May 31, 2024 • 50 mins
Soon after correctional officer Valentino Rodriguez starts working at New Folsom prison, he gets caught up in a bad incident. An incarcerated man ends up in the hospital with horrific injuries, and the prison starts an investigation. Valentino feels pressured to back up his fellow officers’ version of the story, even though he thinks it might not be the truth. Then he gets an opportunity he’s dreamed of — to join an elite unit investigating crimes in the prison.
When correctional officer Valentino Rodriguez first stepped behind prison walls, he wasn’t just starting a job, he was joining a family. What he didn’t know was that he was now bound by an unwritten code that would ultimately test his loyalty to his oath and his fellow officers. Five years later, Valentino’s sudden death would raise questions from the FBI, his family and his mentor in the elite investigative unit where they both worked. This season, join us as we follow in Valentino’s footsteps to uncover the secrets hidden inside the most dangerous prison in California: New Folsom. If you have tips or feedback about this series please reach out to us at onourwatch@kqed.org.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, this is Steve. Hope you enjoyed this season of
The Burden and the bonus episodes, which we'll keep coming,
and hope you're looking out for what comes next in
season two. But today we want to bring you something
a little different, the first episode of a really great
podcast called On Our Watch from our friends at KQED
(00:20):
in San Francisco. This season follows the story of what
happens when two whistleblowers try to expose abuse and corruption
inside California's most dangerous prison. This is one of my
favorite recent podcasts. It's gripping, it's compelling, it's important. Let's
get into it. Episode one of On Our Watch starts
(00:42):
right now.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
This is a series investigating some of the difficult things
that happen to the people who live and work inside
California's prisons. So we wanted to give you a heads
up that this episode touches on intense topics including substance use,
state violence, and self harm. If you need support, we've
got links to resources in the episode description. The story
(01:05):
begins with a death that is intense and upsetting.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I park my car and I walk in the house
and he's not on the couch.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
On October twenty first, twenty twenty, Mimi Rodriguez came home
from having dinner with her friends and called out to
her husband, Valentino Rodriguez.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
So I go, val, Val, where are you? And all
the lights are on in the house, and I go
into the kitchen. He's not in the kitchen.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
So I'm going into our bedroom and he's not in
our bedroom. And I knew something was wrong, and I go, Val, now,
where are you? And I run into the bathroom and
he's just he's on his knees. He's not on his knees,
with his head up against the wall, hunched over, and
(02:04):
I just scream and I had my ear pods in,
So I go Serri nine one one, So SERI Media
calls nine one.
Speaker 6 (02:11):
One forty five second October Luty one thousand, okay.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
With medical.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Again.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
On the call, she's like hello, and I go come please, like,
please help me.
Speaker 6 (02:41):
I'm scared.
Speaker 7 (02:41):
I don't know what to do.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
This has happened.
Speaker 7 (02:44):
He's dead.
Speaker 8 (02:45):
Please what happened?
Speaker 5 (02:48):
And I'm screaming and I go and I grab him
and I pull him back and I put his head
back and he has vomit coming out of his mouth.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
The nine one. One operator tells me me to perform
CPR on him so hard of.
Speaker 6 (03:01):
Fat twice for a second. Okay, we want to make
sure of a check comes up all the way in
between pumps, they're ready to fix on their times or
her help and take over.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
They were going to count together.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
Okay, there's one two three four one three four.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Valentino's hands were purple and he wasn't breathing.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
Is that our door open? Are they gonna be able
to get it to you? It is open? Okay, keep going, man,
pep there a chest compression. Is anybody else in the
house with you? Keep going one.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
Eventually the police came. I don't know how fast. I
think like two minutes or two. But she kept telling me.
She's like, are they they're outside way.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
They're one two three four, one two three four, they're
parking right now. They're almost to you.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
One and I was like, just open the door, just
come inside, please. Like seven officers ran in and I
was always like, I'm in the bathroom. Helped me and
is it save them?
Speaker 6 (04:03):
Please?
Speaker 5 (04:03):
Save them.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
The police pulled her out of the house and had
her sit in the back of a squad car. They
told her they needed to ask her some questions.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
The officer was trying to talk to you as this
lady and she and she's just like what happened? And
she goes, what do you how did this happen? I
was like, I don't know, but it's his job. And
I just kept saying it's his job. This is all
because of his job. She goes, where does he work?
And I'm like, he works at CDCR.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
CDCR the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Speaker 7 (04:34):
It's this stupid job.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
I just it just it just overtook his life, his thoughts,
everything that like he stood for.
Speaker 9 (04:49):
Test test word.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Correctional Office. Valentino Rodriguez was thirty years old when he died.
He'd worked for the department for about five years. Like
a lot of officers, that time changed him, especially the
time he spent inside the walls of this one prison.
New Folsom. This is a story about that place, about
(05:20):
broken promises and unwritten rules and who gets hurt when
the system that promises to keep us safe is bent
on protecting itself. I'm Suki Lewis. This is on our
watch season two, New Folsom.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
It's like you go past these lights.
Speaker 10 (05:56):
Then at the next set, ten left stay.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
In the second li. More than two years after Officer
Valentino Rodriguez died in December twenty twenty two, our reporting
team went to go see his family in ten Right,
we're driving from the Bay Area through rice patties and
apple orchards to West Sacramento, a city on the outskirts
of the state capitol.
Speaker 11 (06:20):
Is just everything about this case just raises questions.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
That's my co reporter, Julie Small. The official cause of
Valentino's death was fentanyl intoxication, but his family and especially
his father, Val Senior, still aren't satisfied with how it
was investigated.
Speaker 11 (06:38):
Now, maybe the answers are be nine, but because they're unanswered,
I think, you know, yea makes you think the worst
or it. Certainly val keeps going over and over it
in his head, trying to tie up the loose ends.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Yeah, we also think there might be more to the
story of Valentino's death because he was a whistleblower. He'd
reported corruption and abuse by his fellow officers just days
before he died, but they said no signs of no
signs of foul play. Julie's been talking to Valcior for
the past few months, it's taken a while to gain
(07:17):
his trust. Today, Stephen Rascone, our producer, is a long
term record.
Speaker 7 (07:22):
So today is like an icebreaker, I think.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
So it's my first chance to meet Valentino's parents, Valentino
Rodriguez Senor and his wife Erma rolling inside. The walls
are covered with photos. They've got a good looking family,
five grandchildren at the time, and therefore adult kids.
Speaker 9 (07:48):
And I think about that, all four of them just
sat there and talked, made fun of each other and
laughed and.
Speaker 12 (07:55):
Close kids.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
In a couple of weeks, the family's planning to get together,
but of course one of them will be missing, Valentino.
It'll be their third Christmas without him. I was in
the fog for a good year.
Speaker 7 (08:11):
This is a different fog.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Now for his dad. Valentino's death started him on this
search to find answers from the police, the FBI, the prison.
He wants to understand what happened to his son and
why and who's responsible. But instead of finding answers, Valcigior
just keeps finding more questions.
Speaker 7 (08:32):
This thing is just all tangled.
Speaker 12 (08:35):
I'm just trying to undangle it.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Now. Valcenior says he feels like a stereotype out of
a true crime series on TV, the grieving parent on
a quest for justice.
Speaker 13 (08:47):
And here I am in the driver's seat and I.
Speaker 7 (08:52):
Couldn't do it any other way.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
But I never wanted to be that person on TV.
Speaker 7 (08:57):
Right, just consumed it.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Yeah, would you be able to tell us, like your
favorite story of your son.
Speaker 14 (09:09):
Him? With him?
Speaker 4 (09:10):
There's a lot.
Speaker 7 (09:12):
We have four kids, and they're all completely different.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Valentino was their second child and the oldest boy. As
we sit around the dining room table, Irma pulls out
some of the stuff she saved over the years, his
first Communion prayer book, a newspaper clipping from when he
made Student of the week.
Speaker 9 (09:33):
I remember his third grade teacher said he was a
very good writer. She told him one day he was
going to be a writer, and she could wait to
hear his stories because you still like to write. I
still have all those his little pictures.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
After Irma points out Valentino in a little league team photo,
he looks about eleven or twelve, She says he wasn't
any good at baseball.
Speaker 9 (09:53):
Yeah, he wasn't very good at soccer either, And I
went to all his kids. I had all four kids playing,
so it was like every Saturday, I'm driving around all
the tacamount of taking them. And I tell him one day,
why do you run around with your eyes closed? He's like,
you would pretend I was an airplane flying in the air.
Speaker 8 (10:11):
Everyone.
Speaker 7 (10:11):
I have to watch them wrestle. He always lose, but
after he was done, he'd be talking to.
Speaker 14 (10:20):
The guy that beat him up here.
Speaker 15 (10:21):
Yeah, yeah, senator, talking to.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
They tell us this was typical Valentino. Goofy, dreamy, smart,
eager to turn enemies into friends. After college, when he
told them he was going to train to be a
correctional officer, his parents were kind of surprised. They weren't
a law enforcement family. But he'd have job security and
good benefits. Val Senior says he remembers the day his
(10:52):
son graduated from the academy. It was May one, twenty fifteen,
and he looked out over this ocean of young faces.
His son was among the about two hundred cadets sworn
in that day.
Speaker 7 (11:05):
Raise your right hand and repeat after me.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
This is tape from a more recent graduation reciting the
same oath Valentino took.
Speaker 15 (11:14):
I state your name, recognize the badge of my office
as a symbol of public faith.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Photos from that day show Valentino in his class a uniform,
Creas's sharp, his hair neatly combed. They promised to protect
the innocent.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Dedicating myself before all present, to.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Be honest, true, and to hold each other accountable.
Speaker 7 (11:46):
Congratulations, Welcome to the family.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
One of Valentino's first assignments was working on death row
at San Quentin State Prison, the oldest prison in California.
He'd often carpool to work with a bunch of other
correctional officers, and on the way back they'd get dropped
off at In and Out Burger.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
I was a cashier and he'd come in in his
little green suit. He's so cute in his little boots.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
That's me me again talking to my colleague Julie. She
calls him cute. But Valentino was not a little man.
