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BLOOD ON ARPAIO'S HANDS

Jeremy Flanders was beaten nearly to death by fellow inmates in 1996. His assaulters grabbed some loose rebar tent stakes and beat him unconscious. Flanders sustained serious permanent injuries, including irreversible  brain damage. Judge Lankford found Arpaio personally responsible for thirty-five percent of the judgment, and accused Arpaio of intentionally creating conditions that would cause violence.  Judge Lankford asserted that Arpaio knew that inmates often used the loose rebar tent stakes as weapons, and did nothing to stop it. According to Lankford, "The sheriff admitted knowing about, and in fact intentionally designing, some conditions at Tent City that created a substantial risk of inmate violence: i.e., the lack of individual security and inmate control inherent in a tent facility; the small number of guards; a mixed inmate population subject to overcrowding, extreme heat, and lack of amenities.  The history of violence, the abundance of weaponry, the lack of supervision, and the absence of necessary security measures supports the jury's finding of deliberate indifference to inmate safety." 

In early June, 1996, Scott Norberg refused to cooperate with guards at Madison Street Jail. Nine detention officers entered the cell, forced him to his stomach, and restrained his legs by sitting on them. At some point in the struggle, officers decided to place Norberg in the restraint chair.  Even in Maricopa County jails, the chair is seldom used.  One officer stated that the chair was used about three times a year. It stands to reason that use of the restraint chair would be strictly limited to the most necessary cases, since its employment is often lethal. However, the Sheriff's Office provides no specific details as to who ordered Norberg be placed in the chair, or to what degree his combativeness was a threat to officers' safety.

Norberg had been arrested after wandering around Mesa, disoriented. He talked nonsense to the officers that approached him, and punched one of them in the head as he was being arrested. When an officer told him to shut up, he dropped dramatically to one knee, begging for forgiveness. Norberg had just been released from the hospital. He had been admitted for dehydration and abnormally low blood-sugar, telltale signs that he'd gone on a dangerous drug-binge and had been up for days on speed. Upon release from the hospital, he went to his former in-laws' house to ask for a blessing. They suggested he seek out a Mormon bishop. Norberg wandered around, aimlessly searching for the bishop. Norberg was acting strangely, and at one point began chasing two girls. He was weak, disoriented, and crashing hard.

Norberg had drug problems. He had also been an Eagle Scout, a high school football star, and a missionary in Venezuela with the Mormon church. Norberg made no excuses for his drug problems, and he still had hope that he could get better. "On the surface, my self-portrait may now be muddled and marred," he writes in a birthday letter to his father, "But underneath await the colors of a masterpiece. Beneath crude rock, a 'David' is still breathing."

Detention Officer Kimberly Walsh held a towel around Norberg's mouth while he was in the chair, in order to keep him from spitting.  When asked about specific training regarding safely placing combative inmates in the chair, she responded, "Training? The way I learned was by the first time doing it. They tell you what to do." Phoenix police officer John Courey was at Madison the afternoon that the struggle took place, and he recalls hearing an officer shout "How (do) you like (it), you think you're a fucking tough guy?" Courey says he heard it repeatedly, "Something to that effect, several times."  As Norberg was beaten, he cried out, "What did I do?" and "Please have patience."

Walsh says she told officers that Norberg was turning purple. When they didn't respond, she said that she didn't think he was breathing.  According to Walsh, Officer Martin Spidell spun around and said, "Who gives a fuck?" Scott yelled, "Oh God, please help me!" On the television news program 20/20, an inmate remembers asking officers, "What are you still beating on him for?  He's already dead."  After guards ignored signs that they were suffocating Norberg, he died of positional asphyxia.  Before he expired, officers had tased him more than twenty times.

A few months before Norberg died at the hands of Arpaio's guards, paraplegic Richard Post was drinking at an Irish Pub called O'Connor's. It was St. Patrick's Day, and Mike Tyson had just defeated English heavyweight Frank Bruno. A musician was just finishing a song, and Post wheeled over to him and let him know the results of the fight. Thinking that the Irish-American occupants of the pub would be pleased to hear that the Englishman had been knocked out, the musician announced the results to the crowd.  Some people cheered. Others booed.

In an hour, Post finished two drinks. An older gentleman approached him and asked, "Why don't you get the hell out of here?"

"Why?" Post replied, "Did you bet on the Englishman?"

The older gentleman informed Post that he was calling the police. Post shrugged and didn't think much of it. What he didn't know was that the older man was James O'Connor, owner of the pub. O'Connor, who had been drinking, went behind the bar and called the police.

Post wasn't sure what to make of what he'd been told. He wasn't sure whether or not he was serious. But, he figured if the cops were on their way, he'd better stay where he was.  After all, he had been drinking, and he didn't want to get pulled over. When the cops arrived, O'Connor informed the two officers that Post had called him "a Protestant and an Englishman." He later denied claims that he told officers Post was extremely intoxicated, and insisted that Post wasn't drunk.

The officers gave Post a choice: he could take a cab, or they would take him to jail. Post told officers he would wheel home. Then they searched him and arrested him after finding 1.1 grams ofmarijuana in his backpack. The videotape of Post being taken to jail shows that he is lucid and cooperative. The tape also shows Post explaining to authorities that he has a urine bag attached to his ankle, and the bag is full. Unless it is emptied and an internal catheter is supplied, he won't be able to urinate. His bladder aches.

"This is a jail, not a hospital," he was told.

Before an officer locks Post into his cell, he tells him, "There's a big difference between what you need and what you get in here. Don't be a baby."

As the pain in Post's bladder accelerated, panic set in. Paraplegics are susceptible to kidney disease from infrequent urination and unsanitary conditions. He manually emptied the urine bag, desperate for some kind of relief. He banged on the cell door, yelling that he needed a catheter. Finally, Post wheeled over to the toilet, tossed in a roll of toilet paper, and started flushing. Before long, the toilet was overflowing. Post figured that if he could create a big enough ruckus, he could attract a number of guards. Hopefully, one of them would sense his distress and help him.

Sergeant Steve Kenner finally responded, but he didn't give Post a catheter. He put him in a restraint chair. Post asked Kenner for a prescribed gel pad that went on his wheelchair. Without it, he explained, he could develop sores that would require surgery. Finally, a nurse arrived and determined that Post needed the pad. They briefly removed the restraints and shoved the pad halfway underneath him. Then, Kenner tightened the restraints, pulling the straps so tightly that they compressed Post's spine. They left him in the restraint chair like that for six hours. Sores developed on Post's anus that did, in fact, require surgery. In the days following the incident, Post developed a numbness in his left hand. His arms shriveled.

He is now a quadriplegic. Doctors determined that the injuries Post incurred while he was detained are the cause.

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