By John Cheves
Lexington Herald-Leader
LEXINGTON, Ky. — Officials feared a gang riot last November at Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville after inmates discovered a guard was planting contraband tattoo needles in cells during searches, resulting in solitary confinement and other punishments, newly reviewed state records show.
Inmates wanted revenge on Correctional Officer Christopher A. Ford, who planted the needles, and his fellow guards, according to a March 24 Internal Affairs report. At least one inmate punched Ford in the face, requiring the guard to be taken to the hospital for treatment.
Many of the aggrieved inmates belonged to prison gangs, referred to in the report as “security threat groups,” investigators wrote.
“Investigators found that Officer Ford’s actions likely resulted in a large portion of the inmate population, including several Security Threat Groups, to agree on a violent response towards many, if not all, staff members at the Kentucky State Penitentiary,” investigators wrote.
“At the time of the conclusion of this investigation, investigators are still assessing the probability and likelihood of said violent response,” they wrote.
The Herald-Leader obtained the report and related documents from the Kentucky Department of Corrections through the Kentucky Open Records Act.
Ford quit his $43,586-a-year job Nov. 20, 2025, after Internal Affairs investigators interviewed him about the misconduct allegations he faced.
Insulting the inmates
Ford initially denied planting needles, but later admitted to it, investigators said.
In a brief, handwritten resignation letter, Ford cited “a hostile work environment and familial health issues.”
Apart from planting contraband, investigators suspected Ford wrote a graffiti message on an inmate’s cell wall threatening a female prison employee — a message Ford claimed to discover during a search of the cell.
“U R dead (female employee’s name),” the recently scribbled message said. “She next one.”
The graffiti closely resembled Ford’s handwriting but not the handwriting of the inmate who lived in the cell, investigators wrote. That inmate read the message out loud “with difficulty” when he was asked to, suggesting he was not familiar with the words, they added.
Also, in an interview with Internal Affairs, Ford admitted to insulting inmates by calling them a “check in.” That’s prison slang for an inmate who requests protective custody because they are too scared for their safety to remain in the prison’s general population.
Asked whom he had called a “check in,” Ford replied: “Probably every Inmate in this institution.”
The 856-bed Kentucky State Penitentiary is a castle-like, maximum-security prison built in the 19th century on the Cumberland River in Western Kentucky’s Lyon County . It houses the state’s death row unit.
When investigators told Ford his actions raised tempers in the prison to a dangerous boiling point, “Officer Ford expressed he now understood and that he was deeply apologetic,” they wrote.
‘A serious violation’
Ford could not be reached for comment for this story.
Morgan Hall, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, told the Herald-Leader this week that inmates at Kentucky State Penitentiary did not riot as a result of Ford’s actions.
“There was no widespread unrest or riot tied to this situation,” Hall said.
“Situations like the one you reference highlight just how critical correctional officers are in maintaining safety and security,” she continued. “Planting contraband is a serious violation that undermines the integrity of the system, and when it occurs, we take appropriate action.”
Report: Guards smuggled drugs into one of Kentucky’s most notorious prisons
The Department of Corrections tries to keep contraband like drugs and weapons out of prisons, she said, with prevention measures including pat-down searches; body scanners; allowing only clear bags that must pass through the belt of an X-ray machine; and limiting personal items for employees, vendors and visitors, among other rules.
The department encourages anyone with information about prison contraband to report it, she said.
Threats of impending violence
Guards at Kentucky State Penitentiary started to hear warnings about impending violence early last November from informants among the inmates and from inmates’ phone calls to the outside, which are monitored for security purposes.
Prisoners were asking their loved ones for money, then stocking up on commissary snacks to prepare for an extended lockdown in their cells.
“These gang members told everybody to use the phones and go to canteen this week, because this weekend, they’re going to tear this place up,” one inmate told his girlfriend in a phone call Nov. 6, 2025. “It’s about to get bad. Man, it’s about to get bad in here, man. And I’m going to need to stock up my cell.”
The anger was fueled by inmates who said they were unfairly punished for contraband that wasn’t theirs.
On Nov. 10, 2025, several high-ranking gang members in 5 Cellhouse complained to a correctional lieutenant that one of them had been framed for keeping tattoo needles in his cell. As a result, they said, the inmate was sent to segregated housing and denied early parole release.
The inmate said he wasn’t a tattoo artist and had no new tattoos, so he had no need for needles.
The inmates’ gang “is known to typically avoid any form of attack against or on staff,” investigators observed, “although a circumstance in which a staff member intentionally fabricated a narrative that would cause a high-ranking member to lose parole eligibility or ultimately compromise their freedom could cause the organization to change its position on respecting staff safety.”
Internal Affairs is called
An Internal Affairs investigation began days later, led by the Department of Corrections’ central office in Frankfort.
The probe focused on Ford, who said he discovered at least four needles in a single day. He denied planting contraband in cells, saying that would be immoral.
After interviewing a number of people inside the prison, Internal Affairs Capt. Bert Bare told Ford he didn’t believe Ford’s version of events.
“Capt. Bare explained that he had never seen such a variety of inmates so upset at one specific officer for seemingly nothing, and (he) asked Officer Ford what he did to upset such a large portion of the inmate population,” according to the report.
“Officer Ford stated that he can only imagine, the way he talks to them, stating: ‘It’s not professional, I’m trying to fix it. But I’ll say, ‘Hey, you shut the f—k up, you check in.’”
A guard confesses
After a 10-minute break in the interview to give Ford time alone to think, the guard admitted he planted some needles in inmates’ cells, according to the report. He told Bare he found the needles on prison walkways and placed them in random cells as he walked into them to conduct searches.
In a statement he wrote soon afterward, Ford said he didn’t realize the punishment for the inmates he framed would be so severe, including parole denial and the loss of highly valued “good-time” credits, which can cut short a prison sentence.
The planted tattoo needles are only the latest in a series of scandals involving Department of Corrections employees to be made public recently by the Herald-Leader.
The newspaper reported April 8 about guards at Southeast State Correctional Complex, in Floyd County, who abused their authority by planting a weapon on an inmate, using racist slurs toward Black inmates, daring inmates to fight them, tossing contraband over the perimeter fence rather than investigate it and various other offenses that were covered up for months, according to state records.
Guards at Lee Adjustment Center in Lee County abused a handcuffed inmate last year and weren’t initially candid about what happened during the episode, leading to a civil rights lawsuit and a shakeup in prison leadership, the newspaper reported March 20.
And the Herald-Leader has reported extensively about staff members physically and sexually abusing inmates and smuggling drugs at Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex in Morgan County. Some of those cases have led to serious criminal charges against the employees.
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