He was five foot seven and at least two hundred pounds,
clean shaven, with dark hair and big brown eyes.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
So his order was a three y three Ketchupolino salt,
the cheese, frid no salt, and then a large seven up.
So I knew his order from the moment, because of course,
you know, the cute guy comes in, I'm going to
memorise his order.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Mimi recognized Valentino from a party she'd gone to at
his house, thrown by his brother Greg.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And I was like, oh, how are you? And he's
like good. And I think in his mind he's like,
who is this girl?
Speaker 6 (13:00):
You brother?
Speaker 3 (13:00):
And he's like what And he was just hecko weirded out,
and in my head, it's going great, right. But he
started coming to it in and out more often, and
I would give him free burgers or shakes when my
manager wasn't looking.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
And they started messaging on Facebook.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And he's like, hey, I haven't seen you. Did you
switch jobs? And I'm like, oh, this void texit me
or this void messaging and I was like.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Hello, yes Hi.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
It was just me being all excited. He was a
kid at heart, very playful.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
They play video games together and watch movies, and they
liked introducing each other to new things food, music, or art.
This one time they went out to a sip and
paint night at a local spot.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
He was kind of nervous. I think it was a
new thing for him. But we had gone to a
paint night with one of my coworkers, and we went
on a double date and he painted this really nice picture.
It was supposed to be of a pelican at the
end of a bridge, but he he changed it and
it's a painting of him and his dad.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
The scene is of the two of them from behind,
a boy and his father sitting side by side with
their fishing poles in the water, wispy white clouds over
the horizon.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
And he gave it to his dad after a week
I fack.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Mimi says they fell hard for each other, and just
two months after they started dating, her roommate moved out
and she needed to find a new place to live.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I was going to move into my brother's house, but
he was like no, like you should move in with me,
and I'm like, no, this is kind of soon, and
he's like, come on, think about it.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Valentino's mom had helped him find a cute little house
just about five miles away from their place in West Sacramento.
Mimi moved in, and it was right around this time
that Valentino got what he saw as a big break,
an opportunity to work in a different prison.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
He specifically chose Fulsome the.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Official name of New Fulsome is California State Prison Sacramento
or CSP SAC. It's called New Fulsome because it was
built back in the eighties next to the Old Fulsome
prison that was made famous by country singer Johnny Cash.
Speaker 7 (15:17):
Okay, Hello, I'm Johnny Kay.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
He wrote a song called Fulsome Prison Blues and then
later recorded this performance live at the prison.
Speaker 7 (15:28):
I hear the tree coming.
Speaker 13 (15:30):
It's a giant.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
I don't know where you can actually see the guard
towers of Old Fulsome from New Folsom Prison. They've got
a medieval castle kind of look to them. New Folsom,
on the other hand, where Valentino was transferring to, has
a more industrial utilitarian look, a lot of razor wire
and gray concrete. It's a high security prison that the
(15:56):
state set up to accommodate people with risky medical conditions
and mental health needs. It also houses active gang members
and people who've been convicted of some of the most
serious crimes.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
He said he wanted to go there because it was
the most He said it was the most dangerous prison
in California, but he described it as there was just
a lot of activity there with officers with inmates, and
he just wanted to be in there.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
There are a lot of infamous prisons in this country,
and a fair number here in California. They're San Quentin
with its Death Row, the state's first supermax, Pelican Bay Corkoran,
where in the nineties officers allegedly set up gladiator style
fights between rival gangs and then shot incarcerated people to
stop the fights. But as we dug through a bunch
(16:56):
of data and public records, we realized in the past decade,
New Folsom has been the most violent prison in the state,
and that violence is committed by people who are locked
up and officers. We found that in the six years
after twenty fourteen, New Folsom officers used serious force, meaning
they either badly injured someone or used deadly force, at
(17:18):
a rate three times higher than any other prison in
the state. This was stunning to us. CDCR declined our
multiple requests to comment on this finding. I've done quite
a bit of reporting on prisons, and Julie's been reporting
on prisons for even longer. New Folsom just wasn't on
our radar in the same way. We'll dig into those
(17:40):
numbers more later, but for now it's important to know
that with just a year of experience as a correctional officer.
This is the environment Valentino was walking into. Mimi says,
he was looking forward to it.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
He was excited to go into this prison. He was
excited for the work. He was excited for what he was.
Speaker 12 (17:59):
Going to do.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
He wanted to be an investigator in this elite squad
called the ISU, or the Investigative Services Unit. A prison
is like its own city, and the ISU squad are
like the police force of the prison. They've got a
canine unit, a gain investigation unit, a prosecution division, and
(18:21):
one for internal affairs to look into complaints of excessive
force or allegations of officer corruption. Walking through New folsom
the squad stood out. They had special black and green
patches on their uniforms, and unlike regular officers, they could
bring their cell phones into work. They could also go
(18:42):
anywhere in the prison they wanted total access. Valentino's goal
was to earn his patch and get into that squad,
but first he had to pay his dues. Officer Valentino
(19:04):
Rodriguez's first assignment was working in the prison's psychiatric unit,
guarding one of the most vulnerable and difficult parts of
the population, people with severe mental illnesses. I've talked to
a number of people incarcerated in this unit, and it
sounds like a really tough place to be. It can
be very loud and chaotic. Sometimes the people in this
(19:27):
unit are angry and confrontational, while others are simply terrified
or heavily medicated. And officers like Valentino are required to
get training in how to prevent incarcerated people from hurting
each other and themselves. Valentino had been working at New
FOLSOM and in this unit for just a few months
when he got caught up in a really bad incident
(19:50):
that Valcior says was a turning point for him. An
incarcerated man ended up in the hospital with broken bones
and injuries to his face and head, so investigators started
looking into how the man got those injuries. We were
able to get the tapes and paperwork for that incident.
Just a note, we noticed a lot of inconsistencies and
(20:11):
what people say happened. The incarcerated man's story changes a bit.
One officer contradicts himself, and other officers have slightly different
versions of the incident. He'll also hear some places where
the department has redacted the audio.
Speaker 16 (20:27):
So what we're going to talk about is, on the
twelfth of August Friday, you were involved in an incident
which occurred. Is that yourself where you're at before, Yes, sir.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
They're looking into this incarcerated man's allegations that officers caused
his injuries and then lied about it.
Speaker 16 (20:47):
You made the allegation while trying to hang myself. The
CEOs came in and smashed my face into the wall.
Can you tell me about that?
Speaker 7 (20:56):
What you mean?
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Well, because of some sensitive details about his mental health,
we decided not to use this man's name. I'm just
going to call him by the initial of his last name, C.
So C tells the investigators that it all started because
of the meds he was taking.
Speaker 8 (21:17):
I was having a hard time on medication. When I
have a hard time medication side offics of committed suicide.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
First, she says, he put his head in the toilet
in his cell to try and drown himself, and then
she told a passing officer that he was feeling suicidal.
Speaker 12 (21:36):
He put a.
Speaker 8 (21:39):
Sheet like a suicide sheet.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
He says. The officer handed him a sheet with a
noose already tied in it.
Speaker 8 (21:50):
You two to mysell He said, hang yourself, so I
turned to hang my.
Speaker 12 (21:53):
Sell in for no.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
Officers have to follow really strict rule to prevent suicides.
They have to check on people in their cells every
thirty minutes. When someone says they're suicidal, officers are supposed
to call mental health services right away, and that person
might even get moved to a different unit or checked
into a hospital. To be clear, handing someone a noose
(22:18):
would totally violate what officers are meant to do. In
the situation, no officers admitted giving him a noose. A
responding officer tells investigators he was doing his rounds and
Sauca with the sheet already tied around his neck, had that.
Speaker 16 (22:34):
Time opened the food port, gave him multiple orders to stop.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
When C doesn't respond, the officer says, he sprays him
with pepper spray.
Speaker 13 (22:43):
My intent was to have to save his life from
stocking him from actually choking himself and killing himself.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
An officer gets C to come to the door to
put handcuffs on him, and he shackled by his feet
and behind his back, and then they escort him to
what's called a decontamination cell. It's basically a cage the
size of a phone booth that they can spray a
hose into to wash the pepper spray off him.
Speaker 8 (23:12):
And boom. He pushed me in there and my face
the back of the cell. I wanted like that boom
here my face, this.
Speaker 16 (23:23):
Injury that's right there, across your nose, my clothing, my
wife in my head and the face that boom, and
then my eye and then my face and then my neck.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
But the officers who are escorting him tell it differently.
Speaker 17 (23:37):
He just kept trying to pull away, so I tightened
my grate and canseled him to knock, not pull away
from myself.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
The officer says. Ce broke away from them and lunged
towards the shower.
Speaker 17 (23:50):
Hey, and then he ended up tripping over the there's
a lip on that shower, tripping over the bottom wood,
smashing in the back in the shower, and I immediately
closed shower, blocked in again.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Se denies this.
Speaker 16 (24:05):
Were you resistant at all, afist, I don't know. You
were just walking calmly, unlocking calmly.
Speaker 10 (24:11):
I mean not.
Speaker 16 (24:12):
I get the injuries from trying to hide myself. I
got the injuries from him pushing me.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
So to recap. According to c he was suicidal. An
officer gave him a noose, pepper sprayed him, and he
was forcibly thrown into a cage and injured really badly.
The version officers tell is that se already had the noose,
they pepper sprayed him to save his life, and he
(24:37):
got hurt first when he fell from his bunk, and
then again when he pulled away from them and tripped
face first into the shower cage. The last account of
events I'm going to walk you through is Valentinos, because
he was one of the officers who responded that day.
(24:59):
Here he is in using himself on tape to an
investigator with the Internal Affairs Department.
Speaker 18 (25:04):
Valentino rodri Riuez, correctional officer, California Department of Corrections, sacon
Mon Estate Prison.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
The agent tells Valentino, he's here as a witness.
