A Harford County Detention Center inmate who hung himself earlier this month died at a Baltimore City hospital Saturday from injuries sustained in the suicide attempt, police said. He was the second person incarcerated at the facility to die in the last two months.
According to the Harford County Sheriff’s Office, Christopher Kelley, 21, of Street was found hanging from his cell in a direct supervision unit at approximately 11:30 p.m. on Jan. 14 according to sheriff’s office spokeswoman Monica Worrell. He was transported to Upper Chesapeake Medical Center before being transferred to R Adams Crowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, where he died Saturday.
Kelley had been held at the detention center since Jan. 8 for violation of probation received on a charge of second-degree assault in February. He was officially released from sheriff’s custody by court order Jan. 17, Worrell said. He had been incarcerated twice before, from July 19 to Sept. 6 for the assault charge, and on Nov. 21 for a charge of burglary, on which he was released on $10,000 bail.
Despite not being “in custody” at the the time, he is the third inmate in the last three years to die from injuries or ailments sustained while incarcerated, and the second suicide in that time frame.
Kelley’s death came just less than two months after that of Michael R. Malpass, 26 at the time of his death and a North East resident, who was incarcerated at the facility following a string of local convenience store robberies. Malpass was found unresponsive in his cell late on Thanksgiving night, Nov. 24, by corrections officers. He was pronounced dead at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center shortly after midnight the next morning.
A spokeswoman for the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner last week said an autopsy attributed his death to natural causes from complications from chronic drug abuse. While incarcerated at the Harford County Detention Center, Malpass had been on 15-minute medical watch due to issues with detoxing from the intravenous use of heroin.
One more down. Wonder where Robert Richardson falls on the list.
The Sheriff’s Office has pointed out that the last two deaths have occurred in a Direct Supervision Unit (whatever that means anymore) which I thought meant an Correctional Officer was present in the unit at all times. Having an officer present does not seem to reduce the likelihood that a death will occur, even suicide by hanging.
I agree. It would in fact appear to INCREASE the likelihood by the evidence. Would it not? Very troubling.
I defy you to prevent a person from killing themselves if they are truly bent on doing so. The only ones who will not even try are likely narcissists.
You may be correct that a person absolutely determined to kill themselves will “eventually” do so. I would say however, that there are many things you can do to prevent them from killing themselves, and others, while in the HCDC. Personnel at the HCDC have both prevented and intervened in suicide attempts many times, saving many lives in the process.
@retiredawhile
When an inmate is put into a DSU, it is considered minimum to low medium security for that inmate. There are two floors to every DSU. Officers only make hourly checks in those housing areas. The DSU’s are usually reserved for low risk inmates, often in need of protective custody or are well behaved. It’s more than feasible that if the inmate was in an upper tier room, not considered to be at risk, showed no warning signs and had his light off in his cell, he had plenty of time to attempt suicide between a
the officers normal tours in that area. It is in fact true that officers man DSU’s 24/7 but, unless you work midnights, you have 48 or more inmates that have a least one issue a peice for you to deal with. For those who have never worked in a jail, an inmates mood can go from perfectly fine to a suicide attempt from simply reading a peice of mail and an officer would have no idea anything was wrong until it happens. @hmmm: DSU’s do work, they don’t cause suicides, they’re actually one of the cleanest, quietest and more decent places to be housed at the DC.
@Mad at Everything,
First, if you work at the HCDC, thank you for the job you and your co-workers do every day in support of the citizens of Harford County.
Thank you for explaining the DSU units. Hopefully all of the HCDC units built to be Direct Supervision Units (DSU) are manned 24/7 as you indicate. Many jails are experiencing staffing shortages after building housing units designated as DSU. Thus they place inmates into the DSU’s and then do not have enough officers to assign to them 24/7. They just end up placing the housing unit on the normal security tour of other assigned officers. This presents an additional challenge for the jails as now they have a housing area designed with several cells with doors, as opposed to a large open dormitory type area where the inmates can be watched easily by remote cameras, and defeats the rational of building the DSU in the first place. The result is an increased opportunity for inmates to conduct inappropriate behavior out of sight.
Most jails do not have enough staff to provide “direct supervision” of minimum level security inmates. You are fortunate at the HCDC to have enough staff to do that.
