The Allegheny County Jail leadership did the right thing Monday in suspending a corrections officer.

Brian Davis has worked at the jail for five years. He most recently worked in the facility’s intake unit. That is where new detainees are brought into the system and processed. It is the introduction to the criminal justice experience, and these are people who have not yet been found guilty of anything.

Davis was suspended as an investigation is conducted into a video circulating on social media.

The video shows a man jail officials say appears to be Davis. He wears a baseball hat and a New England Patriots hoodie and holds up a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.

“You know what this is?” he asks. “I don’t give a (expletive). (Racial epithet) beater.”

We won’t use the word. No one should. It isn’t hard to deduce.

One might argue it isn’t fair to suspend Davis pending the outcome of an investigation of something that did not happen at the jail.

For many jobs, this might be true. It isn’t true for a corrections officer — for many reasons.

Several of those reasons pertain to safety. If it is Davis and these are his views, it would be irresponsible of the jail to allow him to remain in contact with Black inmates, who make up about two-thirds of the incarcerated population.

It would be just as inappropriate to allow him to remain in contact with Black corrections officers; 42% of the corrections staff are Black. Corrections officers, as with any law enforcement organization, must depend upon each other for support and protection.

There is also the risk to Davis himself. Just like placing an inmate in protective custody to prevent an attack from rivals or enemies, until the situation is resolved, Davis should not be in a position where he could be targeted. As the video has circulated freely, it could create a danger of backlash. That could be bad for both Davis and his co-workers.

But those are just physical concerns. There are other risks.

There is the threat to the ethical concerns of a facility that has had challenges in the past. There is the tone of expectations under Warden Trevor Wingard, who just took the reins in January. There is the way uglier instincts can spread like a contagion, and no one needs an outbreak behind bars.

The behavior in the video is serious.

“This is a troubling straightforward charge that violates the county policy we must all abide by,” said Brian Englert, the jail’s corrections officer union president.

Davis deserves due process and a fair investigation of the situation. We hope that is exactly what he receives.

But to get that, and to get to the bottom of everything safely for all concerned, Allegheny County Jail did the right thing in suspending him.

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