Four Alabama correctional officers were charged Tuesday with hitting a prisoner on the ground or filing false reports about it, federal prosecutors said.
Sergeant Keith Finch and correctional officers and Jordan Thomas and Kevin Blaylock are charged with deprivation of rights under the color of the law in the 2018 incident at the Bibb Correctional Facility in Brent, which is about 40 miles south of southwest of Birmingham.
Thomas and Sgt. Orlanda Walker is also accused of obstruction of justice for allegedly filing false reports claiming that once the prisoner was on the ground, “all force ceased,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
In reality, Thomas, Finch and Blaylock allegedly “kicked the prisoner and beat him several times with their batons,” after he was already on the ground and surrounded, the Justice Department said.
Walker is not accused of hitting the prisoner, but he is Thomas’ supervisor and authorities say they filed false reports about it.
Federal court records for correctional officers did not appear to be online Tuesday night, and it was unclear if they had attorneys who could speak on their behalf.
The federal grand jury charges were returned less than a week after the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released the results of an investigation that “found reasonable reason to believe that there is a pattern or practice of using excessive force against prisoners in Alabama Men’s Prisons. ” “
In that 28-page report released Thursday, investigators alleged that corrections employees often failed to adequately document or report uses of force.
He cited an incident at the Bibb Correctional Facility in which a prisoner suffered fractures in both arms after being hit with a cane.
The incident report mentions that the prisoner goes to the health care unit “but does not fully document the extent of the injuries,” says the Justice Department report.
It is unclear whether the allegations announced Tuesday are related to the incident mentioned in the report. Correctional Bibb houses more than 1,800 prisoners, according to the report. The Justice Department investigation into conditions in the 13 state men’s prisons began in 2016.
In the incident that led to the accusations Tuesday, a prisoner who was not identified in a press release ran out of his cell on September 12, 2018, and two officers brought him to the ground and was in a fetal position on the ground. surrounded.
Thomas, Finch and Blaylock allegedly kicked him and hit him with batons while he was on the ground, according to the Justice Department.
Requests for comment from the Alabama Department of Corrections and the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama were not answered Tuesday night.
Finch, Thomas and Blaylock face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison on the charge of deprivation of rights if convicted, and Thomas and Walker could face a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted of obstruction of justice, he said. the Department.
