Spate of Deaths at Tulsa Jail Highlights Medical Neglect
by Michael Dean Thompson
The Tulsa Municipal Jail holds just 70 people. For a jail that size, according to a 2021 Department of Justice study, national data suggests that a person might die every 10 to 15 years. It is possible the Department of Justice undercounted national deaths, but that wouldn’t make the number of Tulsa deaths any less shocking.
Until 2017, Tulsa County held the city’s arrestees. The city paid $809,000 per year for the services, which included a dedicated pod for people with mental illnesses, as well as onsite medical staff. But that year, the county nearly doubled its price to $1.47 million annually. This led the mayor, G. T. Bynum, to make the “business decision” to build the city’s own jail.
The windowless jail sits underground within a parking garage beneath the city’s downtown civic center. It was originally classified as a lockup facility, meaning it could hold people up to ten days. Lockups are not required to have onsite medical care. Anyone that fails a medical screen must be moved to a different facility, yet it often holds people who are in dire need of services. For Tulsa, jail guards, not medical personnel, provide the medical screening.
The city agreed to pay a private firm, G4S Secure Solutions, $1.6 million a year for the diminished level of services, $130,000 more than the county had been asking. Then-Deputy Mayor Amy Brown said at the time, “You really don’t want a jail or a lockup facility that saves a ton of money because then you are going to have to pay for it in increased liability.” It was worth more because it was a “safer” and “more efficient” facility.
A 46-year-old paraplegic woman died shortly after in January 2020 following just four days in jail. G4S’s defense in a lawsuit brought by the family was that state law did not require the firm to provide medical care onsite.
Allied Universal, one of the world’s largest private security firms, bought G4S in 2021. Soon after, they were demanding more money from Tulsa. In 2023, Tulsa agreed to pay them an additional stipend for telehealth care. That allowed the jail to be reclassified as a detention facility, permitting them to hold people for the length of their sentences. Nevertheless, the death rate rose and the Tulsa Police Department (TPD) stopped reporting deaths in press briefings.
None of the seven deaths during the subsequent years uncovered by The Frontier were disclosed to the media. And, open records requests by The Frontier for data related to the deaths were denied. State law, TPD claimed, exempts law enforcement details from being disclosed. In some cases, the families of the deceased were not notified either. One mother learned of her son’s death from the state medical examiner while another saw her son had been listed as “released” on a jail website. The jail staff only told her he had an “accident.” It turned out he was in the hospital with no brain activity. The hospital told her he had attempted suicide.
Mayor Monroe Nichols claims he was unaware of any evidence of policy or state law violations. Unlike other states in the region, state law does not require an outside agency to investigate deaths. For TPD, it is internal affairs. But, given the weight of The Frontier’s investigation, he says he has instructed his Public Safety Commissioner, Laurel Roberts, to “conduct an additional review of all the available information.”
Source: The Frontier
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