Hawaii Public Safety photo
A federal grand jury in Honolulu, Hawaii, returned a six-count indictment against three former correctional officers for their roles in assaulting an inmate housed at the Hawaii Community Correctional Center and for attempting to cover up their misconduct.
The indictment against Jason Tagaloa, 29, Craig Pinkney, 36, and Jonathan Taum, 48 was announced late last month by US Attorney Kenji M. Price for the District of Hawaii, Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, and FBI Honolulu Special Agent in Charge Eli S. Miranda.
The indictment alleges that, on June 15, 2015, defendants Tagaloa, Pinkney, and Taum, along with a fourth correctional officer designated “Officer A,” physically assaulted an inmate in the jail’s recreation yard, that Tagaloa later assaulted the same inmate in a holding cell, and that both assaults resulted in bodily injury.
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The victim was identified in the indictment as “Inmate 1,” but a lawsuit was filed in Hilo Circuit Court in 2017, with Tagaloa, Taum and Pinkney as defendants. The plaintiff is Chawn Kaili, then an inmate at Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Ariz., alleging essentially the same set of facts on the same date, according to the Hawaii Tribune Herald.
Kaili, whose lawsuit also included former guard Joshua Demattos, ACO watch commander Jon Waikiki and retired HCCC warden Peter MacDonald, has since been paroled.
He alleged in his suit that former guards beat him with their fists and kicked him to his mouth, jaw, face, head neck and back. Kaili claimed he suffered a broken jaw, facial scarring and other injuries. Kaili’s suit also alleged his “jail-issued clothing was so saturated with his blood it was discarded by Department of Public Safety personnel,” reports the Tribune Herald.
Kaili also claimed in his suit he thought at least part of the beating was captured on video surveillance.
The indictment further alleges that the defendants and Officer A conspired to cover up their misconduct by engaging in a variety of obstructive acts, including devising a false cover story to justify their use of force, documenting that false cover story in official reports, and repeating that false cover story when questioned during the ensuing investigation and disciplinary proceedings arising out of the assault.
DPS spokeswoman Toni Schwartz told the Tribune-Herald in June 2017 that Taum, Pinkney, Tagaloa and Demattos were “no longer employed with the Department of Public Safety” and the last day of employment for all four was Dec. 23, 2016. She didn’t disclose whether they quit or were fired.
The maximum penalties for the charged crimes are 10 years of imprisonment for each of the deprivation-of-rights offenses, 20 years of imprisonment for each of the false report offenses, and 5 years of imprisonment for the conspiracy offense.
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