Guards released the detainee from a cell in the mental health unit of a Miami-Dade County Jail on Feb. 14 to transfer him to a North Florida jail. The detainee threw urine at the police officer, handcuffed him and was beaten, the department said. “After the detainee was removed, although he was handcuffed and complied with the officer’s orders, the agents say that the police started beating him. The detainee was beaten so badly that he had to be taken to the truck,” the news bulletin said. . The detainee was placed alone in what authorities described as a safe apartment inside the van. CBS Miami has identified the victim as 60-year-old Ronald Ingram. “People who have been sentenced to prison by our criminal courts have lost their freedom but not their basic rights,” said Miami-Dade prosecutor Katherine Fernandez Randle. “Inmates should not be subject to forms of backdoor justice that violates Florida law.” The truck stopped on the way and that was when Ingram was found dead, lying on a bench inside the vehicle, the statement added. A medical examiner pronounced the death as homicide, saying his death was caused by a punctured lung that led to internal bleeding. Ingram also had bruises on his face and torso. Authorities say three inmates were arrested early Thursday: Christopher Rollon, 29, Kirk Walton, 34, and Ronald Connor, 24. Officer Jeremy Godbold, 28, was arrested Friday afternoon. Each of the four police officers is charged with second-degree murder and aggravated assault on an elderly or disabled person, among other offenses. All were held without bail and the prison’s online records did not list lawyers for the men. Florida Department of Corrections Services Secretary Ricky Dixon said the department evaluates staffing and leadership functions at Dade Penitentiary. Since the death of the detainee, the department has removed from the facility any person who might be involved in the incident and has placed it on administrative leave. It has also recruited law enforcement inspectors for each shift, reduced the inmate population to temporarily alleviate staff provocations, and sent each officer to “additional mandatory training in the use of force and ethics.” “What happened in this case is completely unacceptable and does not represent our system or the Dade Penitentiary as a whole,” Dixon said. “The staff involved in this case has failed and as a service we will not support it.”
