A former Kentucky sheriff’s deputy convicted of assaulting people has been sentenced to nine years and two months in federal prison.
A jury convicted Tanner M. Abbott, 31, of four charges of violating people’s civil rights; one charge of conspiracy; and one charge of falsifying records.
Chief U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves sentenced Abbott Thursday in federal court in Lexington.
Abbott is a former deputy for the Boyle County Sheriff’s Office. Abbott was a police officer between 2017 and 2021 and was indicted in October 2023, according to the court record.
Abbott was fired from the Boyle County Sheriff’s Office in 2021. He had posted the identify of a confidential informant on Facebook after she criticized him, according to the court record.
The FBI started an investigation after receiving complaints about him abusing and hitting people during arrests, and then learned Kentucky State Police also were investigating Abbott, according to a sentencing memorandum from Assistant U.S. Attorney Zach Dembo.
The charges on which Abbott was convicted related to using excessive force against four people; performing an illegal search; and writing false police reports to cover up his abuse, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Abbott’s defense attorneys said in a sentencing memo that he sincerely believed his handling of the cases was reasonable under the circumstances, based on his training, experience and knowledge of what other officers in his department did.
But prosecutors said Abbott’s conduct was far from reasonable.
“Instead of protecting and serving the community, the defendant was physically abusing people — even bragging about the injuries he caused,” U.S. Attorney Carlton S. Shier IV said in a release. “That is not law enforcement; that is brazen criminal conduct.”
Evidence the government presented included text messages from Abbott’s work cell phone in which Abbott bragged, sometimes in graphic and vulgar terms, about injuring people he arrested, according to the Department of Justice.
Abbott sometimes took photographs of injuries he had caused and sent them to friends and acquaintances, but never included them in official police documents, according to the release.
“The apparent pride and glee that cell phone evidence shows he took in causing injury — boasting about the severity of injuries he caused, on multiple occasions, to both his colleagues and his then-fiancée — can only be described as sadism,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.
Prosecutors said it appeared Abbott targeted people who were physically weaker than him or unable to defend themselves well.
One victim was handcuffed, and others were physically small. One had a disability and two were teenagers, according to the sentencing memo.
Abbott broke bones in one person’s nose and face. While he was at the hospital with the victim, Abbott texted at least three people to brag about how badly he had hurt the person, prosecutors said in their memo.
The investigation showed the conduct covered in the indictment against him were “only a small fraction of the occasions on which there was at least some credible evidence indicating that he had engaged in misconduct,” Dembo wrote.
Reeves also found that Abbott obstructed justice by lying during his trial.
There is no parole in the federal court system, so Abbott will have to serve at least 85% of the sentence.
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