Posted on 08/17/2003 12:39:10 PM PDT by Born Conservative
A convicted murderer drives a prison official's car.
A prison guard has inmates maintain his vintage Ford Thunderbird.
An inmate repairs the roof of a city official's garage.
As the Times-Tribune newspapers' investigation of abuses and possible criminal activity at the Lackawanna County Prison continues, the scope of the scandal is expanding.
Official explanations about questionable activity at the prison have been proven false while several prison guards -- and at least one city official -- have joined the growing list of those found to have benefited from free inmate labor.
The investigation to date has found two guards at the prison were operating a virtual auto body and repair shop, where guards, administrators and select county officials had their private vehicles cleaned and repaired using free inmate labor.
Inmates also were used as handymen. They were taken out of the prison to work on private property, owned by guards, administrators and county officials, to perform tasks ranging from cutting grass to renovating apartments, the probe has revealed.
Information supplied to the newspapers indicates a long list of individuals in and out of the prison benefited from such activity. The newspapers are still in the process of verifying many of those accounts.
The investigation, however, has verified many of the abuses involved the prison maintenance crew under the supervision of Lt. Leonard Bogdanski and Sgt. Anthony Veno. Lt. Bogdanski has recently retired.
Sgt. Veno's name has already surfaced as part of the investigation. The newspapers reported he stored his 1957 Chevy at the prison garage, where he claims to have worked on it in his spare time.
At first, county officials said the car was kept at the prison because it had broken down there and had to be repaired. But Sgt. Veno explained he kept it there simply because he no place else to store and work on it.
Inmates and guards, however, have said the car was hauled to the prison on a flatbed truck and arrived without an engine. It was completely restored -- mostly by inmates -- at the jail, they claimed.
Lt. Bogdanski also kept an antique car at the prison shop -- a light blue Ford Thunderbird from the late 1960s. It too was restored by inmates, current and former prisoners and guards said.
Interviews with dozens of current and former inmates, corrections officers and others have found:
Administrators and guards routinely brought their private vehicles to the prison to be
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^A1 checked, washed or repaired. The repairs included body and mechanical work. Vehicles were also detailed and painted.
Lt. Bogdanski and Sgt. Veno often took inmates to their homes and commercial properties, as well as to the properties of others, where inmates did painting, carpentry, roofing and other odd jobs.
Inmates were not paid, but were often compensated with cigarettes, food, furlough time and other prison perks. Some were even promised recommendations for parole.
The newspapers are withholding the names of those interviewed for their own protection.
Many of the inmates who work the maintenance crew are "trusties" -- inmates trusted to handle certain jobs inside the prison. They often enjoy greater freedom and more privileges than regular inmates.
Several current and former prisoners who worked the maintenance crew at the jail described an efficient and busy operation.
The auto shop activity was so common and widespread that prison officials often handed inmates their car keys to drive their personal vehicles, parked outside the prison gates, into the garage for service or to a neighborhood car wash.
One former inmate, who worked as part of a car-cleaning crew, said the garage serviced as many as three vehicles a day.
Inmates also worked on some county-owned vehicles, including four assigned to the prison, but private jobs dominated their time, he said.
"We did detailing all the time, for everybody," one former maintenance crew member said. "We did the white shirts' cars, the guards' cars and their wives' cars, their girlfriends' cars, their kids' cars. We even did one guy's nephew's car."
"White shirts" is prison slang for administrators.
Prisoners with mechanical skills worked under the hood, inmates said. Others did body work. The rest worked as detailers -- cleaning and polishing.
Those interviewed said it was well-known that the maintenance department garage was always open and always free.
"It was like a car lot with the number of cars going in and out of there for repairs," said one former guard who worked at the prison for more than a decade. "A lot of guards brought their cars in for inmates to work on. They would pull it in and say, 'Hey, I hear a noise. Can you check it out and give it a wash?'"
A perk for some trusties was driving to an outside car wash instead of soaping up at the jail, a former guard and inmates said. And they weren't always supervised.
"One day when I was on my way to work, I saw an inmate with (Lt.) Frank Chiarelli's car at the car wash on Green Ridge Street," one former guard said. The inmate was serving a sentence for murder, he added.
Although the work was free, customers at the prison's unofficial auto shop demanded professional service. One former inmate told of a maintenance worker brought nearly to tears when ordered to buff Lt. Bogdanski's classic Thunderbird. The man was afraid of scratching the car, the inmate said.
Lt. Bogdanski admitted to a Times-Tribune reporter last week that he's had his Thunderbird at the prison for repairs and care. He said he was unsure when and how many times. Asked who did the work, Lt. Bogdanski paused.
"I worked on it myself," he insisted. "(Inmates) may have handed me a tool or two, but ..."
At that point, he ended the conversation.
"Lenny said we handed him a tool or two?" one of the inmates asked, laughing. "Try the other way around. He hardly did anything down there. He only got involved when we got stuck on something or had to decide what to use."
"Lenny," as he was known to the prisoners, hand-picked a team to take care of the Thunderbird, inmates said. The captain of the team was a prisoner who was a skilled mechanic.
During the mid- to late 1990s, Lt. Bogdanski had his crew take the car's engine apart, according to the prisoners. They took photographs to document the process and illustrate how it should look when reassembled, the inmates said. Prisoners cleaned and painted each piece.
