Six years ago on June 25, Donna Fitzgerald, a 50-year-old corrections officer at Daytona Beach’s Tomoka Correctional Institution, was stabbed more than a dozen times with a piece of sheet metal.
She was found dead, slumped over a pushcart, her blood spilled on the concrete floor of a prison paint room.
A subsequent investigation by Florida’s Department of Corrections’ inspector general blamed the warden, Jerry Cummings, and his top commanders for critical security breaches, gross neglect of duty and ineptitude. Those errors, the probe said, ultimately permitted an inmate to ambush and murder Fitzgerald, who was working late at night — alone — supervising a crew of rapists and violent offenders, some of them lifers, who had access to sharp tools as part of a prison work program.
Despite the blistering criticism and a demotion, Cummings’ career didn’t suffer much. He and his top staffers were reassigned and within a few years he was back on top as warden at Dade Correctional Institution south of Homestead.
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Randall Berg, executive director of the Florida Justice Institute, a not-for-profit public interest law firm, said all the DOC’s investigations should be public because it’s clear its own watchdog — the inspector general — isn’t truly independent.
“Essentially, the corrections officers report to the wardens, the wardens report to the prison inspectors, the prison inspectors report to the inspector general and the IG reports to the secretary,’’ he said.
“It’s kind of like giving the fox the keys to the hen house.’’