Jails have become de facto repositories for people suffering mental illness, both because there is nowhere else to warehouse them and, well, they tend to break laws because they lack the ability to control their conduct.
Sure, their conduct may be harmful, and those who are on the receiving end may well appreciate that there are means to deal with the harm, but most of us would concede they need help rather than punishment if public safety and rationality are the goals. Except in Fairfax County, Virginia, where the Sheriff, Stacey Kincaid, was far more concerned with the rat on her team who revealed how they killed 37-year-old Natasha McKenna.
Natasha McKenna initially cooperated with deputies, placed her hands through her cell door food slot and agreed to be handcuffed, the reports show. But McKenna, whose deteriorating mental state had caused Fairfax to seek help for her, then began trying to fight her way out of the cuffs, repeatedly screaming, “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me!” the reports show.
Then, six members of the Sheriff’s Emergency Response Team, dressed in white full-body biohazard suits and gas masks, arrived and placed a wildly struggling 130-pound McKenna into full restraints, their reports state. But when McKenna wouldn’t bend her knees so she could be placed into a wheeled restraint chair, a lieutenant delivered four 50,000-volt shocks from the Taser, enabling the other deputies to strap her into the chair, the reports show.
McKenna wasn’t an easy inmate, no doubt, having been arrested for punching an officer and wanted on a warrant in Alexandria. When the Fairfax sheriff contacted the Alexandria folks, the anticipated interest in bringing McKenna back didn’t appear.
But because McKenna was technically Alexandria’s prisoner, Fairfax could not petition a magistrate to have her placed in mental health care. Over the next week, Kincaid said, Fairfax deputies called Alexandria police three times seeking to have McKenna picked up, but Alexandria did not do so.
Alexandria didn’t want her. Fairfax didn’t want her either. Who can blame them?
McKenna’s mental state was poor, and the deputies’ reports show that she had brief, violent incidents with deputies Jan. 27 and Jan. 31, including one in which a deputy was scratched. McKenna also repeatedly urinated or defecated on her cell floor, the reports show, which is treated as a biohazard by the jail.
That’s the sort of thing inmates suffering significant mental illness do. It’s no doubt very unpleasant for the deputies, and after the bloom is off the rose, frustrating in the way that people say, “who needs this crap?”
So that morning, the Fairfax guys decided they would pack McKenna up and deliver her to Alexandria themselves, just to be rid of her. And unsurprisingly, she didn’t cooperate, because she was mentally ill.
She placed her hands through the food slot in the door, and the lieutenant placed handcuffs on her. He then attached one end of a Ripp hobble — a strap with a clip commonly used to attach handcuffs to another object — to the handcuffs and the other end to the outside cell door knob.
“Her demeanor began to change,” the lieutenant wrote, “and she attempted to draw her arms back into the food slot.”
A nearby deputy recorded that McKenna yelled, “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me! You promised you wouldn’t hurt me!” and then placed her feet on the inside cell door, pulling her body off the ground as she tried to pull free from the cuffs and Ripp hobble, the documents show.
Were they hurting McKenna? Who knows. But apparently the frustration of the Fairfax deputies got the better of them, and they weren’t going to let McKenna’s mental state put off their efforts to be rid of her.
A restraint chair was then brought in, with straps to hold the arms and legs. McKenna refused to sit in the chair, and reports show that one deputy punched her in the knees four times trying to get her to bend her legs and sit down.
Few things calm down a crazy person better than being forced into a restraint chair.
The lieutenant wrote that he told McKenna that if she did not comply, he would use the Taser, and she continued to resist.
Because reasoning with the mentally ill is always a sound tactic and makes for a perfect justification for what comes next. So McKenna was stunned four times, three by direct contact and once by darts.
McKenna was, at last, strapped into the restraint chair. A nurse checked on her, but McKenna was still struggling, so the nurse decided to take her vital signs when the chair was wheeled down to the transport van.
But at the jail entrance, the nurse “was unable to get a pulse from Inmate McKenna” and called for an ambulance.
Inexplicably, the struggling McKenna morphed into the dead McKenna and nobody noticed until they got to the jailhouse gate.
All of this might form the basis for an important message on the duty of jails, and the deputies that staff them, to be far better equipped to address the needs and problems of the mentally ill, rather than taze them to death before they can ship them off and make them somebody else’s problem. But not this time.
“This is a tragedy,” Kincaid said, adding that she planned to meet with McKenna’s family when the investigation is done. She said she was “disappointed that someone chose to release internal documents prior to the completion of the criminal investigation” and that she wanted the full information about the case to be released.
Inside the Fairfax jail, someone spilled the internal documents as to McKenna’s death. Until then, it wasn’t known what actually killed her. And Kincaid is, naturally disappointed. After all, they were so close to getting rid of a problem like McKenna and now they have the problem of killing McKenna.
Of course, the problem of dealing with the mentally ill inmate, Natasha McKenna, isn’t much of a concern at all. That’s why they have Tasers:
Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid declined to comment on the case but defended the use of a stun gun on a restrained prisoner, saying it was “a means that is often useful to ensure the safety of a person” rather than using physical force to gain compliance. She said stun guns were used “occasionally” on prisoners who are already restrained.
So close. If only McKenna didn’t die. Or at least didn’t die until they made her Alexandria’s problem.
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“Because reasoning with the mentally ill is always a sound tactic and makes for a perfect justification for what comes next.”
While I realize that reason does not work for the mentally that are in a crisis state, when they are non-compliant in a situation where compliance is necessary, the options I can see are:
1. Reason
2. Force
3. Medicine
I am entirely too ignorant when it comes to regulations of the use of force in these situations, so I’ll ask: what other options did they have? Can they just leave her as she is until a psychiatrist is available to administer medicine? Did I miss an option in there?
