Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Public Sector Gulags
The world will never know how Eric Perez died
Ursus:
Published later the same day, a Miami Herald Opinion piece by Fred Grimm...
[See also previous post with some links to discussion re. the Omar Paisley case.]
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The Miami Herald
Posted on Wednesday, 07.20.11
IN MY OPINION
In teen’s death, lack of money is no excuse for lack of caring
BY FRED GRIMM
FGRIMM@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Eric Perez
No need to empanel a grand jury to investigate the last few hours of Eric Perez, who was left to die in a Palm Beach County juvenile lock-up; sick, vomiting, crying for help, unattended by the medical staff.
A grand jury has already investigated circumstances matching young Eric's July 10 death so closely that another effort would just seem redundant.
Might as well just replace the names and dates and location in the grand jury report on the "tragically preventable death" of Omar Paisley at the Miami-Dade Regional Juvenile Detention Center in 2003. Keep the phrase "tragically preventable death." It still fits.
Randall Berg, director of the Florida Justice Institute, in an e-mail Wednesday noted the similarities of the two deaths, eight years apart. "In both instances, staff did not believe the complaints of pain by the juvenile inmates and refused known needed medical care, resulting in the untimely and unfortunate death of both children."
Berg had been among the angry voices heard in Florida after the death of Omar Paisley. The 17-year-old Opa-locka youth had been writhing with abdominal pain, beset with vomiting and diarrhea, begging for a doctor, his life ebbing away. The detention center staff never called 911. Workers, in fact, weren't allowed to call 911 without their supervisor's permission. The cellblock phones were set to block 911 calls.
It took Omar two painful, horrible days to die. The grand jury declared, "We were appalled by the utter lack of humanity demonstrated by the detention workers."
Humanity was not much in evidence at the Palm Beach Regional Juvenile Detention Center when Eric Perez, 18, fell deathly ill. Guards found him on the floor, vomiting. No one called 911. He was not seen by a nurse. There was no nurse on duty.
A detention center medical staffer told The Herald's Carol Marbin Miller that because of budget cutbacks, there wasn't enough money to provide a nurse at nights or over weekends. Statewide, the Department of Juvenile Justice is dealing with a $77 million budget cut. Apparently, getting seriously ill in a juvenile lock-up, under this new budget, has become like Russian roulette.
The Paisley grand jury wrote, "It was very simple for us to envision scenarios in which twenty-four hour medical care could mean the difference between life and death." In 2011, the words became prophetic.
The Paisley grand jury was not much moved by complaints that the 2003 version of DJJ had suffered debilitating cuts and the report sounds just as relevant in 2011. "We were sensitive to the implementation of severe budgetary cuts," the report stated. "However, each of us arrived independently at the same conclusion: one can never measure the cost of human life in taxpayer money."
Nor would Cathy Corry of Justice4Kids, a watchdog group that monitors the rights of detained children, accept an excuse that financial restraints led to either death. "Money doesn't make someone care."
Anyway, Paisley was seen by a medical staffer in the 2003 case, though the particular nurse (who later pleaded guilty to culpable negligence) didn't bother with an examination. Her diagnosis of the dying kid: "Ain't nothing wrong with his ass." An equally compassionate guard told Omar to "suck it up."
The only accurate diagnosis may have come from Corry. "The staff didn't care." She was referring to the Eric Perez death, but the tragic underpinnings of both cases seem sadly interchangeable.
The Paisley death led to a series of reforms. And staffers at state juvenile lock-ups were trained to circumvent supervisors and call 911 if they felt a kid was in medical jeopardy. But as the Omar Paisley scandal faded from memory, so did the reform regimes.
"Over time with staff turnover, and usually a lack of training, staffers become jaded," Berg said. He worried that new hires were ill trained. That the new guards came to regard "every inmate with a health care need a malingerer."
"At every turn in our investigation," the Paisley grand jury wrote, "we were confronted with incompetence, ambivalence and negligence on the part of the administration and the staff."
In 2011, not much has changed. Except the dead kid's name.
Copyright 2011 Miami Herald Media Co.
Ursus:
Comments left for the above Opinion piece, "In teen's death, lack of money is no excuse for lack of caring" (by Fred Grimm, 07.20.11, Miami Herald):
Esauhound · 07/21/2011 03:23 PM
Sadthe_prince · 07/21/2011 03:56 PM
Sad commentary.
