State Committee: Video Of Rikers Inmate Beating Should Be Released To Public
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The New York state Committee on Open Government said this week that Rikers Island jailhouse surveillance footage outside a cell where a handcuffed inmate was beaten by six guards in 2012 should be made public.
The video was played publicly during the administrative hearing this spring of a captain involved in Robert Hinton's beating in a now-shuttered unit for mentally ill inmates.
The Department of Correction said Hinton was beaten after being carried hogtied into a cell for refusing to be escorted. The department said that to justify the use of force, the guards fabricated a story that Hinton put one of them in a chokehold.
An administrative law judge in September recommended the captain and five guards involved be fired.
But Department of Correction lawyers have denied The Associated Press' public records request for the footage as well as the AP's appeal of that denial.
Committee on Open Government Executive Director Robert Freeman said in a Nov. 7 opinion that since the footage was played publicly, it should be disclosed.
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