View the full episode transcript.

After his son’s death, Valentino Rodriguez Sr. waited for the warden of New Folsom prison to call him. That call never came. In our season finale, we walk through the gates of New Folsom to ask the warden for answers. We also get a rare glimpse inside the world of correctional officer discipline and hear from Sgt. Kevin Steele in his own words.

Mental health resources

If you are currently in crisis, you can dial 988 [U.S.] to reach the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

SAMHSA National Help Line
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Helpline
US Health and Human Services
Warmline Directory

Whistleblower resources

The Lamplighter Project
The Signals Network
EMPOWR
Whistleblowers of America
Government Accountability Project
National Whistleblower Center
Whistleblower Aid

The Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism was a key partner in making Season 2 of On Our Watch.

The records obtained for this project are part of the California Reporting Project, a coalition of news organizations in California. If you have tips or feedback about this series please reach out to us at onourwatch@kqed.org.

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Episode Transcript

Producer: Before we start, just wanted to give you a heads-up that this episode references discriminatory language and discusses suicide. If you or someone you know needs support, we’ve got links to resources in the episode description. We’ve also included resources for whistleblowers.

Sukey Lewis: After his son, Valentino Rodriguez, died in October 2020, Val Sr. had waited for someone from the prison to call him, to acknowledge his son’s passing. A few months went by, and when that call didn’t come, he sent off an email.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: I am Val’s dad. These are pictures of my wife and Val’s brother.

Sukey Lewis: Attached to it were photos of Valentino on the day he graduated from the academy.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: I remember his graduation day, how proud he was. I remember the speech from that podium as clear as the day he was born.

[Music]

Sukey Lewis: The email was addressed to the head of CDCR, along with some of the people that Val Sr. felt were critical in what had happened to Valentino.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: It could have been avoided when he asked for help but was swept under the rug to protect those involved.

Sukey Lewis: Including his boss, Sergeant David Anderson…

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: His sergeant that was witness to so many abusive texts.

Sukey Lewis: The chief deputy warden, Gena Jones, and the warden, Jeff Lynch-

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: My son was also left with your betrayal.

Sukey Lewis: … the boss of the whole institution.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: I have not had so much as a knock on the door, an apology, or any acknowledgement of his death.

Sukey Lewis: Val Sr. did get a response to this email from the head of CDCR at the time. She passed on her condolences and said the agency was investigating his son’s case, but there was only silence from the warden.

Then, in March of last year, about eight months into our investigation, we got some news. We were gonna be able to go on a rare press tour at New Folsom Prison, and talk to the warden face to face. Val Sr. sent us a list of questions he wanted us to ask. Like, who had leaked information about the warden’s private meeting with Valentino? Why had the warden banned Kevin Steele from the prison? And why hadn’t he ever called? Julie, my reporting partner, also reached out to Valentino’s widow, Mimy Rodriguez, to tell her the news.

Julie Small: We’re going to the prison next week.

Mimy Rodriguez: Are you?

Julie Small: We asked for a sit-down with the warden, and we were told no. Um, but then we were told that he’ll be there.

Mimy Rodriguez: Oh.

Julie Small: So, I’m getting ready for that. [laughs]

Mimy Rodriguez: How… That’s exciting.

Julie Small: Got any questions for the warden?

Mimy Rodriguez: I wanna know what was going through his head when he found out Val passed. I wanna know what he felt when he sat across from Valentino. How did you feel when you found out? Did you get sick? Did you throw up? I… these things, I just… they probably seem minuscule or silly, but I w-… I just wanna know… was it just another officer for him? I just wanna know. Did you care? Did it matter to you? Do you remember his face the way I do? Or his laugh, or his gap teeth, or his love for ketchup? Do you remember his reports? Do you remember how hard he worked to make you happy, the way he worked hard to make his parents happy? Or, are you just gonna disregard that and say, “He was a great officer,” and give me some generic answer? I want him to be honest, and I want him to respect the people that come in and out of that prison.

[Theme music]

Sukey Lewis: As we prepared to walk through the gates of New Folsom Prison, we were quite literally now going to be following in the footsteps of Officer Valentino Rodriguez and Sergeant Kevin Steele, and I kept thinking about their words to each other on the last day of Valentino’s life. “There are two sides over there.” Which side of the prison would we get to see? I’m Sukey Lewis, and this is On Our Watch, Season Two: New Folsom.

Automated: In one mile, turn left onto Folsom Prison Road.

Sukey Lewis: So, we’re just passing past the sign for Folsom State Prison.

Julie Small: Yeah.

Sukey Lewis: And it’s… [laughs] we’re… it’s actually this lovely pastoral scene. You have this-

Julie Small: Yeah.

Sukey Lewis: It’s a beautiful spring day as Julie and I drive up the winding road in the Sierra Nevada foothills toward New Folsom Prison.

Julie Small: Oh, frick.

Sukey Lewis: What?

Julie Small: Just I’m just… I don’t usually stress out, but I haven’t been in a prison for a while.

Sukey Lewis: Mm, yeah.

Julie Small: And-

Sukey Lewis: Here we go, CSP-SAC, and yeah. You’re feeling it?

Julie Small: Yes, I’m feeling it.

Sukey Lewis: Julie’s bracing herself to go into this place where we’ve been invited, but we’re not exactly welcome, and where everything we see is gonna be tightly controlled.

Oh, yeah, here they are.

We park and then walk up to the outer security checkpoint of this huge facility. There’s a reporting team from the LA Times here today as well for the press tour.

Hello.

Julie Small: Nice to meet you.

LA Times Reporter: The LA Times.

Julie Small: Nice to meet you. [Laughing]

Sukey Lewis: Sources have told us that the prison has been prepping for this for days, and the entourage that comes out to greet us is impressive.

Julie Small: [Laughs] One of the biggest I’ve ever seen.

Sukey Lewis: About a dozen people, who each introduce themselves, starting with the biggest of the bigwigs here today, the associate director for all of California’s high-security prisons, who then introduces the man we’ve been waiting so long to speak with.

Associate Director: One of ’em, and, uh, this is Jeff Warden’s prison, er, uh, Jeff Lynch’s prison. (laughing)

Warden Jeff Lynch: Jeff Lynch, warden, CSP Sacramento.

Sukey Lewis: Warden Jeff Lynch, he’s a tall man with a broad chest, light brown hair. He looks a little like the actor Jeff Daniels, and today, he’s wearing a suit jacket, a pink shirt, and a tie. Down the line from him, we meet two associate wardens, two captains, a lieutenant, and people from healthcare and public relations.

Okay, cool, um, we may have to [laughing] ask you your names again along the way. That’s a lot to remember.

Tour Guide: So, the, the plan is-

Sukey Lewis: We walk past some staff residences and lower security areas that are empty right now and then under the eye of the tall, blue tower, where we know a guard sits with a Mini-14 rifle looking out over everything.

…Chain link fence on either side, big mirrors overhead, and there’s two little, kind of, windows. This is the same process that correctional staff go through when they come to work every day.

Once inside the main complex, off to my left, I see a gray cement building with those very narrow windows. On the side of it, there’s a letter and a number: B8.

Um, so that looks like the B8 unit…

The unit where Luis Giovanny Aguilar was killed in the day room. That’s not part of today’s tour. Instead, they’re taking us to what’s called the short-term restricted housing unit.

…And there’s short term restrictive housing kinda to the front and the left.

It’s the new version of the SHU, or solitary confinement — the place where Dion Green was held after the murder and where he says officers were spreading rumors about him to get him killed. Julie’s walking next to the warden as they go inside.

Julie Small: Do you think this prison is… is this prison dangerous any more than others?

Warden Jeff Lynch: It has days where it’s had dangerous events.

Julie Small: Mm-hmm.

Warden Jeff Lynch: Um, and then, it’s had many days where it hasn’t.

Julie Small: All right.

Sukey Lewis: And that’s what we’re being shown: a calm day. There’s a class going on in a treatment room, where men talk to a counselor about regulating their emotions. But I notice, even as that class is going on, these men are chained to the chairs they sit in. Next, the warden shows us the solitary cages outside the unit. Officially, they’re called IEYs, or individual exercise yards, but incarcerated people refer to them as the dog cages. The entourage of CDCR staff and reporters chat and laugh behind me as I approach a person looking out through the fencing.

