SWAT, unrestrained.

• Author: Krayewski, Ed
• Position: Prison abuse - Lawsuit against the Georgia Department of Corrections - Brief article

SEVERAL FORMER inmates of a county jail in Georgia allege in a class-action lawsuit filed last year that the Gwinnett County sheriff and his "rapid response team" abused the use of restraint chairs at the jail, leaving inmates in them for hours at a time. The practice, which is said to have been used more than 200 times in the six months before the lawsuit was filed last summer, includes a SWAT-like team of law enforcement gearing up in helmets, vests, and masks, then pinning inmates to the chair and sometimes shooting them with pepper-spray projectiles.

The lawsuit received a boost earlier this year when Allen Ault, a former Georgia Department of Corrections commissioner who spent 40 years working in the...