Multiple KY probation officers preyed on felons they were supposed to help reform
Using public records, the Herald-Leader identified at least seven Kentucky probation and parole officers who over the last several years were either fired, allowed to resign or convicted of crimes after they were accused of improperly pursing offenders on their caseloads for personal relationships or sex.
The circumstances ranged from as casual as contacting female offenders on Facebook and making flirtatious comments to as severe as rape and sodomy.
It’s unusual for probation and parole officers to get in trouble for crossing professional boundaries like this on their caseloads, said Robert Greenwood, an assistant professor in the Criminal Justice Department at Madonna University in Livonia, Mich.
The more common problem is officers simply failing at their job by not monitoring offenders like they’re supposed to, Greenwood said.
Greenwood is himself a former probation and parole officer who worked in Detroit and elsewhere. As an academic, he has researched the challenges of the job, such as heavy caseloads and mandatory overtime.
Offenders on community supervision should know they have rights if their officer tries to start an inappropriate relationship with them, Greenwood said. Report the abuse to the officer’s supervisor, he said, and if you have an attorney, get your lawyer involved in filing a grievance.
“Now, when an offender reports this, it’s kind of like my word against yours,” Greenwood acknowledged. “But then, when I left probation and parole, I was a manager, and if an offender came to me and told me something like this was happening, I wouldn’t just sit on it. I would investigate it, right?”
“In all law enforcement, police, whatever, you got bad apples. You know, everybody’s not squeaky clean,” he said. “I’m not making an excuse, but, you know when you have the human element in it, not everyone’s going to be ethically sound.”
The seven Kentucky officers identified in public records were:
Paul Duncan
Paul Travis Duncan, 48, a probation and parole officer in the Department of Corrections’ Mayfield office, was allowed to resign in December 2024.
Investigators said Duncan made improper verbal and physical advances on several female offenders on his caseload, and he commented inappropriately on their physical attractiveness to colleagues. He moved one female offender and her kids into his house for a brief period, investigators said.
Duncan failed to report at least one of the women who tested positive for cocaine use. He said it “slipped my mind,” according to the investigative report. The woman, in turn, blamed Duncan for letting her continue to use cocaine, saying she “could have been clean months earlier if he had done his job the right way.”
“He plays on single mothers who — literally, all of us are trying to either get sober, stay sober or find a place to stay,” the woman told investigators. “He legit was wanting to get married. Like, he talks about marriage. He talks about being intimate.”
Tyler Hinds
Tyler Glenn Hinds, 33, was convicted by a Hardin Circuit Court jury in 2023 of third-degree rape and third-degree sodomy.
An investigation showed Hinds had a sexual relationship with a woman on his caseload and invited her to his home via Facebook messages.
“Come over to have sex,” he bluntly wrote to her at one point.
He was sentenced to a year in prison and is now on parole supervision.
Ron Tyler
Ronald Raye Tyler, 58, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Louisville in 2024 to five counts of deprivation of rights under color or law and one count of obstruction of justice.
Related to the same incidents, Tyler also pleaded guilty in Bullitt Circuit Court to official misconduct and evidence tampering.
Tyler sexually assaulted four female probationers he was supervising, according to his 2022 federal grand jury indictment and a lawsuit filed against him and the Department of Corrections by several of the probationers. Parts of the suit later were settled out of court on undisclosed terms; other parts were dismissed, including the claim against the Department of Corrections, which cited legal protection under sovereign immunity.
Prosecutors said they learned about Tyler’s crimes after one of the women moved from Kentucky to Ohio to get the drug addiction treatment she needed and to escape having Tyler as her probation officer. The woman’s treatment counselor in Ohio listened to her story and reported it to authorities, prosecutors said.
“In this case,” the women’s lawsuit alleged, “KY DOC, its director, its supervisors and its employees set up, allowed and then concealed the fact Defendant Tyler repeatedly sexually assaulted and abused non-violent female charges under his supervision and control.”
Tyler was sentenced to three years in prison on the federal charges and five years on probation on the state charges.
“The defendant is being held accountable for preying upon women who were under his supervision because of their probationary status,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement as Tyler was sentenced. “Probation officers should not use their position of authority to make unlawful and unwanted sexual advances on women, regardless of whether they are in custody or on probation.”
Javin Butler-Roberts
Javin O’Neal Butler-Roberts was fired May 5, 2022.
Butler-Roberts “engaged in inappropriate sexual communications with three probationers under his supervision. He did so to suit his own prurient interests,” according to state records.
The Executive Branch Ethics Commission fined him $3,000 on July 16, 2025.
The Division of Probation and Parole refused to provide more information about the reasons for Butler-Roberts’ firing. The officer was still in his initial 12-month probationary period of state employment when he was fired, so no explanation was owed to him or anyone else, the division told the Herald-Leader.
