Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[Andrea]

An Inmate Died Of Thirst In A Jail Run By A Loudly Pro-Trump Sheriff

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-clarke-jail-death-terrill-thomas_us_57e03580e4b04a1497b5f12e

Authorities have ruled the death of an inmate at a jail run by a top law enforcement supporter of GOP nominee Donald Trump a homicide caused by “profound dehydration.”

Terrill Thomas, 38, was found dead in a Milwaukee County Jail cell on April 24, nine days after being arrested in connection with a shooting. Other inmates heard Thomas beg for water in the days before he died, the Journal Sentinel reported in July.

The Huffington Post has been tracking jail deaths ― more than 800 ― in the year since Sandra Bland died in a Texas jail on July 13, 2015.

Last week the Milwaukee County medical examiner announced that Thomas’ death was due to profound dehydration, according to the Journal Sentinel. By labeling the death a homicide, the medical examiner indicated that it was caused by the actions of another person, although that judgment does not necessarily mean that anyone will be criminally prosecuted in the case.

The Milwaukee County Jail is run by Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., an outspoken Trump supporter and critic of the Black Lives Matter movement. Clarke, who is technically a Democrat, has become popular in conservative circles in recent years for his specific criticism of President Barack Obama and more general critiques of liberalism. A recent disclosure form revealed that Clarke took in more than $150,000 in speaking fees, travel reimbursements and gifts in 2015.

Inmates told the Journal Sentinel that the water in Thomas’ cell had been shut off for six days, and one inmate allegedly said to a guard, “If something happens to that man, it’s your fault.”

“No one should ever die of dehydration. It just should never happen,” Erik J. Heipt, a lawyer for the Thomas family, told The Huffington Post.

Heipt, who has represented the families of a number of individuals who lost their lives in jail, said dehydration deaths were relatively rare. He pointed to a lawsuit involving a 25-year-old man who died of dehydration and malnutrition in a Island County Jail in Washington state, which was settled for $4 million last year.

“They may well have had reason to turn off the water. There absolutely could be reasons why you’d want to turn off someone’s water in their cell. But to then not give them drinking water? That’s crazy,” Heipt said. “To make a human being die of thirst, where they have no ability to get their own water for survival, that’s pretty inhumane. It doesn’t get much worse than that.”

Heipt said he has received calls from other former inmates of the Milwaukee County Jail who said the water to their cells had been cut off, too. In fact, another inmate, Antonio Cowser, died in 2011 after water to his cell was turned off.

“They could have gave him some water,” Thomas’ mother Celia told the Journal Sentinel.

Clarke’s office issued a press release stating that it will not be commenting on the death until all investigations, as well as any civil lawsuits, have ended

The Huffington Post is continuing to collect information on jail deaths that took place in the year after Bland died. Her family recently reached a settlement with Texas authorities in connection with her death.

[Andrea]

Man dies 3 days after allegedly fighting with Baltimore County police in Middle River

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-co-police-fight-20160920-story.html#

A 21-year-old Baltimore County man died Wednesday, days after police say he struggled with several police officers in Middle River.

Tawon Boyd was injured in the confrontation Sunday morning, authorities said, but they did not provide details. An attorney for Boyd’s family said his kidneys and heart failed.

An autopsy is to be performed to determine the cause of death, authorities said, and the county police and fire departments are conducting internal investigations.

Police say officers who were called to the first block of Akin Circle in Middle River just after 3 a.m. Sunday arrived at a chaotic scene. They said Boyd’s girlfriend had called 911 and said he was acting “crazy.”

Officers said they found Boyd “confused and paranoid, sweating heavily.”

Boyd tried to run to different police cars and get inside and was banging on neighbors’ doors, according to police and his grandmother.
Tawon Boyd

Tawon Boyd, a 21-year-old Baltimore County man, has died after allegedly fighting with police in Middle River early Sunday morning. This image shows Boyd in the hospital after the incident. (Family photo via WJZ / Handout)

Linda Burch, Boyd’s grandmother, lived with the couple and their toddler son on Akin Circle. She said Boyd “was acting kind of strange, like he was on something.”

