By Aaron Aupperlee
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
GREENSBURG, Pa. — An Allegheny County Jail sergeant was suspended without pay, jail officials said Monday, but they refused to explain their reasons, citing a confidentiality policy that applies to personnel matters.
Sgt. Andrew J. Coulter was asked to leave the jail Monday.
“They really didn’t elaborate on anything,” Coulter said during a brief phone interview. “There’s a lot I could say to clarify. … I want to give my side of the story. I’m not trying to violate jail policy.”
Amie Downs, a spokesman for Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, confirmed Coulter’s suspension but would not comment further.
Coulter was hired in 2003. He makes $73,000 a year.
Downs, Warden Orlando Harper and Coulter would not comment on whether the suspension involves a three-year protection from abuse order Jamie Coulter, his ex-wife, filed against him in February 2013 and finalized in November of that year. The order doesn’t expire until November 2016.
“I don’t want to wish nothing bad on anybody,” Jamie Coulter said Monday after learning her ex-husband had been suspended. “They have known about his past.”
Jamie Coulter sought the protection-from-abuse order, which remains active, after two of Andrew Coulter’s children came home from a visit with him and complained that he had abused them. It evicted Andrew Coulter from the McKeesport home he once shared with his family, gave custody of the children to Jamie Coulter, prohibited contact with his children and barred him from possessing firearms.
The couple finalized a divorce this year, said Lauren Darbouze, Jamie Coulter’s attorney.
Andrew Coulter, 33, now living in White Oak, according to court records, worked as a firearms instructor at the jail despite the court order, a concern Darbouze said she raised during the couple’s divorce proceedings. Darbouze said Andrew Coulter’s attorneys argued his work as a firearms instructor did not violate the protection-from-abuse order because he did not take the firearms home.
Andrew Coulter’s attorney, Rochelle L. Bosack, did not return multiple calls for comment.
Harper on Friday declined to discuss Andrew Coulter’s duties at the jail, citing security concerns. Nor would he talk about the jail’s policy regarding protection-from-abuse orders against employees because it is a personnel matter. He would not address how Andrew Coulter could maintain his role as a firearms instructor under the provisions of the protection from abuse order.
“Generally, the policy at the county jail is that any employee who has a contact with the justice system (citation, court appearance, charges, etc.) must make notification of that contact to jail administration. Violation of the policy will result in discipline,” Harper wrote in an email Friday.
Guards do not carry guns at the jail, but they do if they transport an inmate outside the jail, Downs said.
There are weapons at the jail that can be used in the event of an emergency.
FBI files leaked to the Trib revealed in 2013 that jail leaders suspected that Andrew Coulter told federal agents about former Maj. James Donis, who was sentenced to eight months in a halfway house and five years probation in 2013 for falsifying reports to hide his abuse of inmate Gary Barbour, a heroin addict who tried to escape the jail in 2010.
Several jail guards believed that supervisors began initiating reprisals against Andrew Coulter in 2011, the FBI files showed. A high-ranking official twice lodged disciplinary charges against Andrew Coulter, even when county police cleared the sergeant of wrongdoing. While the FBI probe continued, the jail stripped him of his “pass days” away from the lockup, and Donis fired him from his job coaching at the firing range. The FBI files showed that officials leaked to junior personnel confidential and embarrassing information about Andrew Coulter’s disciplinary hearings.