By Bob Walsh
Alexander Johnson, 27, was a guest of the county at Florida’s St. Lucie County Jail last November 1 when late in the evening he was found doing a chandelier impersonation. He was in an area where the inmates are supposed to be checked visually by deputies every half-hour more or less. Therein lays the rub.
The area is also under recorded video surveillance. It seems that the deputies were “extremely casual” about doing their checks and were recording checks that were in fact not done. When Johnson strung himself up the records indicated that he had in fact been checked every half hour. He had in fact not been checked for about two hours prior to his death.
Internal affairs went over the hand-written log sheet and the tapes. They found that some of the checks varied from the logged time by from one minute (no big deal there) to 23 minutes. Some were just plain never done but recorded as if they were.
There were three deputies on duty in the area. One was found to have no fault in the matter. One was dinged five days without pay. The third, John Soto, resigned while under investigation.
How hard is it to walk down the corridor, look in the cells and then write down the time you actually did it? You are being paid to do it, apparently the staff has the time available to do it. They KNOW they are being videoed. How stupid do you have to be to let yourself get bit on the butt by this?
2 comments:
This sounds like a pretty easy assignment. How much are they paid? I'll bet it's minimum wage. You get what you pay for.
The report I read said they were actual deputies, not jailers. I therefore suspect they were paid more than minimum wage, maybe substantially more.
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