Restoring prisoners to competency in Yuma County.

I'd rather see more programs diverting the seriously mentally ill from prosecution altogether...but this has an interesting design that includes education about the legal process and seems worth posting. Hopefully they won't take as long with folks as Maricopa County (MCSO) does (9 months seems the norm here) - that's a long time to lock a person up in a place like that who hasn't even been to trial, and seems only to coerce too many into pleading guilty as soon as they're deemed competent to in order to get out of MCSO custody, the jail's treatment of the SMI is so bad.

We wish the best to Dr. Falcon with this program - we hope it serves Yuma County's vulnerable prisoners well. Anyone who has direct experience with this program and thoughts on it is invited to contact me (Peggy) at arizonaprisonwatch@gmail.com. I'd love to hear how it's going. Same with any of the restoration to competency or mental health programs in Arizona's other county jails.

---from the Yuma Sun---

Jail starts program to restore suspects to competency

http://www.yumasun.com/news/program-75148-person-trial.html

December 12, 2011 2:07 PM

BY DARREN DARONCO - SUN STAFF WRITER

After months of planning, the Yuma County Detention Center has implemented its own restoration to competency (RTC) program.

YCDC recently held an open house to show local judges a newly renovated mental health pod and to explain how the RTC program works.

When a person who is charged with a crime is determined by a judge to be incompetent, the judge places him or her into a mental health program so treatment can be administered until the person is capable of standing trial.

“Before we sent everyone who couldn't stand trial to the Arizona State Hospital or to another county with an RTC program,” said Lt. Joe Lackey. “Now instead of sending them away, everything is going to be performed here at the local jail. (Often times,) it would take a year before a person was restored...and that is very expensive. So this will definitely save the county money.”

Yuma County's RTC program focuses on both teaching the person what will happen during the trial and treating the person's mental illness.

“One of the things we emphasize is that it's a process,” said Dr. Elizabeth Falcon, the program's head forensic psychologist. “They first go through intake assessments, which allows us to target the areas they need to work on. Once we identify those, they begin the other critical part which is the education piece. Also during this time, they are receiving the treatment that they need.”

Falcon said the education component is divided into a series of 12 modules and the inmates must pass each one before advancing in the program.

“The modules are curriculum-based and are multi-modal so they are not just doing the same lesson,” she said. “Some (modules) include exercises or role-playing while others are more traditional.”

After inmates finish the modules and complete their therapy, they partake in a mock trial which prepares them for the actual courtroom.

“We try to simulate every aspect of a trial,” Falcon said. “Everybody who participates has a script and then we act out the trial just as it would in the courtroom.”

Two people have been admitted to the program since its inception in early November, with one person successfully completing it.

“I think it's wonderful that we have this program in Yuma,” said Yuma County Superior Court Judge Maria Elena Cruz. “It expedites the process so we can quickly identify those that can be restored and those that can't. So it's a cost savings not only financially, but on the human side of it because we won't have someone who is mentally ill without the possibility of being restored being held for months and months in jail.”

Prosecuting police violence: MCAO falls short with Gerster, Keesee.

"Prosecute Police Violence"
Maricopa County Central Courthouse, Phoenix.
June 2011

I went to former Maricopa County Sheriff's detention officer Kevin Gerster's sentencing in Maricopa County Superior Court today. He entered a plea deal in August in which the prosecution offered him 6 months in county jail and two years of probation for all his crimes. Both the assaults were ruled as "non-dangerous, non-repetetive", too, which is bullshit. He broke one guy's jaw and five months later beat another prisoner repeatedly. Judge Bill Brotherton took his assaultive behavior and pre-meditated crime (giving a buddy the address of a former prisoner, which the buddy used to find and assault him) more seriously than the prosecutor's office, though, and sent him to jail for a year instead.


In arguing for the judge to follow the plea agreement recommendations, Gerster's attorney cited the mitigating circumstances that ultimately kept the guy from going to prison instead. He has has no prior record, considerable community and family support (two of his former colleagues were present), took responsibility for his actions (he actually reported these incidents to supervisors when they happened and they left him on the job caring for mentally ill prisoners). He won't ever try to work in law enforcement again, and is now driving a cab. She even tried to get his probation fees reduced due to them being a hardship because he has child support payments to meet (the judge wouldn't consider that until he's done with jail).


Gerster himself argued that he had been in a stressful job and was just "caught up in the moment" when he did what he did, and was sincerely remorseful that he had embarrassed his family and his employer (he said little - if anything - about regretting the harm he did to his victims - as well as to the public's trust.)


These excuses didn't go over so well with Brotherton, and Gerster received a stern lecture from him about how he had a higher standard of conduct to meet than non-public servants regardless of stress because of the power he wielded, especially since he was working with "vulnerable" prisoners in the mental health unit. Brotherton pointed out that all of Gerster's criminal actions resulted in people being injured, and that the tampering with criminal records charges involved pre-meditated criminal actions that hurt others. It's a wonder he didn't send him to prison, he was so articulate about why Gerster deserved more than just six months in jail.


