Bronx DA: NYC DOC Officer Indicted for Falsifying Suicide Training Completion for 74 Correction Officers

Defendant Allegedly Assigned COs on Modified Duty to Take Training for Others Who Were On Leave or Off Duty to Increase Numbers

District Attorney Clark said, “During the growing crisis of inmate suicides in 2021, apparently amid pressure to increase the number of officers taking a suicide prevention refresher course, the defendant allegedly provided a group of officers the personal identification and log-in information for scores of officers on leave and allegedly directed them to take the training for their colleagues. In the first two weeks of May 2021, scores of officers unknowingly were  credited with taking the training despite the fact that that they weren’t even on Rikers Island, some were in the hospital undergoing surgery, caring for seriously ill loved ones, or nursing their newborn children.”

Commissioner Strauber said, “The Department of Correction’s suicide prevention training for officers is a critical part of the Department’s efforts to prevent and to address self-harm by persons in custody. Given the nature of this training, it is particularly disturbing that this correction officer, as charged, directed a scheme resulting in the creation of training records, which falsely represented that officers had completed the training when in fact they had not. The alleged conduct placed persons in custody at risk. I thank DOC and the Bronx District Attorney’s Office for their commitment to hold accountable correction officers that engage in misconduct that jeopardizes the safety of persons in custody in this City.”

District Attorney Clark said the defendant, Vinette Tucker-Frederick, 41, a Correction Officer for nine years who was assigned to the Anna M. Kross Center (AMKC), was arraigned today on an indictment charging 74 counts of first-degree Tampering with Public Records, 74 counts of first-degree Identity Theft, and Official Misconduct before Bronx Supreme Court Justice George Villegas. She is due back in court on September 12, 2023.

According to the joint  investigation by the Bronx DA’s Public Integrity Bureau and DOI, in the Spring of 2021, a mandatory refresher course on Suicide Prevention was available on a new digital Learning Management System, enabling staff to take the training on a computer at their jail facility instead of going to the DOC Academy in Queens. At the Anna M. Kross Center, the percentage of staff that had taken the training remained around 5%. The defendant, a control room officer with significant authority in determining officers’ assignments, allegedly used some officers to take the training instead of scheduling all the staff to do it.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys Jared Rosen and Tyler Gibson  of the Public Integrity Bureau, under the supervision of Sarah Clements, Supervisor of the Public Integrity Bureau, Allison Riesel, Deputy Chief of the Public Integrity Bureau, and Omer Wiczyk, Chief of the Public Integrity Bureau, and under the overall supervision of Denise Kodjo, Deputy Chief of the Investigations Division, and Wanda Perez-Maldonado, Chief of the Investigations Division. District Attorney Clark thanked Trial Preparation Assistant Nathanielle Filius, BXDA Detective Investigator Janet Caraballo and former Assistant District Attorney Tracy Williams for their assistance in the case.

District Attorney Clark thanked Department of Investigation Investigator Sade Ortuzar, Deputy Inspector General Marissa Carro, of DOI’s Office of the Inspector General for DOC, under the supervision of Inspector General Whitney Ferguson and Deputy Commissioner/Chief of Investigations Dominick Zarrella.

An indictment is an accusatory instrument and not proof of a defendant’s guilt.