Authorized advocacy group alleges sample of power at South Bay after inmate’s demise dominated murder

Native Information

“There must be an instantaneous overview of all of the use-of-force incidents which have taken place since his demise … and self-discipline must observe appropriately from there.”

An investigation by Prisoners’ Authorized Providers of Massachusetts reveals what it calls a repeated sample of extreme and prohibited power at South Bay Home of Correction, months after an inmate died following an altercation with corrections officers on the facility. 

The findings come after the demise of Shacoby Kenny, 32, was dominated a murder in July. Kenny died at a hospital Dec. 8, 2025, in the future after the confrontation inside South Bay. The state medical expert decided he died from a situation by which his mind didn’t obtain sufficient blood and oxygen. 

PLS, a nonprofit that gives authorized companies and advocates for the rights of incarcerated folks, stated its investigation additionally discovered that officers concerned in the usage of power towards Kenny continued working in positions that put them in touch with incarcerated folks. 

“What we discovered is a facility the place management is type of not current,” PLS Govt Director Dave Rini advised Boston.com, “and so they’re not sustaining the procedures and insurance policies {that a} well-functioning facility should have.” 

PLS shared its findings in a letter despatched to the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Division on Aug. 31. 

The group is asking the division to droop the officers concerned in Kenny’s demise pending an impartial or third-party-conducted investigation and to make modifications to its use-of-force practices and procedures, Rini stated. 

“There must be an instantaneous overview of all of the use-of-force incidents which have taken place since his demise … and self-discipline must observe appropriately from there,” Rini added.

What the investigation discovered

PLS stated incarcerated folks at South Bay repeatedly reported officers utilizing chokeholds, kneeling on folks’s necks, and kneeling on folks’s higher backs in ways in which restricted respiration or blood circulate — practices prohibited beneath the Sheriff’s Division’s use-of-force coverage. 

The group additionally stated that at the very least one officer who was concerned in Kenny’s demise used a “breath-restricting method” on one other incarcerated particular person in the identical unit, roughly two months after Kenny died. 

PLS stated it “constantly receives complaints” about officers bending incarcerated folks’s wrists to the purpose of extreme ache. Additionally they have acquired reviews that handcuffs and keys have been used as weapons throughout bodily altercations. 

“That’s for the aim of sending a message and never for the aim of sustaining an orderly facility,” Rini stated of those practices. 

The group says it has reviewed documentation of at the very least two incidents by which accidents allegedly brought on by handcuffs required staples or stitches. At the least one documented harm allegedly concerned the particular person’s face, PLS stated, which is instantly prohibited in division coverage. 

PLS moreover stated it recognized eight particular officers, together with a sergeant and lieutenant, who both staffed the unit the place Kenny was concerned in an altercation or responded as a member of the Sheriff’s Escort and Response Crew the day of the altercation. 

Based mostly on witness accounts, PLS alleges these officers “escalated or instantly participated” within the power used towards Kenny. 

The Sheriff’s Division stated publicly April 30 that the officers in query have been working in “non-inmate/detainee contact posts” whereas the investigation into Kenny’s demise continued. The division repeated that assertion July 21, in accordance with PLS. 

However PLS alleges that the division’s assertion didn’t precisely describe the officers’ subsequent assignments and stated it’s conscious of officers concerned in Kenny’s demise working positions involving direct contact with incarcerated folks. 

“It’s neither controversial nor notably uncommon for officers which can be concerned in one thing vital like this to be suspended pending an investigation,” Rini stated. “The truth that the sheriff’s division has been so aggressive in claiming that that’s not what’s occurred when their very own information appear to point in any other case is shocking to me.”

How PLS gathered the data 

Kenny’s demise was a “actual eye-opener” for PLS and prompted the group to conduct a broader overview of the Sheriff’s Division, Rini stated, including the group has additionally acquired complaints from incarcerated folks in regards to the Sheriff’s Division earlier than the demise.  

As a part of the investigation, PLS stated it spoke with greater than 30 individuals who have been or are incarcerated at South Bay. 

Rini stated PLS makes an attempt to corroborate accounts with public information, incident reviews, work assignments, and hospital information. On this case, they obtained quite a few information via Massachusetts’ Prison Offender Information Info system, in accordance with Rini.  

However he famous the group typically faces limitations in acquiring information. Some requested information don’t exist, Rini stated, whereas others are withheld beneath claimed exemptions. 

Rini additionally stated cameras on the facility have “blind spots” and that some officers don’t file reviews. In its letter, PLS urged the Sheriff’s Division to take away or cut back these “blind spots.”  

What comes subsequent 

PLS has not but acquired a response from the Sheriff’s Division to its letter, Rini stated. 

“We’ll proceed following up with them to see form of what their motion steps are going to be and what they intend to do to deal with the challenges that we outlined,” he stated. “My hope is that we are going to obtain some responses and that they’ll be public of their intentions of how they’ll deal with these issues.”

The division didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark from Boston.com.

The state Lawyer Common’s Workplace is main a legal investigation into Kenny’s demise. 

“My prayers are with Shacoby Kenny’s household and family members as they proceed to grieve,” Lawyer Common Andrea Pleasure Campbell stated in a press release Thursday. 

She stated she couldn’t present additional data “out of respect” for the legal investigation.