Part way through reassembly, the head mechanic got into an argument with a guard and wound up in "The Hole," or solitary confinement, inmates said. He was later transferred to the Luzerne County Correctional Facility and work on Lt. Bogdanski's car stopped, they said.
The lieutenant eventually picked another prisoner to finish the job, but he was unfamiliar with the Thunderbird's engine, inmates explained. He relied heavily on the photographs for reassembly.
Other members of the Thunderbird crew installed a new trunk kit, tires, rims and brakes.
Lt. Bogdanski had other jobs for the inmates, they said. He had them paint his two-tone truck and fix his son's small red car. It needed brakes and work on the rack-and-pinion steering, an inmate said.
On more than one occasion, the lieutenant drove inmates to his home and had them do various chores, such as fixing the roof on a small shed covering his backyard swimming pool's filter system, inmates said.
Other corrections officers made use of the in-house car wash/repair shop, according to the inmates. Sgt. Michael J. McGraw had his truck repaired and detailed. Lt. Chiarelli had his family's vehicles detailed, the inmates said.
Jay Saunders, a former guard at the prison and now Scranton's city clerk, also had work done on his vehicle, according to inmates.
Asked if he had his vehicle cleaned at the prison while he was a guard, Mr. Saunders first said he couldn't remember. He later declined to comment.
Sgt. McGraw and Lt. Chiarelli could not be reached for comment.
Sgt. Veno and Lt. Bogdanski also found jobs for inmates who weren't mechanically inclined. Sgt. Veno took inmates to his apartment building to do work, inmates, former guards and neighbors said. He and another corrections officer rented apartments they owned to former inmates.
"Trusties were hand-selected based on their skills," a former trusty explained. "I was on the maintenance crew and they came to me and asked me about carpentry. That's what I was skilled at."
The former trusty said he worked at Sgt. Veno's home and apartment and Lt. Bogdanski's home. He said he also cut Sgt. Veno's grass.
"I did all kinds of stuff for guards," the former trusty said. "I did repairs, roofing repairs, painting, cutting grass at their homes, apartments. I washed their cars."
Two inmates said work also was done on a property owned by Mr. Saunders.
Mr. Saunders confirmed he rented a garage he owns on Boulevard Avenue to Lt. Bogdanski for approximately a year about two or three years ago.
Lt. Bogdanski informed him at one point that the garage roof was leaking, so he gave the lieutenant permission to fix it, he said. Lt. Bogdanski sent him the bills for the materials, but Mr. Saunders did not know who did the labor nor did he pay for the labor, he said.
The roof work was done by an inmate, the newspapers have learned.
Mr. Saunders, who could not immediately produce the bills for the materials used to repair the roof, said he was aware Lt. Bogdanski also put new lights in the garage. It is unclear who installed the lights.
Another former inmate who worked on Mr. Veno's apartment said trusties would wait for Sgt. Veno and Lt. Bogdanski in the prison yard. The two would drive trusties around to run errands -- pick up supplies like lumber and paint -- then drive them to their homes to do work. The former inmate said the two corrections officers took advantage of his specialty -- painting and wallpapering.
One inmate said Sgt. Veno ordered him to repair a large commercial vehicle. When he raised a number of concerns about doing such a large job, he was threatened with a "parole hit" for failure to complete a program, he said. Afraid, he worked on the vehicle. Two days later, Sgt. Veno ordered him to work on another vehicle -- a 1994 Chevy Suburban -- driven by Thomas P. Needham, director of the county's work release program, he said.
The Times-Tribune newspapers reported last week that Mr. Needham used inmate laborers to work on his South Scranton bar and the apartment above it. A former inmate who was on work release in the 1980s said he worked at Mr. Needham's bar and even was sent to pick up beer for the bar at a beer distributor.
Another former work release inmate in the 1980s said he installed new kitchen cabinets in Mr. Needham's apartment, which he described in detail. He also patched the roof and put in doors. The former inmate said he drove himself to the bar when Mr. Needham came on duty about 4 p.m., and Mr. Needham would cover for him.
Mr. Needham has declined to comment.
Sgt. Veno also declined to comment on his role in car repairs at the prison or inmates working on properties outside of the prison. He referred questions to his attorney, Harry McGrath, who did not return phone calls from the newspapers.
In a previous interview, Sgt. Veno denied he brought inmates to former Warden Thomas P. Gilhooley's house to perform work there involving moving furniture and similar tasks.
Mr. Gilhooley was fired from his job as warden after admitting to a Times-Tribune reporter that he had used inmate labor inappropriately. His deputy warden, Robert A. Hilborn, also had inmates work on his private vehicle and at his home, the newspapers' investigation has shown.
"We did all kinds of stuff for just about everybody from the white shirts on down," one inmate on the maintenance crew said. "At the time, it was good for everybody, I guess. ... It got us out of our cells, out of the jail and doing something.
"They got free labor."
JENNIFER L. HENN, JESSICA D. MATTHEWS and LYNNE SLACK SHEDLOCK, Sunday Times staff writers, contributed to this report.
FMCDH
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Lawsuit: Guards murdered inmate; crime covered up
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=9989129&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=415898&rfi=6
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