Jail Atrocity Timeline from Swine Flu Pittsburgh
With the infrastructure for Noblogs collapsing under attack, okmana is reproducing an article recounting the colonial violence of the occupation's jails where the ohi:yo' & mënaonkihëla rivers meet (saved from here). A repost isn't a cosign; while the research presented below might be useful, some editorial commentary has been added.
Jail Atrocity Timeline
by Swine Flu Pittsburgh, dated 2026/07/21
Allegheny County Jail is known as a terrible place to do time. Especially since the pandemic [is this a eugenicist implication the the COVID-19 pandemic has ended?], atrocities and brutality have been rampant at the facility, despite the alleged best intentions of progressive county executive Sara Innamorato and outgoing warden Trevor Wingard. The mainstream media hasn’t exactly ignored this situation, but their approach has been to treat every jail scandal as an isolated incident, studiously ignoring the broader pattern of abuse. To remedy this lack, we present here a timeline of recent deaths, lawsuits, and other disturbing incidents at ACJ.
September 29, 2023: Long-time warden Orlando Harper retires, getting out before he could be fired by Innamorato. Among Harper’s innovations was the practice of “releasing” terminally ill prisoners just before they died, so that their deaths would not be categorized as having occurred in the jail’s care. Harper was replaced on an interim basis by Shane Dady.
October 17, 2023: Abolitionist Law Center files a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the estate of Anthony Talotta, who died in ACJ as the result of a poorly treated foot infection. The jail doctor responsible for Talotta’s treatment had had his license revoked or suspended in eight states before being hired by Allegheny Health Network to work at ACJ.
December 21, 2023: Richard Sciubba III was reported deceased at the jail, probably by suicide. This is the first known death on Dady’s watch. Jail officials refused to identify Sciubba, leaving that to his lawyer, Casey White. Since the media never followed up on the story, Sciubba’s cause of death remains unconfirmed.
January 10, 2024: William Kemp III, a guard at ACJ, is arrested for attempting to smuggle synthetic marijuana into the facility. Kemp was turned in by his coworkers, who noticed a strong smell of weed whenever he was in a room with them.
December 1, 2023: The federal Department of Justice forces ACJ to begin offering methadone to prisoners suffering from opioid addiction. The county is also required to pay $10,000 to a former prisoner at ACJ whose rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act were violated by being denied access to their methadone prescription.
February 6, 2024: Aaron Tipton, a prisoner at ACJ, sues the county, Harper, and several guards for beating him, tasing him, and deliberately breaking his arm. He was then held in a cell for two hours before being sent to a hospital. His mother was not notified for another three days. Tipton had previously been denied an anti-seizure prescription on highly dubious grounds. [are there non-dubious grounds on which the state can exist, let alone deny someone medication?]
August 7, 2024: The county finally settles a class action suit brought by Abolitionist Law Center over the abysmal health care at ACJ. The suit was first filed in 2020, and was bitterly contested by both the Fitzgerald and Innamorato administrations. Terms of the settlement included filling health care vacancies, allowing medical professionals to make medical decisions instead of guards, providing private space for therapy sessions, and providing mental health treatment in a timely fashion, among other basic measures one would think would have been implemented as a matter of course. [the most readily apparent reason “one would think” a colonial jail built on slavery might provide good healthcare is that “one” is legitimizing the colonizers.]
September 14, 2024: Tracey Hickey dies in ACJ’s bullpen while awaiting processing. No cause of death was ever released, and Innamorato’s office refused to comment beyond a brief anodyne assurance that everyone was doing the best they possibly could.
November 22, 2024: Shawn Daniels, a former prisoner at ACJ, sues the county and two guards who let a pair of other prisoners into his cell to attack him. Daniels was stabbed 37 times with a shank made from a spork. The two guards left Daniels in his cell to bleed after the attack. He was not given any assistance until different guards found him a half hour later. The county didn’t settle the case until late December of 2025, for the amount of $85,000. Trib Live had to file a Right to Know Act request to pry details of the settlement from the Innamorato administration.
December 19, 2024: The county settles a lawsuit brought by a former ACJ guard alleging he was fired for objecting to racist treatment at work. The 1.5 million dollar settlement came nearly a year into Innamorato’s tenure as county executive. Note that the amount of the settlement was over ten times those for recent brutality against prisoners at ACJ, in spite of the guard not suffering any physical injury.
January 9, 2025: Trevor Wingard is hired as ACJ’s “permanent” warden. He barely lasts longer than his interim predecessor, recently announcing his retirement effective at the end of July 2026.
