Cook County Correctional Officer Charged in Inmate Beating

A 20-year correctional officer was charged in the 2014 beating of a Cook County Jail detainee that was captured on video surveillance as the detainee was being transported to another cell within the medium security wing, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.

Miguel Ortiz, 44 was charged Thursday with felony official misconduct at the Leighton Criminal Courts Building in Chicago. Oritz has been employed as a full-time correction officer with the Cook County Sheriff’s Office since Nov. 20, 1995. The charges are the result of an investigation by the State’s Attorney’s Professional Standards Unit and the Sheriff’s Office of Professional Review.

According the charges, the male inmate was being transferred from to another division at the jail the evening of Jan. 17, 2014. The inmate got into an argument with the correctional officers who were transporting him about the new cell’s conditions. The detainee told officers he would not go into the cell that “had quarantine.”

Prosecutors said that Ortiz, who was working in a control room across the hall from where the detainee was standing, overhead the conversation. As Ortiz reached for the inmate’s arm to escort him into the cell, the detainee fell on the floor when one of the others officers went to handcuff him.

Ortiz is then said to have knelt down and punched the inmate approximately seven times in the face and head. The inmate was brought to Cermak Hospital where he was treated for blunt trauma around the face and head, a state’s attorney news release said.

The incident, captured on video from two different perspectives, shows a correctional officer, presumably Ortiz, leaving the control room and walking across a hallway to speak to the detainee, who is alone and leaning against a glass wall.

Video provided y Cook County Sheriff

As the correctional officer moves to take the detainee’s arm, the video shows the correctional officer punching the inmate in head and face. Other correctional officers move in handcuff the prisoner.

Stamped across the video posted by the sheriff’s office are the words “Termination Sought.”

Cook County Judge James Brown gave Ortiz a $10,000 I-bond. Ortiz’s next scheduled hearing is Aug. 18.

Photo: Miguel Ortiz, 44 | Cook County Sheriff