By Brendan J. Lyons
Times Union
ALBANY, N.Y. — Two correction officers at the Montgomery County jail were arrested last month after one of them was caught on camera choking an inmate who claims several guards systematically beat him at the facility for months, according to court records and interviews.
Although most police agencies have policies that require public disclosure when officers are arrested, Montgomery County Sheriff Michael J. Amato kept the arrests quiet.
Reached Friday, Amato claimed he could not discuss the case “because of the investigation.”
“There were two correction officers arrested; that’s all I can tell you,” the sheriff said.
The former inmate, Ryan Cook, who was held at the jail for four months on minor drug charges, has filed a notice of claim against the county accusing at least six correction officers of attacking him repeatedly. Cook was jailed in June and moved to the Fulton County jail last month. He has since been released.
Officer Kevin Abrams, 27, was arrested last month on misdemeanor charges of choking, official misconduct and harassment. Officer Richard Pelosi, 51, was charged with official misconduct.
District Attorney James E. Conboy also declined to provide any details about the case, saying he is ethically prohibited from releasing the information.
In Cook’s claim that was filed recently with the county clerk, he said that he was assaulted more than 20 times between July and August.
“During these assaults, Mr. Cook was repeatedly subjected to the unjustified and excessive uses of force, including, but not limited to, being punched, slapped, kicked, choked and Tasered,” the claim states. “Officer Abrams, among other officers, repeatedly threatened Mr. Cook not to say anything or they would retaliate against him.”
Cook’s attorney, Elmer R. Keach III, said Cook was targeted because he has mental health issues.
Keach said the beatings were stopped last month when a jail employee witnessed Abrams choking Cook on a surveillance camera and stepped in.
In an interview Saturday, Cook said Abrams was the ringleader of a group of guards that began assaulting him in July, not long after Cook was told his father died. He said Abrams, who is extremely large, “thought it was funny” to squeeze Cook’s neck and lift him off his feet.
“A couple times I woke up on the floor and I didn’t even know where I was,” said Cook, who is 5-foot-6 and weighs about 135 pounds. On one occasion, Cook said, another jail officer, Cpl. Michael R. Bellamy, used a Taser on him.
“There was like five of them that thought it was a big joke just beating on me,” Cook said.
In October, Cook said, he wrote down the exact times one of the assaults took place. He gave the information to a sergeant, who followed up, reviewed surveillance tapes and reported the incident after allegedly seeing Abrams choking Cook. Sheriff’s investigators interviewed Cook and he said three officers were suspended and two were arrested.
Keach, who has filed more than 10 lawsuits against Montgomery County over alleged problems at the jail, lashed out at Amato for concealing the officers’ arrests.
“I find it to be duplicitous and hypocritical that Sheriff Amato is happy to issue press releases anytime anybody is arrested for minor charges in Montgomery County, but when his own correction officers commit crimes he tries to hide that fact from the public,” Keach said. “The fact that these gentlemen were able to act as this rogue cell of guards who believed they could act with impunity is indicative of the failure of Michael Amato’s leadership.”
Montgomery County jail has been the target of other recent complaints regarding the treatment of inmates.
In August, a federal lawsuit was filed against several correction officers and state troopers by the mother of a 37-year-old man who died within hours of being admitted to the jail in May 2014. The lawsuit alleges Kenneth McConville was left alone in his cell, where he was found dead, despite being heavily intoxicated and that he had also swallowed a fatal dose of painkillers when he was arrested during a traffic stop.
“Mr. McConville was never sent to the hospital, never evaluated by medical staff, and his medical condition was never meaningfully evaluated,” the lawsuit states. “Rather, for the next several hours, corrections staff merely looked into the window of his holding cell, and assumed that he was sleeping.”
The lawsuit claims jail officers, including Abrams, may have been “untruthful” when they reported seeing McConville alive in his cell 20 minutes before he was found dead. Paramedics said his body was “cool to the touch” and that his corpse showed signs that he had been dead for hours.
In July 2014, another former inmate, Charles Greenfield, who was facing sexual offense charges, filed a federal lawsuit accusing the jail of illegally placing inmates with sexual offense cases in “involuntary protective custody” because of a staffing shortfalls. Greenfield said he was placed in an isolated cell 23 hours a day for more than 200 days because of the jail’s policy.
“The Sheriff’s Department also made this determination in the absence of an appropriate hearing in contravention of written policies of the New York State Commission of Correction,” states the lawsuit, which was later withdrawn. “A detainee’s status in IPC was also not the subject of any appellate rights or other procedural protections.”
Another federal lawsuit, also filed by Keach, accused the jail of starving inmates. The class-action lawsuit was filed in July 2014 by Perry Hill, who said inmates received food containing 1,700 calories per day, “an amount that is comparable with what concentration camp prisoners received during World War II.”
"(Amato) has recently bragged on the radio about allowing inmates to purchase extra food, and how this will generate new revenue for Montgomery County,” states the lawsuit, which is pending in U.S. District Court in Albany. “Proper sustenance while held in a local jail is a right, and should not be subjected to the whim of municipal officials with a long history of misconduct.”
Coypright 2015 the Times Union