Dec. 23, 2007 – P. A6
That Fatal Night Mystery Again
By Michael Amon
Newsday Staff Writer

The attack on Seymour and Arlene Tankleff in the early morning hours of Sept. 7, 1988, was puzzling from the start.

At one end of their opulent Belle Terre home lay Arlene, 54, dead on the floor of the master bedroom, battered about the head and her throat cut so deep she was nearly decapitated. At the other end, gasping on the floor of his den, was her husband Seymour, 62, with similar injuries. He went into a coma and died a month later.

With no signs of a break-in, Suffolk police detectives focused instead on the disquieting demeanor of the couple’s only child, 17-year-old Martin. Barefoot, the young man who had just lost his parents sat outside on a car and in calm, measured tones told police of his theory on who killed his family. He said it was Jerry Steuerman, a business associate who owed Seymour Tankleff hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But something about Tankleff’s story didn’t add up, prosecutors would say later, and he was taken to police headquarters in Yaphank. There, alone in an interrogation room with two detectives for several hours, Tankleff was tricked into confessing to the brutal murder.

When the teen’s attorney, Robert Gottlieb of Hauppauge, called and told Assistant District Attorney Timothy Mazzei to halt all questioning, the prosecutor responded: “Too late,” Gottlieb recalled yesterday.

Nearly 20 years later – after Martin Tankleff’s trial on murder charges, dozens of appeals and hearings, allegations of police and prosecutorial misconduct and, on Friday, the overturning of his conviction by a state appellate court – what happened that night on Seaside Drive remains an open question in Suffolk County.

Tankleff, now 36, never signed his confession, recanted it almost immediately and maintained his innocence even as he began serving a prison sentence of 50 years to life. His defense team has unearthed about two dozen witnesses implicating Steuerman and three career criminals in the murders, a body of evidence that four state justices said Friday would likely sway jurors if there were another trial.

But Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota said Saturday he’s not convinced and is weighing whether to retry Tankleff on murder charges.

Now, with the prospect that Tankleff will be free on bail by Friday, his life hangs in the balance again. His future may depend on this question: Were his parents murdered over a past-due debt owed by a shady business associate? Or were they, as prosecutors charged in a 1990 trial, the victims of a spoiled son who resented them for controlling his life?

By all accounts, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff doted on their son, whom they adopted at birth in 1971.

“Seymour was grooming Marty to take over his businesses,” said cousin Ronald Falbee of Westbury. “They were a very, very tight family.”

They lived in a $1 million house overlooking Long Island Sound, afforded by Seymour Tankleff’s fortune as an insurance salesman. The beautiful home may have masked a turbulent family life inside.

Martin was arguing with his parents about going to college, according to trial testimony. He wanted to step right into his father’s business and often talked to his friends about the money that was coming to him, according to testimony.

Meanwhile, Tankleff’s business relationship with Steuerman, a bagel store chain owner whom he had loaned more than $500,000, was going sour. Tankleff, who owned part of the bagel business, wanted Steuerman to start repaying. Falbee recalls a terrible phone argument between the two in 1988.

“Seymour was just screaming, cussing and swearing,” Falbee said. “I turned to Arlene and said, ‘Who’s he on the phone with?’ This just didn’t happen with Seymour.”

Around 6 a.m. on Sept. 7, 1988, Martin Tankleff dialed 911 and said he’d found his father “gushing blood from the back of his neck.” When police arrived, Tankleff methodically began telling detectives that Steuerman was the only person with the motive to kill his family. But police said the story was full of holes.

For instance, Tankleff told police that he went to bed at 11 p.m., yet he knew that Steuerman was the last person to see his father and had left the home at 3 a.m. after a poker game.

At police headquarters, Det. K. James McCready tested Tankleff with a police ruse.

He staged a fake phone call within earshot of Tankleff and then returned.

“Your father,” McCready told Tankleff, according to testimony. “They pumped him full of adrenaline and he came out of his coma, and he said that you did it.”

Tankleff said his father was wrong and that whoever attacked him should get psychiatric help. McCready asked if Tankleff needed psychiatric help.

“Could it have been that I blacked out? … Could I be possessed?” Tankleff said, beginning the confession that would lead to his conviction.

McCready said the admissions then came pouring out. He told detectives that he woke up at 5:35 a.m. and – in the nude to prevent blood stains – bludgeoned his mother with a barbell and cut her throat with a watermelon knife. He told them he did the same to his father.

Around 4 p.m., the detectives were preparing a written statement when Gottlieb called and stopped the interrogation. In jail the next day, Tankleff recanted the admissions, Falbee said. The confession was ruled admissible in court and has survived appeal.

Police charged Tankleff with second-degree murder, but a week later, something happened that defense attorneys say should have changed their minds. Steuerman faked his own death and fled to California, changing his name and appearance. Police found him Sept. 28 in a motel.

Prosecutors say they never seriously considered Steuerman as a suspect. At trial, Steuerman denied he had anything to do with the deaths. He did not return phone calls to his home in Boca Raton, Fla., for comment.

Defense attorneys implicated Steuerman at Tankleff’s trial. Any future trial will surely focus on him, with charges bolstered by several witnesses who say associates of Steuerman’s son Todd have privately admitted killing Seymour and Arlene Tankleff.

But in 1990 jurors zeroed in on Tankleff’s testimony. In interviews after the trial, they said they didn’t believe the young man and were put off by his unemotional answers.

“I have second-guessed it to this day,” Gottlieb said of putting Tankleff on the witness stand.

As the jury verdict was read, Tankleff revealed his feelings for the first time. He lowered his head to the defense table and cried.

Sept. 24, 2007, p. A6, Part 2 of series
Broken Promises from Manila to Mineola; Filipino Nurses Say Company Exploited Them
By Michael Amon and Ridgely Ochs
Newsday Staff Writers

Elmer Jacinto arrived from Manila at Kennedy Airport in November 2005 to pursue a nursing career, a symbol of the Philippines’ best and brightest.

The top scorer on the Philippines’ national medical exam, Jacinto had prompted an agonized national discussion in his country when he, like thousands of other skilled Filipino workers, decided to leave his homeland to make more money.

But by March of this year, when Jacinto and nine other registered nurses were criminally indicted for endangering their patients at a Smithtown nursing home – apparently the first such indictment in the state – he and the others had become symbols in the Philippines of something else: shattered expectations of life in America.

And for Benjamin Landa and Bent Philipson, owners of the nursing home, the situation marked the only time their relationship with Filipino nurses had resulted in something approaching disaster.

The clash between the nurses and their bosses began as an ordinary employer-employee dispute. But it has reverberated far beyond Long Island as the nurses’ legal troubles have been intensely chronicled in the Philippine press. The events leading up to their indictment also shed light on the difficulties that U.S health care companies face as they struggle to secure sources of qualified staff amid a persistent shortage of nurses. And they highlight the gambles that foreign nurses such as Jacinto take as they uproot their lives for a chance to make more money for themselves and their families back home.

“We should have been very proud. Instead we are becoming criminals,” said Jacinto, who is now working as a nurse at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan. He is actually one of the lucky ones: Of the 10 indicted nurses from the Smithtown nursing home, six remain unemployed. Jacinto and the other nurses face a year in jail and possible deportation if convicted. No trial date has been set. In addition, the nurses are being sued for breach of contract by SentosaCare.

Resigning their posts

On April 7, 2006, Jacinto and nine other Filipino nurses and a physical therapist at Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Smithtown quit their jobs – without notice. They resigned over pay, hours and other work disputes after they had complained repeatedly to their supervisors and had met with senior executives, including Philipson. In days before and after, another 16 Filipino nurses at affiliated nursing homes joined them. The Smithtown facility is part of the SentosaCare nursing home network – based in Woodmere and owned by Philipson and Landa. It is the state’s largest for-profit nursing home group with annual revenue of about $450 million.

Almost a year after they quit, a Suffolk County grand jury handed up a misdemeanor indictment against the 10 Avalon nurses, charging conspiracy and endangering the welfare of children and the physically disabled. The indictment focuses on an unusual pediatric unit with 10 chronically ill children on ventilators. It charged that by resigning together without notice, the nurses were leaving the nursing home pediatric unit, the only one licensed on Long Island, with inadequate nursing coverage.

