Posted on 03/27/2005 7:33:55 AM PST by mhking
After being jailed last summer in Union City, Shakita Perdue was stripped, strapped to a chair and left exposed to male prisoners and guards for hours, according to an investigation by jail officials of the incident.
Now, she is suing those she says are responsible for $10 million.
This week, Perdue, 28, filed the lawsuit in federal court against the city, the South Fulton County Municipal Regional Jail and Georgia Correctional Health, the firm that handled medical needs at the Union City-owned jail. She charges that her civil rights were abused by her jailers that night.
"I had never been treated like that before in my life," said Perdue, who was booked into the jail on a drug charge. "It was a traumatic experience. It has messed up my nerves."
In an internal report on the jail's investigation of the incident, jailer Tremata Anthony said she strapped Perdue in the chair because Perdue was drunk, abusive and threatened to kill herself the night of her arrest.
The jailer was fired 17 days after the incident occurred for failure "to conduct herself in a professional manner using sound judgment at all times," the internal report states. The report listed nine violations of jail policy in the treatment of Perdue. The report indicates that there is an "isolation room" at the jail in which Perdue could have been placed. It also says Anthony filed no incident report, nor did she justify stripping Perdue.
The internal report was provided to the Journal-Constitution by Perdue's attorney, Eldridge Suggs IV, who obtained it through Georgia's Open Records Act.
Anthony wrote in the report that Perdue's paper gown was taken away and her hair was cut because she tried to strangle herself with the gown and with her braids.
The jailer said that she put pepper spray on the chair straps because Perdue tried to chew through them.
In the same report, a nurse with Georgia Correctional Health, Cathy Adams, wrote that Perdue was restrained in an area where detainees are brought to be booked.
"Due to her violent behavior, she was held in the cage in the booking area until she was calm enough to be moved to the medical area," Adams wrote.
When a male officer asked if he could cover Perdue, Anthony wouldn't allow it, another officer wrote in the report.
Repeated calls to Anthony for comment were not returned.
Helen Turner, a Union City councilwoman, said she and other city officials first learned of the incident in an area newspaper.
"I think it is a disgrace that we didn't know anything about it," she said.
Turner called Perdue's treatment "inhumane," and said, "I was appalled to know it happened here."
Not commenting
The South Fulton County Municipal Regional Jail is owned by Union City, used by several nearby municipalities and governed by a five-member authority created by the Legislature.
J. Clark Boddie, the mayor of Palmetto and a member of the jail authority, said he would not comment about Perdue's lawsuit because the jail is named in the suit.
" I am not at liberty to talk about it at all," said Boddie, who is also a U.S. marshal. "I am familiar with the occurrence, I just can't talk about it."
Repeated calls this week to Union City Mayor Ralph Moore and City Administrator Ski Saxby were not returned. Nor were calls to Dennis Davenport, an attorney representing the city and the jail.
Georgia Correctional Health, a private company, no longer provides health care to the jail in Union City. A representative of its insurance carrier said he hasn't seen a copy of the suit.
According to the jail's own report, the incident began after midnight last July 31 when Fairburn police arrested Perdue on charges of disorderly conduct for fighting with her cousin.
When the officers ran a routine background check, they found Perdue was wanted in nearby Union City for not completing all of her required community service on a previous marijuana charge.
Fairburn police turned Perdue over to Union City authorities, and she was taken to the city's jail.
Perdue, who admits she'd been drinking that night, said she was angry and crying when she entered the jail because her cousin had not been arrested along with her. But she didn't try to kill herself, she said.
According to the investigation, conducted by jail Sgt. James Hall, Perdue was taken to the jail's shower room at 2:47 a.m.and returned less than five minutes later in a paper gown. The report said she was placed into the "cage" in the middle of the holding cell.
At 2:55 a.m., Perdue tried to choke herself, Hall wrote. A minute later, Anthony, the jailer, and Adams, the nurse, went into the cage, took off the paper gown and placed Perdue "in the restraint chair nude," Hall's report said.
Anthony's account said Perdue was threatening to kill herself. "Perdue started to bang her head against the wall," she wrote.
Efforts to help
At one point during the hours Perdue was strapped in the chair, Hall reported that two officers attempted to help her. One asked Anthony if he could go into the cage and cover Perdue because there were male officers coming in with male inmates. Anthony told him no.
Another officer, after Anthony repeatedly told him not to cover Perdue, hung a blanket over the side of the cage, "so that other inmates could not look at her nude body," according to the report.
The blanket provided incomplete cover, Hall noted.
At 6 a.m., more than five hours after her arrest, Perdue was still naked and strapped to the chair when another nurse, Arlene Campbell, arrived at work.
"I found the female [Perdue] in four-point restraints in a chair. [She] was completely nude with exposed female genitalia." Campbell's report went on to say men across from the booking center "were laughing and making remarks under their breath."
Perdue said male prisoners were allowed to sit and watch her. At least one male officer made lewd comments, she said.
Her attorney said Perdue's civil rights were trampled.
"I am going to relentlessly pursue justice on behalf of Ms. Perdue," Suggs said. "I want to make them an example."
