York County Prison can’t fire two corrections officers who taunted an inmate who was on suicide watch and then lied about antagonizing the prisoner, a sharply divided Commonwealth Court panel has decided.
The court’s 2-1 decision thwarts an attempt by county officials to overturn an arbitrator’s decision that replaced the firings of officers Marcial Baez and Craig Phillips with one-year payless suspensions.
The officers, who were supported in the case by the Teamsters Union, were disciplined for an incident that occurred in May 2018, Judge Anne E. Covey wrote in the state court’s majority opinion that backs a county judge’s decision upholding the arbitration ruling.
Baez and Phillips were in charge of the prisoner, who was on suicide watch because of mental health issues, when they “verbally engaged in bantering with the inmate, which included taunting and antagonizing the inmate, and using profanity and slurs, causing the inmate to become agitated to the point that he placed a mattress against his cell door,” Covey wrote.
Other officers had to be summoned to force open the cell door. An officer was punched and bitten by the inmate during that altercation, Covey noted.
Baez and Phillips initially denied antagonizing the prisoner, but audio and video recordings of the incident showed they were lying, the state judge wrote. They were terminated, but the union challenged their firings. The arbitrator found there was a lack of just cause to dismiss the pair.
In upholding the arbitrator’s ruling, Covey and fellow Judge Michael H. Wojcik, cited the arbitrator’s finding that while the prison union’s contract allows for firing for a first act of dishonesty, the lies told in this case didn’t rise to a level justifying termination.
Covey and Wojcik rejected the county’s argument that the firings were appropriate because the officers breached public policy that forbids the abuse of inmates. The judges cited the arbitrator’s finding that, “While the banter in this case was excessive and inappropriate…banter of a similar nature does go on in a prison between correctional officer and inmates.”
The arbitrator found the actions of Baez and Phillips “did not come close to the despicable conduct” of three officers of the York Prison who were fired in connection with the running of an inmate “fight club.” Two of those officers were later convicted by a jury of official oppression and conspiracy charges and sentenced to probation in 2016.
Covey concluded the arbitrator’s award doesn’t undermine the policy barring inmate abuse.
Judge Ellen Ceisler issued a dissenting opinion, arguing that the officers deserved to be fired for the 45 minutes they spent calling the prisoner, among other things, “faggot,” “queer,” “pussy,” “big pussy,” “a piece of (expletive),” “nobody,” “dumb dumb,” and “little bitch.”
Ceisler said the firings were justified under the terms of the union contract. She insisted the arbitration award “violates the well-defined, dominant public policy against abuse of prison inmates by corrections officers.”
“I believe the (court) majority’s decision in this case sends a troubling message to our society that there is an acceptable level of tolerance for verbal and emotional abuse of inmates by prison officials and corrections officers,” Ceisler wrote. “Rather than decrying this type of “deplorable” behavior, the arbitrator’s award encourages similar abusive conduct by other corrections officers.”
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