A report released Dec. 18 by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine has confirmed that as many as 20 federal correctional officers routinely abused Muslim, Arab and South Asian men detained on immigration violations at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The report found that "some officers slammed and bounced detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time." The report recommends that 10 guards still working at the jail be disciplined and that another two undergo counseling. The new employers of four guards who no longer work at MDC should be notified of the government's findings, said the report.

The Dec. 18 report follows a report issued last June 2 by Fine's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which found detainees at MDC faced "excessively restrictive and unduly harsh" conditions and "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse" meriting further investigation. That pattern of abuse has now been confirmed by more than 300 videotapes which were recorded by the jail from October 2001 to February 2002--videotapes which MDC officials previously claimed had been destroyed, despite a US Bureau of Prisons policy requiring such material to be kept for two years [see INB 6/7/03]. Many prison officials interviewed for the June report denied conduct which was subsequently confirmed by the tapes, casting doubt on these officials' credibility. Many tapes are still missing and there are unexplained gaps in the available footage, according to the new report.

The new report confirmed that detainees at MDC were kept shackled for long periods of time, kept in cells which were brightly lit 24 hours a day, and kept awake at night by guards repeatedly banging on cell doors. The report also found that jail personnel improperly taped detainees' meetings with attorneys and misused strip searches as punishment. In a few cases, after talking with their lawyers through a solid partition and in the presence of prison staff members, some male detainees were stripped naked and searched in front of female employees, the report said.

One focus of the report was a US flag t-shirt bearing the slogan "These colors don't run," which hung for months on a wall in the sally port, a prisoner receiving area at MDC. Four corrections employees told investigators the t-shirt had bloodstains on it; while no employee would say where the blood came from, the report says there is "some evidence" it resulted from detainees being slammed into the wall. Videotapes showed MDC officials pressing detainees' faces up to the t-shirt; videotapes and testimony from some MDC officials also confirmed detainees' complaints of being slammed into walls. Detainees said they were slammed into walls much more frequently before video cameras were brought into the facility in October 2001.
[Washington Post 12/18/03 (online version), 12/19/03; New York Times 12/19/03; Daily News (New York) 12/19/03; OIG Report December 2003]

The abuse was said to be worse at MDC than at other facilities. "Most detainees did not have complaints about their treatment at other institutions or by other officers," the report concluded.

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