Friday, April 28, 2023

By Josh McGhee

Happy Friday MindSiters. I’m enjoying sunny California this weekend. Here’s to hoping spring has finally sprung. In this month’s Diagnosis: Injustice, we look at a multi-million dollar settlement for thousands of people held in solitary confinement in New York. We’ll take a look at new details in the death of Irvo Otieno, who was killed at a Virginia mental hospital. And a store owner in Oregon says the homeless man repeatedly tased by half-a-dozen police officers was a sweet and harmless man. Let’s get into it…

NYC to dole out millions to detainees wrongly held in solitary 

Last week, New York City agreed to pay as much as $53 million to thousands of people detained in Manhattan and on Rikers Island who were held in isolated, small cells for up to 23 hours per day, The New York Times reported. Mental health and human rights advocates oppose the routine use of isolation because research shows that denial of meaningful human contact can cause anxiety, depression and psychosis and lead to self-harm and suicide. 

In 2022, 19 people committed suicide in New York City jails, mostly at Rikers Island.

People accused of breaking rules while awaiting trial in the jails are entitled to hearings before being transferred to restrictive housing, which can include solitary confinement, but the Correction Department didn’t hold those hearings for about 4,400 people between March 2018 and June 2022, according to the settlement. 

“The department brazenly ignored the Constitution,” said Eric Heckler, an attorney involved in the class-action lawsuit. “They knew it was illegal, but they kept using it anyway.” The practices have since been “modified,” according to a spokesman for the law department. The settlement would be one of the largest ever involving the city’s Correction Department. The final amount will be determined by how many wronged detainees claim their share.

New details emerge in Irvo Otieno killing

Irvo Otieno, an aspiring musician whose mother described him as “brilliant and creative and bright,” died on March 6 at a mental hospital in Virginia, according to The Washington Post. Otieno had been arrested while in the midst of a mental health crisis. Three days later, he was dead. Surveillance video shows seven sheriff’s deputies and three hospital employees atop the shackled 28-year-old Black man for nearly a dozen minutes while his body goes limp. 

In her filing, Dinwiddie County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill compared Otieno’s killing to a medieval method of execution called “pressing” – essentially crushing someone to death. The filing also noted that one minute after Irvo stopped moving a nurse injected him with an antipsychotic and antihistamine and that the leg irons and handcuffs used to restrain him had been cleaned and stowed in a vehicle before state troopers arrived to investigate the death, which was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner. 

While Virginia Gov. Glenn Younkin said the state’s mental health system was “overburdened,” it wasn’t just the lack of services that killed Otieno, The Marshall Project’s Christie Thompson opined in March. His killing illustrates how our mental health and criminal justice system can end up “prosecuting patients and over-relying on police,” she wrote. 

Police say they followed policy in repeated tasing of unhoused man in Oregon

Police officers in Gresham, Oregon, who repeatedly tased 59-year-old Ronald Amato inside of a local beer and wine store in early March did not violate any department policies, according to a “pre-investigation assessment” by the department. The store’s owner, Don Nguyen, described Amato as polite and non-confrontational, though he’d sometimes yell at the sky. Nguyen and other business owners have helped look after him for five years, even buying him cake for his birthday.

The police department has been tight-lipped on details about the incident including the names of the six officers involved, according to reporting by The Oregonian. The incident began when officers responded to an alleged assault on a city homeless services worker. But the assault never happened, according to business owners in the area. 

In surveillance footage, Amato appears confused. At one point, he asks the officers to call the police. During the five minute interaction, officers hit him with a stun gun at least five times, according to reporting by the outlet. Nguyen can be heard on the video telling officers that Amato has schizophrenia. He was so infuriated by the incident that he posted the video to Facebook.

“They tased him so many times they had to wheel him out on a gurney,” Nguyen said. “It just makes no sense.”

Since posting the video, he’s been targeted with hate mail, negative online reviews, and had his store window smashed, according to reporting by the outlet.

Until next month,

Josh McGhee

If you or someone you know is in crisis or experiencing suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and connect in English or Spanish. If you’re a veteran press 1. If you’re deaf or hard of hearing dial 711, then 988. Services are free and available 24/7.