Speaker 11 (25:16):
Can you give me your account of that incident?
Speaker 18 (25:20):
Her on the radio announcement that there was a inmy
hanging in May comped hanging in two block.
Speaker 14 (25:26):
In b session.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Valentino says he put on his gloves and rushed to
the south.
Speaker 18 (25:31):
It's apparent that he was sprayed with OC because O C.
Pepper sprayed because he had He was spitting up mucus
and a little bit of blood on his face from
being sprayed.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
As the two officers took C to hose off, they
walked him past Valentino, who says he saw a little
bump on C's forehead.
Speaker 14 (25:49):
Could you see what clothing?
Speaker 18 (25:51):
I don't remember. I don't remember if I could.
Speaker 12 (25:53):
At the time. Can you know?
Speaker 4 (25:56):
No, So se goes to the shower cage with really
no major injuries that Valentino could see.
Speaker 16 (26:03):
At what point did you observe an injury on him?
Speaker 18 (26:07):
When the water was turned off and I walked up
to the cage to open it up, I observe, uh,
some injuries onto the top of his head and across
his face. I think believe it was across the faces.
Speaker 14 (26:22):
Can you tell me about to describe those injuries?
Speaker 18 (26:24):
They were gashes, like large.
Speaker 12 (26:27):
Large gashes.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Valentino was asked to photograph seize injuries and then take
him to get medical attention. We got those pictures that
he took. The man's face is partially blacked out, but
you can see a five inch gash across his forehead
and his cheek is split open from his nose to
below his cheekbone.
Speaker 16 (26:47):
Is there anything else you'd like to tell me what
you have not already discussed during this interview.
Speaker 14 (26:53):
Before I turn off the recorder.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
I want to remind you it's a big deal anytime
an officer gets pulled into an investigation, even just as
a witness, because lying is a fireable offense. We know
Valentino told the people closest to him about this incident.
Speaker 12 (27:08):
I remember that when it happened, he was so scared
for weeks.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
When we got this recording through a public records request
to CDCR, it was one of the things we really
wanted to share with Val Seniors.
Speaker 11 (27:21):
Want to hear it?
Speaker 12 (27:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (27:24):
My co reporter Julie Small sat down with him and
pressed play on the recording.
Speaker 12 (27:31):
To the theater is December nine, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Val Senior had never heard this interview with his son before.
Speaker 12 (27:38):
Again a.
Speaker 18 (27:41):
Little by a danger about his igh.
Speaker 17 (27:43):
Okay, I think, I wish I I can't call okay.
Speaker 11 (27:49):
But I think that Do you think that he's telling
the truth there?
Speaker 19 (27:54):
I think because I know my son, he has a
really good memories, really toil orientated and well for him
not to remember which side the cut was on and
certain things.
Speaker 12 (28:06):
It's just to me, he's sounds like he's worried right there, scared.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Valentino told him that what happened during the incident was
different than what those officers wrote in their reports and
told investigators. But he said he felt like he had
to go along with their story.
Speaker 13 (28:27):
You should see his face and he come over. That
broke my heart. Man, because he had a job. And
he told me, Dad, you have to you have to
tell the same story because you're.
Speaker 12 (28:38):
On a team. Yeah, and if you don't, then you're
the odd man out.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Mimi told us something similar.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
He was told like, hey, you know, this is this
is what we're writing, and it's important that all of
us have the same story, and it's important for all
of us to be on.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
The same page. And he told me how they never
really specifically said you must do it this way, you
must write it this, you must do it that. It
was more of like, this is what we are doing,
and this is how we're going to do it, and
this is what's important for our team, so we can
all be on the same page. He felt a lot
(29:16):
of pressure because he didn't want to lose his job.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
CDCR did not respond to specific questions about this incident.
A spokesperson did write in an email that the agency
takes all allegations of employee misconduct seriously and there is
a new process for making sure complaints are quote properly,
fairly and thoroughly reviewed. The spokesperson also pointed out that
there is a new system of fixed and body cameras
(29:50):
at new Folsome So we don't know exactly what the
truth is about this incident. What we do know is
that C was severely in Medical reports show he received
twenty seven stitches, his nose was broken, and his spine
was fractured in three places. Ultimately, those in charge believed
(30:12):
the officer's story that C fractured his back when he
slipped and fell off his bunk and injured his face
and head when he lunged away from officers and landed
on the metal rails of the decontamination shower. And that's
the story that Valentino chose to go along with, even
though he told his father it wasn't true. This wouldn't
(30:36):
be the last time Valentino felt compromised by his job.
(30:56):
Mimi Rodriguez told my colleague Julie and me that working
in the psychiatric unit really took a toll on Valentino.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
He would talk about how draining it was, and he
would have come home drained and did not look like
to you. I mean he would just drag his feet.
He would drag his feet, come in and he didn't
want to eat. He would shower and just go to sleep.
I mean, he was just quiet.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
He worked double shifts so we could get more days
off in a row to recharge.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
That's when he would talk more about work and be like, yeah,
like you you know, it was a little stressful and
I'm dealing with this or I'm talking about this, but
you know, I'm happy to go in and he was
always very enthusiastic.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
About two and a half years after he'd gotten to
New folsom late twenty eighteen, Valentino's hard work looked like
it was paying off. Remember the squad that detective unit
Valentino was aiming for. An officer there went on leave
for PTSD and there was a vacancy on the team.
One of the supervisors who knew Valentino, thought he'd be
(32:00):
good at the job and gave him the chance to
fill in.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
He was really excited for that, but he didn't think
he was going to get that opportunity.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
He'd made the squad working in the Security and Investigations unit,
but on a temporary basis. To get the position permanently,
he'd have to impress the right people.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
He's like, yes, of course, I I'll do it. I
mean he was ready.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Valentino called to let his parents know he got promoted.
Speaker 7 (32:28):
He called his mom first and she told me Bell
got a promotion.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
He told them it was a really good position, one
that a lot of other people wanted, and that he
was the youngest on the team.
Speaker 7 (32:40):
I asked him, how's your first day? Yeah, he goes
a bunch of older guys.
Speaker 12 (32:44):
Dad had been there. He called him ojiez.
Speaker 7 (32:47):
I said, well, how do you go? He goes to
ask who the fuck are you?
Speaker 4 (32:50):
So from the very beginning, there was tension on the team.
Some of the people he worked with felt like he'd
skipped the line, that he hadn't done enough to prove himself.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
There was one time where he had asked me to
make little cheesecakes. There's your little mini pie cheesecakes that
I would make, And I made a bunch for the
team and like nobody had them, Nobody ate them, and
they would just tell him like, no, we don't want
this or we don't want that.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
At first, he tried to earn their acceptance by just
working really hard, trying to prove that he was up
to the job.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
He just continued to just put his head down in work.
I think that's what really bothered him, that he would
just try to do the right thing and it just
didn't seem like it was enough.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Valentino was making busts and working cases, but to some
of his co workers this might have made him seem
like even more of a threat because higher ups were
noticing his work. Valentino was getting a reputation for being
a diligent investigator, thorough and for writing really good reports.
(33:52):
This was a big deal because paperwork reports are hugely
important in prison. With one hundred and fifteen thousand people
incarcerated in the state's prisons at the time, these reports
are how the agency kept track of everybody. Officers need
to document everything gang affiliations, medical needs, disability status, history
(34:13):
of suicide, fights with staff, and so on, and these
reports are also the basis for disciplinary action like sending
someone to solitary confinement or charging them with a new crime.
These reports hold a lot of power, and it is
a crime for an officer to falsify an official report.
(34:35):
Valentino wanted to keep moving up in this system and
expanding his skills as an investigator. On the weekends when
he wasn't working, he'd pay out a pocket to go
to these training events and seminars, and during these trips
he became friends with a guy named Sergeant Kevin Steele.
Steele passed away in twenty twenty one, so we couldn't
(34:56):
interview him, but Valsor came to know him well.
Speaker 13 (35:00):
He was about five to seven my age, maybe a
little bit older, using good shape, you know.
Speaker 7 (35:06):
He shaved his head and stood.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Straight up, picture of Bruce Willis type in his fifties,
with intense, bright blue eyes. He was a military veteran
and a straight shooter. Sergeant Steele also worked in the ISU.
He was senior to Valentino, but he was in a
different division. He was in the prosecution division. It was
his job to prepare cases for the district attorney to
(35:29):
bring criminal charges.
Speaker 12 (35:30):
He was very good speaking and writing, very passionate about
his job. And loyal. He was very, very important to
that prison for a good reason.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
The two officers really respected each other. Both of them
were kind of law enforcement nerds, committed to going the
extra mile. Valentino would testify in court for Steele's cases.
All that extra training meant he was a great expert witness,
and Steele became one of the few people Bull Valentino
trusted a mentor and someone he called regularly for advice
(36:05):
about criminal case protocol or how to handle evidence. Things
with the other guys in his division, however, were getting worse.
Speaker 13 (36:13):
Sometimes he would text the guys for help and they'd
have their own group texts, and they would like they
wouldn't they didn't want to help them.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
Some of these group texts are pretty awful. They mock
his weight and call him half patch to remind him
he's still just a temporary member of the squad.
Speaker 14 (36:30):
Are these things that you saw after he died?
Speaker 7 (36:33):
Mm hmm, Only he never He never said look deadly
what they're saying.
Speaker 14 (36:36):
He just never.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
But these messages would escalate even further before they stopped.
The brotherhood, the family that Valentino had been promised at
his academy graduation was nowhere to.
Speaker 14 (36:49):
Be found, and he used to go in on weekends to.
Speaker 13 (36:55):
Work because some of the the team wasn't there to harass.
Speaker 14 (37:00):
Nobody was calling him.
Speaker 13 (37:03):
Names or anything, or teddam anyway, So he liked going
there on saturdays.
Speaker 8 (37:07):
I know that.
Speaker 13 (37:08):
And he told me he used to go to work
in the mornings, and then he told me he would
go into the restroom to vomit.