I’m a reporter with KQED Public Radio. Are you, um, down to talk to me today or no?

Patrick Anthony Bradley: Depending on what.

Sukey Lewis: Just to ask you how your days is going and what your experience is here.

Patrick Anthony Bradley: Yeah, I’ll talk.

Sukey Lewis: Okay. Um, what’s your name?

Patrick Anthony Bradley: Uh, Patrick Anthony Bradley.

Sukey Lewis: Bradley says he’s been at this prison for six years.

Patrick Anthony Bradley: They’re gonna paint the pretty picture like it’s all good, but it’s, it’s really not.

Sukey Lewis: Mmm. What’s the, the picture that you would paint?

Patrick Anthony Bradley: This is, this is a terrible [laughs] place.

Sukey Lewis: Mm-hmm.

Patrick Anthony Bradley: This is terrible. Like, this is a terrible… it’s inhumane for anybody, for a, a, a patient, a inmate, a human being. Just conduct is disgusting.

[Music]

Sukey Lewis: It’s kind of a strange scene. Like, I’m standing in between two worlds — the world Bradley lives in that’s bounded by the fence between us, a reality in his telling of corruption and darkness, and the world behind me represented by the warden and all the other prison officials standing just feet away, who repeatedly tell us their mission is safety and rehabilitation.

Patrick Anthony Bradley: They might, you know, clean, clean today, you know, make it look good, polish and all that, but it’s just a terrible place.

Sukey Lewis: Mm, yeah. Um, were you here when, the, the homicide happened in B8?

Patrick Anthony Bradley: Um, probably.

Sukey Lewis: Yeah.

Patrick Anthony Bradley: It’s probably something you should be asking the feds.

Sukey Lewis: Yeah, mm-hmm.

Patrick Anthony Bradley: You know what I mean? So…

Sukey Lewis: Bradley raises his eyebrows meaningfully. I thank him for his time and turn around to try and get some more of my questions in front of the warden. One of my biggest questions was about use of force, what we’d seen in the data, and the whole reason we’d started investigating New Folsom.

Warden Lynch, I was gonna ask you. I know that their… like, use of force here at, um, CSP-SAC is a lot higher than any other prison in the state, and I was just wondering if you know kind of why that is or if it has something to do with the population here.

Warden Jeff Lynch: We’re part of the high-security mission, which is a conglomerate of all of-

Sukey Lewis: I was expecting Lynch to give me some kind of explanation about how this prison is one of 10 high-security prisons, which means they’ve got people who’ve committed really serious crimes and have mental health issues. And he started with that, but then, Lynch totally surprised me.

Warden Jeff Lynch: We’re probably pretty similar with the number of incidents for the mission that we belong in. If you-

Sukey Lewis: No. It’s, like, 30% higher.

Warden Jeff Lynch: Than, uh, where?

Sukey Lewis: All the other level fours.

Warden Jeff Lynch: Um, the, the data that, uh, we most recently looked at… Hey, Dana.

Dana Simas: Yes.

Sukey Lewis: The warden calls over the then press secretary, Dana Simas.

Warden Jeff Lynch: The data that we were looking at for, uh, the use of force?

Dana Simas: What about it?

Sukey Lewis: Oh, I was just wan-… I was just wanting, uh, to see if he had th-… uh, understanding of, like, why it’s so much higher here than everywhere else.

Dana Simas: Uh, that’s not really the case. Where are you seeing that?

Sukey Lewis: Oh, in the data that CDCR gave me.

Dana Simas: Um, uh, you mean on the CompStat data?

Sukey Lewis: Yeah.

Dana Simas: Um, um, I would need to verify-

Sukey Lewis: Okay.

Dana Simas: … ’cause I’ve looked at the data, and the data shows that, at SAC, the use of force rates are actually really comparable to other institutions that have this same level of population.

Sukey Lewis: Okay. All right.

Sukey Lewis: After this tour, we double-checked our numbers and brought in help from a statistician in UC Berkeley.

[Music]

What they found is that the disparity was actually even greater than I’d thought. Between 2009 and 2023, the last year we have data for, officers at this prison used force at a rate almost 40% higher than any other prison in the state.

Over the course of months, we followed up repeatedly with CDCR about these numbers. At first, a spokesperson said the agency couldn’t confirm our analysis. When we asked for their analysis showing that New Folsom was in line with other high-security prisons, they didn’t respond. When we asked how the warden could be unaware of what an outlier his institution was, they didn’t respond. When we asked why there were so many more of these troubling incidents that we talked about earlier in this series, like what happened to the men Kevin Steele interviewed in the hospital, they didn’t respond. But as we continued on this tour, the warden assured me…

Warden Jeff Lynch: We, we look at it all the time and are always, um, aware of a lot of the, uh, the incidents that happen here, and we’ve got policies we follow.

Sukey Lewis: I move on to some of my questions about protocols that had seemed to allow the B8 homicide to happen, starting with their housing protocol regarding documented enemies like Dion Green and Michael Brit.

Can you comment on, like, why Michael Britt was housed with Dion Green in B8 when that stabbing happened?

Warden Jeff Lynch: Restricted housing in general, and I can’t comment on Michael Britt, um, but restricted housing in general has the ability to confine inmates in, in, uh, secure areas that if enemy concerns existed wouldn’t ordinarily be, um, exposed to each other.

Sukey Lewis: His answer is kind of jargony, but what he’s saying is that really high-security housing units like B8 are set up so that enemies shouldn’t ever be able to get at each other, but he doesn’t address the failures that made that attack possible. And so, I follow up, trying to understand what happened after the attack. Why weren’t the three guys who’d tried to kill Brit separated either?

Say a stabbing or an assault happens, and it’s coordinated between people, is it policy to then separate them from each other?

Warden Jeff Lynch: Uh, I don’t know that there’s an actual policy that says… Uh, are you saying between the enemies?

Sukey Lewis: Between in- inmates, so they are, like, coordinating, if they coordinate an assault on another inmate.

Warden Jeff Lynch: I don’t know that there’s a policy that requires that.

Sukey Lewis: Okay, um, but it-

Dana Simas: That would fall under saf-… normal safety and security, um, classifications.

Sukey Lewis: That’s Dana Simas stepping in here again. She says, yes, maybe there’s not a specific policy that says this, but in general, yes, they separate crime partners.

And how do you deal with that if they’re, like, you know, all high security or all, you know, um, need solitary housing?

Warden Jeff Lynch: There could be a different section, could be separated amongst different tiers. It… couple of different ways you could probably do it.

Sukey Lewis: Okay. All righty.

[Music]

CDCR declined to answer our follow-up questions about why Anthony Rodriguez, Cody Taylor, and Dion Green were not separated. But from what these officials are saying, it sure sounded like they never should have been in a position to murder Luis Giovanny Aguilar. But once again, it’s like we’re in different worlds, and it feels like the warden is saying that the world that I’ve seen — in incident reports I’ve read and heard about from numerous incarcerated people and correctional officers — just doesn’t exist.

It’s tough in a situation like this to get all the questions in that you wanna ask. It’s loud, and we each have a minder attached to us, but at one point during the tour, Julie is able to bring up Valentino with the warden.

Julie Small: I have been talking to the father of, uh, Valentino Rodriguez Jr., who was a correctional officer here. And I know you probably can’t get into specifics, but I’m wondering if you could just tell me, as a person, how you felt when you heard that he had died.

Warden Jeff Lynch: Yeah, it’s, it’s sad when anybody passes away.

Julie Small: Did you know him personally?

Warden Jeff Lynch: Yes.

Sukey Lewis: Julie says the family, including Valentino’s dad, have questions for him.

Warden Jeff Lynch: Probably wouldn’t be able to comment on any, um, particular cases.

Julie Small: I mean, he never heard from you at the prison, he said. Is that normal? Like, if somebody passes away, would you normally reach out to the family? Or, is that not-

Warden Jeff Lynch: Uh, I’d prefer not to comment on-

Julie Small: Okay.

Warden Jeff Lynch: … um, at this time.

Sukey Lewis: She asks the warden if he’ll sit down with us in a better setting.

