CULTURE OF ASSAULTS BY GUARDS IN B'VILLE JAIL NOT NEW

By Juan Montoya

It was in September of 1995, the day that Julio Cesar Chavez won a lackluster fight against David Kamau.

My sister and her family were down from Corpus Christi and I had used their car to do some errands before I returned it and decided to walk from my parent's house off Coffee Port Road to the Tulane Apartments maybe a mile or so down the U.S. 77 Expressway.

It wasn't a long walk and I was wearing shorts, a T-shirt and tennis shoes when I took off down the frontage road. There was no sidewalk so I was walking on the path next to the frontage road when I was coming up to the Fruia Motors showroom. Two police units suddenly drove up behind me and stopped alongside. One of the officers alighted and asked me for identification. I showed him my driver's license and he asked where I was heading. I told him I was going to the Tulane Apartments down the road and he offered to give me a ride.

I politely refused and told him I wanted to walk. He was persistent and insisted that I climb into the front seat so he could take me. I told him I'd rather walk and he persisted until I climbed in the car. Once inside, we drove along the frontage road and he asked me why I didn't want to ride in the police car. I gave him some kind of answer that I didn't want people living in the apartment to think that I was some kind of informant or in trouble with the law.

He saw through it and kept asking me what the real reason was that I didn't want a ride.

Finally, in the apartments' parking lot, I got out of the car and was leaning through the open passenger's side door when I finally told him something to the effect that "You know, we give you guys everything; good pay, health insurance, retirement, and you still want us to kiss your butt."

That was a bit much for the officer and he ran around the front of the car, slapped handcuffs on me and threw me in the back seat telling me he was charging me with public intoxication and disorderly conduct.

We got to the booking desk where and me – still handcuffed – was asked to provide my identification by a burly jail guard behind the counter. I replied something to the effect that since they had taken me into custody for no good reason, that they find out who I was. The arresting officer standing behind me reached into my back pocket and removed my wallet. The guard then asked me if I had ever served in the military and I told him I had. 

"What service?" he asked. 

"The Marines," I replied.

I should have never said anything. This seemed to enrage the guard and he said: "Oh, so you think you're bad, hey?," and he ran out around the counter and lunged at me. At this time I felt the officer unlock the handcuffs and remove them.

I was able to dodge the blow from his fist but the  burly guard's momentum knocked me down on the concrete floor and he slammed me on the ground, coming  down hard on my ankle with his knee. I looked at the side door and saw the officer laughing as I lay there with the guard on top of me as he went out the door.

I didn't know it then, but he had fractured my ankle. I hobbled to the counter to fill out the information and get my fingerprints taken and my possessions confiscated.

"I thought you were a tough Marine," the guard laughed and took my stuff.

Then, since it was decided that I was being non-cooperative, I was placed in a padded isolation cell totally naked and I lay there that night as my ankle swelled like a balloon. Toward dawn, Randy Dunn – with his habitual pipe – looked into the cell and I heard him tell them to take me out of the cell. They waited until he left and left me there. 

In the morning, when they came to take me out, I told them I needed to get some medical care for my ankle and they called EMS. An ambulance took me to the hospital. I couldn't get my right foot into my tennis shoe. The form filled out at the Brownsville Medical Center listed the cause of my injury as an assault. The PI and disorderly conduct charges were dropped.

I recalled this incident because it has just been reported that a  federal jury on Tuesday awarded $2 million in damages to a Brownsville man wrongfully convicted of assaulting a public servant. He even served four years of eight-year sentence for a conviction of which he was later found innocent
The lawsuit named the city of Brownsville, former police chief Carlos Garcia, jailer Jesus Arias, Sgt. David Infante, Lt. Henry Etheridge, and former Cmdr. Robert Avita as defendants. The assault happened on Nov. 27, 2005, 10 years after my experience at hands of the jailers. According to that lawsuit, three jailers, went into the cell to remove him, and when he attempted to ask a question to the jailers, Arias lunged at him from behind, seized him by the neck and placed him in an illegal choke hold. The local newspaper reported that the jailer claimed that the prisoner had assaulted him while in jail custody and that reports filed by the BPD only obtained accounts from the jailers and not from Alvarez. 

An appeals court eventually cleared the prisoner of the charges, but not before he had served four years.

His lawyers said that they came upon the videotapes of the incident which disproved the police version when another attorney investigating another assault discovered their existence. Until then, it was his word against the police officers and the jail guards.

When I filed a lawsuit against the BPD and the jailer, no local attorneys were willing to take my case. I eventually found one from McAllen who took it. During discovery, there was no mention of videotapes by

Mark Sossi, now the attorney for the City of Brownsville, defended the city and police department from the lawsuit. I recall in federal court and in the court-ordered mediation soon after that Sossi loudly proclaimed that I was shouting to the jailers that I was "a Gyrenre" and that I was being combative. No such thing occurred. I was after all, handcuffed. A videotape of the booking process would have showed he lied. I told the mediator that if Sossi was going to continue making those assertions then we would go through to trial. It was obvious that Sossi would stop at nothing to gain his end, truth and justice notwithstanding.

We reached a settlement after that and the matter was closed.

The $2 million verdict award to the man whose civil right were violated by the police and jailers is poetic justice to me and a vindication of my convictions that Sossi and the upper echelon of the city's administration who keep him there are doing the public a gross disservice.