Copyright 2011 Miami Herald Media Co.
Ursus:
Another piece from the Broward-Palm Beach New Times blog The Daily Pulp:
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The Daily Pulp
LAW & ORDER
State Officials Cited Lack of Emergency Training at Palm Beach Juvie Jail Where Teen Died
By Lisa Rab · Wed., Jul. 20 2011 at 11:32 AM
Categories: Law & Order, Palm Beach
Jail officials waited hours to call 911.
Some staffers at a West Palm Beach juvenile jail where a teenager died this month were not trained to know the facility's safety, security, and emergency plans, according to a state quality assurance report written in February. Meanwhile, "management accountability" at the jail was given a "minimal" rating by state Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) officials -- one step above a failing grade.
Despite these shortcomings, the Palm Beach Regional Juvenile Detention Center won an overall grade of "acceptable" five months before Eric Perez,18, died in custody there. Two jail employees have been fired and four others have been suspended in the wake of Perez's death.
Perez woke early in the morning on July 10, "dazed and frantic," according to the Palm Beach Post. He vomited on the floor but was given a soft drink and allowed to go back to sleep. Instead of calling 911, a jail supervisor called a nurse to help Perez, but the nurse didn't return the call.
In the February review by state officials, the jail was commended for having a registered nurse on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
On July 10, Perez slipped in and out of sickness and sleep for six hours before a jail supervisor discovered that the teenager barely had a pulse. Only then did the supervisor call 911. By the time paramedics arrived around 8 a.m., Perez was dead. Authorities from DJJ are still investigating the incident.
Tags: death, DJJ, Eric Perez, juvenile justice, Palm Beach Regional Juvenile Detention Center
©2011 New Times BPB, LLC.
Ursus:
Comment left for the above blog piece, "State Officials Cited Lack of Emergency Training at Palm Beach Juvie Jail Where Teen Died" (by Lisa Rab; Jul. 20 2011; New Times blog The Daily Pulp):
Guest · 1 week ago
Rab is the only real reporter this blog has. Too bad nobody pays any attention.
©2011 New Times BPB, LLC.
Ursus:
Someone got a hold of the Incident Report for that night...
Video news footage at the title link:
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NEWS CHANNEL 5 — WPTV
Report outlines teen's final moments in detention center
Leaked report outlines Eric Perez's death
Posted: 07/20/2011
By: Mike Trim
Photographer: WPTV · Copyright 2011 Scripps Media, Inc.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - An incident report leaked to our news partners, The Palm Beach Post, details the final moment of a local teenager's life in a juvenile lockup.
18-year-old Eric Perez died July 10th in the Palm Beach Regional Juvenile Detention Center.
His cause of death hasn't been released.
To Perez's family attorney Richard Schuler, the details of Perez's death worsen by the day.
"It's moving pretty quickly and that tells me that something really wrong had to have taken place there," said Schuler.
According to the report The Palm Beach Post obtained, Perez's was dazed and frantic about six-and-a-half hours before dying.
Inside his cell he was allegedly screaming over and over, "get him off me."
A guard moved Perez outside his cell according to the report, where he fell asleep but then starting vomiting.
That's when the report states the on call nurse was called twice, but didn't answer.
"She failed to respond and return the calls which I think is atrocious," said Schuler.
Schuler says he's confirmed most of the facts in the report obtained by The Palm Beach Post through a detention center guard's termination letter.
Two guards were fired and four other employees, including the center's superintendent, are suspended.
The incident report says after vomiting Perez was moved to a medical confinement area, where he again fell asleep.
At 7:55 a-m, the report says a guard checked Perez's pulse and he barely felt one.
That's when a 911 call was reportedly made.
The West Palm Beach Fire Department confirms with NewsChannel 5 that a crew was dispatched to the detention center, but a time was not given.
The state Department of Juvenile Justice said Perez died at 8:09 a.m.
Schuler calls it a complete failure of the system.
"It's a series of bad decisions that are made. It's usually not just one decision, it's a series of bad decisions that lead to a catastrophic event and unfortunately a death like this of Eric Perez," said Schuler.
Copyright 2011 Scripps Media, Inc.
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