Blog note: this article references a 2014-15
grand jury report.
Three inmate suicides marred the first nine
months of the year, but the Monterey County Jail is in the
arduous midst of addressing needed improvements to prisoner safety and
health care, authorities said.
With the problems recognized by the Sheriff’s
Office and outlined in a class-action lawsuit as well as in a
grand jury report, numerous changes are occurring at the
jail in hopes of preventing another death.
This year's string of suicides began Feb. 26,
when a Monterey County Sheriff’s deputy was conducting inmate checks
around 2 a.m. and found Salinas resident Jorge Christian Cervantes Huerta,
34, hanging in his cell, according to a coroner’s report.
A second deputy arrived and helped the deputy
cut down the inmate, and CPR was initiated. Paramedics also arrived on scene.
Cervantes Huerta was transported to Natividad Medical Center but died
about a week later from his injuries.
Then around 2:28 a.m. on March 24, a deputy
found Soledad resident Sandra Lee Vela, 52, hanging in her cell. She had tied a
sheet to the back left corner of her upper bunk, according to the coroner’s
report. Staff attempted life-saving measures but Vela also died.
And around 3:13 p.m. on Sept. 16, Salinas
resident Erick DeAnda, 24, was found unresponsive in his cell. Deputies
and medical staff again tried life-saving measures, and DeAnda was taken to a
nearby hospital where he later died, marking the third suicide by hanging at the
jail for the year.
A 2014-2015 civil grand jury report cited inmate
health and safety issues at the jail, and several of those same problems
earlier led to a $4.8 million class action lawsuit filed in 2013 in
federal district court by current and former inmates of Monterey Count Jail.
The suit, filed against Monterey County, the
Sheriff’s Office and the jail’s medical provider, California Forensics Medical
Group, Inc., alleged problems including insufficient custody staffing,
inadequate inmate classification system, dangerous jail facilities that make it
difficult to monitor inmates, overcrowding, and a lack of staff training.
In January, the court granted class action
status to the case, and in April in a preliminary injunction, U.S.
Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal ordered the jail to outline a remediation plan.
In May, the parties reached a tentative
settlement of the case that included additional county funding to correct most
of the substandard conditions alleged in the action, according to the grand jury’s
report.
Monterey County Senior Deputy County Counsel
Susan Blitch said the county is currently working with the court on mediating
the issues of the case.
Plaintiffs' attorney Michael W. Bien, of Rosen
Bien Galvan and Grunfeld LLP, further said the parties have been “making good
progress” in ongoing meetings regarding the remediation plan.
“We always wish we’d be a little further
ahead, but the parties are still working in good faith to reach an agreement,”
he said.
“We’re hoping that some of the issues can be
fixed and resolved very rapidly,” Bien added. “Others may take more time so
it’s a process of agreeing on what will be the goals. Some of the goals are in
the settlement agreement, and some we have to work through in these remedial
plans. Once we have these established, there will definitely be a period of
time where defendants are working on achieving the goals.”
An important component of the settlement is
the appointment of five expert monitors who will review the defendants’
compliance in the areas of American Disabilities Act, mental health, medical
care, general conditions of confinement and jail security, and dental care.
The monitors will make two, two-day
inspections a year at the jail and report on their findings.
Suicide and suicide prevention has been one of
the major issues addressed in the suit and part of the preliminary
injunction that was granted, Bien said.
“One of the things that there’s no dispute
about is defendants are going to be doing various things to try to reduce the
risk of suicide in the jail,” Bien said.
One thing being done is to bring in
consultants to work in identifying so-called "tie-off points" in
segregation cells, that inmates can use to hang themselves.
For example, air vents have been used as
tie-off points in hangings, and the county is considering replacement air vents
that would have smaller holes that would make threading a fabric through more
difficult.
Considering the magnitude of the project to
retrofit existing cells, it will take time to complete, Bien noted. Other
measures, such as limiting placement of mentally ill people in segregation, are
also being explored.
“It’s an area of deep concern … The settlement
agreement doesn’t expect to prevent each and every suicide, but there’s things
we should be doing to reduce the risk,” Bien said.