The nurses’ immigration lawyer, Felix Vinluan of Westbury, is also charged with criminal solicitation and conspiracy for encouraging the nurses to resign. Such charges against attorneys are rare, legal experts said.

Different players in the nurses’ story offer dramatically different views of the impact of their actions that day. The Avalon nurses contend that they never put the children at risk because other nurses were available. None of the nurses left during their shifts; the only nurse working the day they quit completed her shift, then worked four hours overtime.

Marlene Fazio, a former nursing supervisor who said she was never interviewed by the district attorney’s office, was in charge of the nursing staff on the 3-11 p.m. shift the Friday the nurses resigned. Administrators had to fill one shift that night and eight over the next four days, according to the nurses’ affidavits.

“It didn’t seem that chaotic,” she said. Although she said there was a “scramble” to find replacements, her shift was unremarkable and she believed no residents were ever at risk. “They had people in place,” Fazio said.

The state Education Department, which regulates nurses, investigated them last year and cleared them in October.

Philipson and Landa’s attorney criticized the Education Department’s probe as superficial and painted a starkly different picture from Fazio.

“At the end of the day, the nursing home was confronted with the following: They had a group of nurses that they were relying upon to care for these children, these fragile children, and the fragile elderly people in the nursing home, and they left. They just left,” said Howard Fensterman of Hewlett Harbor.

An ‘error in judgment’

Assistant District Attorney Leonard Lato said the nurses seemed to be “good, hard-working people,” but that as medical professionals they made “a severe error in judgment.

“They’re trying to transform this into a civil case about the working conditions,” said Lato, who conducted the investigation. “The working conditions don’t matter to me. They didn’t develop overnight – even if you believe them. Why didn’t they say a couple of days earlier, ‘If our demands are not met, we’re just resigning?’ Just give some notice to allow the nursing home to find skilled replacement workers.”

The nurses have suffered two recent legal setbacks. Last month, an office in the U.S. Justice Department decided not to bring a discrimination lawsuit on their behalf before an administrative immigration court. The nurses now plan to file the suit with the court on their own. That strategy keeps the case alive, but reduces the damages the nurses could win.

And this month, the Philippines Overseas Employment Administration, which regulates Filipinos who work in foreign countries, dismissed an action brought by 26 nurses and a physical therapist against SentosaCare and its affiliated Philippine-based recruiter, Sentosa Recruitment Agency. The nurses are appealing. They charge fraud and misrepresentation in SentosaCare’s sending them to nursing homes other than those with which they had contracts.

Cecilia Rebong, the Philippines consul general in New York, described her government’s decision as “legalistic. It might not be what I wanted. … My personal want is maybe different from the official position of a government agency.

“My fervent hope is that our nurses will get justice,” she said.

The son of teachers who grew up on Basilan, a rebel-torn island in the southern Philippines, Jacinto got his nursing degree in 1996. He then went on a full scholarship to medical school in Manila where he graduated first in the class of 2002.

In 2004, Jacinto finished top among about 1,800 aspiring doctors taking the Philippine national medical exam. In 2005, he decided to work as a nurse in the U.S. His decision was widely covered in the Philippines, where a “brain drain” of skilled workers is a major national issue.

With 70 percent or more of its nursing graduates working abroad, the Philippines is the biggest supplier of nurses worldwide. The reason is money: The average starting salary for a registered nurse in the Philippines is between $100 and $200 a month, according to Dovelyn Agunias, associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Doctors make $300 to $800 a month. By contrast, the average nurse in New York state earns between $4,000 and $5,000 a month, Agunias said.

“I heard good stories about how you can upgrade yourself,” Jacinto said.

For Philipson and Landa – who with their wives own controlling interests in 25 nursing homes in New York City, Westchester and Long Island – bringing Filipino nurses to work in their facilities also made sense. New York is expected to have a shortfall of 30,858 nurses by the end of the year, according to the state Education Department.

Quickly turning sour

Landa and Philipson established a relationship with Sentosa Recruitment Agency in metropolitan Manila to take care of their own shortage. Although the similar-sounding companies have no corporate connection, Fensterman said, SentosaCare has first rights to the nurses recruited in the Philippines by Sentosa Recruitment Agency. Owned by Filipino Francis Luyun, the agency has sent 364 nurses to Landa-Philipson homes since the agency opened in 2002, Fensterman said. About a quarter of SentosaCare’s nursing services directors are Filipino, he said. “These nurses are RNs. One of the objectives of Ben Landa and Bent Philipson originally was to try to ensure that they were maintaining the quality of care in their facilities,” Fensterman said.

The seeds of the disagreement between SentosaCare and the Filipino nurses were planted hours after Jacinto and a dozen or so other nurses landed in New York.

Jacinto liked what he saw in Sentosa Recruitment Agency materials: salaries at $21 to $35 an hour, medical and dental coverage, relocation and housing allowances, free malpractice insurance, paid vacation days, paid sick days, free airfare from Manila to New York, reimbursement of fees for processing certifications, night shift differentials, comprehensive training, and free housing for new nurses. The three-year contract had a $25,000 penalty if a nurse left early.

Virtually all of the subsequent disagreements resulted from the nurses’ feeling that promises were not kept by Sentosa Recruitment Agency in the Philippines and by SentosaCare on Long Island. In general, the issues are typical of those in employee-employer disputes, but for the Sentosa nurses, already feeling insecure and far away from home, they apparently took on even more significance.

For example, Jacinto believed Sentosa Recruitment Agency was a direct-hire agency, as it is described on the agency’s Web site. To Jacinto and the other nurses, that meant that a specific facility would be each nurse’s “petitioner” to the U.S. to help them secure a green card, which makes the bearer a legal permanent resident. For nurses, the distinction is important because many prefer to work for an institution, not an agency that can switch their assignments. The nurses each signed contracts with their petitioning nursing homes.

But it turned out that almost all the Filipino nurses who eventually resigned were placed in nursing homes that did not petition them. While Philipson in an affidavit said the nurses asked for re-assignments, the nurses deny this. However, this arcane point of immigration law eventually became the nurses’ legal rationale for their resignations: They claim they had no contract because they never worked for their petitioner.

Nothing illegal?

Shawn Saucier, an immigration services spokesman, said Philipson and Landa had done nothing illegal in transferring the nurses to other homes. The nurses’ contract states that “employer has the right at its sole discretion to transfer this agreement to any of its affiliated facilities. “

There were other problems, the nurses said. Their housing for the first several months was free, but Jacinto said the house he lived in was so crowded he had to bunk on a couch. They said another was in an unsafe neighborhood and had a faulty heating system. Many found they had to work as clerks for weeks or months because essential documents – including their state nursing licenses – were not ready for them. As clerks, they made $12 an hour, instead of $21 an hour as a nurse.

Sarah Lichtenstein, a lawyer in Fensterman’s office, said the delay in getting the necessary documents was not unusual.

“Our people did them a favor by employing them, giving them some employment even at a clerk level, so they had some income while they were waiting for their permits to be issued,” she said.

The nurses at Avalon also had complaints about working conditions, ranging from inadequate training, inadequate staff on the units, paychecks they say did not reflect their hours worked and reductions in their work week from 37.5 hours to 35 hours.

Avalon’s nursing-patient ratios are above average, federal statistics show. Federal regulators look at health care staffing ratios by calculating how much nursing time each patient gets. In 2006, Avalon residents on average got 40 minutes a day of care from a registered nurse, compared with the state average of 36 minutes and a national average of 30 minutes. That number rose to 55 minutes this year.

Nevertheless, the nurses who quit said they often felt they didn’t have enough staff to help them. Ma Theresa Ramos, who worked on the pediatric ventilator unit, said attempts to get more staff went unheeded.

“We kept telling them that these were children with different needs than other residents,” she said. “We felt we cannot give the care they need.”

Susan O’Connor, Avalon’s administrator, said staffing for the unit is “based on patient census and needs. For ventilator patients, we have a nurse for every four to six patients. In addition, we have 24/7 respiratory technician coverage.”

The nurses also were upset when their hours were cut. The nurses at the beginning of 2006 had their hourly wages raised from $21 to $24 an hour to comply with the U.S. Department of Labor’s prevailing wage rate – a minimum wage for foreign workers to protect American workers from being undercut by lower-paid foreigners. But on Jan. 3 a memo informed the nurses they would no longer work 37.5 hours but 35 hours a week, in effect reducing their pay raise.

