NEW ORLEANS
The Orleans Parish Jail is not in compliance with a federal court order and Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman should be held in contempt of court, federal officials allege.
The jail is allegedly still fraught with problems including prisoner supervision, use of force, incident reporting and tracking, prisoner grievances, investigations, classification, young inmates, supervision and jail sanitary conditions, according to federal prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors noted in legal papers that the court heard testimony this month about the March 2016 jail suicide of Cleveland Tumblin, who died by hanging himself from a known suicide hazard – behind a locked door – after a mental health evaluation flagged him for mental health follow-up that he did not receive.
The mental health monitor further testified that, despite the fact that the Sheriff’s Office was notified of systemic problems from a mortality review of the suicide, those problems had not been fixed.
It was pointed out that “suicide cut-down tools” were too dull to rescue Tumblin remain “too dull to cut a sheet of notebook paper,” officials claim.
Federal prosecutors want a court-appointed receiver to manage the jail until substantial compliance is achieved, federal officials said. The monitor would be able to run the jail, including the ability to discipline, reassign, terminate and promote jail employees; develop and implement policies and procedures; allocate jail budget funds and enter into contract with jail services, according to court papers.
Although the court ordered the consent judgment more than two years ago, Gusman remains dangerously non-compliant. Federal officials want the court to intervene, citing the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. It authorizes the department to seek a remedy for a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the constitutional rights of persons confined in a jail, prison or other correctional facility.
The department’s motion was filed jointly with the plaintiff class, represented by the MacArthur Justice Center.
The read the memo filed in support of the federal prosecutors allegations click here: Justice Department