Police Misconduct Blog

Preston Chaney, 64, could have been the poster child for a person most vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19. He had diabetes and suffered from heart and liver disease. After his arrest for burglary in the midst of the pandemic, he could have been out on bail had he managed to find $100. He did not...

Since the pandemic hit the U.S. in March, 135 inmates and 2 staff members in the federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) system have succumbed to Covid-19. The situation will worsen, as BOP practices such as prisoner transfers exacerbate the situation and spread disease. Rather than limit...

To date, 27 inmates or employees at California’s notorious San Quentin Prison have died of COVID-19 complications. Among them was Daniel Ruiz, 61, whose family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the state and its Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (“CDCR”) on...

Northern California’s San Quentin State Prison is currently home to the nation’s largest coronavirus outbreak, with at least one-third of inmates testing positive since July.
As of August, 25 inmates or guards had succumbed to COVID-19. Many of the inmates believe they were...

There are 168,336 men and women in the custody of the California Department of Corrections as of last week. That doesn’t count the county jails and federal correctional centers. Los Angles County Sheriff’s Department alone is responsible for an additional 18,000 inmates and 18,000 staff...

Centurion, part of the Centene Corporation and a healthcare provider to inmates at prisons run by the Mississippi Department of Corrections (“MDOC”), announced in July that it was terminating its multi-million dollar contract. The $289 million in funding will end in October as Centurion...

Since March, California’s prison population has faced the threat of COVID-19, a disease spreading quickly among those living in close quarters. Now, there is an additional potentially deadly menace.
As raging wildfires spread throughout the state, those outside the prison system in...

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) holds more inmates than any other U.S. jail system. Currently, 163,000 inmates are incarcerated at BOP facilities. Relatively few of those prisoners are on Death Row, but the BOP’s inadequate response to COVID-19 has caused its prisons to become death...

No city in the country has suffered more COVID-19 deaths than New York City, but a May 2 arrest raises questions regarding police enforcement of social distancing rules. There are no hard and fast regulations, but increasingly it appears there is one standard for caucasian residents violating...

It is no secret that coronavirus is spreading rampantly through nursing homes, prisons, and other crowded facilities with poor sanitary practices. Although seven weeks have passed since President Trump declared a national emergency, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) still does not...