Opinion ID: 201506
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Baron's employment at the House of Correction

Text: 5 Baron began working as a corrections officer at the Suffolk County House of Correction in 1995. On January 27, 1997, while Baron was on duty, he and a supervisor, Sergeant Walsh, observed over a television monitor that another officer, Sergeant William Curtis, was playing cards with inmates in violation of the institution's policies. Walsh ordered Baron to call Deputy Superintendent Richard Feeney 1 to the unit and show him the monitor, where Curtis could still be seen playing cards. Baron complied, thereby essentially reporting Curtis's infraction. Curtis was suspended for three days as a result. 6 Almost immediately after this incident, Baron's colleagues began to harass him in retaliation for reporting Curtis's card-playing in violation of a tacit code of silence under which corrections officers refrain from reporting each other for policy violations. Among other things, the corrections officers shunned him at roll call and referred to him as a rat. They displayed posters mocking Baron throughout the facility. One poster accused him of being a child molester. During the summer of 1997, Baron also received harassing phone calls at work; once he left work to find that his car had been defaced with feces and his tires had been slashed. 7 Defendant Daniel Hickey, another corrections officer, was the chief instigator of the harassment, repeatedly threatening Baron and calling him a rat in front of inmates and other corrections officers. In one of their more heated encounters in September 1997, Hickey approached Baron in the cafeteria, said Excuse me, this is for the rat fink, and threw cheese onto Baron's plate. He also called Baron a low down Jewish rat bastard coward. 8 Baron verbally complained to his supervisors and to the Sheriff's Investigative Division (SID) 2 about such harassment on more than thirty occasions. Although Baron submitted at least eight written complaints to the SID detailing specific incidents, he did not keep copies of them and the SID produced only two in response to this litigation. In one written complaint filed on September 15, 1997, Baron reported that he had been harassed by Hickey for eight weeks and did not know why he has a personal grudge against me. In the other written complaint in the record, dated September 16, 1997, Baron reported that Hickey started harassing me about being a rat ... and warning other officers that I may be monitoring them on camera. The September 16 report also recounted the cafeteria confrontation between Hickey and Baron. 9 SID investigator Neville Arthur collected reports from Department employees who had been present at the time of the confrontation in response to Baron's September 16 complaint. In contravention of Department policy, however, Arthur did not submit a final written report of his findings. Also in connection with Baron's complaints, a deputy superintendent interviewed Hickey and ordered him to leave Baron alone but did not discipline him. On another occasion, a supervisor responded to Baron's complaints by telling him to be a man. Baron was ultimately transferred to the night shift in October 1997, but the harassment did not abate. Among other things, officers refused to cover his post for bathroom breaks, requiring him to relieve himself in a cup or in a yard adjacent to his post. 10 Over the ensuing months, as the harassment continued, Baron was charged with several violations of institution policy. In December 1997, a female inmate alleged that Baron had sexually assaulted her. Baron claims that Hickey encouraged the inmate's allegations in an effort to discredit him; a jury acquitted him on the assault charge. Baron was also suspended for five days and placed on employee probation for one year for giving food to an inmate in violation of prison policy. In February 1998, Baron collapsed at work from the stress of the harassment and had to be taken to the hospital. He subsequently returned to work. In June 1998, Baron violated institution policy by directly informing the police of an inmate's claim that his girlfriend had been sexually assaulted, rather than immediately reporting the claim to the Department. Baron deviated from the internal reporting procedure because he did not trust his superiors in the Department in light of the ongoing harassment. As a result of the violation, Baron was presented with a settlement agreement under which he would be suspended for ten days. When Baron refused to sign the agreement because it inaccurately recounted the incident, his suspension was increased to twenty days. Baron did not serve the suspension because he called in sick between the time when it was imposed and September 3, 1998, when he resigned his position. Although the Department contends that he resigned specifically to avoid the suspension, Baron claims that he was forced to quit by the psychological toll of the ongoing harassment.