Syracuse, NY -- Inmate Raul Pinet lay facedown with four deputies restraining him in a small timeout room at the Onondaga County Justice Center jail.

The deputies had placed a cloth mask over his face to block his spitting. The struggle had pushed the mask to the side so its non-mesh, less-permeable part was covering his nose and mouth.

A deputy outside the room heard Pinet coughing and gurgling.

“LT, they got to turn him to the side,” Deputy Allissa Coglitore says she told the lieutenant in charge as she videotaped the episode.

Jailers are supposed to get struggling inmates onto their sides to prevent suffocation under deputies’ restraints, according to two jail operations experts.

Instead, the deputies kept Pinet on his stomach.

When he arrived at the jail that night in August 2010, Pinet repeatedly told deputies who were subduing him, “I don’t wanna die this way!”

Raul Pinet, who died at the Onondaga County Justice Center jail in 2010.

Pinet, 31, did die, of positional asphyxia because of the way deputies restrained him, according to the state Commission of Correction. The county

medical examiner found

that Pinet died of cardiac arrest after being so intoxicated on cocaine that he was in a violent state of delirium, and that the deputies’ restraints contributed to the death.

The state commission and the medical examiner labeled the death a homicide. An Onondaga County grand jury investigated Pinet’s death, and it’s the subject of a lawsuit filed by his widow.

Coglitore’s affidavit for the first time publicly indicates that any of the deputies were concerned about whether Pinet was being handled improperly. Her statement was among a stack of reports by deputies and jail videotapes The Post-Standard recently obtained. They had never before been made public.

Pinet's last words

The video shows the final moments of Pinet’s life, with him moving against the deputies as he screams “Please!” at least 40 times over two minutes. He yells “OK!” at least eight times. They were removing three emergency response belts cinched around his knees, upper torso and waist. Deputies had put them on Pinet after he tried to attack them and the Syracuse police officers who’d arrested him on an attempted burglary charge.

“Get this off my face!” Pinet can be heard yelling five times, apparently referring to the displaced spit mask. The commission criticized the sheriff’s office for allowing the mask to remain in that position, and said it interfered with his breathing.

After Coglitore made her remark about putting Pinet on his side, the lieutenant in charge looked at her, she said in her affidavit.

Lt. James Barrella “had a look on his face that made me think that he heard me but he was busy assessing the situation in the timeout room,” Coglitore’s affidavit said. “I believe I told Lt. Barrella this two or three times but it was also during this time that the remaining deputies were tactically taking off the restraints and handcuffs.”

Once those items were removed, a large deputy placed Pinet in a “figure four leg lock,” with the inmate’s legs bent backward and crossed, the reports said. The deputy leaned onto Pinet’s legs and lower torso while two other deputies held the inmate at his sides. That deputy said in his report that he was on the balls of his feet, putting just enough pressure on Pinet to keep the inmate still. One of the other deputies had a knee on Pinet’s back and was also on the balls of his feet, applying only enough pressure to keep Pinet from rising off the floor, the reports said.

“Stop moving!” one of the deputies yelled. For the next 57 seconds in the video, there’s no sound from Pinet and he doesn’t appear to be moving. Then the deputies rush out and close the door.

Thinking Pinet was feigning unconsciousness, deputies yelled to him, banged on the door and sprayed water at him through the door, their reports said. He gave no response. Pinet lay still for more than seven minutes, according to reports. When deputies re-entered, Pinet did not respond to their tapping his foot and leg, the reports said.

The grand jury found problems with the way Pinet was handled, but decided the deputies’ conduct did not amount to a crime.

The Post-Standard obtained sheriff’s office reports and video recordings last month using the state’s Freedom of Information Law. The video from the timeout room was from a separate source.

Coglitore wrote a report on the day of Pinet’s death in which she did not mention her request to change Pinet’s position. But a sheriff’s detective investigating the case wrote that he spoke with her two days later.

“As Dep. Coglitore and I talked, I observed that she became very emotional, with tears welling up in her eyes,” Detective Keith Hall wrote in his report. He then took a four-page affidavit from Coglitore in which she described her attempt to get deputies to place Pinet on his side.

In the video, Coglitore can be heard yelling, “LT! LT!” as deputies struggled with Pinet. But anything she said after that cannot be heard.

In Barrella’s affidavit, he makes no mention of Coglitore suggesting any change in Pinet’s position. Barrella wrote that he could see Pinet was still moving just before the deputies left the room.

Barrella refused to comment. Coglitore did not respond to phone calls and a written request for an interview.

Experts' analyses

Onondaga County jail deputies are trained to not keep struggling inmates facedown, said former deputy Walter Rys.

“That was one of the things that we drilled into their heads over and over and over.” said Rys, who retired as a lieutenant in 2009 after being a commander of the Sheriff's Emergency Response Team and a certified SERT trainer. “That was one of the priorities – get him on the side so he can breathe.”

Even someone in good shape with his hands tied behind him will have trouble getting air if he’s held facedown, especially after he’s exerted himself, Rys said.

