Anger after London guard calls himself 'babysitter' of 'socially inept' on social media
Family of dead inmate calls comment made by EMDC Correctional Services officer 'disgusting'
It's unclear whether an Ontario corrections officer who works at the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre is under investigation after complaints surfaced that he described his job as a "babysitter of criminal delinquents and socially inept adults" on social media.
The jail guard, who the CBC is not identifying, works at London's EMDC, a troubled facility where 13 people have died in the last decade.
He posted the description of his job on the social website Facebook and the dating website Bumble.
It's the second time in a month that an Ontario Correctional Services employee has been caught making offhand comments about their duties on social media.
CBC News tried to contact the London jail guard for comment on Monday, but has yet to receive a response. The Correctional Services employee removed his Facebook profile from public view shortly after the request was made.
Brent Ross, a spokesman for the Ministry of Community Services and Correctional Services, confirmed Monday that the man is an employee.
"There are times when personal opinions expressed by individual employees do not reflect the values of our ministry nor its correctional staff," Ross wrote in an email.
"It would be inappropriate to provide further comment given this deals with human resources matters."
But that comes as no comfort to Judy Struthers, who lost her son Justin inside the jail in 2017. She said she finds the man's description of his job "disgusting."
"Somebody in this government really has to wake up and start making changes," she said. "That's a person who's in there to be looking after people who are going through for rehabilitation?"
"It's disgusting."
'We can't get honest answers'
It's been nearly nine months since Justin was found dead inside the jail on Boxing Day 2017 and Struthers said she still can't get a straight answer about what really happened to him.
"We can't get honest answers from anybody," she said. "Something doesn't add up."
The 29-year-old was found dead with a blanket wrapped around his neck. At the time, police said there was no foul play and that Justin had choked himself to death after a fight with two inmates.
However, Struthers said she believes the official story from police and corrections officers doesn't stack up and she wasn't the only person who thought so.
Two different stories
"The coroner, when he phoned, he said, 'what I'm seeing and what I'm being told are two completely different things," she said.
There was not one mark on his neck- Judy Struthers
After being denied requests to see their grandson's body by police and the funeral home, Judy Struthers and her husband Glen finally got to see Justin an hour before the visitation.
What they saw was horrific.
"His left eye was a good inch back from his right one. His nose was busted. His mouth and lips were all blood. The whole left side of his face was just a mass of bruises. His ears were like someone kicked them and broke all the blood vessels in them."
'Not one mark on his neck'
According to the police investigation, Justin had choked himself to death after a fight with two other inmates, but Struthers said he didn't seem to have any marks to indicate the choking or the fight took place.
"There was not one mark on his neck," Struthers said. "There was not one mark on his knuckles or his hands."
Where Struthers did find marks was on the back of Justin's wrists, as if they had been through "a paper shredder" and Struthers believes it may suggest her grandson was restrained at the time of his beating.
"They can tell me until they're blue in the face that that was suicide. I worked in the healthcare field for 25 years. I have been choked by residents in the nursing home and I had marks on my neck for over a month from a little, old lady."
Struthers said an Ontario coroner has since told her that Justin's brain will be sent to the Ontario Chief Coroner's Office in Toronto for further testing.
'Changes need to be made'
In the meantime, Struthers and her husband Glen have been visiting the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre every Saturday since June.
There, they along with the families of other inmates who died at the notorious jail have been trying to raise awareness for the inmates they call "the lost souls of corrections."
She said the attitude of some Ontario corrections officers needs to change, noting she, her husband and her daughter were shown disrespect by a jail guard arriving to work as recently as this Saturday, when he gave them the finger.
"Changes need to be made big time," she said, noting her grandson died because he was sent to jail, instead of being treated at a hospital for his mental health crisis.
"Justin was sentenced for mental health, but you don't get mental health in jail," she said. "We don't want that to happen to anyone else. The guards need more training. They need to hire more staff."
The Ontario Liberal government under former premier Kathleen Wynne promised to take actions on fixing Ontario's troubled jail system, hiring Howard Sapers as an independent adviser on correctional system reform.
After the defeat of the Liberal government this summer, Sapers is one of the few Liberal appointees who haven't been removed by the new Ontario Progressive Conservative government, which is also promising to fix Ontario corrections system.
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