Their unhappiness was noticed by other staff members. Fazio said the nurses often seemed miserable – even though she praised them as “excellent, cooperative, hard-working and respectful.”

Attorney’s involvement

In late March, Jacinto and another nurse, Alipio Esguerra, went to the Manhattan office of immigration attorney Felix Vinluan to see what their rights under the contract were. Two days later, Vinluan said, he got a call from the Philippine consulate about Eileen Magnaye and Noralyn Ortega, nurses at Bayview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Island Park, who had similar complaints. The consulate asked him to help the nurses.

Vinluan called a meeting the next week at which 15 or so nurses showed up. The lawyer charged each nurse a one-time fee of $100. He said he advised them that because they were not working for the nursing homes that petitioned them, the contracts they had signed had already been breached and thus they could resign if they chose to without penalty.

Fensterman charged that Vinluan told them to quit: “My view is that there were a few malcontents who ran into an attorney … who himself has his own employment agency in the Philippines. And he, in my view, conspired with these nurses and worked with them.”

But Vinluan denied – as did the 10 nurses – that he told them to quit or orchestrated their resignations. He also said he has no “employment agency anywhere else in the world.”

The nurses’ resignations occurred over several days.

On April 6, 10 Filipino nurses from Brookhaven Rehabilitation & Health Care Center in Far Rockaway quit without notice.

The next day, Jacinto said he and the other Avalon nurses debated all day whether they should quit and whether they should give notice. Their contracts did not require them to give notice unless they had worked for the nursing home for five years. Jacinto said they were afraid of reprisals if they stayed after giving notice.

By 5:15 p.m. on April 7, the nurses said, they had handed in or faxed their resignations. SentosaCare says the nurses did not quit until 7 p.m.

Also that day, two Filipino nurses at Bayview and two at Split Rock Rehabilitation & Health Care Center in the Bronx also quit.

Only two of the Avalon nurses were scheduled to work April 7, according to their affidavits: Rizza Maulion and Ma Theresa Ramos. Maulion said she had been scheduled to work the 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift.

“When I showed up for work, the nursing director sent me home, telling me to work the evening shift. … This was an extreme inconvenience and, in fact, was the final straw leading to my resignation,” she said in her affidavit.

Ramos worked her 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift in the pediatric ventilator unit and also worked an extra four hours – six hours after her resignation, she said in her affidavit.

As for worrying about whether the residents would be taken care of if they resigned, Jacinto – like the other nurses – said he felt there were sufficient numbers of nurses available to cover their shifts.

Fazio, the nursing supervisor from 3 to 11 p.m. that day, said that although “the tension was very thick” after the 10 submitted their resignations, other nurses from within Avalon and other facilities were brought in. “Basically, I didn’t sense there was any real danger or real jeopardy,” she said.

Fensterman disagreed. “If you contemplate … the fact that we are dealing with an acute nursing shortage … where are you supposed to get the nurses from to replace the nurses that walked off the job?”

Lato said it “would have been a different story” if the nurses had quit at 9 a.m. He contends that the nurses quit in the evening so that Sentosa would not be able to bring a restraining order against the nurses.

The indictment, which came almost a year after the nurses left, took all the nurses by surprise. Jacinto, who was working at St. Vincent’s Midtown Hospital until it closed at the end of August, is worried whether he and the other nurses will prevail in court.

As for his time in the United States, Jacinto is polite but noncommittal. “The land of milk and honey – I do not know,” he said, his voice trailing off into silence.

Sept. 23, 2007, P. A4
Nursing Homes Called on DA for Help
By Michael Amon and Ridgely Ochs
Newsday Staff Writers

Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota and three detectives sat in his Hauppauge office and listened to a pitch for an unusual investigation.

It was May 31, 2006. Bent Philipson and Benjamin Landa, operators of SentosaCare, the state’s largest for-profit nursing home group, and their lawyer Howard Fensterman, wanted authorities to investigate 10 Filipino nurses who abruptly resigned the month before from their Smithtown nursing home.

Its administrator told Spota the nurses had endangered children on a ventilation unit at Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center when they quit en masse and without notice.

Fensterman and Spota already knew each other. At a Democratic Party function in 2002, Fensterman said he asked Spota to look into an unsolved homicide on behalf of a client. Spota’s office investigated, but the chief suspect committed suicide before charges could be brought.

In December 2003, Fensterman’s law firm gave $1,500 to Spota’s re-election campaign. “I am a big admirer of Tom Spota,” said Fensterman, of Hewlett Harbor.

Following the May 2006 meeting, Spota’s office opened an investigation of the nurses, said spokesman Robert Clifford. In March, a Suffolk grand jury handed up a misdemeanor indictment against the nurses, accusing them of endangering the welfare of children and conspiracy to break their contracts with their employer.

Legal experts and the assistant district attorney handling the case say the indictment is apparently the first of its kind in the state. It came after the nurses had been cleared five months earlier by the state Education Department’s Boards for Nursing and Respiratory Therapy, which regulates nurses. On Wednesday, a judge is expected to rule whether the charges should be dismissed.

Clifford said Spota “meets with all kinds of people … hears them out, makes a judgment as to whether to pursue their allegation or investigate their concerns,” he said, adding that Fensterman “shouldn’t be ineligible to receive services from the district attorney because of a campaign contribution.”

Joseph Cassilly, president-elect of the National District Attorney’s Association, said meetings between prosecutors and campaign contributors present the appearance of an ethical conflict of interest. He said Spota could have avoided any conflict by having an assistant meet with Fensterman.

Fensterman said he went to Spota’s office after he felt frustrated by a lack of progress in a Suffolk police investigation. However, the nursing home waited 19 days after the nurses’ April 7 resignations before contacting police.

“I felt the situation was so egregious,” said Fensterman said, “that the police department did not understand the gravity of what had occurred.”

Suffolk police declined to comment.

The nursing home did not file a report with the state Department of Health, which agency spokesman Jeffrey Hammond said is required under state law for suspected abuse, mistreatment and neglect. A spokesman for SentosaCare said the company decided on advice of counsel to not notify the Health Department

Fensterman criticized the Education Department’s investigation. He said he, Landa and Philipson were interviewed for about 15 minutes.

Barbara Zittel, head of the Edducation Department’s nursing board, defended the probe. “Our investigators are experts – they are involved in thousands of cases and most of them have had experience as police officers,” she said.

In 2006, she said there were 1,350 cases opened against registered nurses; less than 10 percent were dismissed, as the case was against the nurses.

The indictment has angered many in the nursing field.

Barbara Crane, president of the delegate assembly of New York State Nurses Association, said the indictment sets a bad precedent. “Do they think we will stand by and let a nurse go to jail?” she asked.

Sept. 23, 2007 – Cover Story
A Tale of Access and Influence; Group Gave Schumer $75,000 After Letters
By Michael Amon and Ridgely Ochs
Newsday Staff Writers

Faced with a crisis over complaints about its treatment of Filipino nurses, Long Island nursing home group SentosaCare turned for help last year to a friendly politician it had supported in the past — Sen. Charles Schumer.

The Democratic senator then wrote four letters over the course of two months to Philippine government officials, including President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. They asked the officials to meet with SentosaCare’s executives or to “consider reviewing” the Woodmere company’s case after the country suspended the company’s affiliated recruitment operation. Macapagal-Arroyo’s former chief of staff said the Schumer letters were unprecedented.

Shortly after two Schumer letters sent the same day, the Philippine government lifted the suspension. SentosaCare’s Filipino recruitment pipeline was back in business. Over the next two months, a national campaign fund headed by Schumer received nearly $75,000 from investors, attorneys and vendors for SentosaCare-affiliated nursing homes.

The involvement of New York’s senior senator triggered a storm of controversy 8,500 miles away in the Philippines that also has reached Long Island. Amid the dispute, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota agreed to meet in private with SentosaCare’s principals and their lawyer. They asked him to investigate the 10 nurses at a Smithtown nursing home who were among 26 who prompted the uproar when they resigned abruptly from SentosaCare facilities in New York City and Long Island.

An investigation followed immediately, and 10 months later the Smithtown nurses were charged for endangering patients when they quit without notice. The indictment is apparently the first of its kind in the state.

