Morgan Selected as CO of the Year
If unrest ever occurs at an Ohio prison, nearby residents need not be quite so alarmed. That’s because the training and expertise provided by CO Donald Ray Morgan will minimize any danger.
Morgan works at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. He’s the leader of the Southeast Regional Special Tactics and Response (STAR) team that’s on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond to prison riots. The elite group is made up of one or two members from each institution in the state’s four correctional regions.
His leadership earned him the title of Correctional Officer of the Year. On May 6, in Arlington, Va., the International Association of Correctional Officers (IACO) bestowed the honor upon Morgan, a member of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association/ AFSCME Local 11.
As a STAR team leader, Morgan is responsible for his group’s training schedule, and he makes certain the training is thorough: Although the state requires a minimum of eight hours a month, his personnel train at least 16 hours. They just returned from a week-long session in Moundsville, W.Va.
Morgan served on a committee that revamped the state’s physical fitness test for all STAR members. “Four otherpeople and I sat down and came up with proposals on how we felt the physical testing needed to be changed in order to not only pick better-caliber SRT [special response team] personnel throughout the state, but also to make it fair so that the average individual would still be able to participate in the program.”
If personnel fail the test, they can be removed. The committee’s task was to introduce compliance standards that ensure the integrity of the response-team’s mission. Their review resulted in policy modifications that reflect major changes in physical fitness testing.
Through his STAR membership, Morgan also has been trained as a certified tracking instructor. That came in handy when the Scioto County Sheriff’s Department requested that he help track a missing 4-year-old girl who had wandered off with her dog into a mountain-ous area.
Morgan’s assistance in recovering the girl earned him the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections Gold Star Award last year.
