COLONIE -- To the madcap music of "Yakety Sax," the video shows correction officers chasing a jumpsuit-clad inmate through Albany County jail corridors and stairways. The action is speeded up, lending the attempted escape the feel of a Keystone Kops comedy.

Sheriff's officials were not amused.

The two-minute movie was made four years ago with tape taken from jail surveillance cameras and put together by an investigator after using the tape to look into the incident in which a jail officer was hurt.

"We're not paying our guys to be making comedy skits and videos of incidents that occur at our jail," said Craig Apple, who's in charge of the sheriff's office and jail. "Whether he did it on his own time or on county time, it doesn't look good to take videos of cameras inside the jail and broadcast it out there."

Apple said Charles Higgins, the filmmaker, met with an internal affairs official, but he would not say whether Higgins was disciplined.

"I'm sure he didn't do it to hurt anyone," Apple said. "Chuck is a great employee, a great investigator. It was just a lapse in judgment."

Apple is the former undersheriff running for election in November to succeed Sheriff James Campbell, who retired last month after more than 20 years.

The video to the Benny Hill theme music was sent to the Times Union this week by a former correction officer who recently lost a federal lawsuit that claimed he was the butt of derogatory comments by his co-workers. It comes as the sheriff's department is roiled by an investigation into fraudulent claims of residency by a county employee that led to the firing of the anti-DWI coordinator.

Robert D. Hunter, who sent the video, said it was evidence in his 2008 lawsuit. The 39-year-old Colonie resident was born in Troy and grew up with his mother on an Abenaki Indian reservation near Montreal. He said he was the officer who was hurt in the chase and feels the inmate should have faced charges.

He led the chase, but feels the video ridiculed him and was shown for humor's sake at the police academy and a CPR training session. He said he experienced racial slurs because of his part-American-Indian heritage.

"You ran after that guy like he stole your land," Hunter said a correction officer said to him.

Hunter, who left the job in June 2008, a month before he started his lawsuit, said Tuesday he has put his experiences at the jail behind him. He plans to go to school to become a paralegal.

The inmate in the video, Randy Vanauken, now 32, of Altamont, was jailed for three weeks in the spring of 2007 and has never been back, jail records show.

Initially charged with grand larceny and burglary, as well as escape and resisting arrest for allegedly trying to run off from deputies during his booking at the Voorheesville substation on March 16, 2007, Vanauken ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of second-degree criminal trespass in Knox Town Court on Nov. 7, 2007. He was sentenced that day to three years on probation, Town Justice Jean Gagnon said Wednesday.

Reach Carol DeMare at 454-5431 or cdemare@timesunion.com.