How many people have died in our sheriff's jails?
Six months ago, on May 4, 2015, I asked a spokesman for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for a cadaver count.
It was not an idle question.
Since he was elected sheriff in 1993, county taxpayers have shelled out more than $140 million to litigate — and ultimately settle — claims of brutality by the sheriff's deputies. Lawsuits charge that the sheriff has cultivated a "culture of cruelty" motivated by Arpaio's incessant trumpeting that he is America's toughest lawman.
But even if you could kill and maim the indigent and the lawless for free, do we really want a medieval penal system?
So it is a simple, if morbid, question: How many body bags?
Sheriff Joe Arpaio has refused to answer. His spokesman, Lieutenant Brandon James, said doing the math would take a few weeks.
It's been six months.
Searching other databases (the Office of the County Medical Examiner's and the Office of Risk Management's, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice's) revealed that close to 160 people have died in Arpaio's jails.
But that is an estimate, because the truth is that no outside authority keeps track of how many people die from brutality, neglect, disease, bad health, or old age in Arpaio's jails.
Federal Judge Neil Wake twice has ruled that medical care is so deficient in the jails as to be "unconstitutional."
The Department of Justice supposedly monitors conditions in the jails but has shown little or no appetite for confronting Arpaio.
What my research discovered is that people hang themselves in the sheriff's jail at a rate that dwarfs other county lockups.
And many of the deaths are classified as having occurred in the county hospital or in a cell without further explanation. People die and no one asks how; no one asks why.
more:
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/prisoners-hang-themselves-in-sheriff-joe-arpaios-jails-at-a-rate-that-dwarfs-other-county-lockups-7845679
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