After officers arrested Wayne Bowker on a charge of drug possession, they took him to the detention facility in Carter County, Oklahoma.  During the intake procedure, he told the jailer that he was being treated for a number of serious medical conditions, including asthma, bipolar disorder and congestive heart failure.  He also told them he was taking prescription medications for those conditions.

Although the jail had a policy requiring that a licensed physician would provide the inmates with medical care, the jail didn't have one.  Instead, a nurse, Kimberlee Miller, worked at the jail 5 days a week.  If an inmate developed a medical problem when she wasn't there, jail staff were to contact her.

But they didn't like to do that because Miller did not have the sweetest disposition.  As one court noted, "Miller was known to yell at staff when contacted outside of work hours, a problem so pervasive that even the Sheriff was aware that officers were hesitant to contact Miller when off duty."

Court documents allege that, when contacted, Miller would not go to the jail but would try to make a health assessment by phone.  If jail staff didn't manage to get in touch with Miller, the court stated, "detention officers with no medical training were expected to rely on their 'common sense' to determine whether an inmate should be transferred to the emergency room."

Bowker had been in jail 2 weeks when he complained that his breathing was stopping at night and his hands and feet were swelling.  However, he had neither his medication nor the CPAP machine which had been prescribed to treat this condition.

It didn't require a nurse to see that Bowker's condition was serious, even life-threatening.  Bowker's cellmate wrote a note stating "we are afraid he is going to die on us."
 

However, according to court documents, the nurse did not even review Bowker's request until 2 days later.  She did not conduct a health assessment but did contact Bowker's mother, who brought the CPAP machine and Bowker's medicine to the jail.

But jail staff refused to accept this medicine.  The court noted that the jail "had a policy of refusing any medication that was not packaged in bubble packs.  If an inmate's family did not provide medication in this specific type of packaging, an inmate could only obtain medication through a visit to the emergency room, which resulted in a $100 transport fee deducted from the inmate's commissary account pursuant to a policy created by the Sheriff's office."

Jail records show that Bowker did not receive any medication for almost 2 months.  That wasn't atypical.  The jail nurse also took a long time to respond to other inmates' requests for medical treatment.

Bowker submitted a request for medical treatment stating that he had a broken toe and was having trouble balancing,  After waiting 6 days, he submitted another request, repeating that he was having trouble balancing, was experiencing dizzy spells and had fallen twice, injuring his back.  The nurse did not review this request for another 3 days.

Three times, Bowker was taken to the emergency room. The last time, the hospital's discharge instructions directed that he receive care from a neurologist and listed 3 medications he was supposed to continue taking.  However, the jail did not arrange for Bowker to see or a neurologist or receive further medical treatment.

Additionally, the jail only gave Bowker the prescribed medication for 2 days after his discharge from the hospital.  Then, jail staff stopped.  Why they stopped giving him the prescribed medication isn't clear, but without it Bowker deteriorated rapidly.

After a week without medication, he became catatonic, unable to speak coherently, and began defecating on himself.  Two days later, a guard found Bowker collapsed on the floor of his cell.

Bowker died at age 41.  The official cause of death was an enlarged heart, but an expert witness later testified that several different conditions, including encephalopathy, probably contrbuted.

The administator of Bowker's estate sued the sheriff and the nurse.  The trial court concluded that the doctrine of qualified immunity barred the lawsuit and dismissed it.  However, on March 14, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed the district court and reinstated the suit.

Bowker was the third Carter County jail inmate to die within a 10-month period.  About 7 months earlier, a 44-year-old inmate had died of a pulmonary embolism.  Two months before that death, a 20-year-old inmate had committed suicide.

In an ironic twist, after Bowker died, the sheriff himself learned what it felt like to be jailed.  But the lesson didn't last long.

At the time Bowker died, state investigators already had received allegations of misconduct which shed some light on why the sheriff wasn't paying attention to conditions in his jail.  He had other things on his mind.

Agents of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation arrested Sheriff Milton Anthony on a charge of receiving a bribe, and booked him in his own jail.  The bribe did not involve money.  Rather, for almost a year, a woman employed by the sheriff's department provided sex to the sheriff and in return, the sheriff hired the woman's husband as a deputy.