Julie Small: I’ve been reporting on prisons for a long time. I try to be fair, and I feel it… like it’s unfair when we don’t hear your side.

Warden Jeff Lynch: Yeah, but I think we can… whatever is fair within policy, we can do whatever we need to do.

Dana Simas: We’ll follow up with you on it.

Julie Small: Okay. Okay.

Sukey Lewis: In the moment, it seems like the warden might be willing to follow up with us later on. Then, after a walk through the restricted housing unit, they start to lead us back out toward the gates we came in through. I ask where the ISU is.

Warden Jeff Lynch: The ISU is, uh, above B Facility.

Sukey Lewis: Above B Facility. So-

Warden Jeff Lynch: Yeah.

Sukey Lewis: … up there in the hill, kind of out of sight?

Warden Jeff Lynch: No, it’s, like, right over there.

Sukey Lewis: Okay.

Warden Jeff Lynch: 150 yards.

Sukey Lewis: The warden points off vaguely toward one of the buildings. From the outside, it doesn’t look like much — this place where the police force of the institution is based, where Sergeant Kevin Steele spent six years and where he grew more and more concerned about staff misconduct being ignored. And the place where Valentino Rodriguez spent his weekends writing reports and booking evidence.

Warden Jeff Lynch: I know. We got, we got a ton.

Sukey Lewis: As we pass back out through the checkpoint and under the blue tower, the warden seems to visibly relax the closer we get to the main entrance gate.

What to you is the most significant policy change that has happened?

Warden Jeff Lynch: In my career?

Sukey Lewis: Yeah, yeah.

Warden Jeff Lynch: Oh.

Sukey Lewis: The warden thinks about it as we walk.

Warden Jeff Lynch: There’s been a lot of significant things, and it’s real easy to focus on what’s most current, which for us, over the past six months has been, uh, the, uh, the body worn cameras and the stationary cameras.

Sukey Lewis: CDCR was actually ordered by a judge to implement body cams at certain other prisons as part of an ongoing class action lawsuit against the agency, and they started rolling them out here at New Folsom too. I’ve talked to incarcerated people who say the body cams can help, but they’re not an easy fix because the institution can refuse to review the footage. And they sometimes delete it long before they’re supposed to.

I’ve also talked to officers who say the cameras can help them justify their actions if they’re called into question. As we head toward the outer gate, I’ve been waiting for the right moment to ask the warden about Sergeant Kevin Steele, but I misunderstand how long the tour is.

[laughs]

Dana Simas: Nope. This is about it.

Sukey Lewis: May have been a-

Dana Simas: Yeah.

Sukey Lewis: … misunderstanding. Okay.

Dana Simas: So we’ll make sure you guys are all checked out on equipment.

Sukey Lewis: I think we’ve got more time and suddenly we’re by the gate, so I turn to the warden.

I know you had a, you had a pretty high profile, uh, officer suicide here with Kevin, officer, Sergeant Kevin Steele, and I’m just wondering kind of how you processed that and how you support people to process that.

Warden Jeff Lynch: Say it one more time. How I process and how what?

Sukey Lewis: Y- how, and how other, how you support other correctional staff when their colleague has committed suicide.

Warden Jeff Lynch: We provide all the resources that we can. Um, how I process it [laughing] is the sa-… It’s, it is sad when there’s any staff death, um, and a lot of the examples, I think back on time, you know, a lot of the s- not a lot, but the staff that I’ve been connected to, uh, particularly at this prison that have gone through it, I mean, it, it weighs on all of us.

Sukey Lewis: The warden says they provide many services to officers, including peer support, and that he really understands the importance of taking care of your mental health.

Warden Jeff Lynch: My, uh, my message has always been it’s hard to be a good partner, a good father, a good spouse or a good son or daughter if you’re not taking care of yourself.

Sukey Lewis: Once again, I’m having this moment of disconnect between what the warden is saying and what I’ve heard from officers — that they can’t trust that peer support will stay private, that they have to take time off unpaid when they’re struggling, or pay out of pocket to attend PTSD seminars. And that when you call the state employee hotline to try and access therapy, you still have to wait weeks to get an appointment to talk to someone.

Did you know that, um, Sergeant Steele was suffering m- with his mental health?

Warden Jeff Lynch: I knew that he took some time off work.

Sukey Lewis: And do y- why was he banned from this institution?

Warden Jeff Lynch: I don’t know that’s something that I can, uh, comment on.

Sukey Lewis: You can’t? Okay.

I try one more time to ask the warden what he did when he found out that Steele had died, but Dana Simas steps in again.

Dana Simas: I think it’s an inappropriate question to comment on-

Sukey Lewis: Whoa…

Dana Simas: … a specific person, specific case. Um, it’s, it’s not appropriate for us to do that.

Sukey Lewis: She has us check out our equipment and we say goodbye.

Thank you, Mr. Lynch. I appreciate it. [laughs]

Warden Jeff Lynch: Nice to meet you.

[Sounds of wind and walking]

Julie Small: What time is it?

Sukey Lewis: I know it’s only noon. I thought it was gonna-

Julie Small: I thought we would be there forever.

Sukey Lewis: I thought we would have more time.

The two and a half hours we were in there felt much longer and not long enough at the same time.

It’s interesting, like, just kind of standing out here, and you, like, look around, and you’ve got the beautiful oak trees in leaf-

Julie Small: Mm-hmm.

Sukey Lewis: … and the green rolling hills, and the architecture of that opening gate, you know, while it’s, uh, you know, cement and, and somewhat brutalistic, it also has a little bit of aesthetic beauty to it, and, like, the deeper in you get, like, the less beauty there is.

Standing back outside the gates, back in a world where no one is looking down on us with deadly weapons, where we aren’t surrounded by razor wire and concrete, I can feel something in me that’s been clenched… relax.

It’s just, like, the s- gradual stripping away. Like, talking to correctional officers who talked about walking through this gate every day, and, that, like, each gate further in, the mental kind of armor that they would kind of have to put on more and more and more. Um, and then it’s like, you’re a, you’re a human being out here, and in there, you’re not.

[Music]

As you’ve probably guessed, that sit down interview we’d asked for with the warden never happened. We also sent a detailed list of questions about the institutional response to Valentino’s allegations, but a spokesperson for CDCR declined to answer those questions and said that wardens can’t comment on personnel matters. But lucky for us, that was not the end of things, because while Warden Jeff Lynch didn’t have to answer our questions, he did have to answer someone else’s.

[Ad break]

CDCR Lawyer 1: Did you ever, uh, meet with Officer Rodriguez?

Warden Jeff Lynch: Yes.

CDCR Lawyer 1: Okay. And where did you meet?

Warden Jeff Lynch: In my office.

Sukey Lewis: This is Warden Jeff Lynch testifying at an evidentiary hearing that was held in the summer of 2022. If you remember, some officers had gotten disciplined over the offensive group texts in Valentino’s phone, and two men were even fired… including Daniel Garland, the man who’d sent Valentino that video of his son at the gym threatening to slap him. Garland along with three other officers had appealed their discipline. At this hearing, an administrative law judge is gonna listen to that appeal and decide if their discipline should stand or be overturned. The warden is called as a witness for CDCR to talk about what Valentino had told him in that meeting the week before he died.

Heads up, this testimony references slurs, but we have bleeped them.

Warden Jeff Lynch: He indicated he was referred to at times as a-

CDCR Lawyer 1: Please. [laughs]

Warden Jeff Lynch: … as a [censored] of [censored]. Um, he said, uh, the use of…

CDCR Lawyer 1: Go ahead. [laughs]

Warden Jeff Lynch: … the w- the word [censored] was used up there often.

Sukey Lewis: Officer personnel matters are usually confidential, but we were able to get these recordings because of a new state-wide transparency law that unsealed records related to discriminatory behavior by law enforcement. This would give us a rare look inside this process, and we’d get to hear from some key figures in Valentino’s story about the events leading up to his death.

CDCR Lawyer 1: Did he ever indicate if he had any physical manifestations as a result of these problems he was having with the other ISU staff?

Warden Jeff Lynch: Yeah, I think, uh, he had mentioned that, uh, he wasn’t sleeping well at home. He was throwing up a lot at work.