But she said police used too much force to restrain him.

“He was just hollering and screaming on the ground, and they just kept pushing him down, pushing him down, on his shoulder and back and stuff, hitting him,” Burch said. “He was trying to get them off of him.”

Burch said she and Boyd’s girlfriend were afraid he would be seriously hurt.

“I kept telling them stop before they hurt him because I told them they could kill him like that,” she said. “They told me to go across the street before they lock me up.”

Police said Boyd resisted arrest. They said three officers who restrained Boyd were injured. One wrote in a police report that he punched Boyd twice because Boyd was hanging onto him.

The officers said they were able to finally restrain Boyd by holding him down with their arms and body weight.

Medics were called and administered something to Boyd, but the treatment was redacted in the police report, and police officials said medical privacy laws prevented them from releasing it.

Boyd calmed down, police said, and an officer asked a medic to check his pulse. Boyd was still breathing and had a heartbeat as he was loaded into an ambulance, police said.

“Mr. Boyd was in need of medical attention, and the police responded with violence,” said Latoya Francis-Williams, the family’s attorney. “The police beat him into intensive care, and now he’s no longer with us.”

[Andrea]

Cops Pepper-Spray Girl Who Fell Off Bike

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/22/video-white-cops-pepper-spray-black-girl-after-she-falls-off-her-bike.html

When a teenage girl riding her bike collided with a car, cops didn’t simply take her to the hospital but instead handcuffed her, pepper sprayed her, and threw her in the back of their squad car.

A bystander’s cell phone footage shows the 15-year-old girl from Hagerstown, Maryland being loaded into a police car Sunday. At this point the girl, a minor whose name is being withheld, ask to speak with “Zack,” an officer she says is black, unlike her arresting officers who are white. Then, while the girl is handcuffed in the back of the car, police are seen firing pepper spray at her through the window.

“I can’t breathe!” the girl screams.

Instead of taking the girl to the hospital like they initially told her, police took her to the police station for interrogation. But her lawyer said she never should have been in the squad car in the first place.

“She was flipped over in the air, came down hard on the pavement, was motionless there for at least 30 seconds,” attorney Robin Ficker told The Daily Beast. “Then she recovered, woke up and the ambulance came. She did not want to go with the strangers in the ambulance, she wanted to go to her home nearby. She got on her bike, started peddling away to go home, and a huge officer grabbed her off her bike without any warning whatsoever from behind.”

Body camera footage released by the Hagerstown Police shows the girl refusing to go with polic before an officer grabs her backpack. Then she is handcuffed and pushed against a brick wall while bystanders gather. “You let that badge go to your head,” one onlooker tells an officer.

While the officers had allegedly arrived on the scene to take the girl to the hospital, they began referring to her in criminal terms.

“We’re detaining you for incooperation with an investigation,” one officer says while the girl is forcibly cuffed.

Hagerstown Police told The Daily Beast that they were simultaneously investigating the girl’s bike crash while attempting to take her to the hospital.

“The reason she was placed in custody, is first and foremost we were investigating an accident she was involved in,” Hagerstown Police Captain Paul Kifer told The Daily Beast. “She attempted to leave on a bicycle … she refused to give ay info on who she was.”

Even if the officers had wanted to take her to the hospital, they had no legal grounds for doing so forcibly, Ficker said.

“They said ‘you have to come in, you can’t refuse treatment.’ Well there’s no Maryland law that says you can’t refuse treatment,” he told The Daily Beast. “They certainly don’t arrest every Jehovah’s Witness that refuses treatment. There’s no law that says you can’t refuse treatment.”

When bystanders began arguing with police, an officer used the girl’s age to justify her arrest, saying that she could not refuse treatment as a minor.

“What happens when she’s like ‘I’m fine,’ and has a brain injury afterwards?” an officer says when an onlooker filming the event asks why the girl is being arrested. “She could die later … all we want to do is make sure she’s okay.”

Kifer said the girl’s detention was standard procedure.

