Kevin “Rashid” Johnson details how Virginia prison guards working at the state’s remote locations are repeatedly abusing mostly Black prisoners — and sometimes getting away with it. 

On Jan 28, 2025, three Virginia prison guards at Greensville Correctional Center were reported as having been criminally charged for violent assaults on prisoners. (1)

Greensville is one of Virginia’s predominantly Black-staffed prisons that houses medium security level prisoners. Thanks to the cabal of good ‘ol boys at VaDOC headquarters, all of the state’s maximum and super-max prisons are now concentrated in rural segregated white communities and have almost all Black prisoner populations, where racist abuse is the norm and well known. (2)

On Nov 23, 2023, a Black man, Demetrius Wallace, was beaten by a mob of white Virginia prison guards at the state’s notorious and remote Red Onion State Prison, while repeatedly being taunted with racist names. All the guards were wearing activated body cameras at the time. Surveillance cameras also captured the assault. This was a hate crime.

But none of these Virginia prison guards was charged.

In a desperate response to that and other examples of abuse, Demetrius set himself on fire on  September 2024. As was revealed in the media, Red Onion officials were considering having him criminally prosecuted for this. (3)

As reported by his mother, Tomeka Wallace, Demetrius was assaulted again by a guard who hit him in the face using handcuffs as brass knuckles. That was on top of reportedly being slammed by several guards face first to a concrete floor while handcuffed behind his back and legs shackled. His mother has appealed to officials throughout the state government to intervene on her son’s behalf, fearing for his life at Red Onion. Nothing has been done. No one has been criminally charged in these assaults.

On April 13, 2024, this time at Virginia’s remote River North prison, Walter Kissee was mauled by a prison attack dog while he was lying defenseless on the floor in handcuffs and leg shackles, blinded from mace. The dog was allowed to rip a softball-sized chunk of muscle from his leg, leaving Kissee crippled and confined to a wheelchair. Although he had to have multiple surgeries, no one was charged in this barbaric and gruesome assault. The VaDOC has kept this assault under wraps.

There is obviously a double standard at play.

Two Virginia delegates, Holly Siebold and Michael Jones, separately visited Red Onion state prison in 2024 and they reported inhumane, abusive and racist conditions there. Still, no criminal charges have been made against these remote prisons for these abuses.

In fact, Brett Hall, the prosecuting attorney for Wise County, where Red Onion is located, has stated in the media that he and Red Onion staff have a great relationship. (4) And according to local obituaries and other records, the VaDOC director Chadwick Dotson, is a member of the Mullins and Dotson family clan who have been running the prisons in this remote county. And Dotson was both a judge and prosecutor in Wise County before he became the Director of the VaDOC. You don’t criminally prosecute your buddies and relatives.

Is it a mystery then that just as the media picks up on the stories of prisoners setting themselves on fire, guards at a predominantly Black-staffed prison in central VA are suddenly criminally charged with abuse — while no one at the rural white-staffed prisons has been charged?

In a recent conversation I had with Tomeka Wallace, Demetrius’s mother, she pointed out that the publicized arrests of Greensville guards seems a ploy to divert media attention away from the remote prisons and the KNOWN extreme racism and abuses occurring there.  But the people are waking up to the TRUE corrupt workings of officials, and the games they play to cover up their dirt and manipulate public trust.

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!

_____________________

Endnotes:

1. Laura French, “Virginia Correctional Officers Arrested at Greensville Correctional Center” CBS 6, Jan 28, 2025

2. Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, “Who’s Running the Virginia Prison System?” (2025) http://rashidmod.com/?p=3662

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, “Racist Politics in Virginia: Virginia Prisons Operate Under an Apartheid System” (2024) http://rashidmod.com/?p=3557

3. Demetrius Wallace, “I Set Myself On Fire! Statement of Demetrius Wallace on Experiences With Racism, Neglect, Retaliation and Abuse at Red Onion State Prison” (2024) http://rashidmod.com/?p=3667

4. Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, “Prisoners Burned Themselves. So Staff Discussed Making Them Pay Money” Jan 8, 2025 http://theappeal.org/red-onion-virginia-prison-self…/