The results of its appeals to Schumer and Spota illustrate the ready access to power enjoyed by SentosaCare, which has quietly emerged as the largest for-profit nursing home group in the state. More than one in seven nursing home beds on Long Island are at SentosaCare facilities.

In the last decade, its executives, investors and subcontractors have donated more than $750,000 to political campaign funds for both major parties. More than $198,000 of the largesse went to Schumer’s re-election campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — led by Schumer and credited with restoring Democratic control of the Senate after the 2006 mid-term elections.

Howard Fensterman, SentosaCare’s chief attorney, is Schumer’s Long Island finance chairman and a top fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, chaired by Schumer. Fensterman, along with the SentosaCare executives he represents, said they had supported Schumer for years, well before he acted on their behalf.

The senator’s role in the Philippines episode began in April 2006, shortly after 26 Filipino nurses and a physical therapist resigned en masse from five SentosaCare facilities in New York City and Long Island. Many complained they had contracted with one nursing home only to be assigned to another, and disputes over pay, benefits and hours were routine. They filed formal complaints in Washington and the Philippines.

The Philippines suspended Sentosa Recruitment Agency — a Manila-area company that finds nurses for SentosaCare facilities — on May 24, 2006, to prevent further “exploitation,” according to the suspension order. The order was lifted without a hearing on June 8, 2006, six days after Schumer wrote to the two Filipino labor officials responsible for the action, Philippine records show. Normally, officials said, companies are suspended for months as investigations and hearings are conducted.

This month, the Philippines dismissed the nurses’ complaints for “utter lack of merit.” The nurses are appealing, but Fensterman said the decision was “vindication” for SentosaCare.

Just trying to help

Schumer said his letters were a natural product of his ongoing efforts to assist health care companies as they address the nationwide shortage of nurses. The letters had “no connection whatsoever” to political donations made by SentosaCare’s executives, he said, and they did not ask for the suspension to be lifted, only that the matter be examined closely.

“The letters simply ask for due process for a New York company,” Schumer said. “There are many times that a company will call us up and say a foreign country is treating it unfairly. I regard it as part of my job to help New York companies.”

He also said the letters were handled “on a staff level” — though Fensterman said Schumer asked detailed questions about the issue at a meeting in Washington, D.C., last year about a week before the June 27 letter to Arroyo.

Schumer’s actions struck at least one expert in campaign finance as unusual.

“Members of Congress certainly write letters for constituents all the time. I think the difference here is they don’t always write letters to foreign governments, and they don’t always try to intervene in the way he did,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington, D.C., group that pushes for open government. “It’s very difficult to say … but whenever you have a big contributor and a member working on their behalf, it does raise questions. Members are supposed to be open to everyone. The question is, is he going to these lengths for people who don’t have money?”

Schumer’s letters became front page news in the Philippines. A political furor erupted when Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel last September charged that the Philippine president’s chief of staff, Michael Defensor, had intervened on Sentosa Recruitment Agency’s behalf following Schumer’s letter.

Support for nurses

Filipino immigrant groups and lawmakers have rallied behind the 26 nurses and a physical therapist who quit with them. They have dubbed them the “Sentosa 27,” demanded investigations of Schumer’s involvement and called for the suspension’s reinstatement.

“The bottom line is, [the government] felt the pressure from the senator who wrote the letter,” said Ellene Sana, executive director of the Center for Migrant Advocacy, a Manila group that helped the nurses file their complaints. “The case was not decided on the basis of the issues.”

SentosaCare officials said Schumer’s letters had nothing to do with the $74,480 contributed in the months after Schumer’s letters by their network of nursing homes and subcontractors to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which raised $120 million for the 2006 elections.

“To suggest that a check was given to Chuck Schumer to get him to do something is inappropriate and flies in the face of the facts,” Fensterman said. The group had given Schumer’s 2004 re-election and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee a total of $123,816 before he wrote the letters, records show.

Since the lifting of the suspension, the nurses’ cause has suffered more setbacks. Last month, an office in the U.S. Justice Department declined to bring a discrimination lawsuit on their behalf before an administrative immigration court. The nurses have decided to file the action with the court themselves.

Still unresolved is the March 2007 indictment in Suffolk County. A grand jury charged 10 of them with endangering the welfare of children, saying that their mass resignation caused a staffing crisis at Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Smithtown and put at risk the lives of chronically ill children.

James Druker, the nurses’ defense attorney in the criminal case, said SentosaCare’s political contacts will play a central role in the Suffolk trial because its owners asked for the charges in a meeting last year with District Attorney Thomas Spota, who had received $1,500 in campaign donations from Fensterman.

Robert Clifford, a Spota spokesman, said the district attorney meets personally with “all kinds of people” about investigations and pursues their concerns fairly without regard to political donations.

Having their ear

Long before it called on Schumer last year, SentosaCare had a reputation as a company that elected officials listen to, if for no other reason than sheer size, health care industry observers said. Its two owners — Benjamin Landa of Brooklyn and Bent Philipson of upstate Monsey — control 25 nursing homes in New York, 10 on Long Island. More than 22 percent of Nassau County’s 7,777 nursing home beds are in SentosaCare facilities, according to the Health Department. The group is smaller in Suffolk, accounting for 6 percent of 8,657 beds.

“You have to reckon with them because they’re so big,” said Neil Heyman, president of the Southern New York Association, a group that represents 64 downstate nursing homes, not including SentosaCare facilities.

Landa, 51, a former Pataki Administration appointee, has donated $64,500 to candidates of both major parties. Philipson, 41, is a Danish national and former garment industry executive. Several times a year, the nursing homes’ investors, attorneys and subcontractors contribute campaign money to a bipartisan group of politicians in Washington, Albany, New York City and Long Island, campaign finance records show. The checks are usually delivered on the same date, a time-honored practice that allows the recipient to easily track sources of support.

Fensterman, 54, a Lake Success attorney and an owner of a SentosaCare nursing home in Great Neck, is a leading fundraiser for Schumer and other Democrats, including Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. (Last week, Cuomo stopped accepting donations from Fensterman because of his ties to a Landa-owned company under state investigation.)

He is chairman of the Nassau Industrial Development Agency, which awards millions each year in tax breaks, leases and bond issues to local businesses. No SentosaCare projects have received Nassau IDA assistance. He also sits on a committee that chooses Democratic judicial candidates. Schumer named Fensterman as his Long Island finance chairman in 2001.

After that appointment, Schumer began to stage press conferences on elder care issues at Fensterman’s nursing home, Grace Plaza Rehabilitation and Health Care Center. In 2003, the senator spoke to Fensterman’s nursing home clients about regulatory issues at a private seminar.

“His involvement in the political process has resulted in Mr. Fensterman’s having forged special relationships with several U.S. senators, congresspersons, state senators and assembly persons,” read his official biography on the Web site of his law firm, Abrams, Fensterman, Fensterman, Eisman, Greenberg, Formato and Einiger. The paragraph was removed this summer.

‘Special relationships’

Mark Zafrin, a lawyer at Fensterman’s firm who worked on SentosaCare issues, has suggested privately that those “special relationships” have tangible benefits.

Court records show that in June 2004, Zafrin responded by e-mail to a question from Helen Webster, a business partner of Landa’s who wanted “creative advice” on how to obtain an expedited Medicaid provider ID number for a clinic she and Landa were starting in Queens. Such ID numbers are necessary for businesses to be reimbursed by the government.

“You can also accelerate the Medicaid process by paying us to use our contacts with the Senators to do so,” Zafrin wrote in the e-mail. The e-mail is disclosed in a lawsuit over business disputes between Webster and Landa, who are no longer friendly.

Zafrin did not return phone calls. It wasn’t clear which “senators” he was referring to or whether they were state or U.S. senators. Such numbers are given out by the state Department of Health. SentosaCare’s owners have donated to a number of state senators, all of whom denied helping with provider numbers. Jeffrey Hammond, Health Department spokesman, said every applicant for a Medicaid ID number must go through the same process.

Asked about the e-mail, Fensterman said: “I don’t know what Mark was alluding to by saying that.”

As Landa and Philipson’s nursing home business grew, they ran into a problem facing the entire industry: how to staff the wards during a chronic nursing shortage. United States’ nursing schools do not graduate enough nurses to fulfill the demand nationwide.

“We needed to find another source for nurses before we were enveloped in a crisis of coverage,” said Landa, who would respond only in writing to interview questions.

