Corrections officers at the Allegheny County Jail are seemingly still using “less lethal weapons” brought into the facility during a contract with Corrections Special Application Unit (C-SAU) and controversial trainer Joseph Garcia nearly three years ago, officials said at a Jail Oversight Board meeting Thursday.
Jail officials hired C-SAU in July 2021 to provide use of force training to corrections officers. C-SAU also taught officers a new approach to cell extractions on incarcerated people who refuse to leave their cell, which could include the use of Kel-Tec shotguns and rubber projectiles.
C-SAU’s methods were widely criticized at the time; advocates and community members argued that they violated both correctional standards and federal laws and claimed they had caused serious injuries and deaths of incarcerated people.
Jail administrators said the trainings were a necessary response to a voter-approved referendum that largely banned the use of solitary confinement, leg shackles, restraint chairs, and chemical agents like pepper spray.
Though the oversight board ultimately voted to end the jail’s contract with C-SAU a few months later, and the training was not completed, Chief Deputy Warden Jason Beasom said Thursday that some corrections officers still carry the “delivery systems” employed by the company. He declined to say what the systems “deliver.”
“Are the delivery systems being used, today, in the jail?” asked Bethany Hallam, a member of County Council and the oversight board.
“The CRU has them. Yes,” Beasom said, referring to the Correctional Response Unit, which responds to situations involving uncooperative or potentially violent individuals.
“Are they being used in the jail today?”
“They're deployed in the facility. Yes.”
Hallam said she is concerned that the techniques taught by C-SAU are still being used in the jail, as some corrections officers who received the training went on to train others at the jail.
Beasom said that although the CRU team was formed after the JOB barred the jail from working with C-SAU, officers were trained to use the weapons provided in the initial contract.
Hallam argued that this violates the board’s 2021 motion, which banned training from “Allegheny County, C-SAU, Joseph Garcia” as well as “any related entities.”
Beasom responded that the board “did not ban the delivery systems. They banned us from bringing in additional equipment.”
Public speakers at the meeting drew the board’s attention to ongoing “partial lockdowns” at the jail, during which, they said, incarcerated people do not get the four hours of out-of-cell time required by the referendum ending solitary confinement.
There were 19 partial lockdowns in May, noted Anna Yatsko.
“Staffing is being blamed for these lockdowns, but it was the responsibility of the county to enforce the referendum,” she said. “Whether it's called solitary confinement or not, doesn't change what it's effectively become.”
