A spokesman for a state agency on Thursday issued a statement about video footage shown in court last year of an incident involving a Special Response Team inside the Southern Regional Jail.
The Special Response Team and its policies no longer exist, wrote Lawrence Messina, spokesman for the state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety. When David Farmer took over as executive director of the Regional Jail Authority on June 1, he inherited several lawsuits that had been filed against the response team.
Within a month of his appointment, Farmer did away with the response team, Messina wrote Thursday. Farmer also implemented a new policy that requires the prompt reporting and close scrutiny of all use-of-force incidents.
A lawsuit filed against the Regional Jail Authority by inmate Michael Harshaw accuses members of the response team and the Regional Jails of exposing prisoners to cruel and unusual punishment. A video, which shows members of the team storming into Southern Regional with weapons drawn in the spring of 2014, was shown to Kanawha Circuit Judge Joanna Tabit in August.
Flashes of fire lit up the room as projectiles were filed at the inmates, and smoke billowed from grenades. A correctional officer stood over one inmate, who was face down on the floor with his hands behind his head, and shot at him, maybe with a Taser or a foam or bean-bag pellet gun, the Gazette-Mail reported in August.
When asked about the incident depicted in the videos shown during the hearing, an attorney for the jails, Bill Murray, said the special-response team was deployed because inmates were supposed to be inside their cells and had refused to lock down.
Messina wrote Thursday that the video provides an incomplete, out-of-context depiction of a lockdown and sweep of a regional jail. The precipitating concern was that inmates had weapons and multiple weapons were confiscated by the response team, Messina wrote.
The state Supreme Court will decide whether another video depicting an incident with members of the response team should be made public. The attorney representing another inmate filed a lawsuit asking that it be made public. Tabit ruled that it should be released and state officials appealed Tabit's ruling, arguing its release would give away information about the jail's design, putting employees at risk.