Speaker 14 (37:16):
Because he felt so much anxiety.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
An attorney for these officers declined our request to interview
her clients, but she said that any allegations that any
of them bullied, Haze or harassed Valentino are false. Val
Senior says he wouldn't understand until much later the full
scope of what his son was going through or of
the things he was being asked to do in the
(37:43):
name of this team. But he did notice a change
come over his son. He wasn't sleeping and he gained
sixty pounds over the course of the year he was
in the ISU squad. Sometimes when they were hanging out,
he'd get this blank look on his face.
Speaker 7 (37:59):
I could tell he was starting to build this mental
mechanism where he knew that turned things off, you know,
because I used to see him stare into space and
then he'd snap out of it.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
And this distance was coming between Valentino and Mimi too.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
What really bothered me about his job was that he
was never home.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
They were planning to get married and have kids, but
more and more she felt like Valentino was always gone.
There were the overtime shifts he had to work, and
the milestones in their life together were passing by without him.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
I understood that it was his job and it was
a requirement. But would frustrate me is that when I
would ask him, like why couldn't you make it or
why couldn't do this?
Speaker 5 (38:45):
He would say, well, I asked for help and no
one came to help me. And I would tell him, Valentino,
where your family, Like, we love you. You know if
something happens to you, that job is just going to
replace you. But how we can't replace you.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
She remembers one holiday, maybe Thanksgiving, where she went to
his family's house for dinner.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
I remember just sitting there waiting for him in his
grandma's house, just waiting. He couldn't show up.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Once again, Valentino had to stay late working at the prison.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
And it just broke my heart because I just felt alone.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
I felt really lonely.
Speaker 5 (39:28):
His family very nice, I mean, don't get me wrong,
very kind people, but I don't want to sit next
to his grandma per se when I can just sit
next to him.
Speaker 4 (39:42):
It was in the midst of these pressures. Valentino was overworked,
the holidays were happening, and he felt ostracized by his team.
That something major happened at the prison. Falsenior says he
was the family Christmas party. Everyone was having a good time,
eating and drinking. They had a game of White Elephant
going and they were all laughing a lot. Valentino showed
(40:05):
up late straight from work around ten o'clock at night,
and as soon as he walked in the door, Valcignior
knew something was wrong.
Speaker 14 (40:14):
Yeah, I could just.
Speaker 12 (40:15):
See his face just slip.
Speaker 14 (40:17):
Something really bothering him. I've seen that look on his
face before, but it was really intense.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
Valcenior asked him what was going on.
Speaker 14 (40:25):
And that's when he took his phone out and he
showed me the video.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
The scene that Valcignor saw on his son's cell phone
was incredibly violent. A video taken by surveillance cameras and
one of the most high security housing units in New Folsome.
The camera angle is from inside the control booth, which
looks out on two tiers of cells. Right in front
of the booth, there's an open area on the ground
(40:50):
floor called a day room. In this day room, there
are these metal desks in a semicircle with clear dividers
in between them. In the video, saw a man shackled
to one of these chairs with two other guys standing
over him.
Speaker 14 (41:06):
This guy, this kid's being stabbed over and over and over, and.
Speaker 15 (41:13):
He literally would shrug his shoulders and cover his neck
while they're trying to stab him the neck, and then
they would go back down the chest, and then he
would try to cover his chest by concaving his chest inward, and.
Speaker 14 (41:23):
Then he'd go back to his neck, and it was
just back and forth. So finally the kid threw himself.
Speaker 15 (41:26):
On the floor and they proceeded to just stab him
to the point to where the knights were literally hitting
the ground because every time they pulled up, his body
would go up with it.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
The man on the floor was now lifeless. Valcenior watched
as two attackers painted his blood across their faces, but
Valentino wanted his dad to notice something else.
Speaker 15 (41:52):
He had said, look at the guy in the towers,
not even amy, and they're using rubber bullets.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
Valentino was pointing out to his dad that the officer
in the control booth didn't use his rifle to immediately
stop the deadly threat. He fired his less lethal weapon
that shoots rounds made out of hard foam, and he
fired it way too late.
Speaker 13 (42:14):
You're supposed to use like rounds. I tried not to
emphasize or talk about or look at it. I just
wanted to go on to my little Christmas party, so
I told him, you know, to put that thing away,
and he just liked what he does snapped out of it.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
But that wasn't all. Valentino was also instructed to write
up a particular type of confidential report for statewide gang investigators.
The report was supposed to lay out how the killing
was tied to a dispute between rival gangs. A lot
of questions would later be raised about that report and
(42:52):
who was really behind the murder. CDCR said it cannot
comment on the case because it's part of an active investigation.
Valcior wonders about this murder too. His son was found
dead by fentanyl intoxication less than a year after this
Christmas party, and he was one of the people who
(43:13):
suspected there was something really wrong about what happened in
that day room at New Folsom.
Speaker 11 (43:25):
You have a laptoper to follow along, I guess. So
how are you doing this?
Speaker 4 (43:35):
In VAL's office? This swimming pool construction company and Sacramento
Hanging on the wall, he's got that picture that Valentino
painted of the two of them sitting side by side
on the edge of the dock fishing. Sometimes, he says
he can still feel his son close to him by
his side, and.
Speaker 12 (43:54):
He's holding my hand.
Speaker 14 (43:55):
He just wants me to find peace, and uh, I
find parts of peace, but not completely.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
When Valentino was a kid and Valcior would come home
from work, he says, his son would run up and
pull on the sleeve of his shirt.
Speaker 13 (44:11):
Dead dead dead, But I just feel him tugging still.
Speaker 8 (44:14):
You know.
Speaker 13 (44:16):
I owe that to him, and I'm going to go
as far as I can. And in the end, if
nothing is nothing I tried right, I'll find my answers
where my time comes.
Speaker 4 (44:33):
Since his son's death, Valcior has been pulled into a
new role now he's become the investigator.
Speaker 12 (44:41):
Shows where they got moved to. Where is it different?
Speaker 4 (44:47):
As our little reporting team, Julie, Stephen and I crowd
around the computer in his office. Valcior shows us the
evidence he's collected about the killing of that guy in
the day room, a twenty nine year old man named
Luis Giovanni Aguilar. He's still trying to understand how and
if that murder connects to his son's death there.
Speaker 6 (45:09):
Where did this come from?
Speaker 14 (45:11):
Just people were saying, we still look at her.
Speaker 6 (45:13):
You have secret source.
Speaker 12 (45:14):
See all these different sources.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
It's stuff from his confidential sources who work inside New Folsome.
Val Senior drags and drops the folders on his computer
one by one onto the hard drive that we've brought
for just this purpose.
Speaker 11 (45:29):
All do our best to just try and keep you
informed about our process.
Speaker 19 (45:33):
Is this one of the Gigger stories you've done with
podcast for Computer?
Speaker 11 (45:39):
Yeahult, I mean it's a very it's a very complex story.
But at the same time, I think it's really like
a really important story.
Speaker 12 (45:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
I tell him we're looking into this because his son's
story is part of something even larger. Since twenty nineteen,
when a new transparency law went into a fact here
in California. Julie and I have been trying to get
a clear picture of what the consequences are for correctional
officers who use excessive force in prison, lie on their reports,
(46:12):
or discriminate against their colleagues. That's been a black box
for decades, hidden by laws that were lobbied for by
correctional officer and police unions. Now we've gotten hundreds and
hundreds of documents. Some of them are related to troubling
use of force incidents, like the tapes you heard earlier,
(46:33):
and as we went through them, we discovered that a
really high number of these incidents had taken place at
New Folsom. When we heard there was an officer who
was blowing the whistle on misconduct there and then died,
we knew we had to see if there was a connection,
and the answer to that question could be among the
evidence Valcenior was loading onto our hard drive.
Speaker 10 (46:56):
What you're offering by what you have of the content
that you have, the text messages, combined with.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
All the records that we've requested, we'll be able to
see into the prisons.
Speaker 11 (47:08):
And how they function in a way that really hasn't
been done much.
Speaker 10 (47:13):
These records were completely secret and we are the first
people to analyze them.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
As we walk out of his office, let you be,
fal Senior hands us back the hard drive.
Speaker 7 (47:35):
Really, what else.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
Coming up? Next time? Valentino reaches a breaking point at
work that was.
Speaker 13 (47:46):
A flat out threat and when he got to work
they laughed at him.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
I remember this very clearly. He said, this is my identity.
He's like, I feel like I've given up on everything.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
And someone else starts looking into the murder in the
day room and finding clues, clues that point the finger
not just at the two men with knives, but also
at New Folsome itself. When's the data on that one
that's he died?
Speaker 12 (48:16):
Oh he texted to steal the day he died.
Speaker 4 (48:19):
It's friend Steel. You're listening to on our Watch season
two New Folsome from KQED. If you have any tips
(48:42):
or feedback about the series, you can email us at
on our Watch at KQED dot org. You can also
leave us a review in Apple Podcasts. This series is
reported by me Suki Lewis and Julie Small. It's edited
by Victoria Malone. It's produced and scored by Stephen Rascone
and Chris Agusa. Sound design and mixing by Tarak Fuda.
(49:05):
Jen Chien is kqd's director of Podcasts, and she executive
produced the series. Meticulous fact Checking by Mark Bettencourt. Additional
research by Kayla Mahalovich and Kathleen Quinn, students in the
Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
Special thanks to Rassan Thomas of ear Hustle, Sandia Dirk's
(49:26):
of NPR, KQED Health correspondent April Dembowski, and to our
in house counsel Rebecca Hopkins. Original music by romptin arab Luis,
including our theme song. Additional music from Cameron Fraser APM
Music and Audio Network. We got tremendous support from David Barstow,
chair of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate
(49:49):
School of Journalism, and graduate students Julieta Bisharion, William Jenkins, Arman, Olia,
Arrell Watt, and juniaw Yong. Thanks also to UC Berkeley's
Jeremy Rue and Amanda Glazer for their data analysis. The
internal records highlighted in this podcast were obtained as part
of the California Reporting project. Funding for On Our Watch
(50:10):
is provided in part by Arnold Ventures and the California Endowment.
