July 19, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
media@aclu.org DENVER,
CO -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado filed a sweeping class
action lawsuit today in federal court on behalf of prisoners in the Garfield
County Jail who have been subjected to widespread excessive force by deputies’
misuse and abuse of pepperball guns, restraint chairs, Tasers, pepper spray, and
electroshock belts.
“The deputies are enthralled by these
nifty devices,” said Mark Silverstein, Legal Director of the ACLU of
Colorado. “Some of them may have a legitimate use in a detention facility,
but only in strictly limited circumstances and under carefully crafted
guidelines designed to control the potential for abuse and the serious risk they
pose to prisoners’ health and safety. At the Garfield County Jail,
however, there are no written policies that regulate deputies’ use of restraint
chairs, electroshock weapons, or pepperball guns, and the one-page policy on
pepper spray is insufficient as written and regularly violated in practice.”
The ACLU said in legal papers that the jail’s use of the devices
violates widely accepted standards of law enforcement and corrections
professionals, as well as the manufacturers’ and vendors’ training and
recommendations for safe and appropriate use. The lawsuit says that prisoners
shot with pepperballs or drenched with pepper spray are regularly strapped into
the restraint chair—sometimes for hours—without being provided any opportunity
to decontaminate.
“Deputies have threatened prisoners with
Tasers after they are already fully-restrained and have intentionally strapped
prisoners into the chair in extremely painful positions,” said ACLU of Colorado
Staff Attorney Taylor Pendergrass. “Deputies have used these devices as an
abusive form of summary corporal punishment, causing intense pain and physical
injuries.”
Prisoners going to court are often forced to wear a
remote-controlled electroshock belt during transport to court and during
hearings. With a push of a button, a deputy can deliver an incapacitating
and painful eight-second-long electric shock of 50,000 volts. Amnesty
International has condemned the use of such devices as torture, with prisoners
never knowing when or whether a deputy will push the button.
According to the ACLU lawsuit, deputies deliberately taunt prisoners to heighten
their anxiety while they are wearing the electroshock belt by playing “mind
games” and suggesting that the prisoners are about to be shocked.
Silverstein said he hoped the ACLU’s lawsuit would serve as a
wake-up call to jail authorities. “Without strict regulation of restraint
chairs, pepperball guns, electroshock devices and pepper spray, deputies are
likely to wind up with a dead prisoner on their hands,” he said.
The lawsuit notes that electroshock weapons, pepper spray, and
restraint chairs have all been associated with a number of in-custody deaths,
and that the jail’s unregulated use of these devices in combination poses
especially serious risks to prisoners’ safety. According to the lawsuit,
the jail’s use-of-force practices pose “serious and unjustifiable risks to
prisoners’ health, safety, physical integrity, and even their lives.”
Two of the four named plaintiffs have serious mental health
problems, but the jail has denied their repeated requests for mental health
care. They have been strapped into the restraint chair a total of 12
times between them, sometimes for over six hours. The lawsuit outlines how
deputies have responded to symptoms of prisoners’ untreated mental health
problems as disciplinary issues instead of medical or psychiatric issues.
Today’s lawsuit comes after a several-months-long ACLU of Colorado
investigation, which has included correspondence with current and former
prisoners, review of documents obtained under the Colorado open records laws,
and face-to-face interviews with current prisoners. During an ACLU of
Colorado visit to the jail in June, Sheriff Lou Vallario prohibited ACLU
attorneys from speaking with several prisoners who had asked for ACLU legal
assistance, prompting the ACLU of Colorado to sue the sheriff last month over
the denial of attorney interviews. The lawsuit filed today includes a
claim on behalf of one of the prisoners who was not allowed to speak with ACLU
of Colorado attorneys in June.
The lawsuit,
Vandehey v. Vallario,
was filed in federal district court in Denver and names Vallario and Jail
Commander Scott Dawson as defendants. The named plaintiffs representing
the class of current and future prisoners are Clarence Vandehey, William
Langley, Samuel Lincoln, and Jared Hogue.
The ACLU lawsuit is
online at:
www.aclu-co.org/docket/200603/Garfieldcomplaint.07-19-06.pdf
