Video of a fatal jail injury shows NC jails need sharper scrutiny
Six months before George Floyd died at the hands of police in Minneapolis, John Neville suffered a similar fate inside the Forsyth County Detention Center.
Neville, 56, was handcuffed behind his back and held face down by detention officers as he pleaded that he could not breathe. He died two days later. An autopsy found that he died from a lack of oxygen that led to cardiac arrest and brain injury.
Floyd’s death sparked international protests because of the searing video taken by a bystander. The fatal restraint of Neville on Dec. 2, 2019 was likewise captured by body-camera and jail surveillance footage, but the images and the circumstances were withheld from the public for months.
The videos were released in response to a petition filed by The News & Observer that was joined by other media organizations. Now North Carolina and the nation can see another painful scene of officers pinning someone in their custody despite his cries that he couldn’t breathe. A SBI investigation of the incident led to five detention officers and a nurse being charged with involuntary manslaughter in July.
The images of Neville’s trauma will add to the anger provoked by Floyd’s killing and may ignite more protests. His family has urged people to let the justice system take its course.
The family’s appeal is wise and welcome. But the emotions stirred by the Forsyth video should not be confined to one case. Neville’s death brings before the public a broader issue of inmates being mistreated in North Carolina’s county jails. Jail inmates, many not convicted of a crime but confined because of the unfairness of the cash bail system, are dying from suicide, neglect of their medical needs and assaults from other inmates or officers.
Often these deaths are hidden form the public. Jail officials sometimes duck their responsibility by saying an inmate who dies in a hospital after a jail injury need not be reported to the state as a jail death. That occurred in Neville’s case. It’s a loophole that needs to be closed.
Last year, a record 46 inmates died in North Carolina’s jails or in a hospital after becoming ill or injured behind bars, state records obtained by The News & Observer show. In 19 of those deaths, inspectors from the state Department of Health and Human Services found lapses in supervision.
How bad does it have to get before Gov. Roy Cooper, Senate leader Phil Berger or House Speaker Tim Moore are moved to do something about negligence, incompetence and cruelty leading to jail deaths? Do people surrender their humanity when they are in custody awaiting the resolution of a charge?
The images of Neville – who apparently had fallen off his top bunk while having a seizure – struggling to breathe beneath the weight of several officers should spur legislative action.
The Forsyth County case makes it clear that the state needs to increase its oversight of jail operations and make those findings much more transparent. The days of sheriffs running jails as their own fiefdoms should end. Jails should be as scrutinized and accountable as all other parts of the criminal justice system. The oversight roles of DHHS and SBI should be refined and coordinated to cover both the quality of a jail’s conditions and services and the legality of what happens within it.
Jails, unfortunately, are now more than jails. They’ve become the keepers of the mentally ill, the homeless and the addicted. They need not only more oversight, but more medical and mental health resources and better pay and training for detention officers.
As with George Floyd, John Neville’s case is about more than the officers charged. It is about a system that fails, time and again.
How many times must it happen before those who oversee the system feel compelled to fix it?