Yesterday on Facebook, some of my friends and I were
discussing the tragic death of Natasha McKenna while she was in custody at the
Fairfax County jail. The Fairfax jail guards had placed the mentally ill
McKenna in restraints and tasered her numerous times while trying to extract
her from her jail cell and transfer her to Alexandria. Subsequently, McKenna
died at Fairfax Hospital after she stopped breathing and her heart stopped.
The Fairfax County Police Department has been investigating
this death. In numerous editorials (and here), the Washington Post urged the Fairfax Sheriff,
Stacey Kincaid, to provide a full explanation of what happened without
stalling or brushing any facts under the rug. I certainly agree with that.
Some of my Facebook friends, however, took that to mean that
Sheriff Kincaid should immediately go before the public to answer all questions
and clear everything up yesterday. Indeed, some were muttering about primaries
and getting rid of her. The undercurrent is that the Sheriff’s Department
clearly did wrong, and heads should roll, including hers.
The problem is that is unfair and is a rush to
judgment by people who do not know all the facts but are buying into a sometimes
all too true narrative about police abuse of authority and police brutality. And we need to admit how often that is the case.
But “all too often” and “too frequently” are not the same as
“always”. So, I argued back that
before jumping to conclusions, people ought to take a deep breath and wait for
the investigation to be completed. Of course, given the track record of the
Fairfax County Police Department, and their own history of stonewalling cases,
I can well understand the impatience and frustration. However, it is not fair
to conflate this case with that of John Geer, who was shot by a Fairfax police
officer. It took 18 months before Fairfax County released any information,
including the name of the officer who fired the shot. Plus, the county police
department only released that information after a judge ordered it.
In contrast, the McKenna investigation has been going on for under three months, aPost, other media, and those of us following this case have begun raising legitimate questions about how this was handled. There is nothing unreasonable about the questions. But what is unreasonable is the rush to judgment before the investigation is finished. Again, we are not talking about the 18 month long stonewall that occurred with John Geer. We are talking less than three months -- the medical examiner just released the autopsy results today.
nd the medical examiner’s office just released the autopsy results. According to the Washington Post, the cause of death was “excited delirium".
As the Post editorial points out, none of the medical literature, nor various
medical societies, list excited delirium as an actual medical diagnosis. Only
medical examiners use the terms, usually for those in police custody who have
died due to stun gun use.
I don’t expect Sheriff Kincaid to go before the public until
after the completed investigation gives her a fuller picture of the situation, Nevertheless, the Washington
Before I go further, I want to address the big gorilla in
the room: we need to have a serious discussion about how we treat the mentally
ill. There are deeper, more serious questions about why this woman, who we know suffered
from schizophrenia, was even in police custody rather than under treatment in a
secure medical facility. That, however, is a different topic, for a different day.
It is one I will return to in the future.
But for now, we need to deal with how any prisoner is
treated while in custody. Right now, Baltimore is being torn apart by riots
over that very issue. And while Fairfax is a long way from Baltimore’s mean
streets, the issue is no less important here. You measure a society’s decency
by how it treats its most powerless members. Likewise, you judge an institution
by how well it handles its most difficult situations.
And the situation here was that a severely mentally ill
woman, who was already shackled to a special chair, was stunned four times to control her agitation. Tasering is a technique that works by
inflicting electric shock and pain. So, the very first question is why were
they in effect punishing a severely mentally ill person to bring her into
compliance? Another very troubling
element is the following stated policy: “once we begin an extraction, we do not
stop it.”
Infliction of pain and refusal to back down are all elements
of a mindset that is about controlling an unruly prisoner by showing that
person who is boss. It is about maintaining discipline and asserting control.
And in the case of an unruly prisoner who is not mentally ill, but just rowdy,
it might be perfectly appropriate to assert such authority (though I have my doubts about use of a Taser ever). But it is anything but proper treatment of
somebody who is severely mentally impaired and not in their sound mind. Indeed,
absent the threat of harm to the guard or self-harm to the prisoner,
withdrawing and giving her a timeout to calm down might have been exactly the
right course to take. Without a compelling reason, there is no excuse to
continue an extraction is such a case. Treating her like a patient, not a prisoner, might have been exactly what
was needed.
Further, if you know you have an impossible to control
inmate, why was there no attempt to medicate her? If an inmate had an infection
or other physical illness, would a doctor not have prescribed an antibiotic, a
painkiller? Why wasn’t a doctor available to provide sedatives,
anti-psychotics, or other medication to control her mental symptoms?
We should be asking the following questions: what is the
policy for handling extractions of unruly inmates; was that policy followed in
this case; how, if at all, did guards deviate from that policy; and was the
policy, itself, flawed? Does the Sheriff’s Office need to revise its policies?
Do the guards need better training and more oversight? Use of stun guns was temporarily suspended, but will their use resume? Why? What disciplinary action will the six guard face and why? What exactly needs to
change to make sure this does not happen again?
These questions can’t be answered without knowing the all
the facts. Investigators now have some of the facts, including the actual cause
of death. Now they have to put all that together and present the total picture
to the Sheriff, who must then review it against policy and decide what needs to change, what improvement in training and oversight of her staff needs
to be implemented, what disciplinary action needs to be taken, and what needs to be done to keep this from happening again.
Sheriff Kincaid needs time to review all the facts and provide a satisfactory
statement going forward.
