Wisconsin prison guards facing possible charges on allegations of breaking teen's arm and leaving him naked in cell for hours in 2014

Patrick Marley
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON - Federal prosecutors are investigating an incident in which prison guards allegedly stormed into a disruptive 16-year-old inmate’s cell, broke his arm, strip searched him, left him naked for hours and didn’t get him to a doctor for more than a week.

Lincoln Hills School in Irma.

Details of the March 2014 encounter at Lincoln Hills School for Boys emerged in interviews with the inmate and his mother, state records and a civil rights lawsuit the inmate filed last month, just after prosecutors notified two former guards they could be indicted.

“I told him, ‘You’re breaking my arm, you’re breaking my arm,’ and he kept pulling it harder,” Jacob Bailey said of his treatment from one guard.

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The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office and prison officials reviewed the incident at the time and determined little had gone wrong. Federal prosecutors are taking a different view.

Bailey, who is now 20 and held at Stanley Correctional Institution for car theft and drug delivery, testified before a grand jury in Madison last summer as part of a sweeping probe into inmate abuse at the juvenile prison north of Wausau.

Gov. Scott Walker last week announced plans to close the prison as a juvenile facility if re-elected this fall.

John Wienandt, former Lincoln Hills School for Boys guard.

In 2014, Bailey was sent to Lincoln Hills after he got in a fight at a treatment center, he said. He was angry he was sent there — it was his second time there — and he kicked and banged on his door, he said. Prison records state he also blocked the camera in his room.

Guards told him he would need ice. When he asked why, they said he would need it to soothe his wounds, Bailey said in the interview and his lawsuit.

The guards charged into his room and brought him to his hands and knees. Officers James Johnson and John Wienandt twisted his arms behind his back for several minutes, according to Bailey and state records.

They told him to say he was sorry for covering the camera and threatened to knock out his teeth, according to his lawsuit. When he started to cry, they called him a “little bitch” and told him to stop crying, the suit said.

James J. Johnson, former Lincoln Hills School for Boys guard.

Bailey said he told the guards he thought his arm was broken, but they ignored his pleas for help and told him to strip for a search. Taking off his clothes was painful because of the arm injury, he said.

Guards believed he had a screw he could use to hurt himself or others but they did not find one. They left him naked in his cell. More than an hour later, they gave him socks and two hours after that pants, according to the lawsuit.

Bailey said a nurse visited him hours after the assault, told him his arm probably was broken and gave him ibuprofen. More than a week later, he saw a doctor in nearby Merrill who determined his arm was fractured above the wrist and put him in a cast.

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At the time, Bailey was a month shy of his 17th birthday, weighed 130 pounds and was 5 feet, 2 inches tall. Wienandt is so large that inmates called him “450” because of his possible weight, according to state records.

Bailey’s mother, Lisa Bailey, said she learned of the incident when she visited her son and saw him in a cast about a week after the incident. Prison officials had not followed requirements that they notify her or law enforcement, she said. She told them she would report the incident to the sheriff’s office and cut her visit short to do so.

A Lincoln Hills official got to the sheriff’s office about the time she did to report the incident, she said. The Lincoln County district attorney declined to prosecute after the sheriff’s investigation, according to state records.

No one at the prison documented the incident until a week after it happened, when the security director at the time, Bruce Sunde, told his staff to write reports because Bailey alleged excessive force had been used.

Sunde and others later conducted a use-of-force review and labeled the incident “unremarkable.”

An internal investigator reviewed the incident again in 2015. She found Wienandt had violated department policy because the strip search had not been documented, but she did not find fault with other aspects of how he handled the incident.

Wienandt faced a separate internal investigation in February 2016 for excessive use of force in nine incidents. He was not found to have used excessive force, but was given a written reprimand for violating prison policy by securing an inmate in September 2015 without other guards present.

He said during that investigation he thought he had a good rapport with inmates and never intentionally hurt them. He resigned from Lincoln Hills in May 2016 and told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last month he was not worried about the criminal investigation of him.  

Johnson resigned from Lincoln Hills in December 2015 amid an internal investigation over the incident involving Jacob Bailey.

Wienandt declined to talk Wednesday about the Bailey incident. A number for Johnson could not be found. 

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Troy Bauch, who formerly represented Lincoln Hills employees as a union official, said front-line workers like Wienandt and Johnson used force at the discretion of supervisors. It would be wrong if guards were charged and supervisors and Department of Corrections officials weren't, Bauch said.

"I would say anything any of those employees are guilty of, the administration is guilty of because they facilitated it," said Bauch, who now represents public workers in Minnesota.

Department of Corrections spokesman Tristan Cook said Lincoln Hills has made "substantial changes" since the incident, including requiring guards to receive more training, wear body cameras, write reports promptly and notify parents when injuries occur.  

The state Department of Justice began the criminal investigation of Lincoln Hills in January 2015 and turned it over to the FBI a year later. 

Separately, a federal judge last summer found inmates’ rights were likely being violated and ordered state officials to curb their use of pepper spray and solitary confinement.

The governor last week announced he planned to convert the prison to an adult facility and open five regional lockups for teens in 2019 if he is re-elected this fall.

Lisa Bailey said she wants to see the facility closed and wished officials had addressed problems there years ago. She said she believes Lincoln Hills contributed to her son staying in trouble and winding up in an adult prison.

“He learned a lot from that place," she said. "A lot of bad stuff.”