“We’re not gonna let her go until she’s released to a parent or guardian,” he told The Daily Beast. “If we let her go and she goes around the corner and has an aneurism and dies, that’s on us.”

But Ficker said the force of the girl’s arrest contradicts the police argument that she required urgent treatment.

“Well if someone may have brain damage, why are you slamming her against a wall? Why are you putting her in a police car,” he said, “without a seatbelt, I might add, in violation of police policy.”

Even after police seat the handcuffed girl in the squad car, she refuses to pull her feet into the vehicle, body camera footage shows. Police fire pepper spray at her face from close range and slam the door while she is coughing and screaming. The car pulls away while the girl is still shouting and crying.

But police did not take her to a hospital, Ficker said. Instead, the girl was transported to the police station, where she was interrogated and charged with disorderly conduct, two counts of second degree assault, possession of marijuana and failure to obey a traffic device.

Ficker contends that the “flake” of marijuana found in the girl’s backpack was planted by police, a claim police adamantly deny.

“I categorically deny that,” Kifer said. “It’s absurd and offensive for an attorney to accuse law enforcement of planting anything.”

Police did not return a request for a copy of the arrest report. But Ficker says the official reason for the girl’s arrest, as listed in her medical report was not criminal at all.

“Police told the hospital that the reason she was arrested was not because she was refusing treatment, but because she wouldn’t give insurance information,” Ficker said. “Insurance was never mentioned, and furthermore, who expects a kid on a bike to have insurance information?”

“It’s ridiculous,” he added. “These cops are lying.”

[Andrea]

Three Phoenix police officers resign after being accused of forcing a man to eat marijuana

http://www.businessinsider.com/three-phoenix-police-officers-resign-after-being-accused-of-forcing-a-man-to-eat-marijuana-2016-9

Three Phoenix police officers have resigned after a man alleged they forced him to eat marijuana found in his vehicle to avoid going to jail, Chief Joseph Yahner said Thursday.

A fourth officer, Jeff Farrior, was demoted from lieutenant to sergeant for being aware of last week's incident and not taking appropriate action, Yahner told reporters.

"Their actions are appalling and unacceptable. This conduct is against everything that we stand for," Yahner said.

Police identified the three officers who quit as Richard G. Pina, Jason E. McFadden and Michael J. Carnicle.

Two of them are being investigated both criminally and by the department, Yahner said, adding that the third officer is considered a witness to the act and is the subject of just the administrative investigation.

Yahner said all of the officers' video cameras were turned off and did not record the incident in which a 19-year-old Phoenix man was stopped for a traffic violation around 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 13. The man, whose name was not released by police, was issued a citation and had his car towed.

He later told a patrol supervisor that the officers demanded he eat the marijuana, estimated to be about a gram, or go to jail.

The man reported feeling ill after ingesting the marijuana of an unknown potency, but didn't need any medical attention, a police spokesman said.

Yahner called the allegations about the officers' actions "disturbing and upsetting."

The three officers who quit were all in their first year with Phoenix police and were probationary employees, according to Yahner.

"I was going to fire them. They chose to resign," he said.

Yahner declined to discuss details of the criminal and internal investigations.

[Andrea]

Caught on Camera: Texas Transit Cop Resigns After Train Station Beating

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/caught-camera-texas-transit-cop-resigns-after-train-station-beating-n654821

A Texas transit cop resigned on Monday after a train station camera captured the officer repeatedly beating a man with a baton two weeks ago, authorities said.

Metro Police Department Chief Vera Bumpers said in a statement that a review board concluded that the officer, identified only as J. Warren, used excessive force in the Sept. 14 encounter.

"The board recommended termination of the officer," Bumpers said. "Officer Warren, however, presented his resignation before that action could be taken."

Video footage published by NBC affiliate KPRC showed two officers approaching a man slumped over on a platform bench at Burnett Transit Center, north of downtown Houston.

The station identified the man as Darren Giles, 31.

In the two-and-a-half-minute silent video, Warren can be seen attempting rouse Giles while a second officer looked through a cooler that sat beside him. When Giles stood up, Warren struck him repeatedly for approximately eight seconds.

