A mentally ill man was murdered in a Maricopa County jail by police who used undue force to restrain him and let him die, according to a lawsuit filed by his family on Friday.
Akeem Terrell, a 31-year-old man from Detroit, lived in Phoenix for six years before being arrested after refusing to leave a party on New Year’s Day 2021.
His family claims that newly released body camera footage shows what happened next led to a violation of his rights and led to his death.
After his arrest, Terrell was taken by the Phoenix Police Department to the Containment, Transfer and Release Jail at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office on Lower Buckeye Road in Phoenix.
Upon arrival, body camera video footage and audio show Terrell was confused and possibly in the middle of a psychotic break. Lying about where he is. Terrell has repeatedly said he believes the cops are trying to kill him.
The video shows police officers grabbing Mr. Terrell’s arms and legs, taking him to jail for processing, and continuing to ask what he did wrong.
Officers take Terrell to the prison isolation room, where they attempt to change his handcuffs from those issued by the Phoenix Police Department to those used in the county jail.
Terrell was 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighed over 400 pounds. Because of his size, the lawsuit stated that officers used two sets of handcuffs strung together and “forced Hakeem’s hands behind his back in a strange, painful and unnatural manner.” .
Several officers put their weight on Terrell. Terrell was lying prone with his arms folded behind his back. Terrell told officers that he was killing him when he folded his legs and pressed them against his body.
The video shows Terrell’s head and face hitting the wall as he moaned and grappled with the officer above him.
At one point, as many as seven officers were on top of Terrell and holding him down.
Once the officers changed the cuffs, the video showed them exiting the isolation cell, leaving Terrell lying face down on the floor motionless.
The video showed that several minutes passed before someone came to see Terrell through the observation window in the cell door. I took it off and rolled it onto my back and started CPR.
The Phoenix Fire Department arrived and after continuing CPR, put Terrell on a stretcher and put him in an ambulance.
Terrell’s Death Like Other Cases
Jesse Showalter, an attorney representing Terrell’s family, said the video was the most grotesque he had ever seen after years of working on cases involving deaths in police custody.
“Prison officers don’t appear to have any training to deal with the psychiatric patients and the hazards of postural suffocation,” Showalter said.
He said Terrell’s death was similar to other cases in Valley, where victims died of suffocation during police encounters. The 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police occurred in a similar setting.
A study by the Arizona Republic found that, on average, someone in Arizona dies in arrest or in prison every 21 days. The Republic has found at least 64 cases in which people have died in county jails or during arrests between January 1, 2017 and August 4, 2020.
“When you restrain someone with handcuffs, you impede your body’s ability to breathe when you’re prone,” Showalter said. “Cops need to be trained that leaving a person prone and handcuffed poses a choking hazard.”
Showalter said the response was slow and inadequate.
“The murder occurred when they left him prone, helpless, with his hands tied behind his back in the cell,” Showalter said. “Had he been treated at that point, he might have survived.”
The lawsuit names Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone of the City of Phoenix and police and detainees who work for both the city and county.
“The Officers Defendant alleges that Akeem’s use of excessive and unnecessary force, willful indifference to Akeem’s obvious and serious medical needs, failure to provide or call for medical care, and unnecessary and unreasonable delay in calling medical care, caused death,” the lawsuit states. state. “At all relevant times, Akeem was either ‘arrested’ or ‘arrested’. A “pretrial detainee” protected by the Fourth Amendment or protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Maricopa County and the City of Phoenix declined to comment on the pending lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Arizona, seeks general and punitive damages in unspecified amounts.
“My world was shaken”
Diamond Warren, the mother of Terrell’s daughter, hopes police will be trained to prevent such tragedies from happening to other families. said his loss was devastating.
“My world seemed shaken,” she said. “Do you know how your ears ring after hearing an explosion? Mine haven’t stopped ringing yet.”
Warren is a 911 operator in Detroit, Michigan. She says she knows from her experience that first responders benefit from training on how to interact with people in mental health crises.
“Things can escalate very quickly. That’s why sending specific forces who know how to handle someone in that situation because they’re trained to ask specific questions. You can.
“It’s not easy to take everyone to jail when you’re having a mental health episode,” Warren said.
Got news tips about prisons in Arizona? Contact reporters at jjenkins@arizonarepublic.com or at 812-243-5582. follow him on twitter @Jimmy Jenkins.
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