ALBANY COUNTY — A recently filed petition is seeking a judicial intervention compelling Albany County to disclose documents needed in a federal lawsuit brought against the county, Sheriff Craig Apple, and another 55 named and not-named defendants. 

The Article 78 — a proceeding to challenge a government decision — was filed on Sept. 12 with the Albany County state Supreme Court by civil-rights law firm Roth and Roth.

It claims the county unlawfully withheld records related to a “shakedown” incident on Aug. 20, 2024, at Oneida County’s jail, where members of the Albany County Sheriff’s Office Correctional Emergency Response Team (CERT) allegedly inflicted “severe beatings” on eight incarcerated individuals.

The separate federal suit filed Aug. 21 against Albany and Oneida counties, their sheriffs, a dozen individuals, and about 40 unnamed officers present on the day of the incident, makes claims of excessive force, deliberate indifference to medical needs, retaliation for exercising First Amendment rights, and violations of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process and equal protection clauses. 

Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said he couldn’t comment due to ongoing litigation. Oneida County Sheriff Robert Maciol did not respond to an Enterprise request for comment, nor did inmate attorney Elliot Shields.

A “shakedown” is a process in which authorities look for illegal items like weapons or drugs in prison cells; they are typically conducted at random and without a warrant.

Following the “shakedown,” the petition states, the eight incarcerated men retained Roth and Roth “to investigate and pursue civil claims arising out of severe beatings they sustained during the Incident.”

The petition continues, “The Albany County Correctional Emergency Response Team (‘CERT’), assisted by certain Oneida County corrections staff, conducted a facility-wide cell search that escalated into gratuitous violence: compliant detainees were strip-searched with open cell doors, punched, kicked, stomped, and slammed to the floor while officers repeatedly shouted, ‘stop resisting.’ Several men lost consciousness; nearly all suffered head trauma, lacerations, or suspected fractures. No drugs or contraband were found.”

The petition goes on to further state that Albany County Sheriff’s deputies “were the primary and leading officers conducting the raid and assaulting incarcerated individuals,” who “overheard officers shouting ‘this is how Albany gets down’ and ‘we could kill you’ while chanting ‘stop resisting.’ Oneida deputies largely stood by, and some were instructed to ‘step out of the unit’ by Albany CERT team members, and they complied.”

Included among the most-severe injury allegations were an inmate’s claim of being rammed into a wall and pummeled while handcuffed and compliant, sustaining severe facial swelling and a suspected orbital fracture. Another claimed to have been beaten until semi-conscious, requiring stitches above his eye. A third claimed to have suffered rib and knee injuries, was denied immediate medical care, and had his electronic sick-call access disabled.

At the heart of the Article 78 dispute is Albany County’s alleged failure to lawfully respond to a detailed, 15-category Freedom of Information Law request seeking:

— Body-worn video and audio recordings from the day of the incident; 

— Internal communications from anyone “involved in the planning, execution, or aftermath of the raid, including post-raid discussions, evaluations, and communications regarding injuries, complaints, or allegations of misconduct,” with an emphasis placed on Apple; and

— All official incident and after-action reports, in addition to another dozen records requests. 

The court filing claims that the county’s response to the public-records request — “33 pages of documents which were non-responsive to the original request as they were only generic training documents and policy materials,” the petition asserts — constitutes a “constructive denial,” a legal term that refers to a situation where a government agency or body does not issue an explicit denial of a request, but its actions or inactions are so deficient that, as a matter of law, they are treated as a denial.

The filing asserts, “Albany County obviously possesses [the] responsive records” because “through a separate FOIL request to Oneida County regarding the Incident, that agency provided at least one document that should be in the possession, custody, and control of Albany County, but was not produced in response to the instant FOIL request.” That document is a deposition completed by an Albany County CERT officer.

Rikers Island

The current civil rights complaint against Albany and Oneida counties bares some resemblance to a 2018 lawsuit filed by four young men, none of them convicted of a crime, who, according to court papers, were taken from Rikers Island in the Bronx without explanation, with no means of notifying their lawyers or families, and were put in a van and driven for about three hours to Albany without being told where they were going. 

When they arrived, their suit said, a dozen or so guards of the county jail’s so-called Green Team, which court documents state was not a separate unit with a fixed membership, but rather was the name given to whichever officers suited up in green fatigues and riot gear — some of which was emblazoned with the iconic skull logo of a comic-book antihero well-known for his animus toward the type of cops who would valorize him by branding themselves with his mark — on a given day put them in cages and did “deliver commands that are bizarrely detailed and confusing,” the suit said, and, when the disoriented young men got it wrong, they were punched and kicked. 

The guards said they were hiding contraband in their bodies and, when they denied it, they were beaten some more, the complaint said, and some were shot with tasers between beatings.

The young men, the lawsuit said, suffered head and facial trauma with significant swelling as a result; concussions; and one ruptured an eardrum leading to hearing loss; subsequent retaliatory assaults caused further facial injuries.

More invasive assaults allegedly occurred, including one of the incarcerated who experienced prolonged bleeding of the recturm after being sexually assaulted via digital and object penetration. And one of the inmates, the suit said, suffered severe urinary tract damage requiring long-term catheterization. 

The county and New York City settled with the four young incarcerates for a total of $980,000 with $670,000 going to the inmates and $300,000 going to their attorneys. As part of the settlement, the city also agreed not to send any of its incarcerated inmates to the Albany County jail for two years following the 2019 settlement with the county agreeing that, for one year after the two years were up, inmates from the city would be subjected to New York’s specific regulations limiting punitive segregation.