Three former NY state jail guards were arrested on Wednesday on federal charges that they participated in the 2013 beating of an inmate who suffered life-threatening injuries and had a clump of dreadlocks ripped from his head as a “trophy”.
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“We allege that through retaliation, the charged corrections officers struck Moore with wooden batons, punched him repeatedly in the face and ribs, hit him in the head and the body and even ripped dreadlocks off his head, one allegedly picking up the dreadlocks from the floor, saying he wanted to save them as a trophy”, Bharara said.
The officers, Kathy L. Scott, who is also known as Kathy Todd, and George Santiago Jr. and Carson Morris, were indicted on charges of conspiracy, civil rights violations and fraud. They were charged in an indictment filed in federal court in White Plains. Two other officers who participated in the alleged beating and cover-up, Donald Cosman and Andrew Lowery, have already pled guilty to similar charges and are cooperating with the prosecutors. According to the indictment, Moore had originally questioned why he was being kept in a mental health unit, and whether he was a “monster”, which precipitated the beating; when officer Santiago was kicking Moore in the face minutes later, he taunted him by asking “who’s a monster now?”
After the officers forced Moore to the ground, the defendants beat Moore for several minutes, striking him dozens of times. “That beating left Moore in a pool of his own blood”. He sustained numerous broken bones and a collapsed lung. All of the defendants discussed and agreed that they would write the “Use of Force Report” and supporting memoranda falsely reporting that Moore had pushed one of the correction officers backward onto a table. Before he was sent to the hospital, they locked him in solitary confinement overnight, the court filings say.
Scott took photographs of the marks on the officer’s back to try to document the false evidence, the state says.
Three former jail guards were arrested on Wednesday.
Information on their lawyers was not immediately available. Kevin Moore, 57, a repeat felony serving up to 20 years in prison for a conviction on burglary and grand larceny charges, was pummeled by at least four state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision officers as a sergeant, Kathy L. Scott, who also took part in the assaul, stood by and ignored his pleas for help, according to federal court records.
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After the beating, prosecutors said, the officers tried to cover it up, with Santiago, Morris and others agreeing to pretend the inmate had attacked an officer.
