By Robert Nolin
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A Broward Sheriff’s detention deputy has been arrested and charged with striking a disrespectful inmate with her department-issued radio, sending him to the hospital, where doctors had to staple his wound.
As the deputy, Gladys Dauphin, left the bleeding inmate’s cell, she told other deputies “I got him,” according to an investigator’s report.
Dauphin, 37, who has been with the Sheriff’s Office since December 2004, was charged Wednesday with aggravated battery, official misconduct and filing a false report, the agency said Thursday. She is free on $6,100 bail and suspended without pay.
According to Sheriff’s Detective Joe Kessling, Dauphin entered inmate Darryl Cunningham’s cell at the main County Jail about 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 20 to “counsel” him. Other deputies reported that Dauphin said Cunningham, 25, “disrespected” her. Those witnesses told Kessling they saw Dauphin, 5 foot 9, “whack” Cunningham, 5 foot 4, as he sat on his bed.
Cunningham suffered lacerations to the left upper side of his head, and was taken to the jail infirmary where he received five staples to close his wounds, officials said. He was in jail on several warrants, including burglary, drug possession, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and resisting arrest.
Kessling said Dauphin’s log entry for Cunningham’s injury read, “inmate stated I fell.” That was the basis for the false report charge.
The case was investigated for about three months by the Sheriff’s Office, which forwarded its results to the Special Prosecutions Unit of the State Attorney’s Office. The prosecutor in that unit was in trial on another case and then did some follow-up investigation before filing formal charges, State Attorney’s spokesman Ron Ishoy said.
“The day of the incident the deputy was suspended, and that gave our detectives an opportunity to do a thorough investigation,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright said. “She was no longer a threat to that inmate or other inmates.”
Dauphin has had no previous internal affairs actions against her, Coleman-Wright said.
Copyright 2009 South Florida Sun-Sentinel