Watchdog’s Criticism Ineffective

The Department of Corrections failed to root out a gang of rogue officers known as the Green Wall at Salinas Valley State Prison, even after a state watchdog agency confirmed that the group existed and the warden was protecting it.

A January 2003 report by the state Office of the Inspector General underscored that the Green Wall included several members of the prison’s Investigative Services Unit -- the same officers responsible for delving into inmate crimes. Top corrections officials decided not to follow up on the critical report even though the officers flashed gang signs, wore green wristbands and boasted about brutalizing inmates.

“The department’s response to this and other reports by the inspector general wasn’t as thorough or as timely as it could have been,” said corrections spokesman Bob Martinez. “There is an acknowledgment by the department that the code of silence exists, and we’re committed to eradicating it.”

The existence of a gang of officers who imposed a code of silence at Salinas Valley was made public by Donald Joseph Vodicka, a whistle-blowing guard who is suing the Corrections Department for failing to protect him from retaliation by co-workers.

Vodicka, 41, testified last month before a state Senate hearing that he was forced to take a stress leave after writing a series of internal reports about the Green Wall.

“My life whole changed after I came forward and told what I knew about the Green Wall,” Vodicka said. “My reports were supposed to be confidential, but they were leaked to line officers by upper management. Next thing you know, I was being called a ‘rat’ and a ‘snitch’ in front of officers and inmates.”

The Corrections Department, citing the lawsuit, declined to comment on the particulars of Vodicka’s case. Warden Anthony Lamarque, whom the inspector general’s report accuses of misleading state agents about the Green Wall, is on sick leave.

Acting Warden Edward J. Caden said that alleged Green Wall members have been removed from the Investigative Services Unit, and that the group seems to have vanished.

“I don’t believe that any such group still exists here,” Caden said. “The management team at Salinas Valley State Prison does not condone the conduct alleged to have occurred. We remain deeply committed to the administration’s goal of rooting out misconduct.”

Vodicka traces the gang’s roots to an incident in the prison’s D Yard on Thanksgiving Day 1998 when a group of inmates attacked and injured several guards. As the inmates were led back into a segregated cellblock, Vodicka said, they were roughed up by some of the guards. In the weeks that followed, a group of officers began wearing turkey-shaped pins on their uniforms as a symbol of the Thanksgiving beating.

Word then spread that some of the same officers and others had formed a Green Wall gang. In an internal memo obtained by The Times, Lt. Greg Lewis wrote to the department’s Office of Internal Affairs that the Green Wall reached inside the investigative unit at Salinas Valley. Officers had begun signing in for work with green ink and writing “7/23” on walls. The seventh and 23rd letters of the alphabet -- G and W -- stood for Green Wall.

Officers in green attire were throwing parties with green beer. A group photo captured several officers flashing the same sign: three fingers extended with thumb and middle finger held down -- in the shape of a W.

Officer gangs can be vehicles to brutalize inmates and silence guards who might consider reporting the abuses. At Corcoran State Prison in the 1990s, a gang of officers known as the Sharks operated with just such impunity, prompting newspaper exposes and a high-level state investigation.

But Lewis had a hard time getting anyone above him interested, including Lamarque.

“The warden did not act on [Lt. Lewis’] report that Investigative Services Unit officers might be involved in the Green Wall group,” the inspector general’s report stated. “Over a period of three months, the warden was repeatedly advised by several managers about personnel problems in the investigative unit but failed to take appropriate action.”

Frustrated, Lewis asked Vodicka and a co-worker to write memos about the existence of the Green Wall. At first, both men refused to cooperate, fearful that breaking the pervasive code of silence would bring retaliation. But Lewis persisted and they relented. It was the first of three memos that Vodicka would write.

By late 2001, after a captain had leaked the contents of his third memo to staff, Vodicka was being singled out as a “snitch” by fellow officers. He won a transfer to Pleasant Valley State Prison, but the hostilities followed him.

Lamarque did request an investigation into the Green Wall, but it came four months after Vodicka had blown the whistle. “It wasn’t an investigation,” Vodicka said. “It was a cover-up.”

Vodicka tried to get the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. to help him, but the union refused. As a last resort, he contacted the inspector general’s office, the independent watchdog charged with investigating whistle-blower allegations. The inspector general’s probe found that the group existed, but that it wasn’t easy unearthing evidence of brutality.