I’m not being snide here; I’m genuinely ignorant as to what other options are available in such situations.
The difficulty you’re having is with the fact that mental illness is a medical condition, not a choice. Think of it this way: can the cops order a deaf man to hear? Can the cops beat a blind man into seeing? Can the cops begin with a course of action, reason, which definitionally will fail, and then use their effort to justify force?
The answer is in treating mental illness as what it is rather than adopt the hammer/nail view. The deputies had no other choice, but that’s because the deputies shouldn’t have been doing the job of a psychiatrist.
It’s not that I didn’t understand the nature of mental illness, but that I didn’t know what options were available outside of those.
Your answer ultimately gave me more than I’d asked for and provided something I would’ve wanted to know if had I thought to ask.
Thank you.
In one of my positions at the public defender’s office, I dealt with a client based that involved far more mentally ill people than normal. I had a social worker work closely with me. Her ability to talk down the most crazed, potentially violence clients was truely amazing. If you know how to talk to them, all but the most psychotic can be talked down.
Also, mental hospitals deal with crazy people all day are almost never use force and our local one has not killed anyone in my memory. Also, they don’t get tasers.
I, too, always electrocute my aunt’s cat to death when he gives me a scratch. Delighted to hear Stacey and I have something in common.
Always? You’re just being hyperbolic again, I bet. Maybe only most of the time.
Sane men would have just put here back in her cell. But you see how this works out. Once they have made a decision, no matter how illogical, no matter how petty, you WILL comply. There will be no understanding. There will be no empathy. How dare you defy us. See? You made us kill you and it’s your fault!
They could have bent her legs without resorting punching her kneecaps. The problem though, is not to many cops today work as a team, but as a thugscrum. Each going off in their own little… how dare you!
That’s a recurring theme, that once a decision to act is made and action begins, it falls outside the realm of possibility that anyone says, “you know, maybe this isn’t a great idea,” or “maybe we should take a step back and let things calm down,” or “maybe we’re in deep shit and this isn’t going to end well for anybody.”
But momentum being what it is…
Yeah. As an auto mechanic, I sometimes get frustrated working on an electrical problem. Especially working on today computerized vehicles. But I don’t beat the crap out of the car. I walk away, have a smoke, gather my patience, think it through, maybe grab the schematic again… and fix the car. But dern it, if it’s people, and they are broke, the best option is to break it more! That will show’em!
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”
I try to do my own work on my ’64 Healey, just because if you can’t work on an old car, you don’t deserve to have an old car. Not being a motor head despite my wayward youth, I learn every time I do something that I have a lot to learn. And it’s frustrating, especially when you do it the second or third time.
But there is an attitude of persistence combined with getting it right that doesn’t let me quit or use a piece of duct tape, just because it would be quicker and easier. People deserve at least as much care. Even crazy people. Maybe especially crazy people.
“But there is an attitude of persistence combined with getting it right that doesn’t let me quit or use a piece of duct tape, just because it would be quicker and easier.”
Oh gawd. The things I have seen. It’s embarrassing. I watched a guy work on an older Ford P-U. For some strange reason, Ford routed the power wire to the fuel pump through the blinker system (blinkers don’t work). Truck won’t start. Has spark! Gee! It must be the fuel pump! Replaced the fuel pump and it still won’t start. Gosh! It’s not the fuel pump! Maybe I’d better actually find the problem! He found it 6 hours later. Rather than FIX it, he just cut the fuel pump wire and tied it into the alternator. It started.
Hey! How’s that alternating current working out on your fuel pump!?
Huh? Uh duh… it started!
And the Service Manager let it go that way and charged the guy for the new fuel pump.
And the blinkers still don’t work. 🙂
The cop… er, mechanic stories I could tell.
I admit I am ignorant on some points, but the details don’t seem to be enough to necessarily attribute mal-intent to the jailers. I think it’s possible they were (perhaps misguidedly) trying to do what was right for McKenna, but the situation got beyond their abilities.
I don’t doubt they wanted to be rid of her, but wasn’t Alexandria likely the better option? Fairfax county could only keep her locked up. In Alexandria, there was a chance she could get mental help. Transporting here there, if she was cooperative seems like it could be a good idea. Of course, since Alexandria didn’t want her, that could have also gone poorly on arrival.
I don’t know much of anything about handcuffs, but it would seem that pulling against them hard enough to keep your body off the ground would likely do damage to your hands and wrists. Wouldn’t it be more humane to restrain her in another way so they could be removed and prevent that from happening?
Clearly no one was trained to properly deal with an individual that has mental health issues, and the situation was mishandled and escalated accordingly. This points back to the fundamental issue that jails are not mental health care facilities. Not that the jailers set out to tase a woman to death.
Of course, if it is accurate that she was tased again while restrained/hooded/etc. for failure to sit complacently in the restraint chair, that’s another matter.
You might have done well to stop your comment at four words. After that, you just go in circles.
4 Words?
“I admit I am”
Yeah, he was just keepin’ it Cartesian. Don’t be so uncharitable.
After reading the linked article (and the one linked from that), I was being much too charitable. Disregard paragraphs 1,4,5.
I also see Alexandria was prepared to receive her.
For my own edification: what constitutes full restraints? I originally took that to be another term for the restraint chair. It doesn’t sound like another term for straight jacket. Would a struggling person be likely to further harm themselves on such restraints? I’m guessing there would still be sufficient mobility to hurt oneself, like hitting your head on the floor? Is a restraint chair similar to the typical object in movies with wide leather/fabric belts that would keep a person nearly immobile, and unable to hurt themselves/others?
I also see from the WP article on 2/8 that Fairfax does indeed have a mental health unit and that is where she was located, so one should be able to reasonably expect they were competent in dealing with mentally unstable people.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1HtZkTBhTeI