Sukey Lewis: Warden Lynch says he asked Valentino to write up a statement with all his allegations. So far, this was all stuff we pretty much knew about. But then, the lawyer for the officers finally asks the warden about something we’d only heard about from Valentino’s wife Mimy — the allegations that the ISU squad, the police force for the prison, had been dirty.

Officers’ Lawyer: Um, he made quite a few allegations, did he not?

Warden Jeff Lynch: Yes.

Officers’ Lawyer: Um, a- not only, uh, just about the way he was treated in ISU, but other more serious allegations, correct? Including about officers in ISU planting drugs on inmates?

CDCR Lawyer 1: Uh, objections. Relevance.

Sukey Lewis: That’s CDCR’s lawyer objecting. They don’t want to go down this road. I’m not totally sure why the officer’s lawyer brings this up either. This hearing is not about those allegations, but because she asks about it, we finally got this little window into the warden’s actions after he met with Valentino. The judge allows the question.

Judge: I’ll allow the question.

Warden Jeff Lynch: Yes.

Officers’ Lawyer: And there being uncontrolled weapons in ISU?

Warden Jeff Lynch: Yes.

Sukey Lewis: Uncontrolled weapons are weapons that have been seized, but not yet booked into evidence.

Officers’ Lawyer: And you directed, um, I believe it was… Uh, I don’t know if he was a sergeant or lieutenant at that time, but [censored]. And, um, I believe Lieutenant [censored] to search the ISU office?

Warden Jeff Lynch: Yes.

Sukey Lewis: A little later in the hearing, Officer Martin Fong, who’d been in the ISU and who’d gotten a pay cut for his part in some of the ugly group texts was also asked about this search.

Martin Fong: We came into the office, normal morning, just as, you know, we’re just kinda w- warming up in the morning and then, uh-

Sukey Lewis: He says it was the day before Valentino died. The ISU officers and the chief deputy warden, Gena Jones, came into the office.

Martin Fong: It was kind of weird because usually [censored] doesn’t pop in that early but it’s like, “Hey, whatever.” And she’s, she looks at me and Jordan, and she goes, “I need to talk to you and you.” I’m like, “Oh.” Like, “This is out of the ordinary”

Sukey Lewis: Fong says at first he thinks maybe they’re going to get some praise for a recent case, but then Jones pulls them out into the hallway.

Martin Fong: Just basically says, “Hey, I wanna, I want you to hear from me first, but your desk… Uh, I had Lieutenant [censored] and Lieutenant [censored] search your desk. There’s allegations, uh, that there was weapons and… [inaudible] there’s phones and narcotics in your desk.”

Sukey Lewis: Another staff member had made these claims against them.

Martin Fong: I was like, “Why are they doing?” Like, “I have a target on my back now or what?” But they weren’t just trying to get me removed from the unit. They were, they were trying to get me fired, or, you know, like, that’s some serious allegations. And so that devastated me ’cause of it, it, it challenged my, or it pretty much trying to discredit my character and everything I’ve worked for. And I got emotional, and I broke down.

[Music]

Sukey Lewis: A weapon and some metal were found in his desk. We don’t know exactly what this weapon looked like, but I want to be clear here that from the context, it seems like this isn’t a gun or a baton or a weapon officers would use, but what’s called by CDCR an “inmate manufactured weapon.” So a shiv or something like that, that would usually be stored in evidence after being confiscated. But this weapon, Fong says, had a different purpose. He kept it in his desk as a show-and-tell item.

Martin Fong: We have a lot of tours that came up there and there’s a shadow board that has weapons, but s- sometimes to actually hold and, and look at a weapon, it, it’s a tangible item.

Sukey Lewis: The warden says, even though a weapon was found, he believed Fong’s explanation of why it was there.

Officers’ Lawyer: And that you understood that Officer Fong was using it for some sort of training event?

Warden Jeff Lynch: That was my understanding.

Officers’ Lawyer: Okay, and so, so based on your understanding, it was not improper for Officer Fong to have this weapon in his desk?

Warden Jeff Lynch: Uh, based upon what was reported to me, um, but I didn’t know the, the origin of the weapon either.

Sukey Lewis: I ran this by the former sergeant who you heard from last episode who knew a lot about internal affairs. I wanted to see if this made sense to him — to have an improvised weapon in your desk for training purposes. He said it did not. If you wanted a weapon to use for training, you would check it out of evidence. There would be a paper trail. Ultimately, the search did not result in any reprimand or discipline for officers.

Unfortunately, in this hearing, no one followed up to ask the warden our biggest questions. Why had he chosen this as the way to handle Valentino’s allegations in the first place? If substantiated, evidence of planted drugs or weapons could have massive implications, from tainted criminal cases to charges for the warden’s own cops. But the warden didn’t immediately call in internal affairs, special agents who might have set up a sting operation or pulled phone records. Instead, Lynch has his own in-house people, the direct supervisors of the officers in question, go in and do this strangely casual search of their desks. By making this choice, the warden, also whether knowingly or not, likely exposed Valentino as a whistleblower.

Hours before Mimy Rodriguez got home and found her husband on the bathroom floor, one of the last texts he sent said, “It’s out now that I told on the team.” After Valentino died, and Val Sr. filed a complaint with internal affairs and handed over his son’s phone, a special agent did start looking into some things. Their investigation didn’t substantiate the claims of planted drugs and weapons, but it’s not clear that they really looked into those claims. The report does note one more thing about Valentino’s meeting with the warden and the subsequent search that makes no sense.

Internal Affairs asked the warden to turn over any notes or memos about these two events. The warden told them he couldn’t find any documentation of either event.

Listening through these hearings, we also got to finally hear from one of the people that Val Sr. held responsible for how Valentino had been treated in the ISU — Sergeant David Anderson, Valentino’s boss, the guy who’d been on some of the text threads and who Valentino said had threatened him. He’d been called to testify by the lawyer for the officers, and she asks him what was meant by that nickname they’d given Valentino: half-patch.

David Anderson: It was more of a term of endearment, um, like a brother or a friend, a close friend is the term that, uh, they used it in.

CDCR Lawyer 1: Objection, speculation.

Judge: Sustained.

Sukey Lewis: The lawyer then asks Anderson if he heard other terms used — homophobic slurs, racial slurs, and his answer each time is-

David Anderson: Not that I can recall.

Sukey Lewis: But when CDCR’s lawyer cross-examines him, she confronts him with his prior testimony to internal affairs, in which he admitted hearing these terms.

David Anderson: It must’ve slipped my mind. I apologize for that.

CDCR Lawyer 1: So in fact, you heard Officer Garland use the term [censored]–

David Anderson: Yes.

CDCR Lawyer 1: … in the ISU office?

David Anderson: Yes.

CDCR Lawyer 1: And during that same office of internal affairs interview, you admitted to hearing Officer Garland use the term [censored] in the office.

David Anderson: What page is that on?

Sukey Lewis: If you could just close that and- if you don’t recall?

David Anderson: I don’t recall.

CDCR Lawyer 1: Okay.

David Anderson: That’s one I…

CDCR Lawyer 1: Okay, and if I could direct your attention to page 73.

David Anderson: 73?

CDCR Lawyer 1: And I’m going to direct your attention to lines 13 through 19. Special Agent [censored] says, “Earlier we talked about the term [censored] with an A at the end.” You respond, “Yeah.” He then says, “Did you hear staff use that?” You respond, “Yeah.” “Who did you hear?” And you respond, “Officer Garland.”

David Anderson: Yes, yes. Now that I’m reading this, it does, uh, I’m able to remember that.

Sukey Lewis: We still don’t know if the department imposed any discipline on Anderson. He could’ve been one of the people who got reprimanded in connection with Valentino’s case for failure to report misconduct, but if so… those details aren’t public.

We know from employment records that Anderson was promoted to lieutenant at New Folsom in July of 2022, the month after he gave this testimony. During this hearing, the lawyer for the officers also called each of them to speak in their own defense. And I’m gonna focus on Daniel Garland’s testimony, since you’ve heard the most about his actions.

Officers’ Lawyer: How long were you with the CDCR?

Daniel Garland: Just under 19 years.

Officers’ Lawyer: All right, and, um, how did you get into corrections?

