A former correctional officer at the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for his participation in a coordinated scheme to assault inmates in areas deliberately concealed from security cameras, according to federal officials.
Michael Pack, 40, received the 24-month sentence after pleading guilty to a federal conspiracy charge before U.S. Magistrate Judge Omar J. Aboulhosn.
Court filings reveal that Pack and fellow officers routinely assaulted inmates and pretrial detainees as punishment for perceived misconduct. The officers deliberately transported prisoners to known surveillance blind spots within the facility to avoid detection by security cameras.
In one documented incident, Pack admitted that he and other guards repeatedly struck a pretrial detainee and subjected him to chemical OC spray after the inmate kicked his cell door. In a separate incident, officers moved a handcuffed detainee into an unmonitored interview room. Despite the prisoner posing no threat, other guards proceeded to assault him. Pack admitted that he witnessed the attack and failed to intervene.
Pack and his co-conspirators subsequently submitted fabricated incident reports to conceal the abuse and evade internal scrutiny. Following the interview room assault, Pack filed a report that omitted any reference to the room and falsely claimed the detainee sustained no injuries, despite Pack having witnessed the man escorted out in handcuffs while bleeding from the head.
“Michael Pack conspired with other correctional officers to illegally assault and punish inmates in his custody,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “While we recognize that the great majority of law enforcement officers discharge their duties with integrity, this defendant abused his authority and has received an appropriate measure of accountability.”
Dhillon announced the sentence alongside U.S. Attorney Moore Capito for the Southern District of West Virginia. The FBI Pittsburgh Field Office’s Charleston Resident Agency conducted the investigation.
Leave a Reply