Corrections Officer Who Called Black Inmate the N-Word Is Getting Fired — for the Third Time

A 61-year-old Georgia corrections officer has been fired for the third time in a decade after calling an inmate on suicide watch a racial slur.

Officer Gregory Hubert Brown, a corrections officer at the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office, called a prisoner on suicide watch a “crazy” N-word, according to a colleague and other inmates who were nearby. An official statement from the sheriff’s office released Sunday night offered scant details but said Brown was placed on administrative leave without pay immediately and would be fired from the job within 72 hours.

The racist incident will mark the third time Brown has been fired from a correctional facility job in a decade, according to Georgia Peace Officer recorders obtained by the Atlantic Journal-Constitution. The first was in December 2010, after getting into a heated argument with a fellow corrections officer after he was asked to complete a form keeping track of inmate headcounts at the Coweta County Prison. Records say that Brown replied by threatening the officer with physical violence before pushing him with his chest.

After getting another job at the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office a year later, this time as a jail officer, he was promptly fired in March 2012 for negligently locking his fellow officers in cells with other inmates on at least three different occasions while working in the jail’s control room. Records also show that during this stint, Brown tried to open at least two different cell doors without authorization from a higher-up and used an emergency override to open another section of cells without proper justification, according to the Atlantic Journal-Constitution. 

In 2013, Brown was inexplicably rehired by the Clayton County Sheriff’s office. VICE News reached out the sheriff’s office but did not hear back in time for publication.

Brown’s termination is the second firing at the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office in recent weeks. Earlier this month, a sheriff’s office deputy was fired after video of him repeatedly punching a black man pinned to the ground during a routine traffic stop went viral. The incident, which was caught on camera by a nearby onlooker, set off an immediate internal investigation and the unidentified officer was placed on administrative leave before being fired for using excessive force shortly after.