Officer sues Kentuckys Department of Corrections amid cover-up allegations

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – Kentucky probation and parole officers say the departments leadership is risking the public safety.

It is a major problem that is not having a light shined on it right now, State FOP Vice President Ryan Straw told WAVE News.

The officers are reaching out to the public after a series of exclusive Troubleshooter investigations found dozens of cases in which an offenders new violation was kept in the dark.

Commonwealth Attorneys and prosecutors were never made aware of those new offenses in order to possibly revoke, something that is required by state law.

Straw said the officers have been trying to sound the alarm about the problems. They point to an enormous case load that is impossible for the officers to keep up with, high turnover, a lack of supervision, the hiring of less experienced people and no resources.

This smells horrible, because you have things in place to fix this, Straw said. This shouldn’t happen.

He added the officers have been worried that someone was going to end up getting hurt.

Thats exactly what happened last November to Fred OBannon. The father of five was working on I-264 when he was shot and killed. An LMPD Sgt. Chris Lane, who was working the area off duty, was shot in the face.

The suspect in that case, Keyshaun Stewart had fallen through the cracks. While on probation for a felony, he was convicted of a new offense in Tennessee.

WAVE News Troubleshooters uncovered documents alerting the probation officer in Jefferson County knew, but that new conviction was never reported to the judge or prosecutors as required by state law.

Stewarts probation was therefore never revoked.

Lanes attorney, Tad Thomas, filed a lawsuit Wednesday on his behalf for the departments failure.

This is not just one probation officer gone bad, Thomas said. There is a problem in the entire department of corrections.

Straw agreed. He believes that instead of addressing the problems they were well aware of, the departments leadership was busy covering it up.

And if it gets dug into deeper, were going to find stuff that were not going to be pleased to see, he said.

Straw believes the probation officer in Stewarts case, Chris Mull, did make a mistake, but explained that his supervisor, Brian Patterson, is required to also sign off on new offense reports.

As a former probation officer himself, Straw added that the system used to track new out of state offenses would have alerted at least three people.

Mull is a scapegoat to distract form the bigger problems, Straw said.

He also questioned what previous audits have shown and what the departments leadership has known, and when.

Thomas says Lane protected people as a Marine in Iraq, then as an officer for LMPD.

This lawsuit, he said, is Lanes way of exposing the issues and protecting the public one again.

A lot of questions about what was going on within the department, Thomas said. Who knew what when and we plan on being very aggressive about discovery in this case.

WAVE News is awaiting a response to the accusations from the Department of Corrections.

WAVE Louisville and Southern Indiana’s NBC affiliate. Follow us on Twitter & Instagram @wave3news.(WAVE)

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