In a brief interview in November with the Herald-Leader, Butler-Roberts said he wanted to “move past” that period of his life and not discuss it further. He said he acknowledged his mistakes to the ethics commission last year, although he did not realize the sanctions against him would be made public.
A year after he was fired in Kentucky, Butler-Roberts was hired just across the Ohio River in Indiana as a police officer for the Evansville Police Department, where his salary is $67,770.
Sgt. Anthony Aussieker, public affairs officer, refused to say whether the Evansville Police Department was aware of Butler-Roberts’ troubled background in Kentucky law enforcement.
“I didn’t have any problems getting hired,” Butler-Roberts told the Herald-Leader. “They did their own digging into it and whatnot, and I didn’t have any issues.”
Jessica Hall
Jessica M. Hall resigned “with prejudice” Jan. 29, 2025, while under investigation for a sexual relationship with a felony offender.
Hall was responsible for supervising sex offenders in Madison, Estill, Lee and Owsley counties. She and a felony offender assigned to the Madison County probation and parole office — but not to her own caseload — told investigators they met at a Richmond bar in early 2024 and began a nearly yearlong relationship.
Hall admitted she used her access to the probation and parole computer database to improperly research the man and his criminal history. Officers are not supposed to use office computers to look up anyone but their own clients, and then only for official purposes.
“I guess once I looked him up, I should have known, that should have been the end of it,” Hall told investigators in an interview. “I did not realize it was, like, rape — like, I could be prosecuted.”
Under state law, the Class D felony of third-degree rape includes law-enforcement officers and correctional officers who have sex with people who are in custody or under supervision as an offender.
Hall’s romantic partner, the felon on supervised release, had to be reassured by investigators that he wasn’t the one in trouble for having an affair with a probation and parole officer.
“I explained to him that it was rape, but not on his end, on hers, something he appeared shocked to hear,” investigators wrote in their report. “I asked him if an officer gave him an order, would he follow it. He explained that he would have to, or face jail time.”
Andrew Pemberton
Andrew W. Pemberton was fired Feb. 10, 2024.
Pemberton had a sexual relationship with a felony offender and possibly was the father of her baby, according to state records.
The offender was not on Pemberton’s caseload, but Pemberton used his access to the probation and parole computer database to view confidential information about her and her supervision history, including the fact that she had outstanding arrest warrants on drug charges.
The offender told internal investigators she first met Pemberton around July 2023 when he texted her after seeing her phone number and photo on an escort website. They rendezvoused at a Louisville hotel.
When the woman was booked into the Kenton County Detention Center for a week in January 2024, Pemberton wrote to her on a jail messaging app: “I’m not like the other guys you been with I’m wanting us to be together start a family.” And: “Love you too I’m so sorry hope your doing ok.”
And: “If it’s our son please be with me.”
At the start of 2024, Pemberton told multiple colleagues he had a girlfriend who might be expecting his child, investigators wrote. He showed them the ultrasound. Another officer spotted the name of the expectant mother on the image and recognized her as a felony offender on supervision.
Pemberton admitted the relationship to internal investigators once confronted.
“I guess I’m going to go to jail,” he told investigators. “You can cuff me.”
The internal investigative report did not say if the woman’s child proved to be Pemberton’s.
Ahmaud Harris
Ahmaud Harris was fired March 5, 2025.
Harris lost his job over a number of different misconduct issues involving his use of social media, including his following several women from his offender caseload on Facebook, according to state records.
Harris, previously a jail deputy in Indiana, sent Facebook “friend” requests to female offenders, including one whose boyfriend complained to the Division of Probation and Parole, saying it was “weird” for an officer to reach out like that. Harris also posted “heart” emojis on female offenders’ Facebook photos.
An offender who ignored his friend request said Harris then texted her and started complimenting her looks, calling her “love” on the days she was required to check in with him.
A review of Harris’ phone uncovered chatty texts with female offenders about their personal lives, investigators wrote. In October 2024, Harris used his phone to send four videos in which he portrayed a fictional pitchman selling a new erectile dysfunction drug in sexually graphic and profanity-laced commercials with racial slurs.
On Valentine’s Day 2025, investigators noted, Harris posted a photo of himself on Instagram wearing his Division of Probation and Parole badge and jacket with a ballistic vest. The caption read: “About to go make your baby daddy pee in a cup JK.”
Asked about some of his social media content, Harris “said he has a sense of humor and felt like in this job you have to laugh, but agreed he may have taken it too far,” investigators wrote.
Harris said he didn’t mean to be inappropriate by complimenting women’s appearances or calling them “love.” That’s just how he talks to women, he said.
“So where I’m from, Oklahoma, like, love is a thing,” Harris told investigators. “We said it (to) women. Women, women, little girls. ‘Hey, love.’ ‘How you doing, love?’ ‘OK, love.’ Stuff like that.”
