Over 30 West Virginia Prison Guard Trainees Suspended Over Nazi Salute Photo
A photo taken by graduates of a West Virginia prison training course doing the Nazi salute. Image by Office of the Governor of West Virginia
(JTA) — More than 30 employees of West Virginia’s Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation have been suspended over a photo showing trainees making a Nazi salute.
The photo of dozens of participants in a basic training class reads “Hail Byrd!” at the top, a reference to a training instructor for the class.
Two correctional academy trainers and a cadet from the class shown in the picture were fired, The Washington Post reported.
The class was conducted Oct. 21 through Nov. 27, local news station WCHS reported.
“It is distasteful, hurtful, disturbing, highly insensitive and completely inappropriate,” West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety Secretary Jeff Sandy said of the photo in a memo obtained by The Post. “It betrays the professionalism I have seen time and time again displayed and practiced by our brave correctional employees.”
Sandy has not said how or when the photo came to his attention.
He also said that faith and community leaders were informed of the incident and were asked for their help to address it, including recommending changes or additions to the training program.
It was released by the department with the faces of the trainees and others in the photo blurred.
Division of Corrections Commissioner Betsy Jividen ordered all copies of the photo be destroyed or otherwise taken out of circulation, according to WCHS.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