As Giles writhed on the platform floor — and as the two officers restrained him — Warren struck him two more times.

Giles was charged with resisting arrest and criminal trespass, KPRC reported, though those were later dropped.

The second officer, Daniel Reynoso, will return to duty after additional training, Bumpers said.

"This incident is not reflective of our police force and I will not tolerate inappropriate use of force by officers," she said.

[JDeere]

Originally Posted by Andrea

Caught on Camera: Texas Transit Cop Resigns After Train Station Beating

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/caught-camera-texas-transit-cop-resigns-after-train-station-beating-n654821

A Texas transit cop resigned on Monday after a train station camera captured the officer repeatedly beating a man with a baton two weeks ago, authorities said.

Metro Police Department Chief Vera Bumpers said in a statement that a review board concluded that the officer, identified only as J. Warren, used excessive force in the Sept. 14 encounter.

"The board recommended termination of the officer," Bumpers said. "Officer Warren, however, presented his resignation before that action could be taken."

Video footage published by NBC affiliate KPRC showed two officers approaching a man slumped over on a platform bench at Burnett Transit Center, north of downtown Houston.

The station identified the man as Darren Giles, 31.

In the two-and-a-half-minute silent video, Warren can be seen attempting rouse Giles while a second officer looked through a cooler that sat beside him. When Giles stood up, Warren struck him repeatedly for approximately eight seconds.

As Giles writhed on the platform floor — and as the two officers restrained him — Warren struck him two more times.

Giles was charged with resisting arrest and criminal trespass, KPRC reported, though those were later dropped.

The second officer, Daniel Reynoso, will return to duty after additional training, Bumpers said.

"This incident is not reflective of our police force and I will not tolerate inappropriate use of force by officers," she said.

Good ole corrupt Houston and Metro police. Smh. This is one reason why I don't trust cops, they fly off the handle too easily and are not properly trained.

[Andrea]

Cop violently arrests a man for sitting on his own porch while body cam is on


http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article105525491.html

A Greensboro police officer was stripped of his law enforcement credentials last week, after the release of police body camera footage that showed him violently arresting a man for sitting on his own porch.

Police body cameras have been in the news in Charlotte, involving the fatal shooting by a police officer of Keith Lamont Scott.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said Friday night that it will release more than two hours of video footage of the scene of Scott’s shooting, a reversal from the agency’s previous stance.

In a statement, police spokesman Rob Tufano said the department will honor a request from Scott’s family to make public all dashcam and body camera footage that CMPD has obtained at the Sept. 20 shooting.

Police will allow the family to view the footage sometime next week, before providing it to the public, Tufano said. The statement did not specify what day or time.

In the Greensboro case, Dejuan Yourse was waiting for his mother to arrive to let him into his home on June 17, when two officers were dispatched to investigate a possible break-in, the Huffington Post reported.

On the video from a police body camera, Yourse is seen trying to phone his mom so she can speak to the officers. He gives the officers his ID and suggests the officers ask a neighbor to verify that he lives there.

Officer Travis Cole soon places his hands on Yourse’s chest to stop him from walking away, according to the Huffington Post. After Yourse sits back down, Cole takes Yourse’s phone from his hand, throws him to the floor and struggles to handcuff him.. Yourse keeps asking Cole why he’s punching him. When Cole yells, “I’m going to hit you again,” Yourse yells back, “Why?”

The Greensboro City Council voted unanimously last week to strip Cole of his law enforcement credentials. The district attorney refused the council’s request to file criminal charges against the officer, saying he wouldn’t “rehash the same evidence,” the Greensboro News & Record reported.

Police had charged Yourse with resisting arrest and assault on government officials. The charges were dropped when Cole resigned in August. The second officer quit her job last week, the Huffington Post reported.

[deeds]

Originally Posted by JDeere

Good ole corrupt Houston and Metro police. Smh. This is one reason why I don't trust cops, they fly off the handle too easily and are not properly trained.

hi you...
They know exactly where the kill zones are and there is more than one way to skin a cat.