Daniel Garland: My brothers were, uh, were inmates. My mother and my father were locked up, so I’ve always had some kind of connection to corrections.

Sukey Lewis: Garland says getting a job as an officer changed his life, and this personal history gave him a unique empathy to do that job. But he says it was also hard work. He was exposed to terrible things and assaulted, and he and Valentino were there for each other in the harsh environment of the prison.

Daniel Garland: He was like a little brother. He was becoming… You know, he was becoming closer and like a little brother.

Sukey Lewis: The lawyer says they’ve heard a lot about Garland’s words.

Officers’ Lawyer: How would you describe generally the way you speak?

Daniel Garland: I say, I say inappropriate things, and I say them in inappropriate times. But I’m, I’m, I’m usually doing it a- as hard as it is for people in here to understand, I’m usually doing it in an encouraging manner.

Sukey Lewis: And he says he didn’t even know it bothered Valentino until after he’d died, when someone else in the office said something to him.

Daniel Garland: Sergeant [censored] made several comments about, “We killed Rodriguez.” And he made certain comments that specifically me and Jordan killed Rodriguez. And so we, we put in a, a complaint against him, and that was the first time that I had any idea of anything with Rodriguez.

Sukey Lewis: The tape is redacted, but the sergeant he’s talking about here has to be Steele. We know Steele was really upset about Valentino’s death and blamed these guys who’d been so hard on him. That complaint that Garland and another officer filed against Steele didn’t go anywhere. Then the article about Valentino’s death and Garland’s text messages came out in the paper, the Sacramento Bee.

Officers’ Lawyer: What impact did these articles have on you a- at the time they came out?

Daniel Garland: I- It destroyed me. It destroyed my character. It, uh… As soon as the articles come out, it just… My daughter, my daughter had to go to homeschooling. I mean, uh, it just destroyed everything. It destroyed my life.

Sukey Lewis: Then his lawyer asks Garland a question that she asks each of the officers.

Officers’ Lawyer: I- If you were able to say something about this situation to Officer Rodriguez’s father in light of everything that’s gone on, what would you say to him?

CDCR Lawyer 2: Objection. Relevance.

Daniel Garland: Oh, I would just like to let him know that for the, for the time that he was in ISU, that he had a good time and he had fun and we, we all, we all had fun. We all enjoyed his son and that it wasn’t, it wasn’t what he was told. It’s not what… Rodriguez didn’t have a bad time in ISU. Rodriguez loved ISU. He loved working with us and he, he said the same things I said back and forth and I never got offended by him and I, I never felt he was offended. And I, I just wanna let his father know that we did respect his son and that we, we enjoyed his son and that I’m s- I’m really sorry for his loss. I just, I feel bad for him. I- I’m a father and it’s so- something you shouldn’t see.

Sukey Lewis: In closing, the officer’s lawyer argues that in this case, that’s basically just about bad language, dismissal and long pay cuts are too severe. They were all veteran officers with great reputations.

Officers’ Lawyer: The question is for these four gentlemen, should they either have their careers ended or be hampered, uh, for years financially and with, with the stigma of this discipline based on what were private communications, banter, blowing off steam, were words? They were just bad words.

Sukey Lewis: The attorney for CDCR goes last. He says any reasonable person looking over these messages would understand that they’re harmful and that they had accumulative effect.

CDCR Lawyer 2: This beat down at the office and over text that he took from these officers had its effect over time, and that’s why, that’s why it took a while until he reached his breaking point to start reporting it to people.

Sukey Lewis: Finally, he points back to the officers’ own testimony.

CDCR Lawyer 2: Council’s question to the appellants about, you know, “What, what would you say to Rodriguez’s father if you had a chance to do so?” And it was intended to be emotional testimony, but I think it’s notable that not one of the appellants, not one of them indicated that they would tell him that they were sorry for anything that they did. In fact, several of them said that they would try to convince the, the father that they did nothing wrong — that they didn’t intend to do anything wrong. They treated ISU like their own junior high locker room. They, they bullied, uh, Rodriguez. They, they went after him. They called him horrible names, yet they s- they, they got on the stand and said, “I wouldn’t… I would not say anything to him indicating that I’m sorry for what I did.” A- And, and that right there is the biggest evidence that the likelihood of reoccurrence is high. Thank you.

[Music]

Sukey Lewis: And that’s how the eight days of hearings came to a close. There was one other person who we’d hoped to hear in these recordings, but didn’t, the chief deputy warden, Gena Jones. She wasn’t called by either side, which seems strange. Jones is the person Valentino first broke down to when he felt he had to leave the prison, and she was directly in charge of the ISU. Since Valentino’s death, she has also been promoted. She is now a warden of the prison in Stockton, California.

The judge issued his recommendation a little while later, which was adopted by the state personnel board, which is basically the HR department for the state. And we were able to get that decision through a public record’s request.

Julie Small: Okay. So, this is from… We got this last night from the state personnel board.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: Mm.

Julie Small: These are the decisions that they made about the appeals brought by, uh, Garland, Jordan, uh, Bettencourt and Fong.

Sukey Lewis: Julie met up with Val Sr. to show him the documents.

Julie Small: The first thing to know is that the state personnel board upheld all the decisions, so that means that Garland is still fired, and Jordan’s fired, and Fong and Bettencourt had their pay docked.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: Yeah. Well, I’m glad that you s- you, you told me first before we went on, ’cause, uh, my heart was racing. So, that’s good that they upheld the decisions. Um, I’m interested to hear what, what they had to say.

Julie Small: Yeah.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: But I can imagine, you know, that, “We were just joking around with him,” or whatever.

Sukey Lewis: He says it was in his son’s nature to forgive, to try and get along with people.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: It’s really easy for someone to look at the text messages and see that he’s being friendly at times with these same guys, even after he leaves, but th- that was his personality, you know?

Julie Small: Mm-hmm.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: But it’s one of those things you can’t beat out of your kid-

Julie Small: Mm-hmm.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: … ’cause he’s just a nice person, you know? He was always tugging at me and saying, “Look what I did, dad,” you know? Uh, he always… Like, th- they call them guys apple polishers, you know? [laughs]. Yeah, that was just my son. He was just a little apple polisher.

Julie Small: Mm.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: So, I want their attorney to realize, that’s, that’s the kind of person he was. He was a, he was a little boy in a man’s shell, you know?

Sukey Lewis: Following this hearing, these officers appealed their discipline to the state superior court, and that appeal is still pending.

[Music]
But for Val Sr., this narrowing of the investigation, two officers fired for saying bad words, does not address the underlying machine that enabled that conduct.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: Everybody is just protecting themselves, you know?

[Ad break]

Sukey Lewis: As we were rolling out this podcast, we were also staying in touch with Val Sr. and one day he texted Julie.

Julie Small: It’s like he wrote me this morning saying something like, “Well, Steele promised me I’d know the truth and it would be hard.” I mean, uh, so, he’s got something new to tell us.

Victoria Mauléon: Boy.

Julie Small: I don’t know what it is, or if it’s just reading it from Steele like that. I, I don’t know.

Sukey Lewis: Val Sr. had finally gotten a chance to read the book that Kevin Steele had been working on before he passed away, and so Julie and I met up with him to talk about it a few days later.

Julie Small: Well, we really just wanted to check in with you and see, you know, what is… How you’re feeling, but also just, you know, you had a chance to read the book.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: I was, I was highlighting things and I was like, “Man, could just… You could highlight the whole thing sometimes.” It’s-

Sukey Lewis: Steele’s widow, Lily, shared the manuscript with him, and she also gave us permission to read some parts of it here. The first page is a list of titles Steele was considering. At the top…

The Thin Line Blurs.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: How to Kill a Cop.

Sukey Lewis: Betrayal.

[Music]

The book begins with a line that’s very on brand for him. “This book is dedicated and faithfully devoted to the truth.” The dedication is heavy with Steele’s disillusionment and hurt. “Within this book, you will read the story about how corruption and criminality were treated as celebrities. Prowlers, bandits and punks were granted immunity for dirty deeds and acts of criminality, while the whistle-blowers and law-abiding staff were pursued, harassed and persecuted. This story was never intended to be told.”