Suggs acknowledges that Perdue has not been a model citizen. She had been arrested several times prior to the July incident, she doesn't have a steady job and she doesn't have custody of any of her five children, ages 4 to 11.
"We are in the process of helping her rehabilitate her life and we will use whatever proceeds that we are going to win to put her back in the middle of the road," Suggs said.
I know of a case, BTW, where a sheriff's deputy stopped to copulate with a woman prisoner during a transport. He admitted it, and it was in the news. He kept his job, because the judicial found nothing wrong with the act.
"Tremata Anthony said she strapped Perdue in the chair"
Oh Damn! I needed that today!!!
........:o)
And if YOU could read, you'd note that
"Anthony wrote in the report that Perdue's paper gown was taken away and her hair was cut because she tried to strangle herself with the gown and with her braids."
The woman was using her CLOTHING to strangle herself. Could you please explain to me how she would manage that while it was still on her body? I hope you're not gonna tell me she could have choked herself by buttoning it a tad too tight around the collar.
I can see that you are with the establishment. Good bye.
You think nobody has ever been fired because of a lie before? You are ready to believe a drug addict over the police? Why? had some bad experiences with the police have you?
It will be interesting. However, my view is that drug addicts lie almost all of the time. Police officers only lie some of the time. Most police officers are honest. Anyone who thinks otherwise has probably been in trouble with the law. That's my view anyway.
Absolutely wrong. I have on my desk four paper towels. I have twisted them as far as they can be twisted. I have pulled on them as hard as I can pull on them. I am no weakling. They will not break. It is possible. Now for a gown that has enough paper to cover the human body,I assure you there is enough paper to twist into a form that could be made into a makeshift noose. You don't have to hang yourself from the ceiling. You might tie it to the water faucet and strangle yourself sitting on the floor.
I believe the police over a drug addict who has been arrested numerous times.
Fire the bimbo guard, apologize to the pothead, run the shyster out of town .... case closed.
Agreed. Police departments are now basically just a revenue collection arm of the government. They live to seize money from speed traps and from drug busts. None of these operations actually make any of us any safer.
One of the main reasons that law enforcement is fascinated with the war on drugs is the revenue that comes in through seizures and the new toys the departments justify to fight it.
Wouldn't it be great if law enforcement actually starting focusing on crimes that impact everyday citizens like burglary, vandalism, car theft, rape and murder? Of course solving those crimes doesn't really bring money into the department and its hard to justify new toys for those crimes either.
Wouldn't it be great if law enforcement actually starting focusing on crimes that impact everyday citizens like burglary, vandalism, car theft, rape and murder? Of course solving those crimes doesn't really bring money into the department and its hard to justify new toys for those crimes either.
Everything you said is 100% correct and I agree completely. There is simply no denying police departments are out of control - They continually look at revenues as their top priority (how can they get new cars, new toys, etc, etc).
I currently work down in NC and I live in a town without more than 5000 people total - Yet the number of police and police vehicles (be it from the town and County) is simply mind boggling - And they are actually asking the township now to fund a SWAT Unit!! - It is laughable if it wasn't such a waste -
And of course the monthly police "check-points" on local roads down here simply blow me away (I cannot understand how these hill-people have rolled over and accepted this from their local police czars!). (I'm talking middle of the day ...stop every car going down a major road check-points!).
ROFLMAO. I'm with the 'establishment?' You need to change that Freeper handle to YOUGOTIT-ALLWRONG. You're pushing the notion that some trial lawyer and a pothead get 50 mill for acting like a jackass in jail because the pothead says the cops made her nekkid in front of the other arrestees? Never mind that she was trying to kill HERSELF, or that SHE is the one who took the gown off her body to use in the process.
I'm agin the establishment in that I want that system--you know, the one in which people make 50 mill acting stupid so their lawyers can make a buck--brought down.
And the Atlanta PD is generally a bunch of idiot hoodlums, but they have nothing on the average Atlanta criminal. I'm all for the cops in Atlanta being prevented from arrests for consensual crimes. But I'm not about to say that a woman that repeatedly tries to KILL HERSELF--because for some odd reason she thought her cousin deserved to be busted too, good reason for suicide!?!?--deserves to be believed over the cops in this case. She sounds loopier than a loon. I'm eager to fire the idiot cop in charge, and anyone who let her sit naked in front of a bunch of men, but I'm not real up on sending cops to jail because their prisoner acts toadlicking moonbat crazy. And I sure ain't up on handing out Atlanta tax dollars to raving goofballs.
I can agree with this - (this Women isn't owed any where near the millions she is suing for ) - I say fire the cops in charge (if it is shown they let her sit there like that) and cut this women a reasonable check if it turns out true that either they kept her sitting there naked or went along with her sitting there naked - (though take the funds out of the police budget and make them do with less).
It'd be different if it were HIS daughter, now wouldn't it?
I gotta say that while I agree the police aren't worth the money we spend on them (better to just issue guns to the populace, in my opinion, and allow concealed carry) we do spend that money on them to police. Taking it out of the BUDGET isn't right. Taking it out of their pockets is. Firing them or letting them get sued personally is 100% appropriate.
btt
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