4 NYC Jail Officers Indicted in Inmate Beating

Four correction officers were arraigned Friday on charges they beat a jail inmate last year and then faked incident reports to cover up the assault, authorities said.

Officers Michael Dorsainvil, Christopher Huggins, Mark Anglin and Ronald Donnelley pleaded not guilty at their arraignment in criminal court in the Bronx after a grand jury returned a 19-count indictment charging them in inmate Carl Williams’s beating on Rikers Island.

Williams was being escorted back to the George Motchan Detention Center on Rikers last March when he cursed at the officers for taking and throwing away a bag of food he was carrying, prosecutors said.

Surveillance video shows Williams going back into a pen as Dorsainvil, Huggins and Anglin follow him in and hit him. But they then filed reports saying they had to use force to stop Williams from hanging himself. Donnelley filed a witness report corroborating their account.

“Correction officers who use force when it is unjustified and falsify the facts to cover it up undermine the safety and integrity of our city’s jails and make the job of all correction officers more difficult,” said Mark G. Peters, the commissioner of the Department of Investigation.

This article appeared in print on page 11 of the March 10th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.