A Whistleblower in New Folsom Prison

When Valentino Rodriguez graduated from the academy to become a correctional officer for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, he was promised a brotherhood. At his graduation, the new officers took an oath to protect the innocent, be honest and hold each other accountable.

But when he started his job at the high-security prison in Sacramento, informally known as New Folsom, he found the opposite. He told his wife and father about misconduct in the prison and harassment, threats and mistreatment of incarcerated people. KQED reporters Sukey Lewis and Julie Small learned of Rodriguez’s experience after he was found dead, just six days after reporting the misconduct he witnessed. Their series, On Our Watch, follows Rodriguez’s case and his father’s investigation into his son’s death. 

This episode opens with Lewis and her reporting team meeting the Rodriguez family at their home and Rodriguez’s wife, Mimy. They tell the reporters about who Rodriguez was and his journey through New Folsom. In the prison, Rodriguez earned a spot as a member of an elite unit investigating crimes committed in the prison. But his colleagues made it clear they didn’t think he deserved the promotion and demeaned his work. As the job weighed on Rodriguez and his mental health, his father, Val Sr., started to see him change.   

After his son’s death, Val Sr. collects all the evidence he can on his son’s experience in the prison and shares it with Lewis and Small. This includes a copy of Rodriguez’s cellphone that he used for work, with proof of the misconduct he reported from members of his unit. Through this personal record of Rodriguez’s life, along with disciplinary records obtained through a recent transparency law passed in California, Lewis and Small find a pattern of misconduct that goes deeper than Rodriguez’s experience. 

In our last segment, Reveal host Al Letson sits down with Lewis and Small to discuss any accountability taken by prison officials. Only two of the men who harassed Rodriguez were disciplined, but none of the supervisors with knowledge of the harassment seem to have faced consequences. The reporters talk about other cases of misconduct they uncovered from public documents from the state corrections department, and they share how Rodriguez’s father and wife have been since their reporting became public. 

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