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.
No excuse.
Everyone involved here is black.
If true and she DOESN'T win, then none of us are safe from abuse of authority.
I would want that in addition too the money myself...
I wonder if it is in the lawsuit?
yep....
Doesn't matter. There is a difference between being voluntarily nude with one person and being forcibly stripped naked in front of others.
She should get some thing. And there should be a number of people fired.
Ok, how do you strange yourself with a paper gown. The things are so flimsy they tear if you look at them wrong.
a felon called into a radio talk show recently and said that jailed men are run around the administrative areas with no clothes, doesn't matter if female cops are watching.
I hope this was on Cops!
I hate to wait for the movie.
I think 2 bucks times the number of men should be close to her going rate.
Yikes!
Interesting the "captors" were female and the ones trying to help were male. NOBODY deserves this treatment. Even slimeball druggies. $10M may be too much but the idea is to send a message, I assume.
so for you it would be 3 bucks times the number of men?
Really this is a story of someone getting abused by the authorities and I think you should pay heed to what happens here. IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN and maybe not to someone who has 5 kids already but to an 18 yr old or something....
It's like what one of my ex's said when she accidently exposed a breast on a public beach....."If they haven't seen it by now, they need to!"
This is the same bunch that did not know how to take a large mad prisoner to court and allow him to kill four or five people.
With this and the other lies that police say, I will not believe anything a person of the law says again. One here in Florida said he was scared that a chicken or peacock (I forget which) would do him harm so he shot them. That is against the law but he never got anything for doing it. While the average citizen would be in jail for one year for killing a chicken or peacock or rabbit or rat or dog or cat or horse.
Someone should be in jail but that never happens. I hope they win 50 million. If I were on the jury I would award 100 million as a minimum.
I was being facetious and left off :).
10 mil is a lot. She's probably owed something though. Maybe they can set it up so that the money just goes straight to the person who sources her drugs for her. Probably save some paperwork that way.
Law of probability wins again. Just goes to show that if you break the law often enough that you're bound to make $millions$ by those trying to uphold it who make one mistake.
wow...
I totally missed that one!!
I am SOOOO sorry and I really really mean it....
sorry these Terri threads have me playing for keeps right now...
Please accept my most humble apologizes....
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