After over a year and a half and a political campaign by local organizations, the New York State Commission of Correction has finally released its report on the Aug. 2010 death of Raul Pinet Jr., an inmate at the Onondaga County “Justice” Center. The report comes 32 days after a broad coalition of community groups known as United as One, of which the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is a founding and active member, held a press conference demanding the release of the report. The report documents an hour of terror inflicted on Pinet at the hands of the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department and the Syracuse City Police Department.
Pinet was arrested on Shonnard St., on the city’s Near Westside, on Aug. 6, 2010. Although he was unarmed, police attacked Pinet violently. Residents of the house where Pinet was arrested, in fact, said that they were terrified of the police when they entered and ran into the back of the house. The report says that Pinet struggled with officers and was placed into a prisoner transport vehicle.
According to the report, when Pinet arrived at the jail at approximately 8:26 pm, he was taken into a “time-out” room in booking, a secure cell. Pinet was handcuffed and placed face-down on the cell floor. Deputies then removed Pinet’s clothing and put a “spit-mask” on him, a mask which has a mesh section that is supposed to go over the mouth. At 8:51 pm, a nurse entered the room to assess Pinet. The report documents that the nurse spent a total of 56 seconds assessing Pinet.
By the time that the nurse examined Pinet, the spit-mask had been rotated, severely restricting his breathing. The nurse did not readjust the mask or order it to be removed, according to the report.
For two minutes, jail staff waited outside of the room while Pinet struggled and yelled. He was struggling and yelling because he could not breathe. Between 8:54 and 8:55 pm, “correction officers are viewed periodically kneeling on Pinet’s neck and upper back over his lung cavity.” At 8:55 pm, Pinet stopped moving and became silent. At this point, the correction officers exited the room one by one.
What happened next is as disgusting as it is astonishing. The correction officers accused Pinet of “feigning unresponsiveness,” or “faking it.” It was not until 9:03 pm that a deputy actually entered the room and attempted to get a physical response from Pinet. It was not until 9:05 that the handcuffs were removed from Pinet. From this point on, the report detailing the incident is blacked out.
The report’s most damning conclusion is that Pinet’s death was due to asphyxia during restraint, which makes it a homicide. Immediately after Pinet’s death, the Onondaga County Medical Examiner concluded that the death was the result of “cocaine-induced excited delirium,” a diagnosis with little-to-no legitimacy within the scientific community and not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. “Excited delirium” is essentially a blanket justification for state murder; nearly every single death attributed to excited delirium has occurred to someone in the custody of of law enforcement.
Report omits important facts
Unfortunately, the Commission of Correction report only regurgitates the Syracuse Police Department’s telling of the story. The report does not mention that the police brutally attacked and beat Pinet. The report mentions that the Pinet was handcuffed and then “carried off the porch and placed face down on the side walk.” This is not what happened. According to a slew of eyewitnesses, Pinet was thrown face-first down a flight of concrete steps. When his wife, Tashara Pinet, was finally able to see his body, after being illegally denied access, she said that she could barely recognize him.
According to the report, as Pinet was being taken from the transport van into the jail, he resisted, telling Sheriff’s deputies that “he did not want to be beaten anymore and that he did not want to die.”
The report, and many media stories about the case, brush over or neglect to mention the brutality that Pinet suffered at the hands of the police. Such information, however, is essential to understand why Pinet struggled so much during his arrest. Pinet was literally struggling for his life.
Additionally, sources from inside the jail have told sources close to Liberation News that the staff present at the incident were required by Sheriff administrators to re-write and then re-submit their reports about the incident. We do not know why they were asked to do so, but we can assume that it was an attempt to cover-up the incident. The CoC report does not mention if they only received the re-submitted reports, or if they also received the original reports.
The report does, however, give additional firepower to the Pinet family as they struggle for justice, and the community, as we organize to defend ourselves against the violence of the police and prisons.
Members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation have been extremely active in this struggle. We organized a community forum within days of Pinet’s death. We helped organize and lead a march on the jail the following month. We have remained active even as the headlines have faded from the front page. Last year, we helped organize a protest outside of the jail on the anniversary of Pinet’s death. And one of our members spoke at last month’s press conference demanding the release of the CoC report. We know that this is not the case of a few “bad apples,” but that the police and the prison system are rotten to the core, and cannot be reformed.
We will continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Pinet family and all other workers and poor people struggling against the police and prisons.