[Andrea]

Emotionally disturbed man, 49, dies after NYPD sergeant shocked him twice with stun gun in Bronx confrontation

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/man-critical-condition-cops-taser-bronx-clash-article-1.2855934

A 49-year-old Bronx man who threatened officers with a bottle died Wednesday after an NYPD sergeant used a stun gun to subdue him, police said.

Cops responded to a 911 call around 5:30 p.m. on Mayflower Ave. in Pelham Bay about a man armed with a knife who was “acting violently.”

Three officers and the sergeant confronted the man in a basement apartment of the gray Victorian home. The distraught man menaced them with a glass bottle, police said.

The patrol sergeant used a stun gun on the man, who fell to the ground, but revived moments later and tried to fight with the officers. The sergeant delivered a second blast from the stun gun, police said.

The man went into cardiac arrest, and the cops on the scene performed CPR. Paramedics then took him to Einstein Hospital, where he died at 7:22 p.m., cops said.

The tragic incident comes just 15 days after cops shot and killed Deborah Danner, a 66-year-old woman suffering from schizophrenia, when officers answered a neighbor’s complaint about her behaving “in an irrational manner” in her Bronx apartment building.

The NYPD’s Force Investigation Division was looking into Wednesday’s death and no disciplinary action had been taken against the sergeant, identified by sources as William Melrose, a 13-year veteran working in the 45th Precinct.

Amy Spitalnick, spokeswoman for state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, said members of the office’s Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit were on the scene to review the incident for possible jurisdiction under a 2015 executive order by Gov. Cuomo.

An upstairs neighbor who only gave his first name, Derrick, said he knew the man and described him as a “real good dude.”

“He’s not an aggressive guy at all, he’s a real good man,” said the 28-year-old neighbor. He said the man was kind to his 5-year-old son.

“He works out in Long Island. He cuts cold cuts — he’s a deli guy,” Derrick said. “He was real good with my son. My son called him ‘Big Buddy.’ ”

In an Oct. 21 press conference following Danner’s death, NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said, “There are times when Tasers aren’t effective, but they are less-than-lethal weapons and we do use them.”

The NYPD has increased the number of Tasers in its arsenal from 670 in 2014 to 1,710 this year, O’Neill said.

[Andrea]

‘I Can’t Breathe’: Disturbing Video Shows Father Of Four Begging Guards For Help Before He Died In Jail

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/michael-sabbie-jail-deaths-bi-state-jail-bowie-county_us_57f2ab41e4b024a52d304102?bns

“I can’t breathe.”

Michael Sabbie ― a 35-year-old stay-at-home father of four ― said it after five guards piled on top of him inside the Bi State Jail, a facility that sits directly on the border between Texas and Arkansas and is run by a for-profit company.

“I can’t breathe.” Sabbie ― who packed his kids’ lunches, drove them to and from school, and carted them around to their after-school activities ― said it again after a sixth officer pepper-sprayed him as he lay on the concrete floor.

“I can’t breathe, sir. Please! Please!” Sabbie ― who wrote a Facebook post thanking God for his kids just hours before his arrest ― said it again as guards held him up against a wall outside of the nurse’s station.

“I can’t breathe,” Sabbie said again after he was forced into the shower. “I can’t breathe,” Sabbie repeated, echoing the final words of another black father, 43-year-old Eric Garner, who died in New York in July 2014 as the result of an officer’s illegal chokehold.

A guard threatened to pepper-spray Sabbie again. “I’m sorry,” Sabbie said, hoping to avoid being hit with painful chemical agent a second time. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Then Sabbie collapsed. The guards, paid a starting rate of $10 an hour, apparently thought he was faking it. They took him to a cell.

“Can’t breathe,” Sabbie said as guards removed his handcuffs and left him on the floor of the cell overnight. Sabbie, who at that point had been in custody for roughly 48 hours, was dead by the morning.

