|
Delores
Bird | Neil Stonechild
| Saskatoon's Brief Detox
centre |
- More jail safeguards
needed
jury: Recommendations
stem from hanging in police cell
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, January 7, 2005
The Saskatoon Police Service
must give higher priority to suicide prevention at its detention
cells, the jury at a coroner's inquest recommended Thursday.
The six-person jury heard evidence
over two days about the suicide of Jasmine Arcand, 34, who hanged
herself in a police cell last Feb. 17.
Arcand's booking form was flagged
with a large red S for suicide because of a comment she made
to the arresting officer and file information showing she had
previously attempted suicide while in custody. However, Arcand
gave detention staff no indication she was thinking of killing
herself and they used their own discretion, as they are expected
to do, in deciding not to take any specific precautions with
her.
Arcand used her undershirt
attached to the toilet flush knob protruding one metre above
the floor. She committed the act within three minutes of an officer
checking the cells, based on the time code on a video surveillance
tape. Staff missed the next 10-minute cell check, so it was 17
minutes before Arcand was found. An ambulance paramedic said
brain death occurs after four to six minutes without oxygen.
Trained staff who happened
to be present tried to resuscitate Arcand using an automatic
defibrillator and CPR but were not successful.
The jury recommended that detainees
flagged as suicidal should have "close contact monitoring
by a human being" for the first 24 hours after their arrest
and should not be left alone in an interview room.
As well, suicidal women should
be provided a consultation with a trained person from an appropriate
organization, such as a women's crisis centre, jury members recommended.
The greater emphasis on prisoner
safety should include training detention staff in suicide risk
assessment and prevention, dictating that 10-minute cell checks
take precedence over other duties and having one supervising
sergeant be dedicated to the detention area on evenings and weekends.
Detention staff also should
be required to maintain certification in CPR and be trained to
use the defibrillator kept in the area, the jury recommended.
Booking procedures should include
a specific form for suicide risk detainees that would become
part of the permanent record, they wrote.
Any toilet flush knobs of the
type used by Arcand should be replaced with the tapered, suicide-proof
design already installed in some cells, they recommended.
Police will review the recommendations
and report to the board of police commissioners, probably at
the Feb. 10 meeting, Insp. Jeff Bent said Thursday.
"It's obvious the jury
took their responsibilities very seriously. All of the recommendations
have merit," Bent said.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Cell cameras don't prevent suicides, inquest
hears
Blind spot hampered
timely discovery of hanging
Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix,
January 06, 2005
Video surveillance cameras
trained on police cells may give only "an illusion"
that police are able to monitor suicidal prisoners, the national
director of the Elizabeth Fry Society told an inquest Wednesday
into the death of Jasmine Arcand.
The inquest jury viewed a videotape
of Arcand, 34, in the Saskatoon city police cell last Feb. 17,
when she hanged herself with an undershirt from a toilet flush
knob protruding from the wall, about one metre above the floor.
The video revealed a blind
spot close to the cell wall near the one-piece toilet and sink
unit, which was where Arcand slumped.
Her legs extended into the
video image but the picture quality was so poor, a casual observer
could have mistaken it for a person using the toilet.
"If you were intently
glued to that monitor you would have seen," said Sgt. Donald
Yonkman, a major crimes investigator who testified Wednesday.
"Unless you were paying
strict attention to it, it could be easily missed."
Kim Pate, of the Elizabeth
Fry Society, who testified by telephone from Montreal, said suicidal
prisoners may become more anxious if left alone with a camera
trained on them, while having a person present in the cell area
can comfort them.
She recommended police staff
the area with a matron trained in suicide intervention.
The video showed special Const.
Viola Yanik checking on Arcand at 11:19 p.m. Arcand then got
up and moved to the toilet area. It was not clear what she was
doing as she stood facing the toilet-sink unit.
Within three minutes of the
cell check, at 11:21 p.m., Arcand's body was in the position
in which Yanik discovered her at 11:39.
The police policy requires
cell checks every 10 minutes but Yanik was the only female on
duty.
She was busier than usual that
night because her male counterpart had never worked in the detention
area before and she had to show him how to do some tasks or do
them herself, she testified Tuesday.
During that time, Yanik booked
a prisoner and released another.
The three cell monitor screens
on her left showed rotating images of the 36 police cells. Officers
have controls to lock a monitor on just one camera but it is
not known if that happened in this case, the inquest heard.