They turned to the Philippines, where nurses are educated in English and renowned for their skills.

From start to struggle

In May 2002, Sentosa Recruitment Agency was founded in Manila by a Filipino nurse at one of Landa’s nursing homes. It has since recruited 364 Filipino nurses for SentosaCare facilities, helping them obtain green cards, pass New York state exams and flying them to New York, all at no charge.

But its operations — and those of all recruiters — hit a snag in late 2004 and early 2005, when the Philippines found it had exhausted its quota for EB-3 visas, which the U.S. awards to foreign, skilled workers to work here. Several groups of nurses bound for New York suddenly found their future in limbo.

With Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Schumer inserted language into the 2005 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief allowing the Philippines, China and India to use up to 50,000 visas unused by other countries.

The next year, the nurses issue took center stage. Complaining about working conditions and what they regarded as discriminatory treatment, 26 Filipino nurses and a physical therapist resigned from five SentosaCare nursing homes on April 6, 7 and 8 of 2006.

They held a press conference in front of the office of Philippine Consul General Cecilia Rebong in Manhattan and said they were not paid overtime, did not get medical benefits and were not working at the nursing homes with which they had signed contracts. SentosaCare said the allegations were untrue.

Fensterman, who said the Philippine consul general was wrongly taking sides, then asked a Schumer staff member if the senator would write a letter on SentosaCare’s behalf. He said that he called upon Schumer just as the nurses sought help from their government officials, including the consul general in New York.

“He was someone of sufficient stature who if he wrote a letter, it would be viewed with seriousness,” Fensterman said.

On April 25, 2006, Schumer wrote to Rebong and asked her to meet with Landa and Philipson about the nurses. The meeting took place May 3 in New York but little was resolved, Fensterman said.

Then, on May 24, 2006, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration suspended Sentosa Recruitment Agency’s license and opened an investigation into the nurses’ complaints.

“We have reasonable ground to believe that their continued operations will lead to further violation or exploitation of the Filipino workers being recruited,” the suspension states.

Again, SentosaCare turned to Schumer. Fensterman said calls were made to the senator’s office, asking for another letter to be written.

The senator soon signed his name to two letters addressed to Patricia Tomas, secretary of the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment, and Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz, the administrator of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.

“I respectfully request that you consider reviewing the situation between SentosaCare and those employees who have come through the Sentosa Recruitment Agency, and to take any actions that you consider appropriate,” Schumer wrote on June 2, 2006.

An unusual occurrence

The letters worked their way through bureaucratic channels all the way to the office of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, said Michael Defensor, then the president’s chief of staff.

“That was the first time I got a letter like that,” said Defensor, who is now out of government.

In response, Defensor said, he called Dimapilis-Baldoz.

“It was not a hi-hello-how-are-you phone call,” Dimapilis-Baldoz said.

She said Defensor told her that there were many Filipino nurses awaiting visas with SentosaCare and, if the company’s recruitment agency was suspended, they could not go to the United States. He also said she needed to conduct a more thorough investigation before suspending a company.

“If she’s going to suspend them, she has to say, on the basis of what?” Defensor said. “I was just giving her guidance.”

On June 8, Dimapilis-Baldoz — in a move she said was rare — lifted the suspension against Sentosa Recruitment Agency after the company filed a brief outlining its position that it treated the nurses fairly.

She said she did not consider Schumer’s letter in her decision. However, she said she probably would not have acted so quickly had Defensor not called her. She said she lifted the suspension based on “the records of the case. To do otherwise, that would make a mockery of the process.”

Even after their apparent victory, Fensterman said, “There was a tremendous amount of political activity and media activity in the Philippines, and it was very negative.” Philipson hired a public relations firm there, and the company tried unsuccessfully to set up a meeting with President Macapagal-Arroyo.

Fensterman then arranged in late June for Philipson and Landa to meet with Schumer in Washington.

Different recollections

Schumer said the nursing home owners met with his staff, and he only chatted with them briefly. “I poked my head in, and [Fensterman] may have said, ‘Thanks for sending the letters. I hope your staff will follow up.’” He described the encounter as “very, very short.”

Fensterman has a different recollection.

He said he offered a detailed review to Schumer of the situation involving the nurses and expressed the concern that “all we had built and worked so hard to achieve over the years … was being placed in jeopardy unfairly,” Fensterman said. He said Schumer asked several questions and agreed to write a fourth letter.

On June 27, 2006, a letter from Schumer’s office went to the Philippines’ president.

“I respectfully request that you schedule the meeting with Messrs. Philipson, Landa and Fensterman and to take any actions that you consider appropriate,” Schumer wrote. “Thank you for your kind consideration.”

The meeting never occurred.

Meanwhile, Fensterman said he was fundraising for Schumer, though he said his efforts had nothing to do with the letters.

SentosaCare’s investors, lawyers and business partners had given generously in the past, starting with a modest $3,500 in 2001 and going up to $51,916 in 2005 to the Senate campaign committee in the month after Schumer was named chairman. In the first half of 2006, the company’s owners, investors and attorneys had contributed $14,000 to that campaign committee.

After the letters, they wrote more and bigger checks. On July 25, 2006, as the mid-term election campaigns heated up for Democratic senate candidates across the nation, another round of checks began rolling in to the committee.

On four separate days over the next three weeks, the SentosaCare group would write to the campaign committee 26 checks totalling $74,480.

Daniel Massey contributed to this report.

July 19, 2006 p. B3
Andrew Jacobs and Michael Amon

Investigators are questioning a teenager in the slaying of an 11-year-old Queens girl who was shot in the head late Monday by a gun fired from a passing car as she and her brother, seeking escape from the heat, frolicked in the spray of a fire hydrant, law enforcement officials said yesterday.

The youth, whose name was not released last night, fled to the Dominican Republic and was immediately sent back by Dominican officials at the request of the authorities in New York, officials said. The police said that as he and at least three other young men drove past the hydrant on 99th Street in Corona, one of them opened fire.

On the streets of Corona yesterday, residents mourned the violent death of the 11-year-old, Genesis Regalado, a friendly and bookish girl about to enter the seventh grade who was splashing around a rusty hydrant that sits across the street from her family’s apartment when she was shot, the police said. Hit once in the head, she collapsed into the arms of her older brother, Jeffrey, 17, and was pronounced dead 15 minutes later at Elmhurst Hospital Center.

”Jeffrey yelled out, ‘My sister, my sister, they got my sister,’ ” said Jose Paulino, 14, a cousin who was playing alongside Genesis, Jeffrey and two other young people when the gunfire erupted about 11:15 p.m. ”There’s nothing in the world she ever did to deserve this.”

According to the police, the bullet that struck Genesis may have been intended for one of the others cooling off in the hydrant’s spray — a 16-year-old identified by neighbors as David. In an interview, David, who declined to give his last name, said he had been in an argument involving a half-dozen neighborhood teenagers at a Chinese restaurant down the street. A short time later, David said, he saw four of the youths approach in a black Honda sedan.

”We were all getting water at the pump, laughing and playing,” David said. ”The last thing I heard Genesis say was, ‘I’m going to do good in school.’ ”

Three or four shots rang out, he said, and then he saw Genesis lying in her brother’s arms. The car, he said, sped away, heading north on 99th Street. ”She had the whole world coming to her,” David said.

He said he had given his account to the police, who confirmed many of the details.

A few hours after the shooting, the police found the car parked on a nearby street, and after questioning several youths who were involved in the earlier argument, they turned their attention to the teenager who fled to the Dominican Republic. As of last night, the police had not pressed charges against the youth, who was taken into custody at Kennedy International Airport and was being questioned at the 110th Precinct station house.

Several residents said the teenager being questioned frequently started fights. ”He’s a bad influence and knows how to manipulate young kids into making them do what he wants them to do,” said Michael Lucas, 42, whose 11-year-old son was a friend of the slain girl’s. ”I wouldn’t let my kids hang out with him.”

At Sherwood Village, the housing complex where Genesis lived, her mother and brother spent the day sequestered in their apartment while neighbors tended a makeshift memorial near the hydrant.

Those who knew Genesis described her as a precocious and courteous girl who could often be spotted playing baseball in the front yard of her building. One of her uncles, Dickson Regalado, shaking his head, said he could not understand why young men felt the need to settle petty disputes with deadly force.

