Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Guards at Hernando jail respond to abuse allegations

Nick Ferrio says he and Chris Pursell are being singled out because they gave their names to the inmates who complained.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published September 23, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - Nick Ferrio and Chris Pursell, two guards fired from the jail last week after being accused of abusing inmates, say they didn't do anything wrong.

Now, though, they're under a criminal investigation.

The guards, who are both certified and experienced in jails, say the allegations made by inmates Victor Mammano, 41, and Brent Fiddler, 27, are false.

Those two inmates filed reports with jail authorities saying they had been abused in the booking area of the jail on the evening of Sept. 6, according to warden Don Stewart.

The jail administrators investigated the claims and found them credible enough to fire Ferrio and Pursell. The case was forwarded to the Hernando County Sheriff's Office, which confirmed that a battery investigation is under way.

No arrests have been made and neither the jail nor the Sheriff's Office will comment on specifics of the case.

But the two jail guards were willing to speak out about the accusations that Mammano and Fiddler made, and they are adamant that they did nothing wrong.

"I didn't abuse either of them in any way, shape, or form," Pursell said, "and I didn't use force on either in any way."

An attorney cautioned him not to say anything more in case his comments were misconstrued in the press.

Ferrio gave a detailed, on-the-record description of the night. He didn't abuse anyone at the jail, he said, and the inmates' allegations of a gang beating don't even make sense.

"If seven officers beat this guy all night long, why are myself and Officer Pursell the only ones who got fired for it?" Ferrio asked. "If anything in that videotape was that wrong ... then the shift supervisor, the nurse, the booking clerk - all nine to 13 people in that proximity should have been fired also."

According to Ferrio, the reason he and Pursell have been singled out among the crowd of guards in booking that night is that they gave the inmates their names.

This is Ferrio's version of what happened:

Sometime before midnight, Mammano was brought into the jail on charges of domestic assault. Mammano said his legs wouldn't work. He said he had no memory. He said he didn't know why he was in jail.

The intake nurse said Mammano was faking his problems and gave up on him because he was being so uncooperative, Ferrio said. So he was left in his cell.

Typically, when a person is booked into the jail, the guards take down his personal information, photograph and fingerprint him, and send him through a medical screening. The inmate is deloused, showered and dressed in jail clothes.

But Mammano wasn't cooperating at all, so he was left to lie in the holding cell for a while. The shift supervisor, Adam Nigro, instructed the guards to try again, so they picked up Mammano and walked him from his cell to the booking desk. Every few steps, Ferrio said, Mammano's legs would give out and he would fall to the ground.

Eventually they arrived at the booking counter, where Mammano refused to answer any questions and started to slam his head on the counter.

Ferrio put his fingers under Mammano's chin and cradled it to prevent him from hurting himself. Then Mammano was taken to the shower and to see the nurse - again. He still wasn't answering questions, so Ferrio said he tapped him "real light" on his cheek to get him to answer. That didn't work. So they took him back to the holding cell.

Later in the night, another inmate, Brent Fiddler, came in charged with battery and marijuana possession. Ferrio says Fiddler was cursing and screaming and refusing to be calm.

"He was saying he was unlawfully arrested and now we're holding him against his will, (saying) we've got to let him go," Ferrio recalls. "He started yelling at them about needing everyone's names and numbers because he has a bigwig attorney and is going to sue everybody."

To quiet him down, Ferrio asked Pursell to write down his name on a card and give it to the inmate. Pursell added his name, too.

They gave it to Fiddler, who was quiet the rest of the night. Fiddler was put in the same cell with Mammano.

The next day, Ferrio and Pursell learned they were under investigation by jail officials. Soon after, the Sheriff's Office got involved.

"It's because I told Pursell to write my name on a piece of paper," Ferrio said Thursday. "I guarantee that if Pursell had just written my name on a piece of paper he would still be working there." Ferrio said that all night, there were as many as 13 other employees around. And when Fiddler was carrying on, there were two deputies present. At one point, a deputy also checked on Mammano and Mammano told the deputy that everything was okay.

"This whole thing is just baffling," Ferrio said.

Ferrio also accused Assistant Warden Russell Washburn and Chief of Security Douglas Conn of violating the Officers Bill of Rights.

He said they interrogated him together. The statute says that only one person can act as the interrogator.

They also did not tell him the name of the complainants or the nature of the investigation, he said. And he was denied access to a transcript from the interrogation, despite the statute saying that access has to be made available within 72 hours.

Stewart, the warden, said his investigators did nothing wrong.

"It's often times that people become frustrated when they have a personnel action and make all types of wild complaints," he said.

Ferrio said he had been targeted by an unfair investigation.

"This kind of affects my career and my reputation," he said. "What are they going to do when they find out it didn't happen? Say they're sorry? What does it do for me?"

Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or (352) 754-6114.

[Last modified September 23, 2006, 06:50:40]