The Oklahoma attorney general also charged the sheriff with sexual battery for – allegedly – fondling another female employee without her consent.

The charges could have landed Anthony in prison for a decade or more, but the prosecutor gave him a good deal.  Without admitting guilt, the sheriff entered an "Alford plea" – essentially a plea of "no contest" – to the bribery charge and the prosecutor dropped the sexual battery charge.  The court sentenced Anthony to 2 years unsupervised probation.  He also lost his certification to serve as a law enforcement officer and resigned as sheriff.

Anthony isn't the only Oklahoma sheriff who has gotten on the wrong side of the law.  An Oklahoma newspaper made a list.

 

   Has the city of Hemet, California, delared war on its black residents?  Three have filed a federal lawsuit against the city.  Their complaint describes the kind of police misconduct associated with the Deep South during the 1950s.

    According to the lawsuit, on March 31, 2021, Ryan Gadison drove to the home of his fiancee, Mariah Hereford.  After he pulled into Hereford's driveway, a Hemet police car with two white officers pulled in behind him.

    The cops allegedly were part of a "gang task force." But the 33–year–old Gadison did not belong to any gang and had not engaged in any illegal activity.  Gadison, the complaint states, was simply "driving home after a long, full day of work.  The HPD officers had no reasonable suspicion or probable cause to initiate a traffice stop."

    One cop claimed that Gadison’s car lacked a front license place and asked permission to search  it.  When Gadison refused, they pulled him out of the car, arrested him for driving with a suspended license, and searched the car.

    Gadison’s fiancee Mariah and her mother, Monett Hereford, were outside their home and began recording video of the arrest with their cellphones.  They repeatedly told the officers they were filming, the complaint said, “in an attempt to moderate the officers’ use of excessive force.”

    One of the officers threatened the women with arrest if they did not back up, even though, the complaint alleges, they were “not in the immediate vicinity of the arrest.”

    Then, one of the cops knocked the phone out of Monett Hereford’s hands.  Officers forced her up against Gadison’car and handcuffed her so tightly it caused pain.   The complaint states:

    Over MONETT’s objection, male HPD officers engaged in an invasive full body “search and frisk,” grabbing and probing MONETT between her legs and groin area, despite the presence of female officers fully capable of conducting a less offensive or invasive search of MONETT.

    Meanwhile, Monett’s daughter Mariah was recording video with her phone.  According to the complaint, a white officer pushed her backwards, swatted the phone out of her hand, and knocked her to the ground.  The complaint continues:

   The HPD officer roughly grab MARIAH by her hair, yanked her head back and slammed her face against the ground, multiple times. When MARIAH pleaded for the HPD officer to let her go, his response was: “Shut your fucking mouth!” The HPD officer then hooked his fingers into the underside of MARIAH’s jaw , as if she were a fish, and yanked her upward from the ground, both chokingand restricting her airway. MARIAH wailed in agony, causing her to lose consciousness several times. While she was on the ground motionless, MARIAH was handcuffed with her hands behind her, and due to her injuries, had to be assisted to the squad car.

    Later that night, she was hospitalized and diagnosed with closed head injury, left shoulder pain, low back pain, neck pain and whiplash.

    While these events took place, her children, who had ventured outside the house, were crying.  The Hereford’s 3 dogs, each chained to individual dog houses, were barking.

    The dogs’ 4-foot chains did not allow them to get near the police.  Nonetheless, two cops came over to the dogs.  The complaint states that an officer grabbed by the collar one of the dogs, named “Blue” and “violently threw him to the ground.  A second HPD officer used a baton to brutally beat their second dog, “Rocky,” who required veterinary treatment.”

    These allegations, which still must be proven in court, indicate that the police have gone ferel, totally out of the city’s control.  But do city officials want it that way?

    About a decade ago, Hemet decided to get tougher on crime.  At one city council meeting, a resident said that “some new elements” were moving  into town.  The city council enacted a “crime-free housing” ordinance similar to those many other cities have adopted.  This program, which Hemet ended last year under federal pressure, involved the police in landlord-tenant matters.