The stories he tells are many of the stories that you have already heard throughout this podcast. He writes about meeting Ronny Price in the hospital with his teeth knocked out and his face smashed in after being tripped by officers, and how the incarcerated man died the next day of his injuries.

Steele writes about the murder of Luis Giovanny Aguilar and questions, “Did CDCR peace officers, the individuals who are commissioned and duty-bound to be professional, fair, honest and ethical, become complicit in the slaughter of an inmate?”

And he writes about his friend, Valentino Rodriguez.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: It was hard to read, and then every time I went back into it, it got a little easier to read.

Sukey Lewis: There were parts that Val Sr. found touching, like Steele’s description of how hard his son worked.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: “Valentino was just trying to make his supervisors, the institution and his chosen profession flash, sparkle and glimmer. Valentino was happy and filled with pride when something he was working on gained positive recognition and attention.” And that, that is exactly the way he was when he was a, when he was a boy. He was the same, same way.

Sukey Lewis: And there were parts like this one that made Val Sr. very angry.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: “Valentino would often make comments to me that he was treated as the office bitch and given very little praise and gratitude.”

Sukey Lewis: And it’s clear from the book that Valentino’s death is a turning point for Steel. He keeps waiting for the institution to respond with care, concern, and accountability, but that’s not what he sees. The day after Valentino died the warden wanted to talk to Steele, and here’s Val Sr. again reading what Steele wrote about this meeting.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: “I remained standing in the middle of the office. I was still attempting to fully grasp the significance and magnitude of Valentino’s death as I was openly crying in plain view of Warden Lynch and Lieutenant Strohmaier.”

Sukey Lewis: The warden wanted to find out what Steele knew. Steele writes that he shared everything Valentino had told him, and then waited for the warden to react.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: “Without any hesitation, Warden Lynch calmly remained seated with his right leg crossed over his left leg and very casually said, ‘Well, you haven’t told me anything I didn’t already know.'”

Sukey Lewis: The warden could just be acknowledging that he’d already heard these same things from Valentino himself a few days earlier. But to Steele, this reaction is evidence of the warden’s callousness and preoccupation with self-protection. Steele began to view everything through this lens. The institution he’d have given his life for was starting to treat him as a threat. He writes that the friction in the ISU office was increasing. In one instance, he says that his boss told him, quote, that, “Some staff were starting to consider me as an ‘inmate lover’ as I was spending too much time talking to inmates.” He writes that another boss emailed him asking about his retirement plans. And someone else told him that his bosses were talking about him behind closed doors. “The main topic of discussion within these meetings was how to stimulate my departure without making it appear as workplace retaliation.”

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: I kind of could see how they were systematically picking him apart until his death.

[Music]

Sukey Lewis: When Kevin Steele died, his manuscript was 104 pages, but it wasn’t finished. There were some things Val Sr. was expecting to see in those pages but didn’t.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: Maybe it’s my suspicions and they’re not confirmed there. You know? But he got, he got about as far into that book as um, I, I needed him to.

Sukey Lewis: We still have questions for Steele that aren’t answered in his book, like what had he and Valentino shared with each other about the murder of Luis Giovanny Aguilar? What happened in that last call Steele had with internal affairs? And could things have turned out differently?

Many of Steele’s friends and colleagues have also struggled to understand his death and everything that led up to it, and some of them are speaking up now because they want answers.

Annette Eichhorn: I think that’s why we’re here as well is to find the truth finally.

Sukey Lewis: This is retired correctional officer Annette Eichhorn. She worked as a tower copy at New Folsom. She says Valentino and Steele’s deaths should be a wake up call.

Annette Eichhorn: Now two of them that are dead because to find the truth. That should shock the shit out of everybody-

Sukey Lewis: Mm-hmm.

Annette Eichhorn: … that’s still there. And I don’t understand how it’s not.

Sukey Lewis: Annette came into our recording studio with her friend, Paul Crews, who also retired from the prison.

Paul Crews: I was a correctional officer the last almost 21 years.

Sukey Lewis: Paul was a control booth officer. As you’ve heard throughout this podcast, we’ve often had to agree to confidentiality or anonymity for officers. But these two officers agreed to sit down with us and talk on the record because they wanna stand up for Steele.

Annette Eichhorn: There’s few people that we would be speaking out for.

Paul Crews: ‘Cause this is a guy that was always looking out for us, as… Not just “us” singular. “Us” plural and “us” as a department.

Sukey Lewis: And as Annette says, they want to try and find the truth among the sea of rumors that started going around after Steele’s picture was posted at the gate banning him from the institution.

Annette Eichhorn: I went up to a few people and said, what is, what’s up with Steel? F him.

Sukey Lewis: Annette wasn’t sure why people at the prison had turned on Steele. Paul says he called Steele on the phone in early 2021, but he didn’t know Steele was out of the prison, or that he’d been banned.

Paul Crews: He picked up the phone, so I contacted him, not knowing anything that was going on.

Sukey Lewis: Paul hadn’t been at work for months because he’d been rehabbing from an injury, but now he was supposed to go back to work and he was calling Steele because he was really struggling and he needed Steele to know something.

Paul Crews: I was like, “Kevin, this is what’s going on.” I… It was all about me on that conversation at that point. “I’m on this particular drug. I don’t think I should be in a control booth. I shouldn’t be doing anything with this job until I get me right.”

Sukey Lewis: Paul told Steele he’d had a meltdown and been put on psychiatric medication. Steele was the guy who drug tested officers at the prison, and so, Paul needed him to know that this medication would be showing up in his urine.

Were you at that low point then when you called him?

Paul Crews: I was, I was at a low point, but I was at such a low point, my, my wife was looking at me like, “I need your, your safe key.”

Sukey Lewis: The key to the gun safe. Paul says his wife was worried that he might take his own life.

Paul Crews: I was like, “I’m there.” She says, “We don’t know.”

Sukey Lewis: Hmmm.

Paul Crews: I said, “What do you mean we?” The kids didn’t know. So, “Sure. Have my damn keys,” [laughs], “you know, if that makes you feel happy.”

Sukey Lewis: Paul told Steele what he was going through.

Paul Crews: And then he told me, he’s like, “Well, I’m… I haven’t been there since November.” I’m like, “November? What, what happened?”

Sukey Lewis: Steele had actually stopped working at the prison in December, and then gone to Missouri in January. After the notice banning him, Steele had started to suspect he was under investigation, but he didn’t know what for — and he told Paul he couldn’t talk about it.

Paul Crews: And I was like, “All right. Well, that aside, are you mentally okay?” ‘Cause he didn’t sound right.

Sukey Lewis: Mm-hmm.

Paul Crews: To me, he didn’t sound right. And he said, “I’m just frustrated, you know?” I was like, “Okay. Well, I’ve always been that guy, somebody you can call and talk to no matter what. Um, I’d rather you talk than blow your head off. I just… We know too many people that that happened to.” And, um, he’s like, “No, I’m not there.” And I was like, “Okay.” And he kind of, like, told me, “Everything is gonna come out in the wash, but right now, I’m ou- out a job.” Well, I was like, “All right. Well, I’m gonna check on you every so often.”

Sukey Lewis: Paul says for some reason, talking to Steele helped him.

Paul Crews: My problem didn’t seem so big anymore. It was kind of like… In a weird way, it was kind of like a reset.

Sukey Lewis: Annette was going through her own struggles with the department and would text and talk with Steele about what he was going through. She says he was crushed when he heard they were trying to make him look corrupt.

Annette Eichhorn: They’re switching it to where, no Steele is helping this inmate with his attorney and, um, um, turning on his own people, and that’s why he, he, he had to go.

Sukey Lewis: Annette says Steele told her he wished he’d never opened his mouth.

Annette Eichhorn: He’s like, “I shouldn’t have talked.” He’s all, “My life would have been so much better.” I was like, “Steele, you know you couldn’t.”

Sukey Lewis: Mm.

Annette Eichhorn: “You, you know you could not live with yourself if you just ignored Rodriguez.”