”These young kids just talk trash and every once in a while it escalates,” he said. ”Unfortunately, Genesis was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

July 20, 2006 p. B1
Kareem Fahim and Michael Amon

Arson is the cause of a four-alarm fire that tore through five residential buildings in Queens on Tuesday night, killing a man and critically injuring a woman, police and fire officials said yesterday.

Investigators were focusing on several possible motives for the blaze, which started shortly before 10 p.m. and spread through five two-story buildings on 169th Street in Jamaica. Among the possible motives, investigators said, is a continuing dispute between the landlord and a tenant who lived in the house where the authorities say the fire started.

The man who died, James Crocker, 83, was a retired custodian who relatives said could not be coaxed to jump from a second-floor window, even as the fire grew in intensity. He was pronounced dead at the scene on Tuesday night, the police said.

”My father was too scared,” said Mr. Crocker’s daughter, Jamie Williams, 39. She said that her brother, Jeffrey, 46, stood below his father’s window as the fire raged, begging him to jump into his arms. ”He didn’t want to jump,” Ms. Williams said.

Alexandria Roberts, 46, the younger Mr. Crocker’s companion, was critically injured in the fire and was taken to Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica with severe burns, the police said. She was later transferred to New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital, according to Mary Immaculate Hospital.

The Police Department’s Arson and Explosion Unit will lead the investigation into the cause of the fire, as they do after all suspicious fires that result in fatalities.

A spokesman for the Fire Department said that marshals had determined that the fire started on the first floor of 103-15 169th Street, a two-story wood-frame home that is attached to five similar homes that were gutted by the fire.

Investigators suspect that two intentional fires were set in separate rooms on the first floor, the spokesman said, adding that samples of the rubble had been taken to a laboratory to determine whether an accelerant had been used.

The police did not name any suspects in the case. Residents said the house where the fire started had been the scene of a bitter dispute between a landlord who wanted to sell the property and tenants who refused to move.

The house’s owner, Gerald Brown, said yesterday that his tenants, two women, had moved in eight months ago. About six months ago, he said, they both stopped paying the $1,200 monthly rent.

Mr. Brown said that both he and the tenants had called the police to intervene in the dispute over the last few months, and that the last time officers visited the house was Tuesday, when they told him he could not change the locks.

”If I could have changed the locks,” Mr. Brown said, ”this never would have happened.”

The police were not immediately able to confirm their visits to the house or Mr. Brown’s version of events.

Ms. Williams said: ”They came and got their stuff yesterday afternoon. I could hear them in there. It sounded like they were tearing the place apart.”

The fire started about 10 p.m. on Tuesday, Ms. Williams and other residents say, after the tenants and other people left the house.

Siraj Sajid, who owns the house next door, said he returned home from shopping about 9:40 p.m. and saw his neighbor and one other person drive off in a car. Mr. Sajid said he waved goodbye, and his neighbor waved back, he said.

”After they left, I went inside,” he said. ”Just five minutes later, there was a fire.”

When approached by a reporter, one of Mr. Brown’s tenants refused to talk about the fire.

Mr. Crocker, who was called Papa by everyone in the neighborhood, inherited his house from his parents and had lived there for decades, his children said. He had worked as a custodian for the Police Department in the 103rd Precinct, in Jamaica, and the 107th Precinct, in Fresh Meadows, and retired about 10 years ago.

Three years ago, his wife, Patricia, died, and his health, too, began to fail; he suffered a series of strokes over the last few years. But recently, his relatives said, Mr. Crocker seemed better. ”He’s back to his old self in the last few weeks,” said his granddaughter, Kara Williams.

Mr. Crocker was watching television in his second-floor bedroom when the fire started, his daughter said. His relatives escaped, and realized he was still inside. His son ran to the second floor, and told his father to jump out the window. When his father hesitated, Jeffrey Crocker jumped, and called back up to his father, telling him he would catch him.

And then, his children said, they lost sight of their father in the flames.

Sept. 3, 2006 p. B3
Teenagers are among the three killed
Michael Amon and Manny Fernandez

NEWARK — Firefighters working their way through a burning house here early Saturday morning made a gruesome discovery: the bodies of a 42-year-old woman and two teenagers who had been shot to death, the authorities said. Two other people were shot but survived.

The three bodies were discovered about 4:30 a.m. in a cream-colored house at 546 Sanford Avenue, in a section called Vailsburg. The victims had been shot multiple times in a second-floor apartment rented by the 42-year-old woman, Sandra Bellush.

The two other victims — Eric Jackson, 19, of Newark and Brielle Simpkins, 15, of Elizabeth — were not related to Ms. Bellush.

Police, city and Essex County officials said it was too early in the investigation to say what motive was behind the shootings or why the teenagers were at the home. They said that there was no sign of burglary or robbery, and that the attackers came and went from the apartment more than once in the hours before the shootings.

No arrests had been made Saturday evening.

Essex County Prosecutor Paula T. Dow said investigators believed the fire was set to cover up the shootings. A dog and cat also were shot and killed.

Mayor Cory A. Booker, who was elected in May after making public safety a focus of his campaign, tried to reassure residents Saturday during a news conference at Newark Police Department headquarters.

”This is not a random act of violence,” he said.

The father of one of the victims said his son had been hanging out at the house after work.

”He was with friends and things got crazy,” said Mr. Jackson’s father, Eric Purves, 35. ”We’re still trying to piece together what happened. I want to know what happened. I want to know the reason.”

Mr. Purves said his son was an aspiring rapper who worked for a construction company.

He ”has made some mistakes, but he’s not a rough kid,” Mr. Purves said. ”I believe he got caught up in someone else’s business.”

The 15-year-old victim, Ms. Simpkins, was a student at Elizabeth High School and became a big sister a few weeks ago when her mother gave birth, a cousin said.

”She’s a sweetheart,” said the cousin, Marie Campbell. She said she and other relatives did not know why Ms. Simpkins was at the home of Ms. Bellush, whom neighbors described as an animal lover who wore hemp necklaces and dressed like a hippie.

The two men who survived were trying to escape the flames as firefighters entered the house. They were taken to University Hospital in Newark, where one, a 17-year-old, was treated and released. The other, a 20-year-old, was in stable condition Saturday afternoon with a nonlife-threatening injury, a hospital spokesman said.

Police went to the house after calls to 911 reported shots being fired about 4:30 a.m. When the police arrived, they found the second floor of the two-family, wood-frame house on fire.

A woman who lives down the block said a commotion woke her about 5 a.m. ”There was a lot of screaming, some guy saying, ‘My girl got shot,’ ” said the woman, who declined to give her name.

Crime has been rampant in recent years in Newark, the biggest city in New Jersey with a population of 280,000. There were 97 murders in 2005, up from 84 in 2004, according to a preliminary report released recently by the F.B.I.

Yet Saturday’s shootings — which brought the city’s homicides for the year to 77 — were a shock to many residents, including those in Vailsburg, home to stately Victorian homes, tree-lined streets and spacious porches.

Mr. Booker said the house had no history of drug or criminal activity, according to an initial check of police records for the last three months.

But several residents said they suspected that drug dealing was taking place there. ”There was a lot of traffic going on, in and out, in and out,” said one woman who did not want to give her name. ”They were up to no good.”

The killings are among the first major tests for the Booker administration. Mr. Booker has vowed to crack down on crime and has made public safety a priority by identifying and bolstering the police presence in high-crime areas through a ”Safe Summer Initiative.”

Still, Newark has seen a rash of violence in recent weeks. The Associated Press reported in July that 20 teenagers had been slain in Newark in the preceding 19 months.

”This level of violence will cease,” Mr. Booker said Saturday. ”We are seeing signs of progress, and we are going to make Newark safe again.”

April 25, 2004 — The Washington Post, SM1
Michael Amon, Washington Post Staff Writer

When news broke this month of a state audit questioning the handling of contracts at the St. Mary’s County Department of Social Services, the director, Ella May Russell, shut the agency down for an hour and held two emergency staff meetings in the department’s Leonardtown and Lexington Park offices.

Russell told staff members that the 19 problems noted by the auditors — the most findings in recent memory — were being corrected, according to a summary of the April 12 meetings obtained by The Washington Post. She blamed the problems on seven management vacancies, all positions she cannot fill because of a state hiring freeze.

“Not having individuals in these positions impacted this Department’s ability to provide adequate program supervision and monitoring,” the summary said.

