In 2020, Taej’on Vega, a Black and Latin-American teenager, was stripped and beaten at the hands of corrections officers in the Broome County Jail. He won his federal lawsuit against the jail this past September — a legal victory celebrated by activist groups in the Southern Tier.

According to court documents, Richard Hrebin and Corey Fowler, two corrections officers at the jail, were ordered to conduct a random search — referred to as a shakedown — in Vega’s cell block in February 2020. In accordance with shakedown rules, Vega was on the ground when he asked the officers how their day was going. In response, Hrebrin “thrust” his knee and pressed his fingers onto Vega’s neck. The officers then handcuffed and dragged Vega to his cell, where they conducted a “visual body cavity search” as punishment for Vega’s alleged lack of compliance.

In his cell, Fowler held Vega down as he and Hrebin continuously beat him. Both officers called Vega racial slurs before they uncuffed him, forced him to his feet and told him to “strip n*****.” After Vega complied, the officers “humiliated” him in his exposed state, damaged his belongings — including pictures of his two-year-old daughter — and soaked his bed sheets in toilet water. The officers left Vega naked, traumatized, severely bruised and coughing up blood, according to the court filings.

Josh Cotter, an attorney at the Legal Services of Central New York who sued on Vega’s behalf, described shortcomings in the legal system.

“The law doesn’t protect prisoners all that much,” Cotter said. “Officers involved are still on duty and receiving full pay.”

Deleted body camera footage was also an issue in the case. The federal judge hearing the case ruled that the county should not incur sanctions for the missing footage, guards could not testify about the video in court.

Bill Martin, a commenter for Justice and Unity in the Southern Tier (JUST) — an activist group — and the former chair of Binghamton University’s sociology department said that Vega’s decision was a “partial victory.” In an interview, Martin emphasized the lack of effective oversight for grievances in the jail. In a blog post, he said that when grievances reach the State Commission of Corrections, they reject around 99.7 percent of them. He said that even when a grievance is accepted, the incarcerated individual encounters backlash in the jail to discourage other prisoners from filing complaints. Martin encouraged students to stand against injustice by lobbying for reforms and visiting incarcerated individuals.

“These prisoners don’t always have family nearby to visit them,” Martin said.

Vega’s legal victory comes after Makyyla Holland, a Black transgender woman, recently won her case against the Broome County Jail. In her instance, Holland was abused, experienced discrimination and was denied access to her medication.

In 2020, The Open Repository at Binghamton released a study that concluded that the Broome County Jail has the “highest incarceration rate in New York state, with 39 people incarcerated per every 10,000 residents.” Black people comprised 35 percent of the jail’s inmates, while representing only 7 percent of Broome County’s population.

Gianna Vincent, the vice president of Thurgood Marshall Pre-Law Society (TMPS) and a junior majoring in philosophy, politics and law, said that she and the rest of her organization were unsurprised, given the Broome County Jail’s history of abuses.

“This happening so close to our University should push us to stand in unity against the inhumane treatment of prisoners,” Vincent said.