The basic details of Sabbie’s death, one of more than 800 jail deaths counted by The Huffington Post in the year after Sandra Bland died in jail on July 13, 2015, wouldn’t normally raise much suspicion. The initial news reports said that Sabbie, who was arrested on a domestic assault charge, was found “unresponsive” on the morning of July 22, 2015, suggesting he died in his sleep. A medical examiner ― noting Sabbie’s obesity and that he had significant heart muscle damage ― deemed his death “natural,” a label that implies it was an unavoidable tragedy. Those circumstances wouldn’t make Sabbie’s death terribly unique: Heart disease killed an average of 226 jail inmates a year from 2000 until 2013, making it the leading cause of jail deaths after suicides.

But calling Sabbie’s death “natural” obscures more than it illuminates, and would hide the failures that very likely could have prevented his death. A quick internal investigation might have absolved jail employees of any wrongdoing. But in Sabbie’s case, there’s video.

“If you just looked at the cause of death, you would think that Michael died of some sort of hypertensive heart condition, and that may be true,” said Erik J. Heipt, one of the attorneys representing the Sabbie family. “But if we didn’t have a video, we’d never know that he had been begging for help due to his shortness of breath and inability to breathe. We’d never know that he said ‘I can’t breathe’ 19 times in the nine minutes that we hear in that video.”

Heipt and his law partner, Edwin Budge, regularly represent families of individuals who have died in jails across the country. But this video is “without a doubt among one of the most outrageous,” Budge said.

“Clearly he’s a person in a state of medical crisis, in medical need, asking for help, and the response to his essentially pleas for medical help is inhumane, which is a term I don’t use lightly,” Budge said.

Preventable deaths being labeled as “natural” is a “common phenomenon” and a “huge problem” in jails across the country, said David C. Fathi, the director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project.

“We often find that someone’s death is characterized as ‘natural causes’ ― maybe it was cancer, maybe it was heart disease,” Fathi said. “But if you look at the medical record, you often find egregious neglect and denial of care. If someone dies of cancer that went totally untreated, is that death from natural causes?”

Sabbie was arrested on July 19, 2015, after getting into an argument with his wife over money, according to a police report. Sabbie’s wife told an officer that he threatened her before getting out of the car and walking away. Another officer located Sabbie, who denied threatening his wife. Due to the alleged threat, Sabbie was arrested for third-degree assault on a household or family member, a misdemeanor.

Sabbie was taken to the Bi State Jail, a facility with 164 beds that housed 134 individuals as of this week. The for-profit company LaSalle Corrections has run the facility since 2013, when a previous company backed out because it reportedly could not turn a profit. Governments pay just $39.50 per day to house inmates at the Bi State lockup and $46.50 per day to place them at the Bowie County facility, a nearby facility LaSalle Corrections also runs. (The company that backed out of the previous contract submitted a competing bid of $56.25 per inmate per day.) Under the contract with Bowie County, LaSalle Corrections absorbs the cost of medical services and also indemnifies the county against any claims from inmates or their families.

The Bowie County facility has agreements with local surrounding counties to house their inmates, which the Bowie County Sheriff has said “helps us to lower the costs” of detaining the county’s own detainees, and jail revenue is “one of the largest portions of Bowie County’s budget,” according to a local news report. A job listing for a position at the Bowie County Correctional Center says pay is $10 per hour, and that the position requires “zero experience as a correctional officer.” As of this July, the facilities were reportedly shorthanded and seeking to fill dozens of positions.

With a population of just 134, the Bi State Jail is one of the smallest jails in the country that had two reported deaths in The Huffington Post’s jail deaths project, which looked at deaths between July 13, 2015, and July 13, 2016. There were two additional deaths at the nearby Bowie County Correctional Center, which has 748 beds and a population of 674 as of this week. Together, the LaSalle facilities had four deaths in a single year, with a joint population of just 808. Other jails that reported four deaths in the year HuffPost examined had populations double, triple and even quadruple that.

Matthew Campbell, who is representing the family of another inmate who died in the Bi State Jail, said the facility is “by far the least secure jail” he’s ever been in. He said he was able to walk in with a briefcase without being searched or showing identification.

