One former Panhandle prison employee said she filed a written complaint about a correctional officer’s racist behavior, then came into work several days later to another officer dangling a noose made of toilet paper in front of her.

Another former employee said she walked in on a handcuffed inmate being beaten in the medical unit, surrounded by a group of officers. She was suspended one day after filing an incident report about it, and fired within two weeks.

Though both of those employees are now gone, they aren’t alone.

In interviews with the Times-Union, a dozen former and current employees at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution described a culture of abuse, bullying, racism and administrative cover-ups in the mental health dorms. Officers selected inmates they had problems with for unsanctioned forms of punishment: to include physical violence or withholding their food to the point where prisoners lost considerable weight, employees said.

“It frustrates us and makes us angry every time this happens and we report it and these officers are still there working,” said Betty Young, a former activities technician. “They won’t fire them because they’re so short on staff, and they keep them.”

Several employees complained all the way to the top — Warden Walker Clemmons.

There were multiple meetings about the work environment in the mental health dorms between concerned employees and their supervisors, including two with Clemmons in attendance, one as recently as mid-April, according to employees with direct knowledge of the meetings and records obtained by the Times-Union.

The Times-Union isn’t identifying any current employees, who expressed fears of retaliation. It is naming two former employees and used records to corroborate many of the claims.

In interviews with the Times-Union, employees at Santa Rosa also raised concerns about the July 2018 death of Michael Cuebas, which has been ruled a suicide by the Florida Department of Corrections. Specifically, they questioned why Cuebas was allowed to have a sheet in a shower cell, which is against department policy.

Cuebas, who was being housed in the mental health dorm, said he had attempted to hang himself in prison once before in letters to his mother. But he also expressed fear that correctional officers were going to put a hit on him and stage it to look like a suicide.

An inspector with the Florida Department of Corrections Office of Inspector General noted that Cuebas possessed a sheet in the shower cell but did not flag it as improper in a summary report of his investigation.

The Santa Rosa Correctional Institution is a crucial backstop in the Florida prison system. Deep in the Panhandle, the facility is known as the “end of the line,” but not because of its geographic location. Santa Rosa manages several wings of “close custody” inmates — those between maximum and medium security — as well as two mental health dorms.

That means the prison is responsible for some of the state's most challenging inmates, but also some of its most vulnerable. Employees interviewed by the Times-Union stressed that the facility had seasoned officers who acted professionally as well, but that there was an unwillingness by the administration to hold other officers accountable.

The facility has a capacity of some 2,600 inmates but housed more than 3,300 prisoners from across the state as of the last audit in February 2015. It’s unclear how many of those are from Northeast Florida.

The Department of Corrections said the agency and leadership at Santa Rosa "have zero tolerance for staff who act inappropriately and in contrary to our core values."

"We do not condone a culture of racism, abuse or coverup," the agency said in a statement.

Michelle Glady, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said the agency couldn't comment on Young's firing because she was a Centurion employee and it was not involved in the decision. Centurion is the private medical contractor at Florida prisons.

The Office of Inspector General is reviewing and investigating the allegations, the department added. Glady said the institution had a "track record of ensuring that any individuals involved in misconduct are held fully accountable."

‘YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS’

Ronald Thornton was one week away from his release date, serving a four-year sentence for cocaine possession, when correctional officers called him out from his cell.

Thornton, a black man, had been fighting with several correctional officers who he said used racist language toward him. He had already been badly beaten once before, to the point where his eyes were swollen shut, according to multiple sources at the prison.

But Thornton wasn’t staying quiet. He continued to call out officers for racist behavior.

On April 9, one month ago, a couple of officers told Thornton they had a going-away present for him, he said — then they told him he had to take a tuberculosis test.

The men led Thornton to the medical unit in handcuffs. It’s one of the few areas in the facility that has no cameras, according to several employees.

“They closed the door and put their gloves on and said, ‘You know what time it is,'” Thornton told the Times-Union. “Then they started hitting me.”

Thornton identified Sgt. Lee Peacock Jr. as one officer who beat him, but could not name others. He said violence against inmates was rampant in the prison. The Department of Corrections would not say whether Peacock was under investigation but confirmed that he is still an active employee there. The Times-Union attempted to reach him directly and through the agency but was unsuccessful.

Young, the former activities therapist at the prison, heard what she described as grunting in the midst of Thornton’s beating, and forced her way into the medical office. One officer whistled out a warning, she said, and when she arrived she saw several officers and some nurses were trying to shield Thornton from her view. Young said Thornton leaned away from an officer and looked to her, and she was able to see evidence of physical injury to his face.

Young, who said she had knowledge of Thornton being beaten up once before, said she called out in surprise at the officers that they were beating Thornton again. The officers simply stared at her and said nothing in response, Young said. She went directly to her supervisor to report the incident, she added.

That same day, Young wrote a report about the beating. She identified Peacock and other officers as being in the medical unit surrounding Thornton when she entered.

The incident report would be her last. Young was suspended the day after she filed it, then terminated a week and a half later, she said.

After Young shared her story with the Times-Union, the newspaper interviewed Thornton, whose recollection of the beating included many of the same details shared by Young, details outlined in records later obtained by the Times-Union. Thornton was released from prison on April 16.

‘GHOST TRAYS’

Officers regularly coerced inmates in the mental health unit by withholding or ruining their food, according to a dozen former and current employees.

Because inmates at the mental health unit are kept in one-man cells, officers deliver trays directly to them.

But sometimes, the officers served “air trays” or “ghost trays,” the employees said. The trays have a lid on top, so they appear to be full on video, but contain no food, they said, adding that officers will also position cups of juice to spill into the tray and soak the meal.

