Correction Officer's Act Of Bravery

[geomcrider]

Correction Officer's Act Of Bravery Earns National Organization's Praise

 

This is my brother 10 years younger. I past my badge on down to him when I retired from the CT Department Of Correction.

 

I saw the video/dvd INCIDENT on how this all went down. He hit the Spanish Inmate so hard the inmate $hit and pissed his pants before he hit the floor. The doctor said he almost killed the guy because he lost all bodily functions. My brother cold cocked him in the temple.

 

This made big brother (me) proud !

 

 

By DIANE STRUZZI

Courant Staff Writer

 

May 15 2006

 

Eight seconds.

 

That's all it took for the inmate at Hartford Correctional Center to walk up behind correction Lt. Cynthia Scarmozzino, grab her neck and tighten his grip so firmly that she could barely breathe. Holding a sharpened toothbrush inches from Scarmozzino's face, he told her not to scream and to open the door.

 

Scarmozzino remembers how correction officer Edward Arasimowicz burst from around the corner, hit the inmate, taking him to the ground and freeing her.

 

Only eight seconds. But to Scarmozzino, it seemed like an hour.

 

Arasimowicz, who has worked for the state Department of Correction nearly 14 years, said he acted on pure experience and training when the image of Scarmozzino being throttled by Marco Vasquez popped onto the security camera.

 

"When I took off around the corner, I was thinking about getting her out of there, ending that," the 34-year-old Arasimowicz said during a recent interview. "I was just glad it didn't take longer."

 

"Me too," said Scarmozzino, who was not seriously injured in the incident.

 

Now, nearly a year later, Corrections USA, a national, nonprofit coalition of correction organizations, is set to honor Arasimowicz with the medal of valor for his act of bravery. He is expected to receive the award Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

 

"It's an honor," Arasimowicz said. "I wish the circumstances that led me to get it didn't happen. ... I was just doing my job."

 

This is the fourth annual awards ceremony for the Wyoming-based organization. It is the first time a correction officer from Connecticut has won, said Corrections USA Executive Director Brian Dawe.

 

"We spend more time with convicted felons in one year than the street cop spends in their entire lives, and we do it without weapons," said Dawe, who was a correction officer in Massachusetts. "In many cases, we do it with training, wits and experience."

 

Arasimowicz and Scarmozzino know that from firsthand experience.

 

Scarmozzino, 39, who once worked as a waitress and a school bus driver, has been with the correction department for 6½ years. She has stark memories of that morning in June 2005.

 

"I got tunnel vision," she said. "All I could see was the door and the toothbrush. Almost instantaneously, he turned me from the door to the dorm. I tried to get my chin into his elbow so I could breathe. ... I heard Officer Arasimowicz say, `Let her go.' I think he hit him twice, and he let me go."

 

Vasquez, 41, had been at the facility less than 48 hours when he attacked Scarmozzino, correction officials said. Vasquez was not injured, officials said, and after the incident he was immediately transferred to Northern Correctional Institution, the state's super maximum-security prison in Somers, where he received 60 days of segregation as a part of his punishment. He was later convicted of attempted assault in connection with the incident and sentenced to five years in prison, which he is serving concurrently with a five-year, six-month drug sentence.

 

The last time a similar incident occurred at Hartford Correctional was in 1996, correction officials said, when convicted killer Kevin King beat a female correction officer, dressed in her clothes and tried, unsuccessfully, to escape. King is serving a life sentence without the possibility of release in connection with the murder of a 15-year-old New Britain girl, plus 20 years for the attack on the correction officer. He later won a federal lawsuit that claimed correction officers beat him in retaliation for the 1996 attack and failed escape.

 

Last week, as inmates congregated near a television set to watch TV personality Maury Povich, Scarmozzino and Arasimowicz toured the unit where it all happened in June 2005. The air was clammy and filled with the noise of showers running, inmates chatting and the metal-on-metal of doors opening and closing. Inmates said hello to Scarmozzino. They called to Arasimowicz, using his nickname "A to Z," a reference to the first and last letters of his last name.

 

Scarmozzino returned to work four days after the assault. She had to, she said, or she might never have come back.

 

"You have to keep it in perspective," she said. "Remember, 95 percent of the time your dealings with inmates are not like this type. They're people."

 

Arasimowicz, who broke a finger as he took Vasquez down, said he was out of work for eight weeks. After returning, he got lots of pats on his back and people calling him a hero.

 

Arasimowicz, who now works in the correction department's transportation unit, said he told them, "A hero is a sandwich."

 

That modesty earned him respect among peers such as Robert Cook Jr., a fellow correction officer who sits on the board of directors for the International Association of Correction Officers, an organization that is merging with Corrections USA. Cook nominated Arasimowicz for the award.

 

"I just felt it should be recognized," Cook said. "Ed doesn't ask for much. ... He kept shrugging it off and said he did what he was supposed to do."

[CoolBlueSS]

Good job. Imo, it is a true hero that does something like that, and just looks at it as doing their job.

Congrats! We need more like him.

[geomcrider]

Thanks

[cerbomark]

Nice , one for the good guys