LOL, Retired………stop baiting.
hand washing post —->http://www.daggerpress.com/2011/07/10/harford-county%E2%80%99s-food-facility-inspection-violations-for-april-2011/
I think many people are confusing the term Direct Supervision with the concept of a constant watch. A constant watch a person is actually monitored for their safety. A Direct Supervision Unit is only meant for the officer to be constantly present to deal with concerns that the inmates raise and to make sure that vulnerable inmates do not fall victim to other inmates. It would be impossible to maintain the level of privacy and comfort that the inmates and their families want (many of which are registered voters), avoid causing a conflict with the inmate population by micromanaging what they are doing in their own cells, and still be certain that not one of the 24 cells has someone inside attempting to harm themself. Also, even though a unit is referred to as a DSU and has a similar physical structure they are using the term incorrectly, a DSU is simply a staffed housing unit, when it isn’t staffed then it isn’t a DSU it is a unit,pod, or anything else you want to call it.
@King of Common Sense
How many Direct Supervision Units does the HCDC have, and is the new expanded part of the HCDC designed to support the direct supervision concept?
My two-part feature last year included photos from inside a Direct Supervision Unit: http://www.daggerpress.com/2011/03/13/behind-the-bars-the-changing-worlds-of-the-harford-county-detention-center-part-i/.
Thanks Aaron. I reviewed the articles and can see where parts of the new expansion do include some housing areas designed to be direct supervision.
Hopefully, there is enough staff at the HCDC to in fact make them DSU’s in reality. As someone else pointed out earlier, when a housing area designed to be a DSU is occupied by inmates with no officer posted there, it is just another housing unit. That presents another set of security management issues, not in the HCDC favor.
@aaron cahall
You did a hell of a job with that peice and we’ve talked about something’s that needed to go into that story that you couldn’t put in it. I told you before you got the great PC tour and you should have just been imbedded for a few days to see what true jail is like.
@retiredawhile
Thank you, I put in my time there and have since moved on. I loved my job there, I was
good at it and passionate about what I did.
Where the past two incidents have occured
were in fact in DSU’s that were staffed 24/7.
The hcdc technically has 3 active true DSU’s, the new section has several others but, due to budget issues and contrator snafus they can’t open it up. It’s was so hard some nights in Q,R or S (the DSU’s) just to deal with one problem that arose and pay attention to the other 47 personalities that a lot slipped me. It’s tough. You know, it wouldn’t be such a bad place to work if supervision agency wide would focus on the problems at hand and stop politicking so damn much. Nowadays it’s not who you know, its who support or who you’re screwing around that joint.
@Mad at Everything,
Thanks for the information. The general public does not really understand how jails are designed and configured as a physical plant. When a housing area is built as a DSU it should always be used in that manner. As others have pointed out, when an inmate can place themselves out of the line of sight, it increases the possibility of inappropriate behavior. Even an officer posted within the housing area does not prevent someone from hanging themselves. One can only imagine what can, or maybe does go on, if the housing unit designed to be a DSU does not have an officer posted within the unit.
It is unfortunate that politics plays such a significant part of the everyday operation within the HCSO. It is a morale killer in most instances. I was not sure how you meant your comment about “who your screwing around here”. Did you mean screwed as in treated unfairly, or the hanky-panky kind as in inappropriate personal relationships?
Someone should ask Sheriff Bane how many times his deputies were at this kids house for attempted suicide. The night they arrested him they weren’t at his house for a probation violation. They were there because someone called them because he was threatening suicide.
All that crap about how the jail is set up means nothing! A life was lost……when someone is incarcerated a thorough review of the inmate’s background should be done……the police were at the house several times before for suicide attempts…..what happened to that information being shared with the prison????? The night he was arrested the police were there on a 911 call for a suicide attempt…..not a violation…..
Anonymous,
Absolutely that information from the arresting deputies should have been given to the HCDC. Given those circumstances the man should have been placed on a constant watch by HCDC personnel.
@anonymous
You’re right, that info should have been privy and should always be privy to correctional officers but it never is. And true, a life was lost
And it is a tragedy but, a lack of information sharing at the DC is what puts the suck in jail most times. It would also be nice, as an officer, to know other things about inmates such as being HIV positive, prior assaults on officers and other violent histories to keep officers safe. That info is usually spread by word of mouth. If this kid was such a suicide risk, he should have been on a constant watch, if he wasn’t then that was intake medicals fault… Sort of like placing a detoxing inmate in a cell, by himself, alone and not on a constant watch. Just so everyone knows, you don’t do that, ever! But, the result is a death of a person and another public black eye for correctional officers.
