Board gets heated after Allegheny Co. jail contractor refuses to disclose background

A man hired to provide militaristic training to officers at Allegheny County Jail refused to answer questions about his military service or criminal history during a heated Jail Oversight Board meeting Thursday.

“I never touted anything other than my 27 years of law enforcement experience,” said Joseph Garcia, who runs Corrections Special Applications Unit, or C-SAU. “Everything else before that is private. It’s a personal matter, and I will not answer anything about my personal life.”

Garcia attended the meeting to provide information about the training he offers after the county came under fire last month over the no-bid contract. Advocates for those incarcerated raised questions about the training, its use of inmates in it and whether it’s necessary in a local jail holding primarily pre-trial detainees.

Although a vote to prohibit the jail from implementing the C-SAU training was planned, Steve Pilarski, the designee serving on the board for Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, usurped that motion and introduced one of his own.

Pilarski’s motion, which passed 4-3, will allow the C-SAU training at the jail to continue but also allows members of the Jail Oversight Board to observe the training.

Warden Orlando Harper has said that the C-SAU training is necessary in light of a referendum that passed in May banning the use of chemical agents, leg shackles and the restraint chair at the jail.

“We have very, very concerning allegations before us that a demonstration alone is not going to satisfy,” said Allegheny County Controller Chelsa Wagner. “This board is charged with protecting the health and welfare of our inmates.”

Pilarski argued that the referendum cuts down significantly on the tools jail officers can use to respond to exigent circumstances.

“What you are seeing on the internet is not indicative of the training being conducted at Allegheny County Jail,” he said.

In videos offered on C-SAU’s own website, as well as in the national publication Tactical Life and other media reports, including the York Daily Record, Garcia and his team are shown entering correctional facilities looking like military ops groups.

At one point during the meeting, Allegheny County Councilwoman Bethany Hallam, an outspoken member of the board, asked about the KelTec shotguns that are part of C-SAU’s training.

“That gives us distance,” Garcia said. “Just because we have tools to protect us, it doesn’t mean we have to use them.”

Sheriff Bill Mullen, a member of the board, voted in favor of the training continuing.

“I believe strongly in what the warden is doing. Everybody knows he’s done a good job,” he said. “And if the training doesn’t work out, he’ll pay for it if anything goes wrong.”

Hallam responded: “It’s not the warden who will pay. Nothing will come out of his pocket.”

During the meeting, Garcia spoke briefly about the training, but then refused to answer several questions board members asked.

He told the board he had 27 years of law enforcement enforcement experience, including in four sheriff’s departments: Virginia Beach, Arlington County, Spartanburg County and the City of Richmond. He did not provide any timeline for those positions.

He also said he has worked with 14 different departments of correction. When pressed by Wagner to identify them, Garcia refused, saying he signed a non-disclosure agreement with all of them.

Harper interrupted and said he has Garcia’s references.

Then, Hallam asked Garcia if he previously served in the military.

Harper answered, saying “We’re not going to get into his history with the military. What we’re going to do is base our opinions on the training he’s going to bring to our agency, and the background checks we did with NCIC, and he was cleared.”

“Have you served in the military?” Hallam asked again.

“Again, Ms. Hallam, I’m going to step in. He will not be answering that question,” Harper responded.

“You are not an elected representative of this county, you are not a member of this board,” Hallam said. “I do not appreciate you being an obstructionist in a very important line of questioning. The fact you are so strongly dodging this question is very concerning to me.”

President Judge Kim Berkeley Clark, who chairs the board, interjected and asked Garcia to answer the question, saying it was relevant.

Garcia confirmed he served in the military.

Hallam then asked, “Were you discharged from the military?”

“We’re not going to answer that,” Harper said.

Clark again stepped in, and suggested that the meeting reconvene on the issue in a couple weeks.

Because of the controversy surrounding Garcia, the Allegheny County Controller’s office hired a private investigator, Noelle Hanrahan, to conduct a background check on him, said Brad Korinski, chief counsel in the controller’s office who often sits on the jail board.

According to her report, dated Sept. 1, Garcia, 53, served in the U.S. Air Force and was deployed to the Royal Air Force Station near Mildenhall, Suffolk, England. He was on active duty from January 1986 and separated July 16, 1990.

The report does not indicate what type of discharge Garcia had from the military.

Hanrahan said in her report that Garcia pleaded guilty in an English court to conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm. A story in Stars and Stripes dated Nov. 6, 1989, said the charge stemmed from a plot to beat up a man.

The court ordered Garcia, then 21, to serve 2-1/2 years in prison.

According to the private investigator, another man who pleaded guilty in the incident, verified Garcia’s identity to her.

Korinski said it was unprecedented that his office had to conduct its own background check into Garcia.

“Never in my life would I think I would hear a person subject to a public contract refuse to disclose their CV, background, etc.,” Korinski said. “Nor did I ever think the folks that would hire them would be unable to answer rudimentary questions about it. If we were going to hire a person to clean the county courthouse, we would require a readily available CV; yet, the guy who is training COs to carry shotguns doesn’t say a word.”

Korinski said there are hundreds of experts across the country that can provide similar services to Garcia.

“There are a myriad of red flags surrounding Mr. Garcia and his methods, along with questions how the county came to award him this no-bid contract,” Korinski said. “Unfortunately, despite a two-hour board meeting, the questions surrounding Mr. Garcia continue to far outweigh the answers. His responses, and non-responses, to questions last night were bizarre and odd.”