Jail Official Promoted After Detainee Under His Watch Paralyzed in Officer Takedown

A detainee at the city’s jail barge who is paralyzed from the neck down after several correction officers tackled him last May remains quadriplegic in Bellevue Hospital more than a year later — while the official who oversaw the lockup has just been promoted.

Carlton James, 40, through his appointed guardian, is seeking a nursing home or rehabilitation center to treat him, according to sources familiar with his case, and has filed a lawsuit in The Bronx against the Department of Correction and some dozen officers involved.

James — who was an expert in martial arts — can now only move his head.

Meanwhile, Ned McCormick, a top jail official who ran the Vernon C. Bain Center jail barge where the near-death injury occurred , was promoted and given a raise last month, Correction Department records show.

McCormick was assistant commissioner for facility operations when James was so badly injured he was put on a respirator for two weeks after the takedown on May 11 at 11:24 a.m.

McCormick originally resigned from his $207,635-a-year job in October, a few months after James was injured.

But he came back to the Department of Correction on June 20 and was promoted to associate commissioner, according to Press Secretary Annais Morales.

The new gig came with a pay bump to $212,187, she added.

His return and promotion was “very disheartening to the people working here,” another top jail official, who asked that their name be withheld due to fear of retribution, told THE CITY.

McCormick, through the DOC press office, declined to comment.

The same month that McCormick resigned, James’ lawyers sued the City of New York, DOC, and 13 officers involved in the encounter. McCormick is not named in the suit.

The Bronx Supreme Court legal claim contends the jailers “physically assaulted and battered” and used excessive force against James. The case is still in its preliminary stages.

Jason Rubin, James’ civil lawyer, declined to comment. Pamela Walker, a guardian appointed by the court to oversee James and his estate declined to comment citing privacy issues and the ongoing litigation.

Pain and Suffering

Last July, James’ told THE CITY from his hospital bed that he was afraid of officers coming into his room and attacking him again — especially since the Department of Correction has permanent staff in Bellevue.

“DOC is here,” he said, noting that he wanted to be moved to another hospital.

He also complained of severe pain and indicated it hurt for him just to cry as a tear slowly rolled down his cheek.

“Everything hurts,” he said. “I can’t sleep. It’s all nightmares.”

The Legal Aid Society used what happened to James as one recent example of why the DOC should be taken over by a so-called receiver who would have immense power to reform the scandal-scarred department.

“The record of ongoing violence and chaos — substantiated by the monitor, the city’s own records, and other evidence submitted in support of this motion — is overwhelming,” said a legal brief written by lawyers from the Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project and the firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel.

“Incarcerated people, largely individuals who await trial and are thus presumed innocent, live in a state of terror and despair in the city jails,” the court filing last November added.

James required three surgeries after the takedown, according to court records.

Former Correction Commissioner Louis Molina, who now heads the city’s Department of Administrative Services, has previously defended how correction officers handled the incident.

His staff has pointed out that James suffered from spinal stenosis, making him more susceptible to a serious spine injury.

Slow Investigation

No officer has ever been disciplined in the incident, according to multiple sources. The department’s internal probe into the matter is ongoing, Morales said.

But there’s an 18-month statute of limitations for departmental discipline.

THE CITY first reported how officers from the department’s specialized probe team handcuffed James’ hands behind his back and shackled his legs before bringing him to another room inside the jail where his body was roughly thrown to the ground,  according to handheld video footage cited in court documents.

Two days later, a federal monitor overseeing the department slammed former Commissioner Molina for withholding basic details in James’ case.

Steve Martin, the Texas-based federal monitor in place since 2015, also chided Molina for withholding information in four other violent encounters involving different detainees.  He also noted that the guards dropped a shackled James from a gurney to the floor after the original tackle.

“While the probe team lifted and lowered the individual, his head hit a plastic container, the partition’s leg, and then the cement floor,” according to a report by Martin. “Spots of blood were also visible on the floor below the bench and next to the partition where the person in custody’s head was resting on the floor.”

James was then taken to Lincoln Hospital, in The Bronx, where doctors put him on a respirator.

The initial DOC report detailed the takedown but did not indicate James was taken to the hospital, according to Martin’s review.

Martin said his team was first notified about what happened two days later when they got “an external allegation” about the improper use of force.

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