By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Friday, May 1, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | 5 Star | NEWS | B03
Inmates protesting the food service at the Bergen County Jail trampled three corrections officers in a stampede for the dining room door before guard dogs were sent in to quell the January disturbance, several officers testified Thursday.
Corrections Officer Joseph Mastropole said the inmates ignored his command that they leave the dining room in an orderly fashion.
Mastropole’s account and those of three other officers followed testimony in February from six inmates in a federal lawsuit charging overcrowding at the jail. The suit was filed in Newark in 1988, and Thursday’s testimony was heard in Hackensack.
Instead of leaving one table at a time, with the first table in the room leaving first, several inmates at the back tables headed for the door.
“I said, `Wait a minute, the first table has to leave first, ” Mastropole said. “The next thing I knew, 20 to 30 inmates got up and were heading toward me. . . . I was just overwhelmed by the inmates. They pushed me to the floor.”
Corrections Officer Brian J. Irwin testified that he was kicked and punched by inmates. He said that Gregory Cannell, an inmate who later was charged with aggravated assault on a police officer in the incident, took a swing at him but missed.
“It happened so fast,” Irwin said, adding that the officers were unable to keep the inmates inside the dining room.
A grand jury will decide whether to indict Cannell and another inmate, Howard Tucker, on charges of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer in the disturbance.
The corrections officers versions of the incident matched that of the inmates, except on who attacked whom in the ensuing melee. Officers said Cannell and Tucker physically attacked them, and were cursing and yelling at them.
In their February testimony, six inmates said the officers on duty were the ones who attacked them and ordered guard dogs after them. Cannell, who later served 37 days in isolation and is being housed in the main jail as a problem inmate, was treated for three dog-bite wounds.
Although most of the officers involved went to the medical unit for examination, none was injured.
Deputy Bergen County Counsel Murshell Johnson said outside the courtroom that the officers testimonies showed they resolved in a calm and professional manner a dangerous situation that could have led to many injuries.
Assistant Deputy Public Advocate Audrey Bomse questioned the officers credibility, however. She asked each officer if he had ever verbally or physically abused an inmate, or had seen another officer do so. All said no.
The hearings, part of a federal lawsuit to reduce overcrowding in the Bergen County Jail, will resume in May for further testimony from officers.
ID: 17375943 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)