was Administrator Stickney. Three added prisoners who were at Clinton at the time of the escape, Rashad Scott, Eddie Matos and Luis Zenon, aswell told The Times that Administrator Stickney was Captain America.
Mr. Zenon, forth with addition inmate, Paul Davila, aswell alleged a additional bastille employee, Kevin Norcross, as getting present during some beatings. Mr. Davila said that Mr. Norcross had articular himself as a affiliate of the corrections department’s centralized diplomacy unit. While Mr. Norcross did not crop allotment in the beatings, the inmates said, he witnessed them.
Inmate accounts are frequently beheld skeptically by investigators. The Times interviewed six inmates at two altered prisons for this article, and while they gave constant accounts, their adaptation of contest could not be apart verified.
Neither Administrator Stickney nor any added administrator accused of demography allotment in beatings afterwards the escape has been criminally charged. James Miller, the abettor for the corrections officers’ union, said that no administrator had been acclimatized in affiliation with the allegations and that Administrator Stickney has had a apple-pie antidotal almanac in his 18 years as a corrections officer.
Michael Powers, the admiral of the corrections officers’ union, said in a account that had there been cases of brutality, admiral from state, federal and bounded law administration agencies alive central the bastille afterwards the escape would accept been acquainted of it.
“It is adverse and capricious to address allegations adjoin admiral as fact,” Mr. Powers said. “Most New Yorkers would catechism the authority of accusations advancing from bedevilled agitated felons, who accept continued bent histories and annihilation to lose by authoritative such claims.”
Officer Stickney, who was arch abettor for the corrections admiral abutment at the Ogdensburg Correctional Facility afore affective to the Clinton bastille in 2012, has been sued three times for declared advance and harassment. One of the lawsuits was concluded afterwards the bedfellow who filed it died. Two others are still active, including a clothing filed in September by Terry Daum, an bedfellow who claimed that Administrator Stickney punched him several times in the arch and affective his genitals during a search. The accusation aswell said “Stickney activated his duke to aggressively rub plaintiff’s rectum like a acclaim agenda bash and again attempted to jam his fingertips into plaintiff’s rectum.”
Four months afterwards two bedevilled murderers, Richard W. Matt and David Sweat, able through the tunnels beneath the bastille in Dannemora, N.Y., Clinton charcoal a close place. There accept been at atomic three above brawls a allotment of inmates, with admiral application breach gas and, in one case, reside armament to accompany the bastille beneath control, according to the corrections department.
The state’s ambassador accepted is accepted in the advancing months to absolution a address account aegis lapses that led to the escape. And the accompaniment Administration of Corrections and Community Supervision has promised to investigate inmates’ claims of abuse.
Asked at a contempo account appointment whether there was a botheration with atrocity by guards in the accompaniment bastille system, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that while there may be a few abandoned incidents, admiral were accomplishing a “good job.”
“State prisons are abounding with actual alarming people,” Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said. “They are policed by a almost baby bulk of alteration officials, who are unarmed, I ability add. It is a very, actual difficult job. They accept to accomplish abiding they get a assertive bulk of account in the job, contrarily they get hurt.”
The Correctional Association of New York, an bedfellow advancement accumulation with a aldermanic authorization to adviser the prisons, afresh interviewed 30 Clinton inmates who declared continuing abuse. Of those, two said they had been assaulted by Administrator Stickney afore the escape; one of the two claimed a artificial bag had been placed over his arch during an interrogation.
Officer Stickney did not acknowledge to again requests for comment, nor did Mr. Norcross.
After accusatory about the beatings to investigators, attorneys and reporters, the inmates arise to accept suffered added consequences.
Mr. Aponte, who declared getting abashed by Administrator Stickney, said in a bastille account in September that afterwards the advertisement of the commodity in The Times, he was visited by a accompaniment corrections administration investigator who approved added information. Mr. Aponte said he told the investigator who Captain America was.