But several managers who resigned in the past two years and created those vacancies said in interviews that they left because of Russell’s management style. Although they acknowledged her innovations in the delivery of services, they described a workplace in which senior assistants’ suggestions are unheeded, agency problems are overlooked, and disciplinary action is personal.

“That’s the reason why I left,” said Celeste Belmont, 31, a former agency supervisor who managed welfare caseloads. She resigned abruptly last month after four years and moved to Virginia without a job.

“This is something that needs to be addressed at a higher level,” she said of Russell. “Unfortunately, it’s not being heard, but this is a major problem for St. Mary’s County.”

Former supervisors Katherine Parker, who left in 2002, and John Johnson, who left last month, also said in interviews that they resigned because of Russell.

“It was an abusive environment,” said Parker.

The positions Belmont, Parker and Johnson held remain vacant.

Russell, a respected agency director who has had her post for nearly 20 years, did not return several phone calls over two weeks seeking comment for this article. In a previous interview, she said her detractors — inside and outside the agency — were few.

“I don’t know of any organization that has 100 percent of the staff who are always satisfied about everything,” she said.

The disputes between senior staff and Russell go back several years. In June 2002, they came to a head when nine of 13 staff supervisors voted “no confidence” in Russell’s leadership and asked her to resign or transfer to another department.

In a separate ballot, the supervisors voted unanimously that Russell needed to change her leadership style, according to seven managers who were present for the vote.

“We are now stating our unwillingness to be verbally intimidated and demeaned,” the supervisors wrote in a letter to Emelda Johnson, then-secretary of the Maryland Department of Human Resources, the social services agency’s parent. “We have also become intolerant of being forced to observe and live with contractual, financial and unethical improprieties on the part of the Director.”

Leonard H. Ames, then-assistant director for operations and the local social services agency’s second-in-command, took the supervisors’ issues up with Russell on June 11, 2002. A week later, Russell fired Ames, according to a termination letter signed by her that was obtained by The Post. His position remains vacant.

The inspector general for human resources launched an investigation into the supervisors’ complaints, according to state documents obtained by The Post. In the end, state officials found Russell did nothing improper, according to documents.

But, in a Jan. 13, 2003, letter to Russell, Johnson noted that the inspector general “raised questions” about the St. Mary’s agency’s awarding of contracts. Johnson said the department’s procedures “often appear to be biased,” though, she added, “there is clearly no biased intent.”

Less than three weeks ago, on April 6, the most recent audit of the social services agency again questioned Russell’s handling of contracts. Auditors said Russell served as both project officer and approving authority on at least five contracts, a violation of state policy.

Project officers help contractors execute plans; approving authorities allocate the money for the contract. State officials say the two duties are separated to ensure that more than one person is aware of a contractors’ responsibilities.

For those contracts, it was at first unclear whether any services were delivered by the contractors, the audit said. Documentation was later offered proving the services were performed, according to the audit.

In 2002, Ames wrote letters to state officials, asking them to investigate problems with the same five contracts cited now by state auditors. All of the contracts were for just under $25,000, the amount at which a more competitive bidding process is required.

Ames also complained of a “bullying” work environment fostered by Russell, which he said caused “the loss of talented managers and staff.” He said supervisors would not propose ideas at group meetings involving Russell because they were afraid she would disapprove, leading them to be nicknamed “The Cardboard People.”

“The staff exodus will continue, and citizens of St. Mary’s County will be adversely affected,” Ames warned state officials in a June 2002 letter.

The staff problems come during a period of great change at the agency. Several years ago, Russell overhauled the department, requiring nearly every social worker to be trained in almost every facet of social services — assistance with cash, medical needs and housing problems.

Most social services agencies separate these functions, causing welfare recipients with multiple needs to go through several different offices. Russell’s plan became a model for the state, and even detractors, such as Ames, have called her a “visionary.”

Russell has said her internal critics were employees not willing to deal with change. “Not everyone likes change,” she said.

Sen. Roy P. Dyson (D-St. Mary’s), who has described Russell as “fantastic to work with,” said Friday that he had spoken about her recently with Department of Human Resources Secretary Christopher J. McCabe. Dyson said he told McCabe that Russell has been doing a great job.

“If there was something wrong there, I would know about it,” Dyson said.

“She is not the kind of person you would run up to and give a hug,” he added. “It took me a couple of years to warm up to her, but she really knows how to get things done. I can’t imagine the agency would be better without her,”

St. Mary’s County Administrator George G. Forrest also praised Russell’s work. He said she has been instrumental in relocating poor residents from Lexington Manor and in finding work for welfare recipients.

“Without Mrs. Russell, we would not have been as effective as we are,” said Forrest, who called the issues noted in the audit “minor.”

“What you have there are some disgruntled employees,” Forrest said of Russell’s critics. “You have some folks who are being required to perform duties, and they are not happy with that. . . . I don’t think I’ve seen enough evidence that I would vote no confidence in her as a director.”

But former employees and three current employees who spoke only on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution from Russell said the director’s management style continues to drive hardworking employees away. In two months, two supervisors — Belmont and Johnson — have resigned.

“In Baltimore, the Department of Social Services couldn’t get away with this,” Ames said. “But [Russell] is far from where the action is. Nobody knows what’s she’s doing.”

November 25, 2002 — The Washington Post, p. B3
Michael Amon, Washington Post Staff Writer

Matt Irby hears it all the time as he patrols the cellblocks of the Charles County Detention Center. “I’m old enough to be your father,” prisoners tell Irby, who at age 20 is one of the youngest correctional officers in Maryland.

To succeed in a demanding job, Irby needs to keep an even temper, holding in check any fear, contempt or anger as he breaks up fights among prisoners, serves their meals, brings them library books and listens to their grievances and requests.

“This isn’t something that most 18- or 19-year-olds have to live with,” he said. “It all comes down to respect.”

Only in the past year has Maryland allowed correctional officers so young. Last November, the Maryland Police and Correctional Training Commission lowered the minimum hiring age, from 21 to 18, for jobs at the state prison system and in county jails.

The change came in response to complaints from jail officials in largely rural parts of the state who said they were having trouble filling vacancies. Because of the vacancies, officials said, some jails have incurred huge overtime costs.

But so far, the age change has done little to solve the problem.

In Cecil and St. Mary’s counties, where calls for reducing the hiring age were loudest, no young correctional officers have been hired. Only two people younger than 21 have sought jobs in St. Mary’s, officials said, and no one has applied in Cecil.

“It just doesn’t seem to be appealing to 18-year-olds,” said Tom Sacks, personnel director in St. Mary’s. “We’re dealing with people who are more high-tech, who are going on to college. That’s what we’re up against.”

Meanwhile, the commission’s decision has worried correctional officials in more populous parts of Maryland who opposed the age change.

“I believe correctional officers need broad life experience, and 18 doesn’t cut it,” said Arthur Wallenstein, corrections director in Montgomery County.

Wardens at larger jails with few staff vacancies, including those in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, fought against the change and wanted the option of leaving their minimums at 21. This month, however, the Maryland attorney general’s office ruled that the change applied to all correctional officer jobs in the state and that all jails would have to give equal consideration to applicants under age 21 or risk being sued for age discrimination.

The director of corrections in Prince George’s, Barry L. Stanton, is a member of the training commission and voted for the new policy — but only because he thought it would be optional, he said. Like some of his colleagues, Stanton said he thinks it is generally a bad idea to put people under age 21 to work in such a dangerous environment, where maturity and sound judgment are important traits for the job.

“I’d like it to return to 21,” Stanton said. “The vote was taken at a time when . . . we didn’t have all the information to make what I think is a credible decision.”

No one under age 21 has yet applied for correctional officer jobs in Montgomery and Prince George’s, officials said. It is unclear whether any have applied for jobs in state prisons, but no such applicants have been hired. No one has been hired in Anne Arundel County, either, officials said, although 24 have applied.

At least four people younger than 21 have been hired as correctional officers in Maryland, including Irby, two 19-year-olds in Carroll County and a 19-year-old in Charles. Officials in those counties say the new young officers have performed well.

“They made a believer out of me,” said George C. Hardinger, warden of the Carroll County Detention Center.