Thank you to our Managing editor of News and Enterprise,
Otis R. Taylor, Junior Ethan Toven Lindsay Are, Vice president
of News and KQED Chief Content Officer, Holly Kernan. Thanks
for listening.
Hey, this is Steve. Hope you enjoyed this season of
The Burden and the bonus episodes, which we'll keep coming,
and hope you're looking out for what comes next in
season two. But today we want to bring you something
a little different, the first episode of a really great
podcast called On Our Watch from our friends at KQED
(00:20):
in San Francisco. This season follows the story of what
happens when two whistleblowers try to expose abuse and corruption
inside California's most dangerous prison. This is one of my
favorite recent podcasts. It's gripping, it's compelling, it's important. Let's
get into it. Episode one of On Our Watch starts
(00:42):
right now.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
This is a series investigating some of the difficult things
that happen to the people who live and work inside
California's prisons. So we wanted to give you a heads
up that this episode touches on intense topics including substance use,
state violence, and self harm. If you need support, we've
got links to resources in the episode description. The story
(01:05):
begins with a death that is intense and upsetting.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I park my car and I walk in the house
and he's not on the couch.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
On October twenty first, twenty twenty, Mimi Rodriguez came home
from having dinner with her friends and called out to
her husband, Valentino Rodriguez.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
So I go, val, Val, where are you? And all
the lights are on in the house, and I go
into the kitchen. He's not in the kitchen.
Speaker 5 (01:39):
So I'm going into our bedroom and he's not in
our bedroom. And I knew something was wrong, and I go, Val, now,
where are you? And I run into the bathroom and
he's just he's on his knees. He's not on his knees,
with his head up against the wall, hunched over, and
(02:04):
I just scream and I had my ear pods in,
So I go Serri nine one one, So SERI Media
calls nine one.
Speaker 6 (02:11):
One forty five second October Luty one thousand, okay.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
With medical.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Again.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
On the call, she's like hello, and I go come please, like,
please help me.
Speaker 6 (02:41):
I'm scared.
Speaker 7 (02:41):
I don't know what to do.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
This has happened.
Speaker 7 (02:44):
He's dead.
Speaker 8 (02:45):
Please what happened?
Speaker 5 (02:48):
And I'm screaming and I go and I grab him
and I pull him back and I put his head
back and he has vomit coming out of his mouth.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
The nine one. One operator tells me me to perform
CPR on him so hard of.
Speaker 6 (03:01):
Fat twice for a second. Okay, we want to make
sure of a check comes up all the way in
between pumps, they're ready to fix on their times or
her help and take over.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
They were going to count together.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
Okay, there's one two three four one three four.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Valentino's hands were purple and he wasn't breathing.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
Is that our door open? Are they gonna be able
to get it to you? It is open? Okay, keep going, man,
pep there a chest compression. Is anybody else in the
house with you? Keep going one.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
Eventually the police came. I don't know how fast. I
think like two minutes or two. But she kept telling me.
She's like, are they they're outside way.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
They're one two three four, one two three four, they're
parking right now. They're almost to you.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
One and I was like, just open the door, just
come inside, please. Like seven officers ran in and I
was always like, I'm in the bathroom. Helped me and
is it save them?
Speaker 6 (04:03):
Please?
Speaker 5 (04:03):
Save them.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
The police pulled her out of the house and had
her sit in the back of a squad car. They
told her they needed to ask her some questions.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
The officer was trying to talk to you as this
lady and she and she's just like what happened? And
she goes, what do you how did this happen? I
was like, I don't know, but it's his job. And
I just kept saying it's his job. This is all
because of his job. She goes, where does he work?
And I'm like, he works at CDCR.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
CDCR the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Speaker 7 (04:34):
It's this stupid job.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
I just it just it just overtook his life, his thoughts,
everything that like he stood for.
Speaker 9 (04:49):
Test test word.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Correctional Office. Valentino Rodriguez was thirty years old when he died.
He'd worked for the department for about five years. Like
a lot of officers, that time changed him, especially the
time he spent inside the walls of this one prison.
New Folsom. This is a story about that place, about
(05:20):
broken promises and unwritten rules and who gets hurt when
the system that promises to keep us safe is bent
on protecting itself. I'm Suki Lewis. This is on our
watch season two, New Folsom.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
It's like you go past these lights.
Speaker 10 (05:56):
Then at the next set, ten left stay.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
In the second li. More than two years after Officer
Valentino Rodriguez died in December twenty twenty two, our reporting
team went to go see his family in ten Right,
we're driving from the Bay Area through rice patties and
apple orchards to West Sacramento, a city on the outskirts
of the state capitol.
Speaker 11 (06:20):
Is just everything about this case just raises questions.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
That's my co reporter, Julie Small. The official cause of
Valentino's death was fentanyl intoxication, but his family and especially
his father, Val Senior, still aren't satisfied with how it
was investigated.
Speaker 11 (06:38):
Now, maybe the answers are be nine, but because they're unanswered,
I think, you know, yea makes you think the worst
or it. Certainly val keeps going over and over it
in his head, trying to tie up the loose ends.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Yeah, we also think there might be more to the
story of Valentino's death because he was a whistleblower. He'd
reported corruption and abuse by his fellow officers just days
before he died, but they said no signs of no
signs of foul play. Julie's been talking to Valcior for
the past few months, it's taken a while to gain
(07:17):
his trust. Today, Stephen Rascone, our producer, is a long
term record.
Speaker 7 (07:22):
So today is like an icebreaker, I think.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
So it's my first chance to meet Valentino's parents, Valentino
Rodriguez Senor and his wife Erma rolling inside. The walls
are covered with photos. They've got a good looking family,
five grandchildren at the time, and therefore adult kids.
Speaker 9 (07:48):
And I think about that, all four of them just
sat there and talked, made fun of each other and
laughed and.
Speaker 12 (07:55):
Close kids.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
In a couple of weeks, the family's planning to get together,
but of course one of them will be missing, Valentino.
It'll be their third Christmas without him. I was in
the fog for a good year.
Speaker 7 (08:11):
This is a different fog.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Now for his dad. Valentino's death started him on this
search to find answers from the police, the FBI, the prison.
He wants to understand what happened to his son and
why and who's responsible. But instead of finding answers, Valcigior
just keeps finding more questions.
Speaker 7 (08:32):
This thing is just all tangled.
Speaker 12 (08:35):
I'm just trying to undangle it.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Now. Valcenior says he feels like a stereotype out of
a true crime series on TV, the grieving parent on
a quest for justice.
Speaker 13 (08:47):
And here I am in the driver's seat and I.
Speaker 7 (08:52):
Couldn't do it any other way.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
But I never wanted to be that person on TV.
Speaker 7 (08:57):
Right, just consumed it.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Yeah, would you be able to tell us, like your
favorite story of your son.
Speaker 14 (09:09):
Him? With him?
Speaker 4 (09:10):
There's a lot.
Speaker 7 (09:12):
We have four kids, and they're all completely different.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Valentino was their second child and the oldest boy. As
we sit around the dining room table, Irma pulls out
some of the stuff she saved over the years, his
first Communion prayer book, a newspaper clipping from when he
made Student of the week.
Speaker 9 (09:33):
I remember his third grade teacher said he was a
very good writer. She told him one day he was
going to be a writer, and she could wait to
hear his stories because you still like to write. I
still have all those his little pictures.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
After Irma points out Valentino in a little league team photo,
he looks about eleven or twelve, She says he wasn't
any good at baseball.
Speaker 9 (09:53):
Yeah, he wasn't very good at soccer either, And I
went to all his kids. I had all four kids playing,
so it was like every Saturday, I'm driving around all
the tacamount of taking them. And I tell him one day,
why do you run around with your eyes closed? He's like,
you would pretend I was an airplane flying in the air.
Speaker 8 (10:11):
Everyone.
Speaker 7 (10:11):
I have to watch them wrestle. He always lose, but
after he was done, he'd be talking to.
Speaker 14 (10:20):
The guy that beat him up here.
Speaker 15 (10:21):
Yeah, yeah, senator, talking to.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
They tell us this was typical Valentino. Goofy, dreamy, smart,
eager to turn enemies into friends. After college, when he
told them he was going to train to be a
correctional officer, his parents were kind of surprised. They weren't
a law enforcement family. But he'd have job security and
good benefits. Val Senior says he remembers the day his
(10:52):
son graduated from the academy. It was May one, twenty fifteen,
and he looked out over this ocean of young faces.
His son was among the about two hundred cadets sworn
in that day.
Speaker 7 (11:05):
Raise your right hand and repeat after me.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
This is tape from a more recent graduation reciting the
same oath Valentino took.
Speaker 15 (11:14):
I state your name, recognize the badge of my office
as a symbol of public faith.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Photos from that day show Valentino in his class a uniform,
Creas's sharp, his hair neatly combed. They promised to protect
the innocent.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Dedicating myself before all present, to.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Be honest, true, and to hold each other accountable.
Speaker 7 (11:46):
Congratulations, Welcome to the family.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
One of Valentino's first assignments was working on death row
at San Quentin State Prison, the oldest prison in California.
He'd often carpool to work with a bunch of other
correctional officers, and on the way back they'd get dropped
off at In and Out Burger.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
I was a cashier and he'd come in in his
little green suit. He's so cute in his little boots.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
That's me me again talking to my colleague Julie. She
calls him cute. But Valentino was not a little man.
He was five foot seven and at least two hundred pounds,
clean shaven, with dark hair and big brown eyes.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
So his order was a three y three Ketchupolino salt,
the cheese, frid no salt, and then a large seven up.
So I knew his order from the moment, because of course,
you know, the cute guy comes in, I'm going to
memorise his order.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Mimi recognized Valentino from a party she'd gone to at
his house, thrown by his brother Greg.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And I was like, oh, how are you? And he's
like good. And I think in his mind he's like,
who is this girl?