    Under the program, a landlord required each tenant to sign a lease “addendum” that gave the landlord the power to evict the tenant immediately if criminal activity takes place in the leased apartment. But Hemet’s ordinance went further.  Landlords even were evicting tenants who dialed 9-1-1 too often.

    To promote Hemet's crime-free housing law, police would take their SWAT armored vehicle to various civic gatherings.  In sent a clear message that the city had declared war on crime.

    But turning peace officers into war officers burdens them with new expectations and gives them tacit permission to operate under a different, more violent, set of rules.  An us-versus-them war mentality also fosters prejudices.

    Warriors fight enemies wearing uniforms. How do warrior cops know who’s the bad guy?  When they decide friend-or-foe based on skin color, a lot of innocent people get hurt.

    Imagine this: You need a vacation, badly, and decide to treat yourself to a good one. You're waiting to board your flight when you hear your name called over the PA system and go to the counter to find out why.

    TSA officers meet you at the counter, escort you to a room and tell you to wait. Then, they tell you that you're under arrest on a Texas fugitive warrant.

    "But I've never been to Texas!"

    They pay no attention to your protests and handcuff you to a chair. Minutes later, police arrive and take you to jail, where you stay for almost 2 weeks until your family and the lawyers they hired get you out.

    It happened to Bethany Farber at the Los Angeles International Airport. Now, she's suing Los Angeles.

    "I just kept insisting that they check," Farber said, "that they double-check because they had the wrong person, and I made that very clear. I told them over and over again, and they just completely blew me off."

    Her lawsuit alleges that she was kept unsanitary conditions and saw feces being thrown and smeared on walls. Her lawyer, Rodney Diggs, said she "had to spend her nights in a cold jail cell, listening to voices of other inmates screaming, crying, she saw fights within her cell, she saw fights in the common areas of the jail."

    According to Diggs, the Los Angeles Police Department failed to check her birth date, her social security number, her fingerprints, her middle name, or compare her features with a photo of the actual fugitive.

    Meanwhile, her family hired lawyers in both Texas and California. The lawsuit alleges that after about 11 days, the Los Angeles authorities received notice from Texas that they were holding the wrong person but still kept her locked up another 3 days.

    Finally, the family managed to convince the authorities to release Farber by using her cellphone's GPS records to prove she wasn't in Texas at the time of the crime. Farber praised her family: "They were fighting for me every day." But what would have happened if Farber's family had not worked tirelessly and hired attorneys in two states?

    "There's a lot of people out there who this is happening to who don't have anyone advocating for them," Farber said. "They don't have their family fighting for them every day, and every day that they're in jail, wrongfully, their lives are being dismantled."

    When asked about the matter, the LAPD answered that it does not comment on pending litigation.

    However, Farber had something more to say: "It could happen to anyone." 

    In November 1014, a deputy sheriff in Martin County, Florida stopped David Sosa and checked his driver's license.  According to the database, a county in Texas had issued an arrest warrant for a David Sosa.

    The deputy took Sosa into custody.  Sosa spent several hours at the sheriff's department before the officers confirmed that he wasn't the man Texas wanted.  They released him.

    In April 2018, the same thing happened.  Sosa protested that the deputies had made this mistake three years earlier. However, a jail employee told him they had no records of the previous arrest.  Noneless, he spent 3 days in jail before being released.

    How long would they keep him in jail the next time.  To foreclose that possibility, Sosa sued the sheriff's department in federal court.  The lawsuit alleged false arrest and overdetention.  It also alleged that the sheriff's department had failed to train the deputies and had failed to keep adequate records.

    The district court dismissed the lawsuit based on the doctrine of qualified immunity.  Sosa appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.  In September 2021, a three-judge panel affirmed the District Court's dismissal of the allegations of false arrest and failure to train and keep records.  However, the Court held that the doctrine of qualified immunity did not bar Sosa's overdetention claim.

    But that partial victory may be short-lived.  In January of this year, the entire court voted to vacate the panel's decision.  The case will now be decided by the full court.