[Music]

Sukey Lewis: Over his years at the institution, Steele had seen so much, assaults and cover-ups and over and over again, he’d been told that, “There was a process in place. People would be held accountable. Just trust the system.” Now, he felt that system had turned on him. We can’t see the full internal affairs file on Steele, but we were able to get a summary report about what he was being investigated for and what the outcome was. Here are the allegations. Number one, circumventing the prison’s legal mail process by sending a scanned letter from an incarcerated person to their attorney. Number two, he allegedly met with an incarcerated person and lied that it was for an attorney visit. And number three, he, “Released a confidential memorandum to a member of the public after the Office of Internal Affairs ordered the sergeant not to communicate with that member of the public.

That last allegation against Steele was the easiest to decode. It was about Steele’s own memo — that explosive one that he sent to the warden that we read you earlier in this series. The member of the public that he sent it to, as we know, was Val Sr., who he’d already been told not to talk to. The second allegation that Steele met with an incarcerated person and lied about it being for an attorney visit didn’t go anywhere, and it couldn’t be substantiated.

But for a long time, we weren’t sure what the first allegation was really about. Had Steele been helping someone get around the legal mail process and secretly communicate with their lawyers? And then we were leaked those tapes and memos, and we began to put two and two together. We found out that there were these two letters that Dion Green wrote to the warden. He was worried about his safety because word was spreading that he was a whistleblower. In one of the videos we got, Steele actually holds up one of these letters to the camera.

Sgt. Kevin Steele: And then the other one, I told you that I’m going to, um, email to your attorney.

Dion Green: Yes, sir.

Sgt. Kevin Steele: And then that was at your request. It wasn’t something that I suggested or asked you to do?

Dion Green: No, sir.

Sgt. Kevin Steele: Okay.

Sukey Lewis: That’s what this is about. These letters seem like they were Green’s insurance policy in case something happened to him.

[Music]
So on two occasions, Steele emailed copies of Green’s letters to both the warden and to Green’s attorney. But legal mail is still supposed to go through proper channels and the actual physical mail.

But here’s the thing that makes this investigation so weird. You can see in Steele’s correspondence that this was not some sneaky thing he did. Both times, he explicitly tells the warden he’s doing it. It isn’t until months later that Internal Affairs starts investigating Steele for this. And that investigation was still going on when he died.

[Ad break]
I tell Paul and Annette that after Steele’s death, the agency finished that internal investigation and found that Steele had violated policy by sending those letters and forwarding the memo he wrote to Val Sr..

They completed the Internal Affairs investigation after he died and imposed a 10% pay cut for 12 months.

Paul Crews: After he died?

Sukey Lewis: After he died.

Annette Eichhorn: How can they do that after he died? Are you serious?

Sukey Lewis: Yeah.

Annette Eichhorn: What the fuck is wrong with these people? What the… This is how far they can go. They gotta nail that, literally nail the nail in the coffin on his name. That fucking pisses me off. Fuck them.

Paul Crews: Yeah.

Annette Eichhorn: I needed to hear that. We needed to… What the fuck is their narrative that they thought that they can do that?

Paul Crews: That’s dirty as shit.

Annette Eichhorn: That’s dirty as shit.

[Music]

Sukey Lewis: The discipline deemed appropriate for Steele’s offenses — sending scanned letters over email to an attorney, and sending his own memo to Val Sr. — was a pay cut for a full year. This was greater than the discipline imposed on any of the officers who’d failed to protect Luis Giovanny Aguilar. But because he was dead, the discipline was suspended.

I asked the state’s Office of the Inspector General for prisons about Steele’s case because the timing of it, the nature of it really looks like retaliation. And it’s part of their job to investigate complaints of whistleblower retaliation. A spokesperson said they couldn’t comment on his case but that it was protocol for CDCR to complete investigations even after an officer’s death, and that, “The act of whistleblowing does not insulate a person from being subjected to a legitimate investigation into allegations that the whistleblower engaged in misconduct.”

As far as we can tell, this is the only mark on his record — the only time the agency disciplined him for anything.

But Steele’s disciplinary record, and his book, and even this podcast so far… don’t detail all of Steele’s efforts to expose misconduct in the agency. Some of those efforts we haven’t gone into. We don’t know the full picture

But there is one more case that Steele got involved in that I want to tell you about briefly, because I think it shows how far Steele had traveled from the man who showed up to work early each morning, full of faith in his institution.

In the month before his death Steele was in communication with an attorney, who under other circumstances he likely would have considered on the other side of things.

Sukey Lewis: Would you mind just starting off by telling us who you are and what you do, Steve?

Steve Glickman: So, I’m Steve Glickman. I’m an attorney in Los Angeles.

Sukey Lewis: Glickman was suing CDCR on behalf of the family of a man who died in the prison. That death was reported as a suicide.

Steve Glickman: We had not a single clue that there was anything other than a suicide.

Sukey Lewis: Glickman says another lawyer gave him a tip — that he should get in contact with a man named Sgt. Kevin Steele. So he did.

Steve Glickman: It was a shocking, chilling conversation.

Sukey Lewis: Steele told Glickman he’d interviewed an incarcerated man who’d confessed it was actually a murder and that he had committed it. This was surprising to Glickman because that confession was not among the evidence that CDCR had turned over about the case, and they were supposed to turn over everything. On the phone, Steele told the lawyer that he’d part of gathering that evidence and noticed this key interview was missing.

Steve Glickman: He complained to one of his supervisors and he learned that the inmate Clark, the one who had confessed to the murder, was actually working for the security, in- internal security office there at the prison. And, and so his feeling as he expressed to me was, is that’s why it was being covered up — because this guy was an informant for the, the prison system.

Sukey Lewis: He says that Steele was scheduled to give a deposition in his lawsuit, but before that happened–

Steve Glickman: I was called actually by a newspaper reporter who told me that, uh, Steel had committed suicide under suspicious circumstances. So we never, we never were able to get his testimony under oath.

Sukey Lewis: Uh, what did you think when you got that call?

Steve Glickman: I was shocked. I was shocked.

Sukey Lewis: The agency settled that suit for $250,000 earlier this year. Steele doesn’t mention this case in his manuscript, maybe because he hadn’t gotten to it yet,but the final pages show that he was researching the case law around whistleblowing, and what protections he might be entitled to. And what he discovered is that there were actually relatively few. And here is the fundamental catch–22 that correctional officers like Steele face: if there’s a policy against sharing confidential information and an officer shares it anyways, even if the purpose is to blow the whistle on misconduct, the officer can still be punished.

[Music]

Sukey Lewis: Yet, on the day they join the academy, correctional officers also swear an oath… an oath to uphold the law. And so, what are they supposed to do if they come to believe that their own institution is breaking it?

The lack of protections for whistleblowers is not a new problem for CDCR. 20 years ago, the state Senate called for hearings about CDCR’s failure to police itself.

Sen. Gloria Romero: Can the California Department of Corrections police itself? The answer, I believe, is no. But starting today, it must…

Sukey Lewis: And a persistent code of silence.

Sen. Gloria Romero: Code of silence at the highest level of government.

Sukey Lewis: The testimony sounds eerily familiar.

D.J. Vodicka: He yelled, “Hey, you big old snitch, you big old rat. Who you telling on now?” And I felt really threatened by that.

Woman: I’m a family member of an inmate. My husband is in prison. He’s currently at Ironwood. He was up at Pelican Bay, and guards tried to have him killed by putting an inmate in his cell. He was very, very, very badly hurt.

Sen. Jackie Speier: What’s frightening to me is that there are correctional officers within the institution at all of our state prisons that feel they cannot come forward for fear of retaliation.

Mike Jimenez: Yes, there are.

Sen. Jackie Speier: And that should be of concern to you.

Mike Jimenez: It is.

Sukey Lewis: Part of the impetus for these hearings was the suicide of a captain who’d reported concerns about a massive riot that officers delayed responding to. The captain was demoted and threatened by his colleagues, according to news reports. “My job has killed me,” the captain wrote in his suicide note.

After Valentino died and after Kevin Steele died, both Mimy Rodriguez and Lili Steele had a decision to make. In order to get husbands’ death benefits right away, they could sign a release form stating that their deaths were unrelated to their jobs. But neither widow could bring themselves to sign that piece of paper. Lili told me it would’ve felt like stabbing her husband in the back.

