Body slams, pepper spray and other recent abuses inside KY juvenile detention centers

Just months into his new job, Kentucky’s juvenile justice commissioner, Randy White, is learning the depths of problems at his troubled state agency.

A Herald-Leader review of public records from the first four months of 2024 reveals contraband smuggling in a juvenile detention center that led to the felony arrests of three officers, as well as several officers body slamming teenagers in state custody while sometimes using inaccurate and misleading language to report what they just did.

The records, obtained from internal investigators, also show continued improper use of pepper spray on youths who don’t follow orders and a social service worker who was fired after having a “very inappropriate” relationship with a teen boy who received tutoring sessions in her private office.

Gov. Andy Beshear appointed White in March to replace Vicki Reed, who resigned after two years of controversy and calls for her ouster from state legislators because of assaults, riots, escapes and other problems at the state’s eight juvenile detention centers. where more than 200 teens are in state custody as of last month.

The problems prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to announce in May that it has opened a civil-rights investigation of the state Department of Juvenile Justice to learn if youths in state custody are being abused or neglected.

Overall, the Herald-Leader identified 18 serious acts of misconduct involving 15 employees at the Department of Juvenile Justice that internal investigators substantiated during the first four months of this year. It obtained 259 pages of investigative reports from the department through the Kentucky Open Records Act.

Of those cases, six employees were fired, six were suspended, one resigned and two received a written reprimand, said Morgan Hall, spokeswoman for the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet.

White declined to be interviewed for this story.

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Before his recent appointment by Beshear, White spent 27 years with the Kentucky Department of Corrections, where he served as deputy commissioner of adult institutions and as warden of Kentucky State Penitentiary and Green River Correctional Complex.

In a prepared statement to the Herald-Leader, White said he’s aware of the problems the newspaper identified and he takes them seriously.

“Confirmed incidents in our facilities involving contraband, sexual misconduct, violations of policies and procedures and excessive use of force will not be tolerated, and corrective action has and will be taken,” White said.

Body slammed or ‘assisted’ to the ground?

Investigators for the Justice Cabinet said three juvenile justice employees inappropriately picked up youths and threw them to the ground during separate cases early this year, according to security video and interviews with staff and youths.

Officers at the juvenile detention centers are trained to use Aikido, a martial art involving nonviolent locks and holds, when they restrain youths.

However, at the Campbell Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Newport, Correctional Officer Jerrell Jordan followed a teen boy out of the facility’s cafeteria on Jan. 9, leaving it unguarded. He then started a fight with him in the hallway after the pair had an argument about a mess that someone left on the salad bar, investigators said.

Jordan moved around a colleague in the hallway who tried to intervene, and he body-slammed the boy, telling investigators later that he was “hot and bothered” and should have walked away.

Jordan was fired the next day, personnel records show.

In two other body-slamming cases, officers inaccurately described their actions in their incident reports to make them sound less violent than they actually were, raising concerns among investigators.

Security video at the Fayette Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Lexington showed Correctional Capt. Jeremy Baker lifting and slamming a teen-aged boy to the floor on Feb. 20 and then falling on him after the boy tried to pull away from his grasp.

The boy said he coughed up blood afterward.

A teacher told investigators he wiped up “bloody slobber” from the hallway floor where the boy landed during the body-slam.

However, Baker said in his report that he “escorted” the boy to the floor, investigators wrote.

Baker was suspended for 30 days, said Hall, spokeswoman for the Justice Cabinet.

Likewise, at the Warren Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Bowling Green, Correctional Lt. John Washer wrote in his report he “assisted” a teen boy to the floor on Feb. 18. But video showed Washer lifting the boy off his feet and slamming him onto the floor to gain control over him, hurting the boy’s knees, investigators said.

“Washer stated the word ‘assisted’ on the incident report is the verb he was instructed to use to describe ‘any bring-down,’” investigators wrote. “He stated on a previous incident report that he used the word ‘slammed,’ and he was advised not to use ‘aggressive’ words on his incident reports.”

Washer was given a three-day suspension with an intent to dismiss on July 1, Hall said.

Inaccurately reporting body slams and other acts of violence has been a recurring problem at the Department of Juvenile Justice in recent years.

In 2021, youth worker Jezreel Bell, who also worked at the Warren County facility, told the Herald-Leader he was instructed by his superiors to omit incriminating facts from his incident reports and to use passive language.

“The way I was trained to write reports, they never wanted you to use direct words like ‘hit’ or ‘struck,’ or ‘push’ or ‘shove,’” Bell told the Herald-Leader at the time. “You never ‘pushed somebody down.’ You ‘assisted them to the floor.’”

“They want you to make it sound as buttery as possible. They want you to make it sound like you used all the right Aikido moves, all the training moves. But truthfully, all the training that they teach you doesn’t do crap,” he said.

In his prepared statement, White said he wants to make changes in how incident reports are written.

“I am not satisfied with the current structure for completing incident reports and changes will be made,” White said.

White said he has asked the department’s training director to revise the curriculum on incident report writing for new hires and staff who receive annual training. The department also will install a new system for employees to use when submitting incident reports, he said.

“All these items are in the development stages but are a priority for me and the training director,” White said.

When to use pepper spray

Investigators also criticized two incidents involving pepper spray, a painful, burning chemical that sometimes is misused by juvenile justice officers, making it one of the specific focuses of the federal civil-rights investigation.

According to department policy, pepper spray should be used by specially trained staff only to prevent loss of life, injuries, significant property damage or a riot.

But on Jan. 13 at the Warren County facility, a correctional lieutenant pepper sprayed a teen boy to keep him from exiting his isolation cell after she opened the door, investigators said. The officer was reprimanded and informed July 1 of the department’s intent to dismiss her, Hall said.

A youth service program supervisor at the same facility pepper sprayed a teen boy in his eyes Feb. 15 when he resisted an escort back to his cell by a half-dozen colleagues. She explained that she believes it’s appropriate to pepper spray youths if they don’t follow directions during “a show of force,” investigators said.

The supervisor was suspended for three days.

In a different type of misconduct incident, at the Fayette County juvenile detention center, a correctional officer was suspended for three days after she argued with and cursed at a teen boy Feb. 9 and then left several other youths unsecured in the unit, allowing them to assault the boy, investigators said.

Other staff members rushed to restrain the attackers. The officer said she did not assist her colleagues because of “shock, mainly.”

And at the Adair Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Columbia, a social service worker was fired after investigators concluded she had what the facility superintendent described as a “very inappropriate” relationship with a teen boy at the facility in March and April of this year.

Interviews and a review of security video and love letters the boy gave the social worker showed that although they did not have sex, physical and emotional “boundaries” were crossed while the two spent time together in the social worker’s private office for study sessions, investigators wrote.

The social worker should have immediately reported the boy’s sexually forward behavior — for example, tickling her foot and grabbing her breast — rather than appear to encourage him, facility officials told investigators.

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