In the meantime, a claim has been filed
by Sandra Vela’s family against the county, jail and California Forensic
Medical Group, alleging that jail staff should have been aware of Vela’s
serious medical conditions, provided her with necessary medical and mental
health care, and implemented adequate policies, procedures, training and
supervision.
Vela had a history of various medical
conditions including a seizure disorder, chronic pain, carpal tunnel syndrome,
diabetes and depression, according to the coroner’s report. Her family
noted in the claim that she had battled brain cancer, but the coroner's
report reads that she actually had pseudotumor cerebri, which appears to
be a brain tumor but is actually a build-up of cerebrospinal fluid
Medical records also showed she was being
given Zoloft, an anti-depressant, but it didn’t show up in her toxicology
screen.
She had been calling family daily since her
arrest, and “the inmates housed with Vela that would speak with investigators
said essentially Vela was having difficulties with her incarceration,” the
coroner’s report reads. “Some said she was delusional, thinking other
inmates were deputies. Vela was increasingly agitated and wanted to be released
from jail. It appeared her incarceration had become too much for her to
handle.”
In addressing the suicides, Monterey County
Jail Chief Michael Moore said, “We’ve had more this year than we’ve had in a
little while, but even one would be too much for us. It’s a serious concern we
deal with.”
Each in-custody death is investigated by the
Sheriff’s Office detective bureau as well as by administrators.
And as it completes those investigations and
works on improving services, the agency continuously re-evaluates its policies
and procedures, Moore said.
“Again, one death is too many for us. We have
had an increase this year, and again I think a lot of it has to do with, not
just the jail, but everyone’s lack of mental health resources,” Moore said.
Many counties are having problems with inmate
suicides, he explained, and a shortage of mental health resources on the
outside has increased the jail’s responsibility for some community’s most
fragile people.
“Unfortunately we’ve become de facto mental
health institutions at the jail, and we’re not equipped for that either,” he
said.
Also, with Assembly Bill 109, which
has certain inmates serve their time in county jail instead of state
prison, the jail now cares for inmates that are serving much longer sentences
than jails have been accustomed to.
“This jail was not built to be a mental health
facility. It was built to be a jail where people got sentenced to less
than a year, did their time here, there were some programs and you
rehabilitated them,” Moore said. “And now with AB 109 and everything else,
they’re doing 14 years in county jail.”
Additionally, while there was once a time when
jail staff could get to know the inmates a little better and have a better
chance to see any warning signs, short staffing took away some of that
opportunity, he explained.
The jail is now trying to fill 11 positions,
but the application and training process can take up to a year.
“With the lack of staffing, they’re just
trying to get the minimum stuff done, and with some of these other collateral
duties we have now, with the lack of staff, it takes away some of that personal
knowledge of what’s going on around them,” Moore said.
In the meantime, a major reorganization at the
beginning of the month took 18 officers out of patrol and put them back on jail
duty.
When Sheriff Steve Bernal was elected and
Moore became jail chief in December, one of the first things they noticed was
that there wasn’t a jail intake nurse screening people coming in, and that
position was also put in place this spring, Moore said.
He added that many changes like that at the
jail were not prompted by the lawsuit but rather were recognized by the new
administration as critically missing components to a safe jail.
“We felt that that was very important for both
the mental health side and just the medical side itself to identity people who
may have some sort of problem before we get them into the jail,” Moore said.
Deputies already receive suicide prevention
training, and the jail is in the process now of looking for a provider for
additional training on prevention, awareness and handling those in mental
health crisis, he said.
Moore said he's concerned about what
happens to people who are suffering from mental health issues once they are
released and is in talks with the behavioral health division to try to address
some continuity of care for those released.
“It’s a tough process right now, because it’s
the mental health resources we’re all lacking,” he said.
Moore underscored that the jail is never just
trying one avenue to address inmate safety and reduce suicides.
“Our goal is ...
they get released the same, but hopefully in better condition,” he said.
“There’s no one in the Sheriff’s Office or on the corrections side, the jail,
that doesn’t take an in-custody (death) seriously."
October 29, 2015
The
Salinas Californian
By Chelcey Adami