Speaker 6 (13:00):
You brother?
Speaker 3 (13:00):
And he's like what And he was just hecko weirded out,
and in my head, it's going great, right. But he
started coming to it in and out more often, and
I would give him free burgers or shakes when my
manager wasn't looking.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
And they started messaging on Facebook.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And he's like, hey, I haven't seen you. Did you
switch jobs? And I'm like, oh, this void texit me
or this void messaging and I was like.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Hello, yes Hi.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
It was just me being all excited. He was a
kid at heart, very playful.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
They play video games together and watch movies, and they
liked introducing each other to new things food, music, or art.
This one time they went out to a sip and
paint night at a local spot.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
He was kind of nervous. I think it was a
new thing for him. But we had gone to a
paint night with one of my coworkers, and we went
on a double date and he painted this really nice picture.
It was supposed to be of a pelican at the
end of a bridge, but he he changed it and
it's a painting of him and his dad.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
The scene is of the two of them from behind,
a boy and his father sitting side by side with
their fishing poles in the water, wispy white clouds over
the horizon.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
And he gave it to his dad after a week
I fack.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Mimi says they fell hard for each other, and just
two months after they started dating, her roommate moved out
and she needed to find a new place to live.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I was going to move into my brother's house, but
he was like no, like you should move in with me,
and I'm like, no, this is kind of soon, and
he's like, come on, think about it.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Valentino's mom had helped him find a cute little house
just about five miles away from their place in West Sacramento.
Mimi moved in, and it was right around this time
that Valentino got what he saw as a big break,
an opportunity to work in a different prison.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
He specifically chose Fulsome the.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Official name of New Fulsome is California State Prison Sacramento
or CSP SAC. It's called New Fulsome because it was
built back in the eighties next to the Old Fulsome
prison that was made famous by country singer Johnny Cash.
Speaker 7 (15:17):
Okay, Hello, I'm Johnny Kay.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
He wrote a song called Fulsome Prison Blues and then
later recorded this performance live at the prison.
Speaker 7 (15:28):
I hear the tree coming.
Speaker 13 (15:30):
It's a giant.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
I don't know where you can actually see the guard
towers of Old Fulsome from New Folsom Prison. They've got
a medieval castle kind of look to them. New Folsom,
on the other hand, where Valentino was transferring to, has
a more industrial utilitarian look, a lot of razor wire
and gray concrete. It's a high security prison that the
(15:56):
state set up to accommodate people with risky medical conditions
and mental health needs. It also houses active gang members
and people who've been convicted of some of the most
serious crimes.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
He said he wanted to go there because it was
the most He said it was the most dangerous prison
in California, but he described it as there was just
a lot of activity there with officers with inmates, and
he just wanted to be in there.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
There are a lot of infamous prisons in this country,
and a fair number here in California. They're San Quentin
with its Death Row, the state's first supermax, Pelican Bay Corkoran,
where in the nineties officers allegedly set up gladiator style
fights between rival gangs and then shot incarcerated people to
stop the fights. But as we dug through a bunch
(16:56):
of data and public records, we realized in the past decade,
New Folsom has been the most violent prison in the state,
and that violence is committed by people who are locked
up and officers. We found that in the six years
after twenty fourteen, New Folsom officers used serious force, meaning
they either badly injured someone or used deadly force, at
(17:18):
a rate three times higher than any other prison in
the state. This was stunning to us. CDCR declined our
multiple requests to comment on this finding. I've done quite
a bit of reporting on prisons, and Julie's been reporting
on prisons for even longer. New Folsom just wasn't on
our radar in the same way. We'll dig into those
(17:40):
numbers more later, but for now it's important to know
that with just a year of experience as a correctional officer.
This is the environment Valentino was walking into. Mimi says,
he was looking forward to it.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
He was excited to go into this prison. He was
excited for the work. He was excited for what he was.
Speaker 12 (17:59):
Going to do.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
He wanted to be an investigator in this elite squad
called the ISU, or the Investigative Services Unit. A prison
is like its own city, and the ISU squad are
like the police force of the prison. They've got a
canine unit, a gain investigation unit, a prosecution division, and
(18:21):
one for internal affairs to look into complaints of excessive
force or allegations of officer corruption. Walking through New folsom
the squad stood out. They had special black and green
patches on their uniforms, and unlike regular officers, they could
bring their cell phones into work. They could also go
(18:42):
anywhere in the prison they wanted total access. Valentino's goal
was to earn his patch and get into that squad,
but first he had to pay his dues. Officer Valentino
(19:04):
Rodriguez's first assignment was working in the prison's psychiatric unit,
guarding one of the most vulnerable and difficult parts of
the population, people with severe mental illnesses. I've talked to
a number of people incarcerated in this unit, and it
sounds like a really tough place to be. It can
be very loud and chaotic. Sometimes the people in this
(19:27):
unit are angry and confrontational, while others are simply terrified
or heavily medicated. And officers like Valentino are required to
get training in how to prevent incarcerated people from hurting
each other and themselves. Valentino had been working at New
FOLSOM and in this unit for just a few months
when he got caught up in a really bad incident
(19:50):
that Valcior says was a turning point for him. An
incarcerated man ended up in the hospital with broken bones
and injuries to his face and head, so investigators started
looking into how the man got those injuries. We were
able to get the tapes and paperwork for that incident.
Just a note, we noticed a lot of inconsistencies and
(20:11):
what people say happened. The incarcerated man's story changes a bit.
One officer contradicts himself, and other officers have slightly different
versions of the incident. He'll also hear some places where
the department has redacted the audio.
Speaker 16 (20:27):
So what we're going to talk about is, on the
twelfth of August Friday, you were involved in an incident
which occurred. Is that yourself where you're at before, Yes, sir.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
They're looking into this incarcerated man's allegations that officers caused
his injuries and then lied about it.
Speaker 16 (20:47):
You made the allegation while trying to hang myself. The
CEOs came in and smashed my face into the wall.
Can you tell me about that?
Speaker 7 (20:56):
What you mean?
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Well, because of some sensitive details about his mental health,
we decided not to use this man's name. I'm just
going to call him by the initial of his last name, C.
So C tells the investigators that it all started because
of the meds he was taking.
Speaker 8 (21:17):
I was having a hard time on medication. When I
have a hard time medication side offics of committed suicide.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
First, she says, he put his head in the toilet
in his cell to try and drown himself, and then
she told a passing officer that he was feeling suicidal.
Speaker 12 (21:36):
He put a.
Speaker 8 (21:39):
Sheet like a suicide sheet.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
He says. The officer handed him a sheet with a
noose already tied in it.
Speaker 8 (21:50):
You two to mysell He said, hang yourself, so I
turned to hang my.
Speaker 12 (21:53):
Sell in for no.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
Officers have to follow really strict rule to prevent suicides.
They have to check on people in their cells every
thirty minutes. When someone says they're suicidal, officers are supposed
to call mental health services right away, and that person
might even get moved to a different unit or checked
into a hospital. To be clear, handing someone a noose
(22:18):
would totally violate what officers are meant to do. In
the situation, no officers admitted giving him a noose. A
responding officer tells investigators he was doing his rounds and
Sauca with the sheet already tied around his neck, had that.
Speaker 16 (22:34):
Time opened the food port, gave him multiple orders to stop.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
When C doesn't respond, the officer says, he sprays him
with pepper spray.
Speaker 13 (22:43):
My intent was to have to save his life from
stocking him from actually choking himself and killing himself.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
An officer gets C to come to the door to
put handcuffs on him, and he shackled by his feet
and behind his back, and then they escort him to
what's called a decontamination cell. It's basically a cage the
size of a phone booth that they can spray a
hose into to wash the pepper spray off him.
Speaker 8 (23:12):
And boom. He pushed me in there and my face
the back of the cell. I wanted like that boom
here my face, this.
Speaker 16 (23:23):
Injury that's right there, across your nose, my clothing, my
wife in my head and the face that boom, and
then my eye and then my face and then my neck.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
But the officers who are escorting him tell it differently.
Speaker 17 (23:37):
He just kept trying to pull away, so I tightened
my grate and canseled him to knock, not pull away
from myself.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
The officer says. Ce broke away from them and lunged
towards the shower.
Speaker 17 (23:50):
Hey, and then he ended up tripping over the there's
a lip on that shower, tripping over the bottom wood,
smashing in the back in the shower, and I immediately
closed shower, blocked in again.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Se denies this.
Speaker 16 (24:05):
Were you resistant at all, afist, I don't know. You
were just walking calmly, unlocking calmly.
Speaker 10 (24:11):
I mean not.
Speaker 16 (24:12):
I get the injuries from trying to hide myself. I
got the injuries from him pushing me.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
So to recap. According to c he was suicidal. An
officer gave him a noose, pepper sprayed him, and he
was forcibly thrown into a cage and injured really badly.
The version officers tell is that se already had the noose,
they pepper sprayed him to save his life, and he
(24:37):
got hurt first when he fell from his bunk, and
then again when he pulled away from them and tripped
face first into the shower cage. The last account of
events I'm going to walk you through is Valentinos, because
he was one of the officers who responded that day.
(24:59):
Here he is in using himself on tape to an
investigator with the Internal Affairs Department.
Speaker 18 (25:04):
Valentino rodri Riuez, correctional officer, California Department of Corrections, sacon
Mon Estate Prison.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
The agent tells Valentino, he's here as a witness.
Speaker 11 (25:16):
Can you give me your account of that incident?
Speaker 18 (25:20):
Her on the radio announcement that there was a inmy
hanging in May comped hanging in two block.
Speaker 14 (25:26):
In b session.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Valentino says he put on his gloves and rushed to
the south.
Speaker 18 (25:31):
It's apparent that he was sprayed with OC because O C.
Pepper sprayed because he had He was spitting up mucus
and a little bit of blood on his face from
being sprayed.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
As the two officers took C to hose off, they
walked him past Valentino, who says he saw a little
bump on C's forehead.