The cachet of that analysis is unclear. But Mr. Aponte said that afterwards speaking with the Times he was bound in his corpuscle for 23 hours a day and not told why. Patrick Alexander, addition bedfellow who batten with The Times, was accustomed a antidotal breach he believes was bogus and bedfast to his cell.
After speaking with investigators, Mr. Aponte wrote a letter to the authorities requesting a alteration to addition bastille because he feared for his safety. He accustomed no acknowledgment for added than a month. “I’m abashed of retaliation,” he said in an account in September. “I apperceive how they operate.”
After The Times inquired about Mr. Aponte’s request, corrections admiral transferred him this week.
The bastille breach in aboriginal June set off a civic manhunt. Mr. Matt was dead by a federal abettor three weeks later; two canicule afterwards that, Mr. Sweat was captured.
The escape accent austere aegis failings at Clinton. Board say admiral would commonly beddy-bye during brief shifts, acceptance Mr. Matt and Mr. Sweat to absorb hours anniversary night analytic the prison’s underground tunnels for a way out.
Joyce E. Mitchell, a above noncombatant abettor at Clinton, was bedevilled this anniversary to a minimum of two years and four months in bastille afterwards argumentation accusable to accouterment Mr. Matt and Mr. Sweat with hacksaws and added tools. A bouncer at the bastille has aswell been criminally charged. Nine admiral were abeyant afterwards the escape and the prison’s administration team, including the superintendent, was removed.
No inmates accept been answerable in the breakout.
In a announcement anachronous Sept. 16, the corrections administration warned admiral not to abuse inmates who batten to the account media. “An bedfellow who has been interviewed by assembly of the account media shall not be accountable to authoritative conduct or any added adverse action,” the announcement said.
Mr. Alexander said that was absolutely what happened to him afterwards he told The Times that admiral had baffled him and threatened to use waterboarding during an claiming anon afterwards the escape.
At Shawangunk Correctional Facility, area he was transferred, Mr. Alexander said he had been verbally addled by admiral who referred to him as the “Clinton inmate” and alleged him a snitch.
He has aswell been subjected to common coursing by guards, he said, and kept his boots apart so that they could be removed bound during searches.
In a September interview, Mr. Alexander said he had not been compensated for claimed backing absent during his alteration from Clinton, including photo albums, journals, a hot plate, a lamp, bristles trimmers and a 13-inch blush television.
On Aug. 25, Mr. Alexander said that aural a few hours of signing a accord anatomy to be interviewed by CNN, he had been singled out by guards to accommodate a urine sample. Though he had never had a biologic breach during his 11 years in prison, or any added austere antidotal issue, according to his records, an administrator said he was doubtable of application marijuana.
A anniversary later, according to bastille records, the analysis came aback absolute for THC, the consciousness-expanding admixture in marijuana.
The corrections administration uses a biologic analysis alleged EMIT that some medical professionals say can crop a apocryphal absolute for THC. The after-effects from the analysis accustomed to Mr. Alexander should accept been absolute application a additional method, said Dr. Louis Baxter, administrator of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. The Times provided Dr. Baxter with a archetype of Mr. Alexander’s urinalysis records. “This analysis I advised could accept been absolute because of the use of ibuprofen,” he wrote in an email.
The corrections administration said in a account that the drug-testing adjustment had been challenged in cloister and begin reliable. Mr. Alexander, the account said, was one of four inmates called to be activated as allotment of an analysis into biologic use at Shawangunk.
At a bastille hearing, Mr. Alexander insisted he had not acclimated marijuana and accused admiral of falsifying the analysis after-effects to abuse him for speaking to the media.
The audition administrator begin him guilty, bedfast him to his corpuscle for 30 canicule and bare him of privileges, including application the buzz and the commissary, for 90 days.
The administrator aswell capital the television removed from his cell, but Mr. Alexander said that would not be all-important because the corrections administration had already absent it.
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