‘Hurt Him’
https://www.abqjournal.com/873290/guards-handling-of-problem-inmate-sparks-complaints-from-mdc-medical-staff.html
Jail Sgt. Eric Allen gave the order repeatedly: “Hurt him.”
Correctional officers responded by twisting inmate Joe Ray Barela’s handcuffed wrist as he screamed in pain. The officers described it as “pain compliance” needed to control a belligerent prisoner with a long rap sheet and a history of violence.
But it horrified medical staffers who were trying to assess and treat Barela in the emergency room at the Bernalillo County jail, according to county documents released in response to a Journal request for public records.
One nurse called it torture. Two employees were in tears.
“They won’t stop hurting him,” one counselor told a colleague.
And the orders to “hurt” Barela, they said, interfered with their attempts to assess his medical condition.
They told sheriff’s detectives and a private investigator for the county that they think officers used excessive force on Barela and that the incident fueled tension between medical staff and corrections officers inside the massive jail.
Some medical staffers also said correctional officers tried to intimidate them after the incident.
Their accounts of what happened to Barela on Dec. 18 are outlined in reports prepared by sheriff’s detectives and a private investigator for the county Human Resources Department.
The officers saw the incident much differently. No one used excessive force, they said, and their actions were simply intended to keep everyone safe from an inmate with a history of violence.
Barela, 39 at the time, has been booked 30 times and was being held on charges that included aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, according to a jail report.
“This guy is a decade-long troublemaker in any facility,” jail Lt. Stephen Perkins, head of the correctional officers’ union, said in a Journal interview. “This guy is a problem child.”
Whatever happened, the incident highlights tension between correctional officers and medical personnel inside the Metropolitan Detention Center, one of the 50 largest jails in the country.
Allen acknowledged telling “the civilian staff to keep their opinions and noses out of his and security staff’s business,” the private investigator, Doug Shawn, a retired Albuquerque police officer, wrote in his report.
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