Speaker 14 (25:49):
Could you see what clothing?
Speaker 18 (25:51):
I don't remember. I don't remember if I could.
Speaker 12 (25:53):
At the time. Can you know?
Speaker 4 (25:56):
No, So se goes to the shower cage with really
no major injuries that Valentino could see.
Speaker 16 (26:03):
At what point did you observe an injury on him?
Speaker 18 (26:07):
When the water was turned off and I walked up
to the cage to open it up, I observe, uh,
some injuries onto the top of his head and across
his face. I think believe it was across the faces.
Speaker 14 (26:22):
Can you tell me about to describe those injuries?
Speaker 18 (26:24):
They were gashes, like large.
Speaker 12 (26:27):
Large gashes.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Valentino was asked to photograph seize injuries and then take
him to get medical attention. We got those pictures that
he took. The man's face is partially blacked out, but
you can see a five inch gash across his forehead
and his cheek is split open from his nose to
below his cheekbone.
Speaker 16 (26:47):
Is there anything else you'd like to tell me what
you have not already discussed during this interview.
Speaker 14 (26:53):
Before I turn off the recorder.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
I want to remind you it's a big deal anytime
an officer gets pulled into an investigation, even just as
a witness, because lying is a fireable offense. We know
Valentino told the people closest to him about this incident.
Speaker 12 (27:08):
I remember that when it happened, he was so scared
for weeks.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
When we got this recording through a public records request
to CDCR, it was one of the things we really
wanted to share with Val Seniors.
Speaker 11 (27:21):
Want to hear it?
Speaker 12 (27:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (27:24):
My co reporter Julie Small sat down with him and
pressed play on the recording.
Speaker 12 (27:31):
To the theater is December nine, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Val Senior had never heard this interview with his son before.
Speaker 12 (27:38):
Again a.
Speaker 18 (27:41):
Little by a danger about his igh.
Speaker 17 (27:43):
Okay, I think, I wish I I can't call okay.
Speaker 11 (27:49):
But I think that Do you think that he's telling
the truth there?
Speaker 19 (27:54):
I think because I know my son, he has a
really good memories, really toil orientated and well for him
not to remember which side the cut was on and
certain things.
Speaker 12 (28:06):
It's just to me, he's sounds like he's worried right there, scared.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Valentino told him that what happened during the incident was
different than what those officers wrote in their reports and
told investigators. But he said he felt like he had
to go along with their story.
Speaker 13 (28:27):
You should see his face and he come over. That
broke my heart. Man, because he had a job. And
he told me, Dad, you have to you have to
tell the same story because you're.
Speaker 12 (28:38):
On a team. Yeah, and if you don't, then you're
the odd man out.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Mimi told us something similar.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
He was told like, hey, you know, this is this
is what we're writing, and it's important that all of
us have the same story, and it's important for all
of us to be on.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
The same page. And he told me how they never
really specifically said you must do it this way, you
must write it this, you must do it that. It
was more of like, this is what we are doing,
and this is how we're going to do it, and
this is what's important for our team, so we can
all be on the same page. He felt a lot
(29:16):
of pressure because he didn't want to lose his job.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
CDCR did not respond to specific questions about this incident.
A spokesperson did write in an email that the agency
takes all allegations of employee misconduct seriously and there is
a new process for making sure complaints are quote properly,
fairly and thoroughly reviewed. The spokesperson also pointed out that
there is a new system of fixed and body cameras
(29:50):
at new Folsome So we don't know exactly what the
truth is about this incident. What we do know is
that C was severely in Medical reports show he received
twenty seven stitches, his nose was broken, and his spine
was fractured in three places. Ultimately, those in charge believed
(30:12):
the officer's story that C fractured his back when he
slipped and fell off his bunk and injured his face
and head when he lunged away from officers and landed
on the metal rails of the decontamination shower. And that's
the story that Valentino chose to go along with, even
though he told his father it wasn't true. This wouldn't
(30:36):
be the last time Valentino felt compromised by his job.
(30:56):
Mimi Rodriguez told my colleague Julie and me that working
in the psychiatric unit really took a toll on Valentino.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
He would talk about how draining it was, and he
would have come home drained and did not look like
to you. I mean he would just drag his feet.
He would drag his feet, come in and he didn't
want to eat. He would shower and just go to sleep.
I mean, he was just quiet.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
He worked double shifts so we could get more days
off in a row to recharge.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
That's when he would talk more about work and be like, yeah,
like you you know, it was a little stressful and
I'm dealing with this or I'm talking about this, but
you know, I'm happy to go in and he was
always very enthusiastic.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
About two and a half years after he'd gotten to
New folsom late twenty eighteen, Valentino's hard work looked like
it was paying off. Remember the squad that detective unit
Valentino was aiming for. An officer there went on leave
for PTSD and there was a vacancy on the team.
One of the supervisors who knew Valentino, thought he'd be
(32:00):
good at the job and gave him the chance to
fill in.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
He was really excited for that, but he didn't think
he was going to get that opportunity.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
He'd made the squad working in the Security and Investigations unit,
but on a temporary basis. To get the position permanently,
he'd have to impress the right people.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
He's like, yes, of course, I I'll do it. I
mean he was ready.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Valentino called to let his parents know he got promoted.
Speaker 7 (32:28):
He called his mom first and she told me Bell
got a promotion.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
He told them it was a really good position, one
that a lot of other people wanted, and that he
was the youngest on the team.
Speaker 7 (32:40):
I asked him, how's your first day? Yeah, he goes
a bunch of older guys.
Speaker 12 (32:44):
Dad had been there. He called him ojiez.
Speaker 7 (32:47):
I said, well, how do you go? He goes to
ask who the fuck are you?
Speaker 4 (32:50):
So from the very beginning, there was tension on the team.
Some of the people he worked with felt like he'd
skipped the line, that he hadn't done enough to prove himself.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
There was one time where he had asked me to
make little cheesecakes. There's your little mini pie cheesecakes that
I would make, And I made a bunch for the
team and like nobody had them, Nobody ate them, and
they would just tell him like, no, we don't want
this or we don't want that.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
At first, he tried to earn their acceptance by just
working really hard, trying to prove that he was up
to the job.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
He just continued to just put his head down in work.
I think that's what really bothered him, that he would
just try to do the right thing and it just
didn't seem like it was enough.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Valentino was making busts and working cases, but to some
of his co workers this might have made him seem
like even more of a threat because higher ups were
noticing his work. Valentino was getting a reputation for being
a diligent investigator, thorough and for writing really good reports.
(33:52):
This was a big deal because paperwork reports are hugely
important in prison. With one hundred and fifteen thousand people
incarcerated in the state's prisons at the time, these reports
are how the agency kept track of everybody. Officers need
to document everything gang affiliations, medical needs, disability status, history
(34:13):
of suicide, fights with staff, and so on, and these
reports are also the basis for disciplinary action like sending
someone to solitary confinement or charging them with a new crime.
These reports hold a lot of power, and it is
a crime for an officer to falsify an official report.
(34:35):
Valentino wanted to keep moving up in this system and
expanding his skills as an investigator. On the weekends when
he wasn't working, he'd pay out a pocket to go
to these training events and seminars, and during these trips
he became friends with a guy named Sergeant Kevin Steele.
Steele passed away in twenty twenty one, so we couldn't
(34:56):
interview him, but Valsor came to know him well.
Speaker 13 (35:00):
He was about five to seven my age, maybe a
little bit older, using good shape, you know.
Speaker 7 (35:06):
He shaved his head and stood.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Straight up, picture of Bruce Willis type in his fifties,
with intense, bright blue eyes. He was a military veteran
and a straight shooter. Sergeant Steele also worked in the ISU.
He was senior to Valentino, but he was in a
different division. He was in the prosecution division. It was
his job to prepare cases for the district attorney to
(35:29):
bring criminal charges.
Speaker 12 (35:30):
He was very good speaking and writing, very passionate about
his job. And loyal. He was very, very important to
that prison for a good reason.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
The two officers really respected each other. Both of them
were kind of law enforcement nerds, committed to going the
extra mile. Valentino would testify in court for Steele's cases.
All that extra training meant he was a great expert witness,
and Steele became one of the few people Bull Valentino
trusted a mentor and someone he called regularly for advice
(36:05):
about criminal case protocol or how to handle evidence. Things
with the other guys in his division, however, were getting worse.
Speaker 13 (36:13):
Sometimes he would text the guys for help and they'd
have their own group texts, and they would like they
wouldn't they didn't want to help them.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
Some of these group texts are pretty awful. They mock
his weight and call him half patch to remind him
he's still just a temporary member of the squad.
Speaker 14 (36:30):
Are these things that you saw after he died?
Speaker 7 (36:33):
Mm hmm, Only he never He never said look deadly
what they're saying.
Speaker 14 (36:36):
He just never.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
But these messages would escalate even further before they stopped.
The brotherhood, the family that Valentino had been promised at
his academy graduation was nowhere to.
Speaker 14 (36:49):
Be found, and he used to go in on weekends to.
Speaker 13 (36:55):
Work because some of the the team wasn't there to harass.
Speaker 14 (37:00):
Nobody was calling him.
Speaker 13 (37:03):
Names or anything, or teddam anyway, So he liked going
there on saturdays.
Speaker 8 (37:07):
I know that.
Speaker 13 (37:08):
And he told me he used to go to work
in the mornings, and then he told me he would
go into the restroom to vomit.
Speaker 14 (37:16):
Because he felt so much anxiety.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
An attorney for these officers declined our request to interview
her clients, but she said that any allegations that any
of them bullied, Haze or harassed Valentino are false. Val
Senior says he wouldn't understand until much later the full
scope of what his son was going through or of
the things he was being asked to do in the
(37:43):
name of this team. But he did notice a change
come over his son. He wasn't sleeping and he gained
sixty pounds over the course of the year he was
in the ISU squad. Sometimes when they were hanging out,
he'd get this blank look on his face.