So instead, they filed worker’s compensation claims with the state. This was a difficult process, but Lili said this was her way of saying, “I know what you people did to him.” Initially those claims were denied, but after a fight they were granted. Both Kevin and Valentino’s deaths were found to be the result of mental injuries sustained in their profession as correctional officers for the State of California.

Lili said when she got the call about that decision, she sobbed. She told me she was overcome with emotion to have someone acknowledge what had happened, and that they believed her. Mimy says she also remembers getting that call.

Mimy Rodriguez: I just said, “Okay. Thank you.” And then I cried when I got off the phone. But I, I, I knew it was going on. Like, I knew that this was… had to do with his job. Oh, that’s all he talked about. The night that he passed, I remember when I was getting put in the back of the cop car, I remember yelling at the cop, like, telling her, like, “Quit your job. Like, this job is gonna cause you so much stress. Look what happened.”

Sukey Lewis: Mimy says when she and Valentino first met, his job was one of the things she loved about him. She also had plans to go into the field herself.

Mimy Rodriguez: It’s a field that I had a lot of respect for, still have a lot of respect for, but it’s also something that is permanently engraved of “I know what happens here. I know what happened here.” And it’s hard not to look at it differently now and feel differently now. I didn’t realize it was gonna be like this.

[Music]

Sukey Lewis: On paper, California’s $14 billion a year prison system is an institution that’s trying the Norway model — the cutting edge of progressive and humane policies that focuses on reintegration and emotional wellbeing. An institution that bans discrimination, that promises to protect the people in its custody, that forbids the code of silence. And yet, we’ve found the reality inside this system is very different from the promise.

Our review of 80 cases of officer discrimination going back to 2015 found the type of abuse that Valentino experienced happened across institutions. The most common type of discrimination in these cases disclosed to us was sexual harassment. Yet on its own, even egregious misconduct often did not lead to firing. And this culture is important because sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly it enforces the code of silence and even more serious misconduct goes unreported.

Along with off-the-charts use of force at New Folsom Prison, our analysis of CDCR’s data found another troubling trend. Despite damning reports from the Office of the Inspector General of prisons, the rate officers used force across all high security prisons in the state between 2009 and last year increased by 137%. This gap between what the system promises and what it delivers is the gap that swallowed up incarcerated people like Ronnie Price and Luis Giovanny Aguilar. And this is the gap that Valentino Rodriguez and Kevin Steele fell into as well. The agency will not discuss their cases, and their names do not appear among the fallen officers memorialized on CDCR’s website, but they are not alone.

[Music]

In terms of overall numbers of correctional officers who’ve died by suicide like Steele, it’s hard to get an exact number. There are about 30,000 peace officers employed in California’s prison agency. A 2017 UC Berkeley survey of some officers found that one in 10 reported suicidal thoughts. But CDCR said they don’t track employee suicides out of respect for their privacy.

The California Correctional Officers Union provided me with a list that they had gathered, informally by word of mouth, institution by institution. So it’s not a complete list, and it’s not even a list of names, but simply dates of death. There are 24 dates on this list — 24 current or former officers who died since the beginning of 2020. Since I got that list in May last year, I heard about six more officers and a former warden who died by suicide, bringing the number to 31; at least 31 peace officers who took their own lives since 2020.

The union contact who gave me that list said, “If these deaths were happening in any other profession, someone would be calling for an investigation,” and yet he can’t even get a solid count to understand the scope of the problem.

The number of officers who simply died too young, like Valentino, often due to stress, heart attacks, and substance use issues is likely even greater.

Paul, the retired correctional officer, told me among officers, it’s become a kind of dark joke. When someone leaves the profession, on the 5th anniversary of their retirement, they throw a party to celebrate that, unlike so many of their colleagues, they are still alive. Like a lot of officers, Kevin Steele and Valentino Rodriguez signed up to work for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation because of the promise of good benefits, early retirement, a family of fellow officers. Now their actual families are left without them.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: My biggest regret is that that day he died, I just didn’t take him for a long ride with me and talk. We were, we were due for one, and I just… You know, you just don’t know. This, uh, opportunity there and you just don’t know. Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if I woulda been able to save him. I, I know I could have.

Julie Small: I think that’s one of the hardest things about being a parent. When they’re little, you can protect them from things.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: Yeah.

Julie Small: You know where they’re going. You can keep them close. And then…

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: Mm-hmm.

Julie Small: They go out in the world.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: Mm-hmm.

Sukey Lewis: Since the podcast came out, Val Sr. has had good days and bad days. He hopes something big will come from this.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: I think, um, most importantly, this is probably my last stand. Um, I don’t, I don’t know what else I can do. You know, I just always pray that, God willing, it’s, it’s for a, a good, a good thing.

Sukey Lewis: He says it’ll be a relief in a way to come to the end of this project, but he’ll also miss it. It’s been a way for him to keep Valentino alive.

Valentino Rodriguez, Sr.: I’ll never stop, ever stop thinking about my son. No, he’s just too, uh… I just loved him too much.

[Credits music]

Sukey Lewis: You’ve been listening to the final episode of On Our Watch Season Two: New Folsom from KQED. While this is the last episode of the series we will let you know if we get any more breakthroughs in our reporting. Please continue to send tips or feedback about the series to: onourwatch@kqed.org

Thank you to the people who knew and loved Valentino Rodriguez and Kevin Steele for sharing their stories with us. And thanks to all the correctional officers who spoke to us for this series, whose voices you often did not hear on the podcast, but who informed us about the challenges of their profession. If you are a whistleblower, you can find support online including at TheLampLighterproject.org which is especially for law enforcement whistleblowers. And we’ve links to other resources in our episode description and on our website.

We also want to thank the families of Ronnie Price and Luis Giovanny Aguilar for opening up to us about their loved ones. And huge gratitude to the incarcerated people who spoke to us under very difficult and dangerous circumstances, including Joel Uribe, Mario Gonzalez, Mario Valenzuela and many more.

The series is reported by me, Sukey Lewis, and Julie Small. It’s edited by Victoria Mauléon. It’s produced and scored by Steven Rascón and Chris Egusa. Sound design and mixing by Tarek Fouda. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts and she executive produced the series. Meticulous fact checking by Mark Betancourt. Additional research for this episode by Kathleen Quinn, and Laura Fitzgerald — students in the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, whose chair David Barstow provided valuable support for the whole series.

Over the past two years… so many journalists have helped with this series… We got research support from graduate students Elizabeth Santos, Cayla Mihalovich, Julietta Bisharyan, William Jenkins, Armon Owlia, Vera Watt, and Junyao Yang. Thanks also to UC Berkeley’s Jeremy Rue, Amanda Glazer and Olivia Qiu for their data analysis. And to George Levine of the LA Times.

The internal records highlighted in this podcast were obtained as part of The California Reporting project. Special thanks to Rahsaan Thomas of Ear Hustle, Sandhya Dirks of NPR and KQED Health Correspondent April Dembosky for their editorial insights.

Promotion and engagement support from César Saldaña and Maha Sanad. Graphic design by Sophie Feller. Photography by Beth LaBerge, and videography by Kori Suzuki. Thank you to our in-house lawyers, Rebecca Hopkins and Bridget Barrett, along with Sarah Burns and Thomas Burke of Davis Wright Tremaine, who helped us sue CDCR so we could get the internal tapes you heard on this podcast.

Original music by Ramtin Arablouei, including our theme song. Additional music from APM Music and Audio Network. Funding for On Our Watch is provided in part by Arnold Ventures and the California Endowment.

Thank you to Katie Sprenger, our podcast operations manager, our Managing Editor of News and Enterprise Otis R. Taylor Jr., Ethan Tovan-Lindsey our Vice President of News, And KQED Chief Content Officer Holly Kernan.

And thanks to all of you for listening.

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On Our WatchOn Our Watch

BONUS: Sukey on NPR’s The Sunday Story | S2: New Folsom

BONUS: Right to Know | S2: New Folsom

BONUS: “The Prison Beat” | S2: New Folsom

BONUS: The Whistleblower Playbook | S2: New Folsom

8. Last Stand | S2: New Folsom

7. “We Don’t Do Coincidence” | S2: New Folsom

6. The Day Room | S2: New Folsom

5. End of Watch | S2: New Folsom

4. "Foul Play" | S2: New Folsom