Prison Staff Charged With Cruelty For Forcing Inmates To Listen To Baby Shark On Repeat
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Two former detention officers and their supervisor have been charged with cruelty offences after claims emerged they played 'Baby Shark' on repeat to inmates.
The Oklahoma County Jail inmates say they were forced to stand the whole time during the disciplinary treatment and had their hands cuffed behind them and secured to a wall.
Gregory Cornell Butler Jr., 21; Christian Charles Miles, 21; and Christopher Raymond Hendershott, 50, have been charged with misdemeanour counts of cruelty to a prisoner and conspiracy.
Butler and Miles are accused of carrying out the discipline and Hendershott allegedly knew about it and heard complaints from inmates however didn't do anything to stop it.
The alleged treatment against at least four inmates has been described as 'inhuman' and reportedly happened in an attorney visitation room of the Oklahoma County Jail in November and December last year. Some inmates were in the room for up to two hours while the treatment took place.
The case against the two detention officers was helped after video surveillance allegedly showed them carrying out the punishment.
An investigator wrote in affidavits filed in the case that the song on loop 'put that the undue emotional stress on the inmates who were most likely already suffering from physical stressors'.
The affidavits added that Butler and Miles 'systematically worked together and used the... attorney booth as a means to discipline inmates and teach them a lesson because they felt that disciplinary action within the Detention Center was not working in correcting the behaviour of the inmates'.
The playing of the music was said to be a 'joke' between Miles and Butler.
Sheriff P. D. Taylor said the young detention officers were suspended immediately after the allegations came to light and they've since resigned following an internal investigation, while the lieutenant retired.
He added: "We don't tolerate it. We always did an excellent job policing ourselves."
CIA agents during the George W. Bush administration used to play music on repeat for hours as a form of psychological torture, according to a 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report.
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