“The guy behind the big glass window doesn’t have me sign in, doesn’t ask for ID. There’s no metal detector, he doesn’t check my bag, buzzes me into the attorney meeting room,” Campbell said. “It could have been a briefcase full of cocaine and guns, and I could have left it there in the room and nobody would have been any the wiser.”

At about 3:30 a.m. on July 20, less than 12 hours after his arrest, Sabbie told jail staff he was having difficulty breathing and could not breathe while lying down. A nurse treated him for a low level of oxygen in his blood, and advised him to sit up if he had trouble breathing.

The next day, July 21 at 10:30 a.m., Sabbie was found on the floor of his cell and taken to the nurse’s station. He said once again that he couldn’t breathe and that he believed he had pneumonia. But a nurse cleared him to go back to his cell, which frustrated Sabbie. “So [y’all] aren’t going to help?” he asked, according to police records. He began walking back to his cell, but fell on the floor on his way back and required assistance. The nurse, Tiffany Venable, said she had seen no signs or symptoms of pneumonia during the morning appointment. She told an investigator she completed a medical form for this visit, but believed she placed it in the wrong file.

Sabbie had a court appearance that afternoon, during which he pleaded not guilty and had his bond set at $2,500. A court bailiff said he observed Sabbie “sweating very heavily and coughing.” The judge also saw that Sabbie was having trouble breathing, and suggested Sabbie might have asthma or bronchitis. Sabbie said in court that he had been spitting up blood and needed to go to the hospital.

After the court appearance, Sabbie and a group of other detainees were taken back to the jail at about 4:15 p.m. This is where the video kicks in, and we see that Sabbie stopped to lean against a wall.

Officer Clint Brown walked over to Sabbie. Brown claimed Sabbie wanted to use the phone in the booking desk, but Brown said he had to go back to his cell. He claimed Sabbie turned aggressively toward him, so he grabbed him. Other officers soon assisted.

Lt. Nathaniel Johnson, who earlier in the day had taken Sabbie to the nurse because he had difficulty breathing, pepper-sprayed Sabbie directly in the face, just as he said, “I can’t breathe.”

Venable, the nurse who saw Sabbie earlier in the morning and had been on duty since 5 a.m., witnessed the guards use force against Sabbie, and then evaluated him briefly in her office. She didn’t fill out a form, but said she believed his complaints were a normal reaction to pepper spray.

“Ms. Venable said she wanted to get off work on time because she had to get her daughter to a pitching lesson,” one police report states. “She said she was going to complete one this morning when she came into work but learned that Mr. Sabbie had passed away.”

Heipt, one of the lawyers for the Sabbie family, said they believe that Sabbie had pulmonary edema, or excess fluid in his lungs caused by a heart condition. It’s a medical emergency, but treatable and should have been detected with a proper evaluation, Heipt said. The State Crime Laboratory’s Medical Examiner Division found that Sabbie died of “hypertensive arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease,” and claimed that the altercation “played a minimal role in the decedent’s death, and may not have contributed at all to his death.”

Correctional Officer Simone Nash was charged with keeping an eye on Sabbie overnight. She was required to do cell safety checks on all her pods and cells every 30 minutes, as well as a count four times each shift. Although her records indicated that the guard did those 30-minute checks, she admitted that “not all the checks were done and they were only documented,” according to a Texarkana Police report. Nash admitted she “didn’t consistently enter and check the cells inside the pods during every one of the 30 minute checks” as required, according to the report. During her counts, she said that while Sabbie never responded to her during the counts, she claims she saw him breathing.

LaSalle Corrections employees were still not conducting proper face-to-face observations on July 18, 2016, nearly a year after Sabbie’s death, according to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which performed the inspection after the July 1, 2016, death of Morgan Angerbauer. Twenty-year-old Angerbauer, whose family is represented by Campbell, was diabetic, and jail nurse Brittany Johnson was arrested in August and charged with negligent homicide in connection with her death. (In a similar case, a former Oklahoma guard was indicted on a federal civil rights charge this week for allegedly ignoring the medical needs of a diabetic detainee who died in 2013. It is rare for corrections officials to face such charges for exhibiting “deliberate indifference” to the medical needs of inmates.)

