Officials Stymied Corcoran Probe, Investigators Testify

Three members of a state corrections investigation team testified Monday that key decisions passed down from Sacramento officials stymied their attempts to investigate allegations of brutality and cover-ups by guards at Corcoran State Prison.

Under oath at an ongoing legislative hearing, repeating accounts previously reported in The Times, the state agents said that important investigative tools were taken away from them by then-Director of Corrections James Gomez and others in Sacramento.

Investigator Ben Eason, who helped supervise the probe, said the department “rolled over” and yielded to the state prison guards union in removing any teeth from their 1997 examination of Corcoran, which had been launched at the behest of Gov. Pete Wilson.

From 1989 to 1995, seven inmates were shot to death by prison guards and 43 others seriously wounded, most during fights in a cramped prison yard. After 1996 stories in The Times detailed the staging of fights by prison guards, Wilson asked the Department of Corrections and the attorney general’s office to conduct investigations. But the probes turned out to be extremely limited--none of of the fatal or serious shootings were fully investigated.

One investigator, Bryan Neeley, testified Monday that his supervisor, Jim Connor, had used the word “sham” to describe the final results of their investigation--a statement that Connor denied, in testimony last week, that he had made to The Times. Connor did not attend Monday’s hearing because of illness, colleagues and legislators heading the hearings said.

Unable to Compel Guards to Testify

The three investigators who did testify Monday pointed to Del Pierce, a trouble-shooter for Wilson who led the 1997 investigation for the Department of Corrections, as the official who told them they could not compel key prison guards to give testimony about their knowledge about any brutality or cover-ups.

“We were unable to extract information from staff,” said Neeley.

Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) then asked why investigators were not allowed to compel officers who witnessed a crime to talk, or face insubordination charges--and how that affected the investigation.

“I considered staff not being compelled to talk as an obstacle that in most cases we were not able to negotiate,” Neeley said.

One incident guards refused to give firsthand accounts of was a case in which problem inmates were purposely locked in a cell and subjected to repeated rapes by an inmate enforcer nicknamed “the Booty Bandit.”

Don Novey, president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., testified that he agreed with investigators that they did not have all the tools to conduct an adequate probe, and had insufficient time and poor direction from their bosses in Sacramento.

Novey said his prison guards union encouraged members to talk if they were not suspects. He said that the 80% of guards at Corcoran who were contacted by investigators and refused to talk did not constitute a “code of silence.”

“There are pockets of codes of silence and it is our job to weed them out,” Novey said.

Monday’s session marked the fourth day of testimony about widespread alleged brutality and cover-ups at Corcoran State Prison and whether the result of the two probes done at the direction of Wilson--by the corrections team and the attorney general’s office--was a whitewash.

When asked whether their investigation was a “whitewash,” the investigators said they wouldn’t use that term to describe the final result. But each one detailed how their probe was almost destined to fail from the start.

The first mistake, they said, was putting Pierce, a political appointee, in charge of the investigation, instead of Brian Parry, an experienced corrections investigator.

Moreover, they were told they could not investigate most of the 43 serious shootings and seven fatalities. They also said they could not question top corrections officials about flaws in policy or whether a cover-up of crimes and brutality reached into the office of director Gomez and assistants Eddie Myers and David Tristan. Finally, they were given only 60 days to complete the task.

The investigation ended in mid-1997 without criminal charges being brought against a single officer.

A federal probe of Corcoran is continuing, and has thus far resulted in the indictments of eight officers on charges of brutality.

One state investigator, John Harrison, said that in hindsight the special team should have teamed up with the state attorney general’s office and the Kings County district attorney’s office at the outset of the state corrections probe to ensure a better outcome.

“I felt we as investigators did a good job, but there were serious problems that occurred during the course of this investigation with regard to management,” he said.

“There were too many chiefs, too many generals,” said Harrison. “If [investigative team leader] Brian Parry would have been able to run it, I feel the investigation would have been better.”

During the afternoon session, legislators questioned Pierce about who made the decision to limit the probe and take away key tools that would help uncover crimes at Corcoran. Pierce said the decisions were made by Gomez.

Gomez was not present at the hearing Monday but two investigators testified that the tools were taken away after Gomez talked with the prison guards union.

Union’s Political Contributions

Novey, who testified Monday evening, said allegations that guards have refused to cooperate with investigators are “unfounded and inaccurate.”

When asked by Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) about the possible chilling effect for state officials of the union’s political contributions, Novey refused to talk about the $5.2 million given to candidates statewide since 1987, including $667,000 to Wilson and $159,000 to Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.

“To speak to contributions stuff, I really don’t want to get into it,” Novey said.

Novey never elaborated about the statements of investigators that the union was allowed to control the probe. He did say that when the union filed a lawsuit against the Department of Corrections in late 1996 seeking representation for guards interrogated by investigators, the department “accommodated us.”

During his testimony, Novey took to task a Times reporter, citing a memoir the reporter had written about his family and the 1972 unsolved murder of his father. In the book, “In My Father’s Name,” Mark Arax uncovered police corruption in Fresno that was condoned by then Atty. Gen. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown in the 1950s.

“When’s it going to end?” Novey asked, holding up the book, and claiming that Arax had unfairly criticized one too many state officials.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said the book and reporter were side issues “not germane” to the proceedings.

During earlier testimony, the three investigators said they were quoted accurately in a July 5 article in The Times, which prompted the hearings. And they reaffirmed their criticism of the probe, saying its ineffectiveness was not their fault but rather the failure of higher-ups to clearly define their mission and the tools needed to do the job.

The accuracy of the quotes became an issue when one supervisor of the probe, Connor, last week testified that he was misquoted and did not use the word “sham” to describe the investigation.

On Monday, Neeley said that he had conversations with Connor before the article appeared in which the supervisor told him he had used the word “sham” to describe the results of their probe.

“I shared with him what I said to the reporter and he shared with me what he said,” Neeley testified.

Neeley said Connor told him “it was a mess, a sham. . . . He [Connor] had the nerve. I had a career and I couldn’t bring myself to say those kinds of things, but you know he’s close to retirement.”

Polanco, in an interview, said he was upset by the apparent contradiction. “That raised the issue of him having perjured himself. Obviously, that’s something to be further scrutinized but it certainly opens the question, the door.”

Polanco said he was disturbed by the testimony.

“From the beginning, the investigation was geared to fail, whether by design or not, it was geared to fail. Why? Because they didn’t have the tools to bring people forward. The tools were taken away,” Polanco said.

Sean Walsh, Wilson’s press secretary, described Polanco’s characterizations as “unfair.”

“I think the investigators did the best job they could, working under the constraints of an ongoing FBI investigation,” Walsh said.

“Quite frankly, at times it’s been partisan and unfair that we have seen investigators testify for three days in a row and asked the same questions over and over again,” Walsh said.

He said some of the investigators, including Connor, were not faring well under the stress of the high-profile hearings.

“We are concerned about the physical health and mental well-being of those who have been called to testify day after day under grueling and combative conditions.”

The hearings are scheduled to resume Aug. 12.