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Public defender wants deputy charged for dragging woman through hallway by her feet.
Deputy says he feared woman was going to cause a commotion, so he dragged her.
A veteran Broward Sheriff's deputy who dragged a mentally incompetent woman through a courthouse hallway by the shackles around her ankles is now on restricted duty. Christopher Johnson, who joined the department in 1988, will not have contact with inmates until an Internal Affairs investigation is complete, the Sheriff's Office said. Johnson was recorded pulling Dasyl Jeanette Rios, 28, by the chain binding her feet together on the third floor of the Broward courthouse Monday morning.
Broward Sheriff Scott Israel issued a statement six hours later questioning Johnson's conduct.
"I am concerned by the way the deputy handled this situation, because there were other courses of action he could have taken," Sheriff Scott Israel said. "Internal Affairs has initiated a complete and comprehensive investigation, and the deputy has been placed on restricted duty pending the outcome."The incident was caught on cellphone video by attorney Bill Gelin, who was in the hallway as the events unfolded. Witnesses and some who saw the video afterward decried the deputy's conduct as inhumane. Public Defender Howard Finkelstein called it criminal.
Rios, 28, who had just been declared mentally incompetent during a trespassing and criminal mischief case, sobs and pleads with Johnson in the video. "Stop! You're hurting me!" she screams. "You're ****ing hurting me! I hate my life! I wish they would kill me already! Why do I have to be alive?" "I gave you a chance ..." Johnson says. "You didn't give nobody a chance," she yells back. "All I wanted to do was sob for a few minutes — cry. That's all I wanted to do was cry for a few minutes."
Finkelstein said he was furious when he saw the video. "This is nothing less than treating a mentally ill patient like she's a reptile," he said. "It's shameful. I believe a crime was committed. For God's sake, this is 2015. We don't drag human beings down the hallway of a public courthouse. A crime has been committed and that deputy should go to jail."
According to witnesses, Rios was in court before Broward Judge Kal Le Var Evans for a mental competency hearing on a misdemeanor case. She is also being held without bond in the Broward Main Jail for violating probation on a felony drug possession case. In a written report to her supervisor, Assistant Public Defender Rhonda Boettcher said Rios had been declared incompetent and, after her hearing was over, was heard arguing with a female deputy in the courtroom. Johnson interceded and escorted Rios into the hallway, Boettcher said. Once there, Rios sat on a bench and started to cry.
Assistant Public Defender Lynn DeSanti, who is married to Gelin, said she saw Johnson say "Get up, we're leaving." When Rios wouldn't get up, Johnson got physical, DeSanti said. "He basically picked up this girl, yanked her off the bench, and started dragging her through the hallway," she said. "I said 'Stop it! What are you doing to her?' But he just told her, 'You don't want to walk? I'm going to drag you.'". Gelin's video does not record that exchange. "This is just barbarism," said Gelin, the main contributor for the JAABlog courthouse news and gossip site. "The truly disgusting part is, during that entire breakdown, you can hear her telling them she's mentally ill. There's no excuse."
In an incident report, Johnson said Rios was loud and disrespectful to the judge. He does not mention a female deputy. He said she got up from the jury box where inmates usually sit during hearings. In the hallway, he said Rios sat on the bench and refused to budge, yelling and "disturbing the public." "Fearing she would cause a commotion in the public area, I then physically grabbed inmate Rios by her leg restraints and pulled her back to the D10-door," Johnson wrote in his report. To get to that door from Evans' courtroom, Johnson would have had to drag Rios down one short hallway, across half the third floor, and down another hallway, with Rios screaming the whole way. Deputy Anthony Pulitano wrote in a supplemental report that Johnson asked Rios twice if she wanted to walk, but she refused.
At one point, halfway through the video, Rios is surrounded by four uniformed deputies and bailiffs, with two on the other side of a doorway. One deputy briefly addresses Gelin, who is holding his camera phone, but no one tells him to stop recording. "I'm not going back to get beat up!" Rios yells. "I'm not going back to get beat up by BSO! No!" The video ends with Rios getting dragged through the doorway screaming "No! No! No!"
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