Heipt, who is also representing the family of a man who died of thirst in a jail run by prominent Donald Trump supporter and Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, said it’s only recently that there has been public attention on jail deaths. Local media outlets sometimes only cover a “sham investigation” conducted by local officials investigating themselves before moving on.

“This is not a tin-foil hat conspiracy; it happens all the time,” Heipt said. “The jail or the county investigates itself, inmates aren’t interviewed, medical records are not reviewed, video recordings are lost or destroyed, and medical examiners who are in charge of determining the cause of death are not given complete information, and so the cause of death is either undetermined, wrong, or doesn’t tell the whole picture.

“The American public has no idea what’s taking place, and because of the lack of public awareness, there’s a corresponding lack of public outrage,” he added. “So politicians on the local and national level have ignored it. Consequently, jails are understaffed and underfunded, money is saved by denying medications and medical care. Funding issues also lead to inexperienced and unqualified corrections officers being hired, as well as a lack of training.”

Sabbie was “cold to the touch” when guards eventually entered his cell, according to documents. The voicemail of the warden, Robert Page, was full when HuffPost reached out for comment this week. He did not respond to a message left with an employee, nor did an official at LaSalle Corrections’ corporate office in Texas.

In a statement, the Sabbie family said they “cannot conceive of how something like this could happen to an American citizen” like Sabbie.

“He was treated as if his life did not matter,” the family said in a statement issued through their lawyers. “Most of all they want justice and accountability and to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”

“I can’t put into words how devastated my children and I are after the loss of Michael,” Sabbie’s wife Teresa said in a statement. “He was my backbone and best friend. My children lost a wonderful father who wanted the best for his family. A piece of our heart is gone, and I pray to God for justice. This was a tragedy that should never have happened.”

The Department of Justice informed Teresa on Aug. 1, 2016, that it would not be prosecuting anyone in connection with her husband’s death.

“After careful consideration, we concluded that the evidence does not establish a prosecutable violation of the federal criminal civil rights statutes,” Paige Fitzgerald, acting principal deputy chief of the criminal section of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in the letter. “Please accept or [sic] condolences on your lost [sic].”

[*Anya*]

[Andrea]

A black 17-year-old reported his stolen car using LoJack ... and police reportedly arrested him instead

http://www.chron.com/technology/businessinsider/article/A-black-17-year-old-reported-his-stolen-car-using-9397893.php

Race-relations between the police and black citizens is a huge topic of conversation in America right now.

Athletes are refusing to stand for the national anthem in protest over police killings of unarmed black men, the presidential candidates were asked about the issue in their debate on Monday. And on Tuesday, police near San Diego fatally shot another unarmed black man within minutes of responding to a mental-health-related call.

With this subject in mind, we bring you this story of what an ordinary black family can face when they need the police.

Take for example this series of tweets from by Tristan Riddell, who is best known for his Nerd Party network podcasts The Senate Floor and Nerd Nuptial. For his day job, he works as a videographer/video editor at Northwestern University.

"One of my favorite students had his car stolen last night. He's a 17 year old black male. Thought it would be a good idea to call the cops.

Groceries in hand he checks his LoJack app first and can see that its moving down the road. Cops arrive and immediately frisk him.

They ask him if he's on drugs. He tries to tell them that he just wants his car back.

He shows them on his phone exactly where his car is. They don't believe him so they put him in the squad car and take him in. They process him and take his fingerprints.

He gets to call his mom and she raises hell. After a long time they let him go."

They then allow him to go get his car and the window is broken in. It was exactly where the app said."

This never would have happened to me because I'm white. He called the cops asking for help and got treated like a criminal.

Just because he's black and could afford a fancy car."

We reached out to the student who has, so far, not responded to our questions. Riddell has not revealed his identity nor said what city and police department where this occurred, except to reveal that it happened in Illinois.

It seems likely it was in or near Chicago because Northwestern is located in the Chicago suburb of Evanston (though we have no evidence that the incident took place there).