Danielle Muscatello was interviewed by Gothamist about several lawsuits in which we represent a total of 70 men. The context was the recent videos uncovered by the New York State Attorney General's office showing prisoner abuse, as well as CERT (emergency response) teams.
As she is quoted in Gothamist, CERT team are "given this extra imprimatur of authority and force and strength, and they're being let loose."
More from the article:
"A lawyer representing dozens of men alleging abuse at the hands of CERT officers at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Washington County said there was a familiar feature in the video of Brooks’ beating: a white rag.
“We have two clients who claim independently of each other that they were brought to Great Meadow and a rag was either wrapped around their face or stuffed in their mouth,” said Danielle Muscatello, a lawyer with Barket Epstein Kearon Aldea & LoTurco.
“One of them claims to have his head dunked in water and the other had water poured over his face while he was laying on a gurney similar to where Robert Brooks was positioned” in the video, she said.
"According to Muscatello’s lawsuits, Charles Wright claims CERT officers waterboarded him for 45 seconds and Eugene Taylor claims he was repeatedly submerged in water during a racially infused, prolonged torture session laced with racial epithets.
"Two other pending lawsuits involving more than 80 incarcerated men at Great Meadow and Sing Sing in Westchester accuse CERT officers of beating handcuffed inmates, gouging eyes, breaking inmates fingers and causing other injuries."
Read it all, here:
https://gothamist.com/news/ny-prison-emergency-teams-face-scrutiny-after-fatal-beating-inmates-call-them-the-demon-squad--