January 23, 2025: The county settles a lawsuit brought by Joanna Obuzor for $62,500. Obuzor was arrested for drunk driving by Pittsburgh cops who found her sleeping in her parked car, and repeatedly tased at the jail. She was then left alone in a cell for hours without receiving medical treatment. The city of Pittsburgh, also named in the suit, contributed an additional $7,500 to the settlement. In what seems to have become a pattern, county officials under Innamorato refused to comment on the details of the settlement, citing a confidentiality clause in the agreement.
June 24, 2025: Allegheny County and the town of McCandless settle a lawsuit from Brian Estep, who was beaten and repeatedly tased at the jail after being arrested by McCandless police. The county denied all liability. Trib Live’s piece on the settlement revealed that the county maintains a 1.7 million dollar fund for settling lawsuits.
July 2, 2025: Kush Wilkerson files a lawsuit from inside ACJ alleging excessive force and violations of the ADA. He is represented by Abolitionist Law Center. Wilkerson was repeatedly tased and beaten while handcuffed. One of the defendants, William Kemp, is likely the same guard who was charged with smuggling narcotics into the jail.
August 27, 2025: Daronte Brown, a former prisoner at ACJ, files a lawsuit against multiple guards and former officials at the jail, as well as the county. He is represented by the Abolitionist Law Center and Alec Wright. Brown was beaten and tased on two separate occasions during his stay in jail, as well as being held for a month in solitary confinement. Only one of his attackers, former guard Robert Veith, was fired over the incident.
November 10, 2025: Nathan Piernik dies in a housing unit at ACJ. No cause of death was ever made public. Both jail officials and the Allegheny County Police said they were launching investigations, but no results were ever released.
December 16, 2025: County Council passes a resolution requiring the medical examiners office to prioritize autopsies of those who die in ACJ. It does not appear to have occurred to anyone to pass a resolution requiring the jail to stop killing people.
February 1, 2026: Mark Schwartz dies in his cell. Schwartz had been held without bail on charges of simple assault and summary harassment. Once again, no cause of death was ever announced. Once again, an investigation was promised with no results ever made public.
March 5, 2026: A rookie guard manages to accidently bring a gun into ACJ, despite whatever security measures were in place. Bethany Hallam is quoted saying multiple people were suspended over the incident.
March 7, 2026: Yet another prisoner dies at ACJ. This time the jail refused to even identify him, and the media never pursued the matter. [if the prisoner wasn't identified, why use “him”?] Nor did they follow up on the increasingly hollow promise of an investigation.
May 13, 2026: Tyrone Good is murdered in his cell by eight other prisoners. Accused of homicide, Good was placed in a housing unit with friends of his alleged victim, instead of being housed in protective custody. Unlike previous deaths at ACJ, this one caught the media’s attention. The exact circumstances of Good’s death, including autopsy results, were revealed in fairly short order, proving the county can release such information when it wants to. We should keep in mind however, that the county administration has a couple of advantages in the discussion. One, as an accused murderer, nobody is going to ask what Good was doing there in the first place, a question it would be very reasonable to pose about most of ACJ’s other fatalities. And two, because Good was killed by prisoners instead of guards, the worst the jail can be accused of is negligence and incompetence, not actual brutality. [reinforcing this false distinction between “negligence” and “brutality” where the second is worse than the first is whitewashing anti-Black oppression.]
July 6, 2026: Trevor Wingard announces his resignation in order to, wait for it, be closer to his family. He is leaving at the end of July to take a new job in North Carolina where he grew up, a supposedly irresistable opportunity. Note however that North Carolina has 157 correctional institutions within its borders (according to World Population Review). [so, a systematic undercount.] Wingard could have gotten a job running one of them pretty much any time he wanted, although to be fair his new position is a step up from just being a warden. Still, why would he leave so soon? A potential answer to this question came just days after his announcement…
July 10, 2026: A woman sues the county government and multiple guards at ACJ, alleging she was sexually assaulted in her cell by a guard on several occasions and suffered retaliation, including being placed in solitary confinement, when she reported the attacks. The abuse happened last year during Wingard’s stint as warden. It’s quite likely that Wingard got wind of the suit and bailed out before his reputation became too damaged to land a job elsewhere. Discovery can be a bitch… [the author's dropping a misogynist slur here because.....?]
July 14, 2026: Deputy Warden Connie Clark is appointed interim warden, meaning she gets to clean up the mess Wingard is leaving behind and deal with the fallout from the latest lawsuit. It will be very interesting to find out what she knew and when she knew it.
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