Allegheny County fires jail guard after furor over racist viral video

An embattled Allegheny County Jail corrections officer has been fired three weeks after a video surfaced online purportedly showing him making a racist comment about Black people while holding a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.

A county official confirmed Friday that Brian Davis, who started working at the Downtown lockup in March 2020, has been terminated.

The video that has made the rounds on social media features a man wearing a baseball hat and a New England Patriots hoodie and holding up the bat. The video was not recorded at the jail.

Jail officials told TribLive last month the man in the video appeared to be Davis.

“You know what this is?” the man asks two women who can’t be seen in the video. “I don’t give a (expletive). (Racial epithet) beater.”

Davis was suspended July 21 after the video went viral on social media. He was fired this week from his $81,156 job.

At a Jail Oversight Board meeting Thursday, the first since the incident became public, Warden Trevor Wingard and Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato briefly addressed the controversy.

“What this investigation found was that termination was the best path forward for this individual,” Innamorato said at the meeting.

Two board members told TribLive they’re pleased with how quickly the county addressed the situation.

“They moved so quickly and I think that’s what gives us the most hope,” county Councilwoman Bethany Hallam, who serves on the oversight board, told TribLive Friday. “In the past, we’ve waited months and months to get any semblance of accountability.”

“The warden has been in constant contact,” said board member Muhammad Ali Nasir, who goes by the name Man-E. “That’s something we haven’t had before.”

Neither Davis nor Brian Englert, who heads the jail workers union that represented the former corrections officer, returned calls Friday seeking comment.

Before starting at the jail, Davis worked for about two years in the county Treasurer’s Office. His job title there was clerk/typist.

Englert previously told TribLive that Davis’ comments in the video were “troubling” and appeared to violate “the county policy we must all abide by.”

To work at the jail, employees are required to sign off on that code, which prohibits a variety of behaviors. Several are listed as zero-tolerance violations, making them fireable offenses, Englert said.

“Racism is a terminable offense,” Englert said.

About 65% of the 2,079 inmates at the jail were Black as of Friday, county data shows. Englert previously said 42% of the officers who work at the jail are Black.