@retiredawhile
Come to think of it, I meant interagency relationships but when you bring it up that way it could go either way.
The part that angers me is eventhough the sherrif’s office didn’t properly manage and share information with the HCDC, as they should have for a documented at risk young man, they still had the gall to make a statement that was published in several papers about the incident. False statements about an outstanding warrant makes news and gives the impression that our tax money is being well spent! Don’t speak to the media about it because in the end the warrant wasn’t really the reason. Someone’s son died. There is a family who has to pick up the pieces. Whatever happened to the oath “to serve and protect” To serve and protect who? The family’s privacy wasn’t protected but in case it got out, the sheriff’s office certainly protected themselves though. Whatever they gained by making all of this public, sure isn’t nearly as much as what this family has lost.
The Detention Center and the Sheriffs Office doesn’t get off that easy. The first time this kid was in, for the original offense, they had him on suicide watch. The intake briefing should have uncovered that little tidbit of information. The officer that responded to the suicide attempt and subsequently arrested him for the probation violation was also there during the first, almost successful, attempt.
On one of the occasions there was a Lieutenant and a Captain from the Harford County Sheriffs office on the scene with the state helicopters and K9 Units searching for him.
A judge actually had to sign a document in the middle of the night so that officers could pick him up if they found him because of the danger he posed to himself.
The indicators, in this particular case, were so overwhelming there is no way this should have ever happened. If the alarms and red flags weren’t waving for this kid there is no hope for anyway in this state of mind when they enter the facility.
Who is in charge at the Detention Center? Shouldn’t they have some answers about why this man was not placed on a watch. Two deaths in two months. One who was left alone with significant medical withdrawal from drugs, and another that we now find out was obviously suicidal when he was taken to the Detention Center.
I guess they feel they don’t have to answer to it because Bane himself said it…sometimes we come up short on our efforts. As a parent, I would want answers and not the smoke screens of what staff and deputies are trained to look for but exactly what they didn’t do and should have done to prevent this tragedy. If Harford County if so transparent when it comes to confronting these issues, then address what the deputies missed and what the detention center missed and address it with the families that have been affected by these deaths.
@Aaron cahall
You want a start, look into ConMed, the medical services at the DC. They rarely share information with the officers and it’s usually a fight to get things done with them when officers want steps to be taken.
@Madateverything
ConMed inprocesses them and doesn’t tell the COs about potential problems? That doesn’t make any sense; particularly in a situation like this when there was clearly an issue. Do you think they are trying to protect the inmates privacy? I thought you gave up your rights to privacy when you were in jail.
Chief Freeze,
You believe that the man was evaluated by medical people when first at the jail, and determined that he was not suicidal?
Mike
It sounds that way based on what @MAD AT EVERYTHING is saying about the intake interview completed by ConMed.
Chief Freeze, The question should be: Was Mr. Kelly ever placed on a constant watch during his last stay at the Detention Center? If he was, when and for how long? If he was placed on a watch, what were the reasons for his removal, and if he was never placed on a watch, why not, given the circumstances of his activity the night he was arrested?
Mike,
Those are very good questions.
Something is just not right about this. Most folks don’t seem to care much when someone in jail dies, especially those that kill themselves. When a person is taken to jail who is obviously suicidal, you would think the sheriff’s officers would pay more attention to them.
Something else that seems strange about this situation. He was found at 11:30 PM. Based on the pictures Mr. Cahall provided in his article he should have been in a cell with at least one other person. Isn’t there some type of lock down period for the inmates. At that time of night shouldn’t his cell mate have been locked in with him? Are the inmates allowed to wander around at all hours?
@chieffreeze
Lock in is at 2330
@chieffreeze
There are some privacy issues but they share very little with the officers. It’s almost an us against them mentality.
@MAD AT EVERYTHING
Thanks for your honest answers.
Given the circumstances isn’t there something that can be done about that even if it means putting a comment in the suggestion box at the jail? Does the warden or sheriff’s office know or care about the lack of communication between their people?
People are dieing because they can’t pass information to each other.
That is almost like being an accessory.
Chieffreeze,
Perhaps deliberate indifference would be a more appropriate description.