Pittsburgh Lockup Accounts for 43% of Pennsylvania Jail TASER Use, Suit Filed
According to an investigative report published on January 30, 2025, guards at Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) accounted for nearly half of all use of taser weapons on detainees and prisoners in Pennsylvania. That revelation followed a lawsuit filed by a former detainee allegedly Tasered while handcuffed at the lockup.
The investigation found that ACJ guards deployed the weapon 183 times in 2023, accounting for 43% of all such Taser use in jails statewide. This was not a new development, either; guards used a Taser at the jail 146 times in 2019, representing half of all such deployments in Pennsylvania that year.
Nevertheless, Allegheny County Prison Employees Union Pres. Brian Englert blamed a later voter initiative passed in 2021, which banned the use of solitary confinement, restraint chairs and chemical agents at the jail. “We’ve been handcuffed by the voters here. All our tools are gone,” he said. “When you have people that are engaged in a violent confrontation, you either go hands-on or use the Taser.”
That doesn’t explain the apparent overuse of a Taser before the referendum. Nor does it excuse the use of the weapon on handcuffed detainee Brian Estep, 29, after he was booked into the jail for drunk driving in February 2024. Two McCandless cops joined three other guards in the holding cell with Estep, when one of them, Patrick Jennings, told fellow cop Todd Ray to leave the room because he had an activated body-worn camera (BWC).
“Dude, get out of here. You got your shit on,” Jennings said.
Ray then left the cell, but his BWC picked up the crackle of the Taser as it was used on Estep—along with the detainee’s grunts. Estep was later found guilty of DUI and simple assault at a bench trial in September 2024 and received an 18-month probated sentence. The suit was filed on his behalf in state court in December 2024 by attorneys Anthony J. Gianetti and Adam D. Shor with Shwartz Culleton PC in Pittsburgh. On January 21, 2025, it was removed to the federal court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, where it remains pending. See: Estep v. Allegheny Cty., USDC (W.D. Penn.), Case No. 2:25-cv-00095.
Additional sources: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, WTAE
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