Police Misconduct Blog

It is a plaintive, heart-wrenching plea. Matthew Loflin, 32, an inmate at the Chatham County Detention Center (“CCDC”) in Savannah, Georgia, tells his mom on a phone call that “I’m gonna die in here.” His words were prophetic.
As of early 2014, Loflin had spent...

Between 2008 and 2019, 7,571 inmates died in the U.S.’s largest jails. Of these, 4,998 were people arrested on minor charges who never had their day in court. Those are the findings of a Reuters investigation into fatalities in the country’s 500 biggest jails. These jails had a minimum...

The largest settlement in the Oregon Department of Corrections’ (“DOC”) history, $2.7 million, was awarded to the brother of a man who suffered for weeks while prison medical staff ignored him. His half-brother, Stephen Brown, filed the lawsuit.
In January 2018, Oregon State...

A man whom Charlotte-Mecklenburg County police saw eat a large amount of cocaine died while in custody. The officers did not try to get medical help for him, left him unattended in violation of department regulations, and failed to respond to his calls for help.
Harold Easter, 41, was taken...

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...

Antonio Valenzuela, 40, a Mexican-American, died literally in the arms of Las Cruces, New Mexico, police officer Christopher Smelser. Smelser was holding him in a vascular neck restraint at the time, a type of restraint banned by the department.
Now, seven months after Valenzuela’s...

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...

Philip Garcia, 51, pleaded for someone to help him. At the time, the inmate was in California’s Riverside University Health System Medical Center. The facility treats county jail inmates suffering from serious issues, including psychiatric crisis.
That is precisely what Garcia was...

The Douglas County Jail in Douglasville, Georgia is no stranger to controversy. The facility, operated by Douglas County Sheriff Tim Pounds, has been sued multiple times. Numerous people have died in the jail because of poor medical care. At least two jail staff were indicted after an inmate died...