Jeff Eiser, a Cincinnati expert in training for corrections officers, reviewed the videotape and sheriff’s reports for The Post-Standard. He agreed with Coglitore’s suggestion of turning Pinet onto his side once he started making gurgling noises.

“It’s the recommended position whenever anyone’s having distressed breathing or under restraint,” said Eiser, who has been hired as an expert consultant more than 60 times, usually by counties defending against lawsuits from inmates. “You don’t put them flat on their stomach unless you absolutely have to.”

The deputies had to be concerned about their own safety, he said. But they should have reassessed the situation as they gained control of Pinet and he appeared to be struggling for air, Eiser said.

“You’ve got to continue to size the inmate up,” he said. “As the situation changes medically – be it he stops struggling all of a sudden or starts gurgling or goes limp or other changes in his condition – the staff has to be aware and seek help from supervisors and the medical staff.”

The fact that Pinet was high on drugs put him in greater danger of suffocation, Eiser said.

“If an inmate has cocaine or some other depressant in their system and you put them on their stomach, then you compress their breathing even more,” he said. “It makes it twice as hard for them to breathe.”

The grand jury was correct in finding no criminal conduct, Eiser said.

“I don’t think there was any intent to hurt somebody,” he said.

Sheriff Kevin Walsh said he couldn’t comment on Pinet’s death because it’s the subject of a lawsuit against the county. In 2010, Walsh said the amount of force his deputies used to restrain Pinet was justified because he was struggling so violently.

The state commission also criticized the jail’s medical staff. A jail nurse told deputies she did a medical assessment of Pinet before his death – shortly after they’d brought him into the timeout room but before they started removing his clothing and the restraints. The registered nurse lifted the spit mask and saw abrasions on Pinet’s face, but did not remove it, she wrote in an affidavit. He did not appear to be in distress, she wrote. The state commission faulted the nurse for not adjusting the spit mask or ordering deputies to remove it during that assessment.

The state commission found the jail violated minimum standards by failing to get the inmate medical attention at the outset, failing to properly supervise the deputies’ restraints, and for leaving him unattended for more than seven minutes after he stopped moving.

The commission also found jail nurses failed to do a full assessment of him and failed to comply with state regulations calling for a physician to examine any new inmate who appears to be intoxicated.

A prior death

The night he died, Pinet had walked into two homes of strangers on Shonnard Street, high on crack cocaine and PCP. He grabbed a 7-year-old child in one of the homes before police subdued him. Police did not report anyone being injured by Pinet.

The arrest was only the latest criminal trouble for Pinet. He’d been released from state prison two months earlier after serving half of an 18-month sentence on a drug conviction. He also served a two-to-six year prison sentence ending in 2005 for another drug conviction. He was the father of six children.

Pinet died 16 years after a similar death at the jail. Inmate Johnny Williams died from the cumulative effect of his agitated state, a deputy standing on his back, the placement of an emergency response belt over his face and deputies placing him on his stomach with his hands cuffed behind his back, a medical examiner found.

Williams’ death prompted the sheriff’s office to establish the sheriff’s emergency response team, a unit of deputies trained in how to handle violent, uncooperative inmates.

In an odd coincidence in Pinet’s case, one of the jail’s video cameras had an incorrect date on it. Instead of 2010, it read 1994 – the year of Williams’ death.

Pinet’s widow, Tashara Pinet is suing the county in federal court, claiming deputies caused his death by restraining him facedown then failing to properly observe him. Community groups have rallied around the death and called for county leaders to create an oversight board to provide accountability and transparency for incidents at the jail.

Members of the local ACLU and United as One Coalition attend Onondaga County Legislature meeting on Tuesday Feb. 5, 2013 to demand more oversight of the Justice Center Jail in the wake of two inmates' deaths. Left to right, Ed Kinane and Ann Tiffany.

Barrie Gewanter, executive director of the local chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, contends deputies did not follow accepted protocols for handling unruly inmates. She cited deputies’ reports that said a medical evaluation was done after the initial use of force, when they brought him into the timeout room.

“But why no medical evaluation after the second use of force” after deputies had subdued him in that room? Gewanter asked. Jail officials don’t appear to have learned from the Williams case in 1994, she said.

“Why are they repeating fatal failures?” asked Gewanter, a leader of the community groups that last week asked the Onondaga County Legislature to provide independent oversight of deaths and other incidents at the Justice Center jail.

The grand jury that investigated Pinet’s death last year recommended more law enforcement training about the effects of drugs on inmates who enter the jail and a change in the way emergency response teams are used in dangerous situations. The grand jury said cases of intoxicated, violent inmates should be treated as medical emergencies.

After Pinet’s death, the sheriff’s office retrained deputies in the medical and mental health issues they can expect to encounter with inmates, especially resulting from drug and substance abuse, Walsh has said.

The department also has established a closer relationship with St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center and its mental health unit to deal with inmates in need of medical and psychiatric help, Walsh said. And his office spent about $300,000 on cameras and digital video recording devices throughout the jail since Pinet’s death, the sheriff said.

Contact John O'Brien at jobrien@syracuse.com or 315-470-2187.