By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, February 8, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | Two Star B | NEWS | A03
Two Bergen County Jail inmates testified Friday that dissatisfaction with the jail’s food led to a hunger strike and a disturbance last month in which one prisoner was bitten three times by a guard dog.
Gary Jones and Gregory Cannell testified at the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack at continuing hearings on a 1988 class-action lawsuit filed by the state Department of the Public Advocate to reduce overcrowding at the jail.
Jones and Cannell said that prisoners are dissatisfied with the quality of food and the size of the portions. Until the protest, they said, food often was served cold.
Jones said that, as a leader of a group of white inmates, he persuaded black and Puerto Rican inmates in his dormitory to go on a hunger strike Jan. 11. All 64 inmates from the dormitory skipped lunch that day, he said.
That evening, all but five inmates, who ate because they were hungry and were allowed to leave ahead of the others, dumped their food into the garbage and tried to rush out of the dining hall past corrections officers to return to their dormitory, Jones said.
Officers used dogs to quell the disturbance, Jones said. Cannell said that corrections officers cornered a group of inmates, handcuffed and beat him, then allowed a dog to bite him on his left hand and once on each arm.
As a result of the disturbance, 15 inmates were charged with rule violations, and Cannell and Howard Tucker each face a charge of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer.
Cannell, whose testimony will continue next week, hired Westwood attorney Leopold A. Monaco to represent him on the charge. Cannell said inmates had many complaints, ranging from how corrections officers treat them to physical conditions. Monaco said his client has been held in isolation since the incident as punishment.
County officials have maintained that the correction officers actions were proper, saying the inmates provoked the response by rushing for the doors.
The hearings resumed this week before James A. Zazzali, a special master appointed by U.S. District Judge Harold A. Ackerman in September 1989, when the parties failed to reach an out-of-court settlement. They are expected to last at least through February.
ID: 17368253 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)
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