Speaker 7 (37:59):
I could tell he was starting to build this mental
mechanism where he knew that turned things off, you know,
because I used to see him stare into space and
then he'd snap out of it.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
And this distance was coming between Valentino and Mimi too.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
What really bothered me about his job was that he
was never home.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
They were planning to get married and have kids, but
more and more she felt like Valentino was always gone.
There were the overtime shifts he had to work, and
the milestones in their life together were passing by without him.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
I understood that it was his job and it was
a requirement. But would frustrate me is that when I
would ask him, like why couldn't you make it or
why couldn't do this?
Speaker 5 (38:45):
He would say, well, I asked for help and no
one came to help me. And I would tell him, Valentino,
where your family, Like, we love you. You know if
something happens to you, that job is just going to
replace you. But how we can't replace you.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
She remembers one holiday, maybe Thanksgiving, where she went to
his family's house for dinner.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
I remember just sitting there waiting for him in his
grandma's house, just waiting. He couldn't show up.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Once again, Valentino had to stay late working at the prison.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
And it just broke my heart because I just felt alone.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
I felt really lonely.
Speaker 5 (39:28):
His family very nice, I mean, don't get me wrong,
very kind people, but I don't want to sit next
to his grandma per se when I can just sit
next to him.
Speaker 4 (39:42):
It was in the midst of these pressures. Valentino was overworked,
the holidays were happening, and he felt ostracized by his team.
That something major happened at the prison. Falsenior says he
was the family Christmas party. Everyone was having a good time,
eating and drinking. They had a game of White Elephant
going and they were all laughing a lot. Valentino showed
(40:05):
up late straight from work around ten o'clock at night,
and as soon as he walked in the door, Valcignior
knew something was wrong.
Speaker 14 (40:14):
Yeah, I could just.
Speaker 12 (40:15):
See his face just slip.
Speaker 14 (40:17):
Something really bothering him. I've seen that look on his
face before, but it was really intense.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
Valcenior asked him what was going on.
Speaker 14 (40:25):
And that's when he took his phone out and he
showed me the video.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
The scene that Valcignor saw on his son's cell phone
was incredibly violent. A video taken by surveillance cameras and
one of the most high security housing units in New Folsome.
The camera angle is from inside the control booth, which
looks out on two tiers of cells. Right in front
of the booth, there's an open area on the ground
(40:50):
floor called a day room. In this day room, there
are these metal desks in a semicircle with clear dividers
in between them. In the video, saw a man shackled
to one of these chairs with two other guys standing
over him.
Speaker 14 (41:06):
This guy, this kid's being stabbed over and over and over, and.
Speaker 15 (41:13):
He literally would shrug his shoulders and cover his neck
while they're trying to stab him the neck, and then
they would go back down the chest, and then he
would try to cover his chest by concaving his chest inward, and.
Speaker 14 (41:23):
Then he'd go back to his neck, and it was
just back and forth. So finally the kid threw himself.
Speaker 15 (41:26):
On the floor and they proceeded to just stab him
to the point to where the knights were literally hitting
the ground because every time they pulled up, his body
would go up with it.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
The man on the floor was now lifeless. Valcenior watched
as two attackers painted his blood across their faces, but
Valentino wanted his dad to notice something else.
Speaker 15 (41:52):
He had said, look at the guy in the towers,
not even amy, and they're using rubber bullets.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
Valentino was pointing out to his dad that the officer
in the control booth didn't use his rifle to immediately
stop the deadly threat. He fired his less lethal weapon
that shoots rounds made out of hard foam, and he
fired it way too late.
Speaker 13 (42:14):
You're supposed to use like rounds. I tried not to
emphasize or talk about or look at it. I just
wanted to go on to my little Christmas party, so
I told him, you know, to put that thing away,
and he just liked what he does snapped out of it.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
But that wasn't all. Valentino was also instructed to write
up a particular type of confidential report for statewide gang investigators.
The report was supposed to lay out how the killing
was tied to a dispute between rival gangs. A lot
of questions would later be raised about that report and
(42:52):
who was really behind the murder. CDCR said it cannot
comment on the case because it's part of an active investigation.
Valcior wonders about this murder too. His son was found
dead by fentanyl intoxication less than a year after this
Christmas party, and he was one of the people who
(43:13):
suspected there was something really wrong about what happened in
that day room at New Folsom.
Speaker 11 (43:25):
You have a laptoper to follow along, I guess. So
how are you doing this?
Speaker 4 (43:35):
In VAL's office? This swimming pool construction company and Sacramento
Hanging on the wall, he's got that picture that Valentino
painted of the two of them sitting side by side
on the edge of the dock fishing. Sometimes, he says
he can still feel his son close to him by
his side, and.
Speaker 12 (43:54):
He's holding my hand.
Speaker 14 (43:55):
He just wants me to find peace, and uh, I
find parts of peace, but not completely.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
When Valentino was a kid and Valcior would come home
from work, he says, his son would run up and
pull on the sleeve of his shirt.
Speaker 13 (44:11):
Dead dead dead, But I just feel him tugging still.
Speaker 8 (44:14):
You know.
Speaker 13 (44:16):
I owe that to him, and I'm going to go
as far as I can. And in the end, if
nothing is nothing I tried right, I'll find my answers
where my time comes.
Speaker 4 (44:33):
Since his son's death, Valcior has been pulled into a
new role now he's become the investigator.
Speaker 12 (44:41):
Shows where they got moved to. Where is it different?
Speaker 4 (44:47):
As our little reporting team, Julie, Stephen and I crowd
around the computer in his office. Valcior shows us the
evidence he's collected about the killing of that guy in
the day room, a twenty nine year old man named
Luis Giovanni Aguilar. He's still trying to understand how and
if that murder connects to his son's death there.
Speaker 6 (45:09):
Where did this come from?
Speaker 14 (45:11):
Just people were saying, we still look at her.
Speaker 6 (45:13):
You have secret source.
Speaker 12 (45:14):
See all these different sources.
Speaker 4 (45:16):
It's stuff from his confidential sources who work inside New Folsome.
Val Senior drags and drops the folders on his computer
one by one onto the hard drive that we've brought
for just this purpose.
Speaker 11 (45:29):
All do our best to just try and keep you
informed about our process.
Speaker 19 (45:33):
Is this one of the Gigger stories you've done with
podcast for Computer?
Speaker 11 (45:39):
Yeahult, I mean it's a very it's a very complex story.
But at the same time, I think it's really like
a really important story.
Speaker 12 (45:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
I tell him we're looking into this because his son's
story is part of something even larger. Since twenty nineteen,
when a new transparency law went into a fact here
in California. Julie and I have been trying to get
a clear picture of what the consequences are for correctional
officers who use excessive force in prison, lie on their reports,
(46:12):
or discriminate against their colleagues. That's been a black box
for decades, hidden by laws that were lobbied for by
correctional officer and police unions. Now we've gotten hundreds and
hundreds of documents. Some of them are related to troubling
use of force incidents, like the tapes you heard earlier,
(46:33):
and as we went through them, we discovered that a
really high number of these incidents had taken place at
New Folsom. When we heard there was an officer who
was blowing the whistle on misconduct there and then died,
we knew we had to see if there was a connection,
and the answer to that question could be among the
evidence Valcenior was loading onto our hard drive.
Speaker 10 (46:56):
What you're offering by what you have of the content
that you have, the text messages, combined with.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
All the records that we've requested, we'll be able to
see into the prisons.
Speaker 11 (47:08):
And how they function in a way that really hasn't
been done much.
Speaker 10 (47:13):
These records were completely secret and we are the first
people to analyze them.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
As we walk out of his office, let you be,
fal Senior hands us back the hard drive.
Speaker 7 (47:35):
Really, what else.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
Coming up? Next time? Valentino reaches a breaking point at
work that was.
Speaker 13 (47:46):
A flat out threat and when he got to work
they laughed at him.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
I remember this very clearly. He said, this is my identity.
He's like, I feel like I've given up on everything.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
And someone else starts looking into the murder in the
day room and finding clues, clues that point the finger
not just at the two men with knives, but also
at New Folsome itself. When's the data on that one
that's he died?
Speaker 12 (48:16):
Oh he texted to steal the day he died.
Speaker 4 (48:19):
It's friend Steel. You're listening to on our Watch season
two New Folsome from KQED. If you have any tips
(48:42):
or feedback about the series, you can email us at
on our Watch at KQED dot org. You can also
leave us a review in Apple Podcasts. This series is
reported by me Suki Lewis and Julie Small. It's edited
by Victoria Malone. It's produced and scored by Stephen Rascone
and Chris Agusa. Sound design and mixing by Tarak Fuda.
(49:05):
Jen Chien is kqd's director of Podcasts, and she executive
produced the series. Meticulous fact Checking by Mark Bettencourt. Additional
research by Kayla Mahalovich and Kathleen Quinn, students in the
Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
Special thanks to Rassan Thomas of ear Hustle, Sandia Dirk's
(49:26):
of NPR, KQED Health correspondent April Dembowski, and to our
in house counsel Rebecca Hopkins. Original music by romptin arab Luis,
including our theme song. Additional music from Cameron Fraser APM
Music and Audio Network. We got tremendous support from David Barstow,
chair of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate
(49:49):
School of Journalism, and graduate students Julieta Bisharion, William Jenkins, Arman, Olia,
Arrell Watt, and juniaw Yong. Thanks also to UC Berkeley's
Jeremy Rue and Amanda Glazer for their data analysis. The
internal records highlighted in this podcast were obtained as part
of the California Reporting project. Funding for On Our Watch
(50:10):
is provided in part by Arnold Ventures and the California Endowment.
Thank you to our Managing editor of News and Enterprise,
Otis R. Taylor, Junior Ethan Toven Lindsay Are, Vice president
of News and KQED Chief Content Officer, Holly Kernan. Thanks
for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Dax-Devlon Ross
Steve Fishman
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