Former officer pleads guilty to mistreating prisoner paralyzed in Connecticut police van

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A former Connecticut police officer accused of mistreating prisoner Richard “Randy” Cox after he was paralyzed in the back of a police van pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor Wednesday and received no jail time, while three other officers chose to take their cases to trial.

Betsy Segui, a former New Haven sergeant who supervised the city police station lockup, pleaded guilty to second-degree reckless endangerment in exchange for a 60-day suspended jail term. Another former officer, Ronald Pressley, took the same plea deal and received an identical sentence last week.

Cox, 39, who did not attend the New Haven Superior Court hearing, was left paralyzed from the chest down on June 19, 2022, when the police van he was riding in without a seat belt braked hard, sending him head-first into a metal partition while his hands were cuffed behind his back. He had been arrested on charges of threatening a woman with a gun, which were later dismissed.

“I can’t move. I’m going to die like this. Please, please, please help me,” Cox said in the van minutes after the crash, according to police video. He later was found to have broken his neck.

Once at the police station, officers mocked Cox and accused him of being drunk and faking his injuries, according to surveillance and body-worn camera footage. Officers dragged Cox out of the van and around the police station before placing him in a holding cell before his eventual transfer to a hospital.

When Cox told the officers that he thought he had cracked his neck, Segui responded, “You ain’t crack nothing. You just drank too much,” according to an internal affairs investigation report.

Segui did not speak about Cox's treatment during the court hearing. She only answered standard questions from the judge about her guilty plea.

Her lawyer, Gregory Cerritelli, said Segui wanted to put the criminal case behind her.

“She’s no longer working in law enforcement and has no desire to, so I think from her perspective this just gives her closure and lets her move on with her life and focus on her new career,” he said in an interview after the hearing. He declined to say what Segui's new career is.

Three other officers involved in Cox's transport, Oscar Diaz, Jocelyn Lavandier and Luis Rivera, rejected plea deals proposed by prosecutors and chose to take their cases to trial. All three are charged with cruelty to persons and reckless endangerment.

Prosecutors said Cox was informed about Segui's plea deal beforehand and gave his consent. In 2023, the city of New Haven agreed to settle a lawsuit by Cox for $45 million.

Louis Rubano, a lawyer for Cox, said Cox and his family had hoped the criminal cases would end as quickly as possible with plea bargains by all five officers.

“I think bringing a conclusion to this tragic situation is what the family wants, and the fact now that there’s going to be potentially a trial for the other remaining officers forces Randy and his family to have to kind of re-live the events of that tragic day,” Rubano said.

Rubano said Cox has bought a home and is living there with his mother, who is caring for him with the help of medical professionals.

The case drew outrage from civil rights advocates including the NAACP, along with comparisons to the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore. Cox is Black, while all five officers who were arrested are Black or Hispanic. Gray, who also was Black, died in 2015 after he suffered a spinal injury while handcuffed and shackled in a Baltimore police van.

The case also led to reforms at the New Haven police department as well as a statewide seat belt requirement for prisoners.

New Haven police fired Segui, Diaz, Lavandier and Rivera for violating police conduct policies, while Pressley retired. Diaz appealed his firing and got his job back. Diaz, who was driving the van when Cox got injured, said he had to brake hard to avoid an accident with another vehicle.