Taser Use Doubled After Grand Jury Report on Pennsylvania Prisoner’s Death
by Michael Thompson
Everett Palmer Jr. died in the York County Prison (YCP) in Pennsylvania as a direct result of attempts to extract him from his cell in 2018. Palmer was suffering a severe mental health crisis that was later attributed to a combination of methamphetamine toxicity and bipolar disorder. His erratic behavior leading up to the extraction was probably not helped by the taunts of two different guards.
At one point during the incident, Palmer, who had been yelling at people who were not there and dodging imaginary bullets, screamed out that he needed a tool. That led one of the guards to tell him there was a Phillips in the toilet, “You gotta reach in there … in the hole.”
Palmer paced the cell and spread dirty toilet water on himself and the cell floor. Eventually, he began ramming his head against the wall, leading to his extraction. Before entering the cell, guards twice hit him with a Taser through the door.
Palmer was then placed in an emergency restraint chair (ERC) and a spit hood placed over his head. From there, he was moved to a medical unit, then the hospital, and pronounced dead roughly an hour and a half after the extraction.
A grand jury was asked to look into Palmer’s death and determine if any of the prison staff should be charged with a crime. After examining video footage and autopsy reports, the grand jury came back in 2021 with a list of 24 recommendations but no charges. Among those recommendations were calls for de-escalators or negotiators to be engaged prior to extraction and medical staff and EMS to be present. Likewise, they recommended the prison “should reconsider the use of electronic stun gun devices during extraction.”
Over the next two years, however, Taser use doubled, culminating in the 2023 death of yet another prisoner. Haywood Dixon was hit twice by a Taser and placed in an ERC with a spit hood just like Palmer. Unlike Palmer, there were no drugs in his system. He had underlying medical conditions. YCP medical failed Dixon as well. According to YCP policy, Taser usage requires that the recipient undergo a medical exam, including an EKG, which did not happen. Despite Dixon’s struggle to breathe, he was returned to a cell. Two hours later, they were giving him CPR.
District Attorney Tim Barker said, “Of course, the overall scope of time of medical care and observation has an impact on survivability.” He added that according to medical experts, “Mr. Dixon’s condition was survivable.”
Yet another grand jury came to the same conclusions about Taser use as the one for Palmer. Dixon’s grand jury attributed the doubling of Taser use to an unnamed “Consultant #1” who trained and led the prison’s Special Operations Response Team (previously known as CERT). A separate lawsuit, by people incarcerated at YCP at the time, claims that Joseph Garcia—along with his Corrections Special Application Unit (C-SAU1)—was hired in November 2020 to train CERT. The contract became official, with the county paying more than $250,000 for services, in December 2021, after the grand jury’s recommendations from Palmer’s death. The Dixon grand jury also pointed to Consultant #1’s preference to use a Taser over any hands-on approach. The court case indicates that Garcia and C-SAU1 were chosen to some degree because of claimed specialty in high-risk cell extractions.
The county will not confirm if Garcia is Consultant #1. C-SAU1’s contact was terminated early, in May 2022, due to a controversy and the lawsuit regarding the group’s use of violence, including the alleged firing of a shotgun in a cell without cause. The county ended up paying $135,000 to settle its part of Schwenk v. Garcia, the suit that detainees Christopher Lee Schwenk and Keith Druck brought against YCP guards allegedly given bad training by Garcia. [See: PLN, Oct. 2023, p.44.] Nevertheless, half a year a year after the contract ended, Garcia’s legacy remained. One of the SORT officers trained by Garcia was implicated by the grand jury in Dixon’s death for violating use-of-force policy and Taser procedures. York County settled a federal lawsuit with Palmer’s family in June 2023 for $1.5 million, the York Daily Record reported.
Source: York Daily Record
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