Lee County deputies Casey Howell and Enzo Finamore were fired and arrested on Tuesday for torturing inmates with scalding hot water. They now face charges of felony and misdemeanor battery. The Lee County Sheriff's Department says they threw scaling hot water from a hot water tap in one of the housing units on inmates to gain their compliance resulting in serious injuries. Both deputies were promptly fired and publicly denounced by their boss.
Correctional officers often use excessive force on inmates that refuse to cooperate. They'll usually try to do things by the book at first but if the punishments available within the rules are not enough to gain compliance, they often look outside the rules to maintain their authority. Few things scare correctional officers more than inmates not being afraid of them. This author found that out the hard way after creating this website and threatening to post home addresses of correctional officers on it if I were taken to the hole in my local county jail (not Lee County). They responded by taking me to a cell out of view of the cameras, breaking my arm, and saying, "[we] run this f*cking jail not you!" Had just one of them told the truth in their incident report, I'd like to think they would've been fired, but as usual they stuck together and were able to maintain their ability to run the jail as they saw fit simply by breaking their own rules and lying about it. Normally people as dimwitted as deputies wouldn't stand a chance against someone with my skills, intellect, and educational background hell bent on undermining them, but in their jail they can simply torture you into compliance and avoid accountability due to lack of evidence no matter who you are. The deputies in this case likely felt unable to control their victims within the rules and resorted to corporal punishment to maintain control.
Scalding hot water is an often surprising necessity in correctional facilities. Without it there would be no hot coffee in the morning and inmate productivity would plummet. Coffee is often the only legal drug inmates have access to and they need a hot cup of coffee before going to work if they have an inmate job. Even unemployed inmates need coffee whether they're working on their case, working out, fighting, or just pacing around aimlessly. Unfortunately, sometimes people throw scaling water on others which is why many county jails don't have hot water taps. That makes it safer without as much of a productivity hit due to most county inmates not working, but it doesn't eliminate the risk entirely. If the facility sells inmates radios then it probably sells batteries which inmates will use to create small fires out of toilet paper to boil water. Having hot water taps just eliminates the fire risk otherwise present if you want to scald someone.
According to public records, Casey Howell is a white male standing 5'10'' tall and weighing in at 180 lbs. with the inmate number 367816. Also according to public records, Enzo John Finamore is a 24 year old resident of Lehigh Acres, Florida. His is 5'7'', weights 200 lbs. and his inmate number is 367815.
You can learn more about this case in the video below.