Hiring teenagers is not unheard of. In Virginia and Pennsylvania and in the federal prison system, correctional facilities can hire at age 18, though they rarely do. In Northern Virginia, almost all correctional facilities hire only applicants who are 21 or older, and federal correctional officers must have a bachelor’s degree or three years’ experience in management, officials said. In Delaware, the hiring age is 20.

Maryland detention facilities were able to hire 18 year olds until 1982, when questions about maturity led officials to increase the minimum hiring age to 21, said Francis L. Manear, assistant director of the state training commission.

In Charles, 20-year-old Irby has the same responsibilities as other correctional officers, said Walter “Buddy” Poynor, deputy director of the detention center. Irby had been a leader in youth programs run by the county sheriff’s office, which made him an ideal candidate for a correctional officer’s job even before the policy change, Poynor said.

Some detention centers have started targeting teens for recruitment. The personnel director of the St. Mary’s sheriff’s office gives presentations to high school seniors. William Jacobs, warden of the Cecil County Detention Center, said he plans to talk with 10th-graders, telling them to stay away from drugs so they can qualify for the job, and its $ 26,000 salary, when they graduate.

“They’re looking for these people to start looking at these jobs as careers,” said Stephen Ingley, executive director of the Maryland-based American Jail Association. “The younger you get started into a career, the more likely you are to stay in that career.”

Staffing shortages at correctional facilities have been acute in the past decade.

Incarceration rates rose dramatically in the 1990s, and prisons and jails were built faster than officers could be hired, Ingley said. In addition, the booming ’90s economy gave young people more employment options, and the low pay and high safety risk of corrections did not attract strong candidates.

Correctional officer unions say that lowering the minimum hiring age is tantamount to lowering standards. Verjeana McCotter, president of the Prince George’s Correctional Officers Association, said detention centers should do what some police departments have done in trying to attract more applicants: Increase pay, benefits and training.

“I don’t want to see us go backwards,” McCotter said.

Despite difficulties attracting young people, corrections officials said they will continuing seeking enthusiastic applicants like Irby, who had long dreamed of a law enforcement career.

“You got to take it on a case-by-case basis,” Irby said. “There are 26-year-olds who are not mature enough to do this job.”

November 25, 2001 — The Washington Post, p. C1
Michael Amon, Washington Post Staff Writer

St. Mary’s County sheriff’s detectives are wrapping up a two-month internal investigation into an inmate’s suicide at the county detention center, and they expect to report that correctional officers did everything they could to save 19-year-old Robert Allen Nelson’s life.

But the man’s mother, Victoria Nelson, has charged that jailers did not closely watch her son, who had a history of depression and had attempted suicide several times. Nelson hanged himself in his cell Sept. 28 and died a day later at Washington Hospital Center.

The mother’s account is supported by the “call sheets” that were filled out by nurses and by paramedics who were called to the jail. The documents suggest that correctional officers failed to make an hourly check on Nelson the night he hung himself.

The dispute comes as law enforcement officials have begun calling for more staffing and training of officers at the St. Mary’s County jail, saying unfilled positions have led to dangerous lapses at the facility.

Critics, including some top county officials, point to the sexual assault of a retarded man in the jail last year, an incident that officials acknowledged happened when correctional officers failed to make a routine check of the man’s cell. They say a similar failure allowed Nelson time to hang himself.

“I think it’s something that should be checked out,” Richard D. Fritz (R), St. Mary’s state’s attorney, said of the suicide.

Fritz pointed to two reports from county grand juries that examined the detention center. On March 7, a grand jury said that the jail “is without a doubt undermanned” and, along with a report from the year before, recommended that county commissioners allocate money for new positions.

With the November 2000 sexual assault in mind, the grand jury wrote: “Up front action taken to help prevent a repeat of the situation could well prevent a costly lawsuit to the county in the future.”

In April, Sheriff Richard J. Voorhaar (R) asked commissioners for 10 new correctional staff positions. They budgeted money for two.

“I’m getting a little fed up and a little tired of those recommendations not being taken into consideration by the county commissioners,” Fritz said.

Julie B. Randall (D-At Large), president of the St. Mary’s County Commission, said the problem is how Voorhaar spends the money the board gives him.

“Many of the ways he has decided to spend the funding, certainly I and others would not have made those same choices,” Randall said. “However, that’s his to do. To merely come back on this board and say that there are still funding issues, I take exception to that.”

Fritz said that he is willing to investigate Nelson’s suicide but that he is waiting for Victoria Nelson to put her concerns in writing.

Victoria Nelson said she does not trust Fritz to do the investigation because he was once her son’s defense attorney, and the family’s relationship with him withered after Robert Nelson was put in a juvenile detention center several years ago.

“I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t start an investigation based on the circumstances alone,” Victoria Nelson said.

At 1:10 a.m. Sept. 28, Robert Nelson was found hanged in Cell C-14. He had fashioned a noose of bedsheets and shoelaces tied to a vent in the wall. He died the next day at Washington Hospital Center, though sheriff’s officials released information Oct. 1 saying that Nelson’s life had been saved by correctional officers.

After Nelson’s death became public, sheriff’s investigators said the correctional officers made a routine hourly check of the young man about midnight, a claim that detectives investigating the incident stand by.

“The correctional officers did nothing wrong. They made their hourly checks,” said Sgt. Michael Merican, head of the sheriff’s internal investigations unit.

But according to two documents filled out by paramedics at the scene and nurses at St. Mary’s Hospital, Nelson was last seen by correctional officers at 11:15 p.m. In separate interviews, inmates Daniel Ball and Garry Shubrooks, whose cells were near Nelson’s, also said the guard did not make a check at midnight.

Voorhaar said he “would have to look into that” discrepancy. He said that the jail had six vacant positions at the time of Nelson’s death and that the jail remains so understaffed that supervisors are doing the work of regular correctional officers.

“That means they can’t do their supervisory responsibilities,” Voorhaar said.

Lindsay M. Hayes, who has conducted several national studies on jail suicide, said many of the 400 to 600 inmate suicides every year happen when guards fail to make checks.

“Often a suicidal inmate may time their suicide attempt with a guard’s check and then the check never happens, and the suicide is completed,” Hayes said.

Such lapses in inmate monitoring occurred 900 times during fiscal 2000, Sgt. David Zylak, acting commander of the detention center, told county commissioners after the sexual assault.

Zylak said he could not comment on Nelson’s case because of the open internal investigation.

Voorhaar said the jail usually has an inmate classification specialist who determines whether an inmate is suicidal and makes sure the inmate is supervised properly. But that position was vacant when Nelson hanged himself and won’t be filled until December, Voorhaar said.

Officials said Nelson had been placed on suicide watch before, though they were not sure if that was when he was in juvenile detention or in the St. Mary’s jail. Nelson was in jail in connection with two June burglaries. He was arrested and jailed in the detention center July 10.

Nelson had been placed in disciplinary confinement in August. On the night he hanged himself, a correctional officer had disciplined him and threatened him with another month of confinement for throwing a shoe at her, according to a jail citation written Sept. 27.

Nelson’s mother said correctional officers should have made a point to check her troubled son, who had tried to kill himself several times while in juvenile corrections facilities, according to hospital documents.

Even before his short stay in the St. Mary’s jail, the teenager seemed to feel imprisoned.

According to hospital records, Nelson had bipolar disorder and severe episodes of depression. He turned to crime at a young age, and so many of his teenage years were spent in juvenile detention centers that he never sat for any of his family’s portrait photographs, his mother said.

While incarcerated, Nelson obsessively wrote his girlfriend’s initials on the pages of crossword puzzle books, composed poetry about “the prison within myself” and lifted weights.

In a letter to his mother dated 2 a.m. Aug. 28, Nelson wrote from solitary confinement that he was contemplating a life in prison, saying he was “working out 10 hours a day” to protect himself from other inmates.

“You say you want me to write you to tell you how I’m improving my behavior, but the truth is . . . I’m not. I’m preparing myself for prison,” the 19-year-old wrote.

On the day he hanged himself, Nelson was chipper much of the time, playing a game of pickup basketball and joking with friends, inmate Ball said.

He wrote two letters that night. The first, written before he was disciplined, was cheerful, his mother said.

The second letter was written a few minutes before he hanged himself. It was a suicide note.

“I was told that in jail would be the safest place he could be,” Victoria Nelson said. “Now there are so many what-ifs. If they had just checked on him, who knows?”