KY juvenile justice workers pepper sprayed youths as punishment, violating policy

Staff at a state juvenile detention center in Adair County improperly used pepper spray on youths as punishment at least three times in March, sometimes forcing youths to wait more than 30 minutes before washing off the burning chemicals, according to internal reports obtained by the Herald-Leader.

At least twice, staff fired pepper spray on youths through the small slot in their cell door while they were confined alone inside, with nowhere to hide, according to the reports.

“The (pepper) spray should not be used as a form of punishment or to quiet a noisy resident/inmate,” internal investigators wrote after one of the incidents.

Gov. Andy Beshear this year authorized the use of oleoresin capsicum spray, also known as pepper spray, as a defensive weapon by trained and certified employees at the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice following a high-profile series of assaults, riots and escapes.

Pepper spray is meant to be used to prevent serious injuries or major property damage by youths who are acting violently in DJJ custody. The spray can cause painful burning on the skin and in the eyes, severe irritation in the nose and throat and difficulty breathing.

But DJJ employees have not always obeyed the official instructions.

The Herald-Leader reported last month on a correctional captain at the DJJ facility in Campbell County who pepper sprayed a girl in the face on May 3 as she handed him paint chips that she peeled off the floor of her cell.

The girl immediately dropped the paint chips. The captain kicked the cell door closed.

“Stupid sh-t, she wouldn’t give it up,” the captain told his colleagues outside the cell, according to security video footage. Pepper spray is “being pushed as the first response,” he explained to internal investigators later.

Likewise, the staff sometimes has turned to pepper spray too quickly at the Adair Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Columbia, according to reports from the Internal Investigations Branch of the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet.

A cabinet spokeswoman on Thursday said problems in Adair County were limited to a few isolated incidents as staff learned how to use the new option.

“Pepper spray was authorized for use at Adair Juvenile Detention Center on March 8,” spokeswoman Morgan Hall said. “Since the initial three cases in March, there have been no additional substantiated cases of inappropriate use of pepper spray.”

“Pepper spray is a non-lethal, effective tool for both staff and juveniles and used by adult and juvenile correctional facilities across the country,” Hall said.

The Adair County facility has been the most troubled DJJ center in Kentucky in recent years. It has seen frequent violence and chronic under-staffing. Youths are locked in their cells for long stretches rather than receiving the sort of rehabilitative programming, such as education and mental health treatment, for which DJJ was created.

Last month, the ACLU of Kentucky filed a complaint asking the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to investigate the “unsanitary and nearly uninhabitable” conditions inside the Adair County facility. Children are kept in lockdown for 24 hours a day, medications are withheld and there was no ombudsman for most of 2022 to hear complaints, the ACLU said.

It’s alarming to learn that, on top of the other problems, staff are misusing pepper spray and “proactively harming children as a punitive measure,” said Kevin Muench, an attorney with the ACLU of Kentucky. “It’s proof that youth in Adair County are being abused and mistreated.”

Critics in the General Assembly have called for the resignation of DJJ Commissioner Vicki Reed over continued problems on her watch, but Beshear has stood behind her. Beshear appointed Reed in 2021.

According to internal investigative reports obtained by the Herald-Leader:

▪ On March 8, a correctional captain pepper sprayed a boy through the slot in his cell door. The boy had refused to retract his arms from the slot, the captain explained.

In a “memo of concern,” internal investigators noted that the boy was pepper sprayed in a cell at 11:58 a.m. But he was not allowed to wash off the burning chemicals until 12:45 p.m., more than 45 minutes later, they wrote.

“Being left in a confined space, where OC had been dispersed, could be viewed as a form of further punishment,” they wrote.

The same captain was involved in a controversial incident last year at the Adair County facility. A mentally ill girl was reaching out the slot of her cell door and saying, “Please help me, please help me” when her arms were painfully twisted and forced back in, witnesses said. Security staff then angrily ordered the slot’s flap kept shut, witnesses said.

The captain was demoted, Hall said.

▪ On March 14, a different correctional captain pepper sprayed a boy in the face and neck after he loudly complained to staff that he had not been allowed to shower for a week.

“Now that you’ve been sprayed, do you think it’s enough?” the captain asked the boy, who said he was about to pass out.

Interviewed about the incident later, the captain “stated she was taught in OC training that the spray is the ‘least restrictive way of doing things,’” internal investigators wrote.

That captain received a reprimand, Hall said.

▪ On March 17, a correctional officer pepper sprayed a boy through the slot in his cell door after he had thrown a cup of flavored drink through the slot at her and another officer, splashing her.

“Bet that feels worse than the Kool-Aid did!” the officer told the boy through his cell door, investigators wrote. On security video footage, the boy could be heard choking and gagging in distress in his cell.

The officer and her colleague told investigators they were instructed to use pepper spray if they were splashed with any liquid. But investigators said this incident constituted a misuse of the pepper spray because it was clearly meant to punish the boy, not stop a dangerous attack.

Also, they wrote in another memo of concern, the staff let 36 minutes pass before they removed the boy from his cell and allowed him to wash off the burning chemicals.

Investigators asked questions about several other uses of pepper spray from March through July at the Adair County facility, but they ultimately concluded that staff were justified.

In one case, on June 3, a correctional officer who was not yet certified in Kentucky to use pepper spray assisted with the restraint of a youth by spraying it onto a latex glove and then rubbing the glove into the youth’s face. This was a violent restraint that required staff to take aggressive measures to gain control, investigators said.

In another case, on July 16, a boy who had opened his cell door to get his medication refused to move out of the doorway and allow the door to be closed again, saying he was frustrated because his unit had not been allowed showers or recreation time in days. A correctional captain pepper sprayed him, and the cell door was secured.

Investigators did not fault the captain for using pepper spray, because the boy was being “aggressive and non-compliant,” they wrote. But they did fault her for spitting on the boy during a restraint 15 minutes later as he was extracted from his cell in handcuffs and leg shackles.

They also faulted her for taunting the boy the next day.

The employee was terminated, Hall said.

The Adair County facility holds “the toughest cases” in the state juvenile justice system, so staff were dealing with their own frustrations as they learned how to appropriately use pepper spray, said Larry Chandler, a retired prison warden who recently joined DJJ as deputy director of its Office of Detention.

“As you know, sometimes we flub,” Chandler said Thursday. “Sometimes staff’s frustration gets the better of their judgment. But we try to deal with that with disciplinary action, we try to deal with that with counseling, we try to deal with that with training.”

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