But the guy has a young daughter and family members who have suffered through this prosecution and the public shame with him, which is unfortunate for them (his fault, not ours), and Brotherton seemed to really weigh the mitigating factors - some of which I'm sure I don't know about, like the supervisors failing to take action to remove him from his job when it was clear he couldn't handle it. That made me want to see them in court, too, not just Gerster.


I stayed to watch him be put into cuffs by his former colleague, but didn't get the sense of satisfaction that I thought I would from it - I'm still a prison abolitionist, after all, and it's uncomfortable arguing for prison for someone, even a bad cop. For all I know the guy is mentally ill and asked for treatment before he escalated to the level of assaulting vulnerable people. In any case the MCSO was negligent in ignoring his abusive conduct, and should take some responsibility too.


In the end here's what Gerster plead to:

Agg Assault on his first victim (the guy whose jaw he broke in June 2010): Class 6 felony. 2 years probation concurrent with 6 month jail term, and suspended prison sentence (he could face 2 years in prison if he violates his probation);

Agg Assault on his second victim (William Hughes, who has assaulted last November): Class 6 felony. 2 years probation concurrent with 1 year in county jail, and suspended prison sentence (could face two years on this, too);

Unauthorized access to the criminal database and release of information (I'm not sure exactly what this charge was called, but it's a class 1 misdemeanor, down from a felony). 1 year probation concurrent with other sentences; suspended prison sentence (again, this could be 2 years at the ADC if he violates his probation - though he'll be in jail all that year anyway).

I'm still disappointed with the county attorney's office on this - they could not have lost at trial because of the video evidence - the whole world witnessed these assaults on Youtube, so I don't know what their excuse is for being so soft on him, but I'm glad Brotherton wasn't. Just keep in mind folks, that if any of those prisoners were in a position to defend themselves and tried to, they'd be facing a ten year sentence for assault on a peace officer, so don't think I'm calling any of this justice. I wanted him to go to prison - just not bad enough to shout it at the judge.

More troubling to me is that the other assaultive officer caught on video, Alan Keesee, plead guilty to aggravated assault (a class 1 misdemeanor) last month and was sentenced to only 3 months of unsupervised probation. His judge was Gottsfield; the prosecutor of record was Ed Leiter. That's less of a punishment than a friend of mine got for disorderly conduct at a protest - she got 30 days in jail and a year probation. Even I'm facing six months in jail for refusing to vacate a city park - now that's ridiculous.

Finally, a reminder to folks that tomorrow (October 22) is National Day Against Police Brutality: there will be an action at the 4th Avenue Jail at 10am. Join us if you can.

Find the Phoenix New Times' report on this case here.

You can find updated Superior Court court records at this link.

Mentally ill prisoner abuse: Keesee walks.

CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION HERE

I just don't know how this all works sometimes, folks...

---------------------

Looks like the Maricopa County Attorney's Office doesn't think it can make a case stick against former MCSO detention officer Alan Keesee, despite the Youtube video we all saw of him assaulting William Franklin Hughes in the psychiatric wing of the Lower Buckeye Jail while the kid was fully-restrained. They must just not care how brutalized we are - I should have seen this coming after they sent the Game Boy kid in to handle Gerster's prosecution.














This is really pathetic. Talk about being soft on violent crime.

This means that Keesee will probably be reinstated at the jail, of course - with seven months back pay. No labor in this state has rights unless it's a cop of some kind, it seems. All the guards who helped kill Marcia Powell got their jobs back, too...and the MCAO didn't have the guts to prosecute them, either - that was on Rick Romley's watch. What does it take in this place to get justice for the poor when we get beaten up or killed by law enforcement officers?

Meanwhile, the county attorney's office prosecuted William - despite his mental illness, the benign nature of the charges against him, and the beating he took in the jail by both Gerster and Keesee. I'm pretty confused about the direction of the MCAO now - I thought Bill Montgomery was against such abusive prosecutions of people who - but for the symptoms of a psychiatric disability - would not be in the criminal justice system. I was so sure he was I wished him a hug.

William was so impaired when he was arrested for indecent exposure that the judge who arriagned him ordered a rule 11 hearing and refused to release him - which is when he was beaten, disturbingly. You'd think if no one else was outraged about Keesee being let off, that judge who put him in their care would be. I sure am.

Guess victims in custody really don't have any rights in Maricopa County, pre-trial or otherwise - especially the most vulnerable and seriously mentally ill.

You all know who to complain to about this.
Don't just leave it as a conversation between him and me.

Bill Montgomery
Maricopa County Attorney
301 W. Jefferson St.
Phoenix, AZ 85003
602-506-3411



Original Court Minutes

POLICE BRUTALITY: This is also what resistance looks like.

Bill Montgomery's Follow-up HERE
(SEPTEMBER 2011)