Thursday, 4:30 PM
Former correction officer pleads guilty to making racial threats against Sheriff Cousins
By Andrew Ryan, Globe Correspondent
A former correction officer pleaded guilty today to criminal harassment and other charges for invoking the name of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin in a threatening message directed at Essex County Sheriff Frank G. Cousins, Jr., the first African-American to head a county correctional system in the state.
Scott "Tiny" Thompson, 41, was spared prison time for pleading guilty in Lynn District Court to harassment and two counts of threats to commit a crime. Thompson, who worked at the Essex County House of Correction at Middleton, received a two-year suspended sentence and three years probation.
The former correction officer, who stands 6-feet-4 and has a tattoo on his left forearm of the Confederate flag, admitted posting threatening messages on the Essex County Corrections Officers Association website under the screen name "The Shadow Knows" between July 2004 and September 2005. As a solution to labor problems with the sheriff, Thompson wrote on the website: "There was someone who can help, but James Earl Ray is dead!"
Cousins told investigators at the time that he felt threatened by the reference to King's killer.
Thompson was a lieutenant when he resigned in 1999, long before he wrote the messages. He was also ordered today by Judge Dominic J. Paratore to perform 300 hours of community service and told him to say away from Cousins, his family, and the Middleton jail.