It is not unusual for detention
staff to miss cell checks, in part because booking in new prisoners
requires two people, said Sgt. John Garnet, who supervised the
detention and communications centre that night.
The male commissionaire on
duty after 4 p.m. and on weekends can check the men but, until
Arcand's death, only female officers could check the women.
That procedure has since been
changed. Now the commissionaire checks the women if the female
officer is not available.
There are still concerns about
female privacy, but the need to prevent suicide or notice other
health problems takes precedence, Garnet said.
Saskatoon police don't have
an official policy for handling suicidal prisoners, Garnet said.
Officers must use their discretion
on whether to take precautions with at-risk prisoners because
police try to use the least intrusive measures, he said.
Police don't want to take away
the clothes and blanket of every inmate who has ever been at
risk; the cells are warm but have only thin mattresses on concrete
floors, Garnet said.
All of the evidence has been
presented. Coroner Alma Wiebe will instruct the jury today before
they meet to decide their findings and recommendations.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Officer ignored parts
of police suicide policy, inquiry hears
Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix,
January 5, 2005
A special constable with six
months' experience and no training in suicide assessment said
she used her officer's discretion when she ignored parts of the
city police suicide prevention policy in her handling of a woman
who hanged herself in a cell in February.
Special Const. Viola Yanik
told a coroner's inquest Monday that she did not place Jasmine
Arcand in a special Plexiglas-fronted cell and gave her a bedsheet,
despite having been told by the arresting officer, Const. Avery
Spott, that Arcand had suicidal tendencies.
Yanik said Arcand didn't say
anything to her about wanting to kill herself when Yanik booked
her, or during four other brief interactions that night.
Yanik said she also missed
several, standard 10-minute cell checks of three female prisoners
because she was busy with other duties, including booking a new
prisoner, releasing another, doing computer background checks
and completing paper work.
Yanik found Arcand, 34, at
11:44 p.m. on Feb. 17 with a T-shirt tied around her neck and
fastened to the toilet flush handle in her cell. No one else
was in the cell with her.
It had been about 24 minutes
since Yanik's last cell check. Another prisoner said Arcand seemed
normal when they spoke to each other 10 or 15 minutes before
Yanik discovered Arcand's body.
Arcand was addicted to morphine
and Ritalin and had attempted suicide in the past, her friend,
Gordon Mills, testified. Arcand, who had warrants for her arrest
for breaching court orders, had told him that day she would kill
herself if she ever had to go to jail.
Arcand also told arresting
officer Spott that she was "a rat" and that she was
"done." At the police station, she asked to talk to
a drug officer and asked him if he could get her out of jail
if she gave him information.
After that officer said there
was nothing he could do, Arcand asked to speak to a lawyer and
was put on the phone with a legal aid lawyer, Yanik said. They
had a five-minute talk, then Yanik took Arcand to a cell and
gave her a sheet, magazines and a cup.
Police said Arcand seemed drunk
and "skittish," sometimes moving erratically or waving
her hands.
On Feb. 16, the day before
Arcand's arrest, Mills had taken her to a hospital emergency
ward for help coping with withdrawal symptoms. It had been seven
days since she last used morphine. She was given medication "to
take the edge off," Mills said.
On the morning of Feb. 17,
Arcand visited a doctor at a walk-in clinic and obtained other
medication.
The autopsy showed Arcand died
from air blockage caused by the ligature around her neck, pathologist
Dr. Qinglong Hu said. Toxicology reports show Arcand had therapeutic
amounts of two sedatives as well as codeine, acetaminophen, caffeine
and a blood-alcohol level of .04. The combination of drugs could
have exaggerated their effects, Hu said.
Yanik worked that night with
five-year constable Matt Ward, who was new to the area, making
Yanik the more experienced of the pair staffing detention. Both
were overseen by a sergeant, who was also responsible for the
communication centre just down the hall.
Spott's warning, and probably
an alert in the local police computer records that Arcand had
once tried to hang herself in a police cruiser, had resulted
in a large red "S" for suicide risk being written at
the top of the booking form for easy notice, Yanik said.
Officers must use suicide precautions
if the red S indicates the prisoner has made current comments
about harming themselves, Yanik said.
But officers can use their
own discretion in applying the precautions if the red S was put
on because police records show they were a risk at some time
in the past, she said.
Such flags on the older record
may no longer be pertinent and police are reluctant to deny prisoners
their basic rights, Ward said.
The red S is the same whether
the suicide threat is current or old.
The inquest continues today.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
