A Pittsburgh man sued ten Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) correctional officers, two former administrators, and the county itself in federal court Wednesday morning alleging a violation of his constitutional rights due to excessive force and a failure to adequately train and supervise staff at the county jail.
According to court documents, Kush Wilkerson, age 29, has been incarcerated at ACJ in pretrial detention since July 5, 2023, after his arrest on felony robbery and aggravated assault charges dating to an incident on December 12, 2022. (Wilkerson was on probation as part of a 2016 guilty plea on kidnapping for ransom charges at the time of his 2023 arrest.)
The lawsuit asserts that correctional officers used excessive force during a July 12, 2023 incident which began after Wilkerson encountered a former cellmate who allegedly performed lewd acts in front of him during a 2021 jail stay related to a simple assault charge.
Wilkerson, believing a separation from contact was in place between him and this individual, became “shocked and upset” upon seeing him and then “swatted his former cellmate on the back of the head,” according to the complaint. He says that approximately 15–30 minutes later a correctional officer led him into a nearby sallyport and tased him as he was being handcuffed. Wilkerson says he was punched and tased again and then attempted to “squeeze through the wicket opening to get back on the pod,” after which point he alleges he was physically assaulted by “approximately 8–10 correctional officers” who kicked and punched him to the point that he lost a dental implant and blacked out multiple times.
The complaint states that other incarcerated individuals attempted to intervene by yelling and throwing coffee and water at the officers. The complaint states that Wilkerson filed a Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) grievance in response to the alleged tasings, but it was dismissed without a physical examination–according to the complaint.
A press release from the Abolitionist Law Center announcing Wilkerson’s lawsuit describes Sergeant Hunter Sarver as “the main perpetrator of the assault.” According to the complaint, Sarver tased Wilkerson four times, including “once on his scrotum and once on his rectum.” The complaint continues: “Mr. Wilkerson was fully handcuffed and on the ground when Defendant Sarver deployed the taser in his rectum.”
The lawsuit names former ACJ Warden Orlando Harper and former deputies as “supervisory defendants” and alleges that they “failed to adequately train, supervise, and discipline ACJ correction officers for such conduct, which has resulted in the rampant use of unlawful force on people incarcerated at ACJ.” Harper retired as warden in September 2023 and was replaced by Trevor Wingard in January 2025. Neither of the other men are employed at the jail.
Allegheny County spokesperson Abigail Gardner declined to comment for this story. A message left with a representative of a union representing jail sergeants was not immediately returned. Brian Englert, president of the Allegheny County Prison Employees Independent Union, which represents some of the correctional officers named in the lawsuit, said that he has watched surveillance video of the incident and disagrees with some of the assertions made in Wilkerson’s complaint, though he would not go into specific detail citing pending litigation.
According to the complaint, the alleged assault “caused serious physical and mental injuries to Mr. Wilkerson, many of which persist to this day–including headaches, a worsened memory, a persistent eye glare, nearly daily rectal bleeding, increased anxiety and paranoia, routine nightmares, and vivid flashbacks.”
“The reason we thought it was so important to bring this case forward is not just because of how brutal the assault was, but the fact that it’s evidence of a pattern that we’ve seen,” said Dolly Prabhu with the Abolitionist Law Center (ALC), one of Wilkerson’s legal representatives.
A May 2025 investigation by PublicSource, cited in ALC’s press release, reported that Sarver was named in seven lawsuits over five years. ALC claims that these lawsuits, five of which were closed or dismissed, echo allegations similar to those in the present complaint of “excessive force and sexualized violence”.
Wilkerson is a hip-hop artist who performs under the name “Kush Wilkes.” His track “Level 5” has over one hundred thousand views on YouTube. He is represented in this case by Prabhu, Jaclyn Kurin, and Bret Grote, all of the ALC.
“I’ve known Kush for several years as a promising young hip-hop artist. I’m outraged at this brutal and cowardly assault,” said Saleem Holbrook, ALC’s executive director, in a prepared statement. “The behavior and depravity by the defendants outlined in the complaint can only demonstrate an atmosphere where this behavior is tolerated or ignored. If this is business as usual at ACJ, this complaint will be the one to put an end to it.”
According to ALC’s filing, in 2023, the year Wilkerson alleges the assault took place, Allegheny County Jail used stun devices on incarcerated individuals 183 times–over five times as often as the second-highest county and accounting for approximately 43% of the uses statewide.
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. He brings claims under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Rehabilitation Act “as a qualified individual with psychiatric disabilities who faced discrimination on that basis.” Wilkerson seeks a jury trial along with compensatory and punitive damages.