Employees said officers used the trays for coercion or retaliation. For instance, Thornton said that after his beating, an officer came up to the back of his cell, off camera, and told him to file an incident report saying he fell. The officers threatened him with ghost trays, he added.

Several current employees and former employees said officers commonly withheld food to get inmates to change their stories for investigations into abuse or to concoct fictional narratives that would cover up the wrongdoing of an officer.

Another form of retaliation is known as “bucking,” according to employees and former prisoners. To attend state-mandated programs such as group therapy, correctional officers must sign an inmate out of their cell after a contraband search, employees said.

Employees added that certain inmates were consistently being blocked from programs if they fell out of favor with the officers for any reason. When the employees asked officers why the inmate didn’t show up, they were told they refused to be searched, claims that employees would later find out to be false, they said.

Not attending the state-mandated programs can result in the loss of privileges for inmates such as time spent in the day room or the ability to possess radios.

Glady, the department spokeswoman, said that under policy, inmates who do not participate in scheduled activities are interviewed by counselors "to encourage him to participate at the time of the refusal."

She added that the department's Central Office "recently" assigned an ombudsman to the facility who is monitoring conditions in the mental health dorms.

‘FALL IN LINE’

Lauren Gaylord, a former activities specialist at the facility, said white officers frequently racially harassed her and other black employees there.

Gaylord did what she thought she was supposed to do in the face of harassment, she said, and reported the officers. But that only led to more problems, according to Gaylord.

During a mental health group meeting she was leading, Gaylord said, a correctional officer appeared outside the window holding a noose constructed out of toilet paper.

The noose appeared again, Gaylord said, several days later, when she was walking into work.

“They made sure when I walked in the quad that they had it dangling for me off of a roll of toilet paper that they had just taken out of a different inmates’ cell,” Gaylord said. “They had it hanging for me when I walked in. I knew it was for me because as soon as I saw it, they pulled it up, they all laughed together and then they balled it up and put it in their pockets.”

Gaylord identified Officer Kyle Hollis and Officer Travis Boswell, who she said dangled the noose in front of her that time. She said Officer Hollis then walked past her “and gave me kind of a, ‘You fall in line” kind of smirk and said, ‘Did you see that, Gaylord?'”

Both incidents with nooses occurred last year, Gaylord said, but she could not identify specific dates. Gaylord said she reported the incidents, and the Times-Union has requested copies of those reports.

The Department of Corrections confirmed that Officer Hollis is still employed at Santa Rosa.

Unsettled after hearing about the noose incidents, several employees at the facility — many of them African American — complained about what they described as an environment of racial harassment by correctional officers, according to employees and records obtained by the Times-Union.

The newspaper first heard about the noose incidents from current employees. Gaylord then independently shared many of the same details when contacted by the Times-Union. The Times-Union attempted to reach the officers directly and through the agency but was unsuccessful.

‘ZERO TOLERANCE'

Late last year, employees at Santa Rosa voiced concerns in a meeting with Warden Walker Clemmons, Assistant Warden Michael Pabis and other high-ranking supervisors, according to employees with direct knowledge of the meeting.

The employees wanted to know why Officer Hollis was still working there and believed his actions were captured on video, according to several people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

Warden Clemmons said the incident was under review, according to several people with direct knowledge of the meeting. He told them he had a “zero tolerance” policy, they said, and that the department’s Office of Inspector General would open an investigation.

For months, the employees who complained assumed Hollis had been fired.

Then, last month, an employee at the prison observed Hollis in a different part of the facility. That prompted another complaint and another meeting with the warden, this time with several more members of the medical health unit staff attending, according to people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

Employees who attended the meeting described it as “punitive” and felt the administration was more upset that they had reported the abuses than they were disturbed about the misconduct by officers.

Glady, the department spokeswoman, said "Warden Clemmons has made diligent efforts to ensure all of his employees, to include contract staff, feel comfortable reporting any perceived misconduct without fear of retaliation."

A representative from Centurion also defended the administration’s actions during the meeting, saying the “warden’s reputation is beyond reproach,” according to several people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

The Times-Union has left multiple messages with Centurion seeking comment but has not yet heard back from the company.

‘THAT’S WHAT THEY DO’

Phyllis Johnson-Mabery, Cuebas’ mother, said she doesn’t believe her son killed himself.

She shared letters Cuebas had written home, expressing fears that officers were going to hurt him, kill him or hire other prisoners to do the job for them.

“They tell me they are going to brutally murder me and cover it up, then tell my family that I did it to myself, or just make something up, because that’s what they do” Cuebas wrote in a letter to his mother dated about a year before he died.

Johnson-Mabery shared an unredacted report on Cuebas’ death that described trauma to his face and head, but attributed those injuries to “when the ligature was untied and the decedent fell onto the tile floor.”

Cuebas was still breathing when he was cut down, the report also noted.

According to the report, Cuebas was hiding the sheet from correctional officers, but several employees questioned how he could have gotten a sheet there in the first place. Inmates are escorted to the shower cells wearing only their boxers, with guards holding them by their arms, they said.

The Department of Corrections faces wrongful death lawsuits not uncommonly, including those that raise questions about deaths that were ruled as suicides by the department's Office of Inspector General.

Johnson-Mabery said Cuebas “just wanted to do his time, never go back there again, and just get back to his family.”

“I knew he would be different. As a mother, you know,” Johnson-Mabery said. “I knew the Michael I knew was no longer, and that a broken person was coming out. But we were prepared and ready to get him the help that he needed.”

Ben Conarck: (904) 359-4103