Probation office ignored alert that North Side funeral shooting suspect shed ankle monitor

Two days before police say Shawn Davis shot five people at a North Side funeral on Oct. 28, Allegheny County Adult Probation received an alert that his electronic monitoring ankle bracelet had been removed.

No action was taken.

“We get a lot of alerts,” Probation Supervisor Jason Bright testified in a court hearing Friday. “They’re not all legit.

“If you get an alert, it’s not immediately checked upon.”

In Davis’ case, it wasn’t checked at all — until after he was charged with attempting to kill five people.

Bright was called as a witness on Friday during a bail hearing in an unrelated homicide case.

Deputy District Attorney Stephanie Ramaley, who was opposing bail for that defendant, was trying to show Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Beth A. Lazzara that electronic home monitoring — increasingly used by probation and pre-trial services — is unreliable in keeping the community safe.

Electronic home monitoring, Ramaley said, is not appropriate “particularly in extremely dangerous, violent individuals.

“It will not (protect) public safety in Allegheny County the way it’s being run.”

A message left with the probation department was not immediately returned.

Bright, who supervises nine probation officers in the Electronic Home Monitoring unit, said during his testimony that EHM works using an ankle bracelet that is tethered by radio frequency to a box in the subject’s home. That box is then connected to the probation office by a landline or cellphone.

If the subject removes the device, or goes out of range of the box, an alert is made to the probation office.

Bright said there is one person tasked with monitoring all the EHM alerts overnight, and two during other shifts.

The person monitoring the alerts will sometimes call the subject to see if it’s a false alert, but often, Bright said, they just make a note of the alert and report it to the subject’s probation officer via call or email.

“There’s always an intermediate step alerting a supervisor. They never call the police themselves?” Lazzara asked.

Bright said that was the case.

“We give them discretion to handle their cases,” he said.

In Davis’ case, according to court records, he was placed on EHM on April 28 after pleading guilty to attempted aggravated assault for an attempted shooting at a Downtown electronics store.

Judge Thomas E. Flaherty sentenced Davis, of McKees Rocks, to 10 to 23 months incarceration and immediately paroled him to EHM.

On June 13, probation issued a request for a warrant for Davis, after EHM recorded four separate alerts of unauthorized leave or entry between June 9-13.

Davis told his probation officer he had been leaving to go to his girlfriend’s house even though he was not permitted to do so.

Although he was warned about his behavior, Davis again left his home on June 15.

“It is respectfully recommended that due to the refusal to comply with community supervision, the severity and violent nature of the present offense, Davis remain detained and a (probation) hearing be scheduled at the court’s earliest convenience,” wrote Probation Officer Brandon Bailey.

Bright reviewed and signed that request.

However, following a June 24 hearing before Charlene Christmas, who is listed in paperwork as a hearing officer, it was determined that Davis would get new EHM equipment. He was released on June 28.

During Friday’s hearing, Ramaley played a recorded video-call between Davis and an inmate at Allegheny County Jail from Sept. 25.

In the call, Davis demonstrated to the other inmate how he could take his EHM bracelet off and on.

First Darohn Winmon, Davis’ friend who is incarcerated, asked “You didn’t need to cut it?”

Davis held up the bracelet to the camera.

“Ohhhhh,” Winmon cheers. “Oh my God.”

“I tried to show my dad, bro, and I took it off and I put it back on, and then I just wear (stuff,)” Davis said. “I took it off and put it back on. My P.O. caught me like, ‘What’re you doing?’ He said, ‘Yeah, equipment (messing) up. I’m about to slide it on. He slid on, put a new anklet on, and he left.

“This one’s a little shorter, so it’s a little harder to put it back on.”

Then Winmon asked Davis to take it off again to show his friend with him at the jail.

“It’s the weekend, though, so I ain’t tripping about my P.O. coming here right now or nothing,” Davis said.

It is unclear from court records whether probation received additional alerts between September and Oct. 26. But that day, Bright testified, probation received an alert about Davis.

“There was a no-motion alert?” Judge Lazzara asked. “It was pretty much ignored?”

“Yes,” Bright answered.

“They get inundated with hundreds of these emails. You get hundreds of false alerts, and one slips through,” he continued.

When Bright spoke to Davis’ probation officer about what happened after the shooting at the funeral, Bright testified, the officer’s first response was “this is all of these false alerts.’

“It’s like the boy who cried wolf, and then something horrible happened,” Bright said.

Three weeks after the shooting at the funeral, he said, what happened in Davis’ case has still not been thoroughly evaluated.

“No, I would not say a full-blown investigation,” Bright said.

He said that, in investigating the alerts, probation officers “quite often” give the subject the benefit of the doubt and additional chances.

“There is a balance,” Bright said. “We don’t want anyone to go to jail because our equipment is faulty.”

Related:

• Police failed to patrol Brighton Heights funeral despite request
• Police: 5 shot at funeral