Judge Upholds Firings, Pay Cuts for California Prison Guards Who Bullied Whistleblower

Four correctional officers who worked in an elite investigative unit at a high-security Northern California prison lost their final bid this week to overturn disciplinary decisions arising from an investigation into the 2020 death of a coworker.

The Sacramento County Superior Court on Monday affirmed earlier State Personnel Board findings that the four officers at California State Prison, Sacramento — colloquially known as New Folsom — had violated prohibitions against harassing, bullying and abusing others and using slurs and other derogatory language.

This included harassment of a former coworker in the Investigative Services Unit, Lt. Valentino Rodriguez Jr., a whistleblower who was found dead in his home just days after reporting misconduct within the unit to then-warden Jeff Lynch.

Judge Jennifer K. Rockwell’s 13-page ruling also affirmed that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had sufficient evidence of those violations to terminate former ISU officers Daniel Garland and Marcus Jordan and shave 10% of officers Martin Fong’s and Paul Bettencourt’s pay for 24 and 36 months, respectively.

“The Court’s inquiry is limited to whether substantial evidence supports the decision in light of the whole record,” Rockwell wrote in her ruling. “The Court does not reweigh the evidence.” 

Much of that evidence came from the cellphone of Rodriguez, which contained thousands of texts between the officers. It also showed that he’d told senior officers that the group excluded and degraded him.

“I’m glad that the judge stuck to the decision, and that they’ve run out of appeals,” said his father, Valentino Rodriguez Sr. “I know for a fact that if he hadn’t been in that ISU, he’d be alive today.”

Rodriguez was promoted to the ISU in 2018 to fill in for another officer on administrative leave and became a permanent member before going on leave for stress in early 2020.

His efforts to cope with unrelenting hazing by fellow officers, the loss of his career and his ultimate death by an accidental overdose were chronicled in KQED’s eight-part podcast “On Our Watch: New Folsom.”

The multi-year investigation also told the story of ISU Sgt. Kevin Steele, who urged the warden to investigate Rodriguez’s untimely death. Steele had also reported systemic abuse of inmates and allegations that guards’ negligence resulted in a homicide in a high-security lock-up at New Folsom. Steele died by suicide in 2021.

CDCR representatives have repeatedly said they could not comment on specific allegations made by Steele and Rodriguez before their deaths.

The internal affairs investigation into Rodriguez’s death resulted in the discipline of a number of employees, some of whom settled out of court. Just four officers pursued an appeal all the way to the Superior Court.

Garland and Jordan, who had used a racist slur and other derogatory language in the office, were cited for “Inexcusable Neglect of Duty, Discourteous Treatment of Public or Other Employees, Willful Disobedience, and Other Failure of Good Behavior” and dismissed from their jobs; Fong and Bettencourt, who repeatedly called Rodriguez “half patch” as a reminder of his temporary status on the unit and failed to report misconduct, received lengthy pay cuts, according to court filings.

At a Sept. 29 hearing with the judge, the attorney representing the four officers argued that the offensive language was commonly used as a way to cope with the stress of working in a maximum-security prison and that CDCR’s decisions were overly severe.

“There were no allegations of dishonesty, no allegations of insubordination, but we end up with this nuclear reaction in terms of discipline,” Lina Balciunas Cockrell said. “They communicated off-duty with each other, and they got fired and heavily disciplined for it.”

Timothy Knight, an attorney for CDCR, argued that the policies the officers violated “were in place to prevent exactly what occurred in this case: harassment of a coworker.”

Knight said the officers who didn’t use slurs and derogatory language “were repeatedly not reporting the misconduct that they knew about.”

In disciplinary decisions, he said, CDCR considers the likelihood that the employee would repeat the misconduct.

“These are not individuals that, looking back, have recognized the degree of their misconduct or feel any particular noteworthy responsibility for the mistakes they made,” Knight said.

CDCR dismissed Garland and Jordan in October 2021, according to a department spokesperson. Fong and Bettencourt still work for CDCR at other prisons. Their attorney could not comment in time for publication.