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