Eyewitness: Elmore prison guards ignored inmate collapse before he vomited, died
Melissa BrownTwo Alabama correctional officers ignored a man who collapsed feet away from them at Elmore Correctional Facility on Dec. 5, and fellow prisoners begged them to call for medical help an hour later when he vomited and stopped breathing, according to an eyewitness account.
Cornelius Jackson died in the early hours of Dec. 5, his family confirmed to the Montgomery Advertiser.
An Alabama Department of Corrections spokesperson said an investigation into Jackson's death is ongoing, but an officer "involved" in the incident has been reassigned to a "non-inmate contact post" until the investigation is concluded.
More:Alabama prisoner dies, two guards on leave after 'use of force' incident
An eyewitness confirmed Jackson's death this week to the Advertiser but asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. The Advertiser has confirmed his identity.
Jackson allegedly lay on the floor of an Elmore dormitory just after midnight before fellow inmates carried the unconscious man back to his bed. "He was trying to get to the water fountain," said the source.
"He passed out, he fell. They saw him fall because it was count time," the source said, referring to the roll call guards conduct inside prison dorms several times a day.
Fellow prisoners realized Jackson was still unconscious 30 to 45 minutes after he was placed in bed. When they went to check on him, they realized he had rolled over, vomited and was not breathing.
Multiple prisoners then tried to rouse the attention of guards to call for medical attention. By the time guards came into the dorm, Jackson was already dead, the source said.
"It really hurts me. I feel betrayed," said Barbara Pitts, Jackson's mother. "I feel like some part of me has been ripped apart. I need some kind of closure. I don’t know what his last few minutes were like."
Pitts said prisoners who knew Jackson, often called "Lil Jack" inside, reached out to her after her son's death.
"They wanted to assure me that they stayed on that night trying to get him help," Pitts said. "A couple of inmates told me that [prison staff] didn't even try to perform CPR or nothing. But if you're not bleeding, you're not considered hurt. They just let him lay there and die because he wasn't bleeding."
'Wigging out'
The source said Jackson was maybe three or four feet away from the two guards, who were in the dorm to perform a routine count, when he fell unconscious.
The guards acknowledged that they saw Jackson, the source said, but said he didn't need medical attention because he was "wigging out."
The term is used frequently inside Alabama prisons to refer to adverse drug reactions or drug overdoses. Drug use is rampant, dozens of prisoners have told the Advertiser, with illegal drugs smuggled into state facilities or prisoners turning to homemade forms of narcotics using chemicals found on site.
"I've seen dudes wigging on that stuff, fall off the top bunk and hit their heads. People need medical attention," the Elmore source told the Advertiser. "And if something else is really wrong with you, you won't get real help. The police also use it [as an excuse] to jump on people: They say someone was wigging and swung at them."
Kenneth Traywick, a prisoner at Kilby Correctional Facility who advocates for prisoner rights, said that days after Jackson's death, a man in a Kilby dorm had what appeared to be a seizure.
When another inmate brought two guards back to the man's bunk, one correctional officer started to radio for help, Traywick said, but another officer stopped him, saying the man was just "wigging out."
Traywick said a captain then came to the scene and the three ADOC employees watched the man for several minutes before radioing for medical assistance.
"They automatically assume these dudes are high, but none of the COs have the ability to diagnose," Traywick said. "These dudes are dying and they're writing them off as natural causes. But let's say these dudes are high and wigging out: At that point, it is still a medical issue."
ADOC spokesperson Linda Mays said Friday any correctional officer witnessing "an inmate in need of urgent medical care" should call for immediate medical assistance.
"A failure to do so would be a violation of protocol and would result in discipline and/or corrective action," Mays said. "Anyone who is aware of such situations occurring in an ADOC facility has an obligation to report it by contacting ADOC by phone call, letter, email, ADOC’s website, etc. and the complaint will be investigated."
Staffing
The day after Jackson's death, state attorneys at a federal court hearing revealed ADOC lost nearly 11 percent of its correctional supervisory staff in a four-month period this summer.
Thirty-nine supervisors left ADOC between June and September —359 to 320 — which Southern Poverty Law Center attorney C.J. Sandley said was very "concerning."
In November, a Montgomery Advertiser investigation revealed rampant mismanagement, violence and understaffing in Alabama prisons. State prison officials have acknowledged serious systemic issues that would require "time and resources" to resolve.
Multiple men reported it was not unusual to have less than a dozen ADOC officials, of varying authority and status, managing prison populations of 1,000+ men at any time. Prisoners told the Advertiser guards on duty ensconce themselves in “the cube,” a secured guard post with visual access into the dorm, performing cursory “counts,” or daily roll calls about four times a day.
But ADOC Commissioner Jeff Dunn said that he believed the department had corrected course on staffing woes, hiring at a faster pace than he'd seen in "almost five years."
Legislators this spring increased corrections department spending by $40 million — an 8.4% increase over the previous General Fund allocation, mostly dedicated to raising pay and improving benefits for corrections officers.
"In addition to that, we're beginning to see our attrition rates improve as well. Less people are leaving the department, anecdotally," Dunn said. "It hasn't been long enough to really track that data yet, but anecdotally I'm hearing from more and more people that they feel there is positive change going on in the department. The new compensation structure helps. Other things help to. We're generally cautiously optimistic about that."
But the staffing numbers discussed during a recent federal court hearing reveal the department is leaning heavily on less qualified officers, called basic correctional or cube correctional officers, who are trained less and are limited in their interactions with prisoners.
Cube correctional officers aren't allowed any interaction with prisoners, are relegated to stay inside command posts and are paid significantly less than other officers. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, overseeing a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2014 about prisoner mental health treatment, expressed concern during the hearing.
"I think you've sort of paralleled my concern that the BCOs and the CCOs don't necessarily address the continuing decrease in COs, whether that's just plain COs or supervisors," Thompson said in court. "The ones who do the real work with the inmates, the COs and the supervisors."
In November, several prisoners interviewed by the Advertiser expressed skepticism and fear over the shortened training, wondering whether new guards with less training would contribute rather than control the ongoing chaos inside prison walls.
More:Alabama inmates fear more chaos in prison as state hires guards with far less training
"The officers they’ve hired won't help because if the ones we had were inadequately trained, then a dummied down version will not improve the situation," said Richard Fox, an Alabama prisoner.
In court, Judge Thompson expressed concerns as well, telling attorneys "you get what you pay for."
“And if you’re paying these people less and they have less training, then the quality of what the system is providing is not going to meet what’s needed for, say, a correctional officer or what a correctional officer could provide," Thompson said.
Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Melissa Brown at 334-240-0132 or mabrown@gannett.com.