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Hillsborough Detention Deputy Scarred By 'Part Of The Job'

Tribune photo by KELVIN MA.

Hillsborough County Deputy Nelson Birch is back in a lockdown unit at Falkenburg Road Jail a little more than a month after being attacked by an inmate with a razor. The razor carved his jaw line and barely missed his carotid artery.

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By MIKE WELLS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 20, 2007

TAMPA - It was that quick.

Hillsborough County Deputy Nelson Birch didn't see the sliver of metal in the jail inmate's hands until it was too late.

As the inmate whipped around, the 53-year-old detention deputy's training triggered instantly.

Birch pulled out a can of pepper spray and moved to restrain the inmate, telling him, "Stop struggling!" and "Drop the razor!"

"Yeah, I cut you," the inmate said.

But the words didn't sink in until Birch was standing over the man as he struggled with other deputies.

His white uniform shirt was scarlet.

The razor had sliced under his right earlobe down along his jaw line

Two thoughts flashed through his mind.

The first: "Why me?"

The next: He might not make it to the hospital alive.

It was the most violent attack on a detention deputy this year, according to the sheriff's office.

Until that night of Nov. 10, Birch had never laid eyes on Rolando "Chico" Padilla — a 25-year-old violent felon serving life plus 60 years in prison on several convictions.

One month after the attack, Birch is back on duty at Falkenburg Road Jail, still trying to shake off the memory of nearly losing his life.

The Worst Of The Worst

Confinement units hold inmates who are violent, mentally ill or charged with the most heinous of crimes as they await trial. Inmates stay in individual cells and are allowed into a common area alone for one hour per day for recreation and a shower.

Sometimes because of the violence they exhibit or the charges they face, inmates can be restricted to no contact with other inmates and to soft food on Styrofoam plates.

Birch arrived at the jail at 7 p.m. Nov. 10 to work a 12-hour night shift in housing pod 3-Alpha, a confinement unit where he would fill in for another deputy and work alongside two others in lockdown.

One of the first things Birch does at the start of a shift is look over the unit's population list.

Padilla's name was on the list that night, along with notations that he was a state prisoner and an escape risk. He had attacked a deputy in the past, Birch was told.

Padilla, 25, was brought to the jail about two weeks earlier on a court-ordered transfer from Florida's Washington Correction Institute to appear in court for a hearing in a previous case, records show.

In 2001, also at the Falkenburg Road Jail, Padilla and another inmate, Ronald Tillman, beat Deputy Ernest Morgan, then 63, unconscious in an effort to escape, officials say. Padilla reportedly choked Morgan and shoved him into a shower stall. The two inmates tried to handcuff him as they kicked and punched him.

The escape effort was fruitless. The duo got no farther than a vestibule outside the housing unit before deputies caught them. Other inmates had pressed a panic alarm.

Morgan's head required 25 stitches. Padilla and Tillman were convicted of attempted murder. At the time Padilla was 19, already sentenced to life in prison plus 60 years for other crimes.

Morgan retired nearly two years later with his wife, also a deputy, officials said.

'No Such Thing As A Routine Night'

Forty minutes into Birch's shift, Padilla's recreation hour nearly was finished and he asked to take a shower, Birch says. The inmate's wrists were shackled, and he grabbed a towel out of his cell.

Birch knew he wasn't dealing with just any inmate, he says, but Padilla had shown no signs of aggression in the two weeks he'd been back in the jail.

When Padilla walked out of the cell, he had a soap bottle tucked under his arm and the towel draped over his hands, Birch says.

Birch walked behind to Padilla's left, escorting him to the confinement unit's safety shower, essentially a caged shower stall used by the most dangerous of inmates.

"There really is no such thing as a routine night," Birch says.

Halfway to the shower, Padilla turned and swung his arms toward Birch's head. Birch thought the inmate was trying to hit him with the handcuffs, he says.

He expected to feel a punch. Instead, Birch felt only the whoosh of air as the inmate's hands swung past his face.

The blade was the type used in a disposable shaver. It had been removed from a shaver and jammed onto the end of a toothbrush handle.

Inmates housed in confinement units are issued shavers only when they shower and not allowed to keep them. Inmates in the lower security quarters are allowed to keep shavers with their belongings.

It is not known how Padilla got the razor.

"It made a very clean cut," Birch says. "It was half an inch from the carotid artery, the doctors told me. I believe that's what he was aiming for. He just missed it."

Birch and the other deputies managed to take the inmate to the floor and put him in a restraint chair to immobilize him.

"That's when I started to bleed," Birch says.

Other deputies handed him a towel. He initially he waved off their concerns, he says.

"I couldn't comprehend I was cut that badly," he says.

After receiving eight stitches, taking several HIV-related medications as a precaution and undergoing a series of shots to prevent a hepatitis C infection, Birch realized he nearly lost his life.

In 2006, inmates assaulted Hillsborough detention deputies 75 times and assaulted other inmates 132 times, sheriff's Maj. Robert Lucas said.

As of Tuesday, assaults on detention deputies had fallen to 57 reports this year; there were 138 assaults on inmates.

"What we've done all along is teach deputies that their main source of defense is keeping in communication with the people they work with," Lucas said. "If a situation presents itself, never go one-on-one with an inmate."

There is no recent national collection point for data on jail staff assaults.

U.S. jails process about 25 million arrests annually and supervise about 810,000 inmates on any given day, says Ken Kerle, editor of American Jails magazine. He's concerned that nobody's tracking these incidents in a collective database.

"The jail staff is locked up with these people for 24 hours a day — so there are bound to be problems," he says.

The most recent collection of data on assaults against jail staff was published in 2001 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which reported that from July 1, 1998, through June 30, 1999, there were 9,276 inmate assaults on jail employees in 848 jail jurisdictions. Florida ranked third with 794 attacks.

'It's Just Part Of The Job'

Birch returned to work last week. The scar is barely visible, but he can feel it when he runs his finger over it.

"I've received some bruises before in a lockdown situation, but nothing like this," Birch says.

After he stopped questioning why it happened to him, the deputy says, he grew angry. "First at myself for allowing it to happen, and then at the individual who did it to me."

The Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office is preparing to file charges against Padilla for the attack, Birch says.

The incident was recorded on video surveillance cameras, and Birch says he hopes the sheriff's office will use it as a training film.

His wife, Maria, heard about the attack before he made it to the hospital, he says.

"I called her every 15 minutes, but I didn't go into details on the phone," Birch says. "It really hit her the next day when I asked her to change my bandage. She took it a little hard.

"I explained it to her," he says. "It's just part of the job."

Reporter Mike Wells can be reached at (813) 259-7839 or mwells@tampatrib.com.

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