A Texas man is seeking justice for his brother who died in police custody: ‘He was a good person’ | US policing

R.Days before his death, the 33 -year -old father and an old US military warrior named Glin Smallwood Junior was talking about building a house. His younger brother, John, was reshaping a house in Louvkin, TexasThe two brothers lived, and he asked Glin if he could help.

John said: “He was very happy with the idea of ​​working with me and turning his life,” John said. “He was thinking positively on his future. I am thinking of this memory often.”

About 48 hours later, on June 16, 2023, Gilin Smallwood was arrested to poison the audience. GPA will appear that it was clear that in the midst of the mental health crisis, as for most of his adult life, he had a selective disorder, a condition that could cause ideas for depression, crazy and hallucinations.

However, after arriving at Angelina County Prison, a team of officers tied Smallwood to a chair, and later told his brother that this usual practice of people with poisoning. And that is when Smulwood began to re -retreat and faded to consciousness and outside. Many guards laughed, then put it in a Holding cell where he would die later. (The pathologist ruled an occasional death from the effect of methamphets.))

His death, and his horrific mistreatment at the hands of law enforcement, confirms how people with mental illness are at risk when they face the police in the United States. The deadly power database in the Washington Post shows that one out of five people killed by the police may have had a mental health crisis when their lives were taken, while another study shows that people with mental illness have killed more than 16 times during a police confrontation.

Other data indicates that this problem is especially sharp in Texas. In Dallas Fort, for example, 2021 investigation At Fort Worth, Worth Star revealed that one out of three people were killed by the police from 2014 to 2021 who were suffering from the mental health crisis when they were killed. In 2019, the University of Texas in Austin open The state’s police department in the state has one of the highest shooting rates on the police with mental illness, also indicating that Texas has one of the worst records in the country to provide comprehensive mental health services.

In other words, Texas is the place where the disturbing history of the police brutality is collided with the financing of weak mental health. Despite the presence of the second largest economy in the country, the country occupies the fixed rank near all fifty states in mental health services that spend on the individual.

Greg Hanch, Executive Director of Texas from the National Coalition for Mental Diseases, said that Texas simply does not have enough infrastructure of mental health.

“We do not have enough family, but it is also more than just a family,” said Hanch. “You need a full continuity of care. Many people who will be in the hospital will actually achieve the best accommodation from 48 to 72 hours in a crisis facility.”

He added: “The other countries do better in building services that must be done to keep people away from prison. If you do not have this continuity, the police are really limited in their options in terms of a place to bring a person.

For Hanch, Smulwood’s ordeal calls for the mind Sandra Blander, a woman she was I found hanging In her cell in Waller Province, Texas, in 2015, she screaming and calling for her death led to a new law called Band, but before its passing, the main provisions of the draft law were stripped.

One of these provisions will have limited arrests in favor of the Class C, such as general poisoning, the charge that has been booked Smallwood.

That night on June 2023 was not the first time that Smallwood was arrested, but John wants the world to know that his brother has a “great heart.” He never wanted to harm anyone. In fact, it was recruited in the American army to help others. His emotional plan continued after returning from military service. At one point, literally save a cat from a tree.

John recalls, “No one wanted to get the cat because of its height,” John recalls. “Without hesitation, Glen started climbing the tree to save the cat.”

Smallwood also rose above, and so did the cat. She finally caught and returned the animal to safety, then embraced its owner crying with comfort.

John said, “I was proud of him.” “I thought it was the most wonderful thing ever.”

Again, when the boys were Smulwood growing up, John felt frustrated because he had to share a bike with his sister. When Glene caught the wind that one of the neighbors was about to get rid of an old divided bike, he asked whether they would give them instead. Then he fixed it so that his brother could get it.

John said: “We did not have much, so he always was playing toys or finding things to entertain us, while my mother made two jobs,” John said.

Later, John added, “I would like everyone to know that Glin was more than his mistakes. He was a good person.”

The prison records details of what happened to Smallwood as soon as it was inside that cell. The treatment he holds in a lawsuit filed by his brother. Smulwood remained confined to the restriction chair – a practice that the United Nations has long criticized – and when she found an unconscious nurse, she abandoned any calls to the hospital or doctor, and instead, relying on smell salts to keep him awake. Less than two hours later, after leaving the nurse, the officers noticed that Smallwood stopped breathing. An ambulance was called to transfer him to the hospital, where he died shortly after.

The choice of keeping him on the chair for hours at one time, even when he retracted, removed and stripped of his consciousness, is a major point in John’s lawsuit, through which the province is sued, a Lofkin police officer, the nurse, and the profitable health entity that the nurse works.

Why, John wondering, didn’t require any of these people auxiliary soon?

“Self -control chairs are designed to secure violent, aggressive or unaccounted people,” said one of John’s lawyer, Eric Hypelet. “However, Angelina County prison routinely uses them to people like Mr. Smallwood who do not pose any safety threat. This practice is unconstitutional.”

Worse than that, in the arrested morning, Smallwood entered a healthy facility looking for medicines. The facility staff transferred to a hospital where he could get long -term care, but he left before the transfer.

Through the judge, the facility then issued a mental health note, also known as “emergency detention”. This police gave the authority to transfer Smallwood to a mental health facility, although this did not of course – although the police faced it on the same day.

According to Creesh Gondo, co -founder and executive director of Texas Prison ProjectLaw enforcement officers can often reach the history of complete persons, including orders like this.

“We have said that there is a major part of the lost data is frustration in emergency situations,” she said. “Because the number of times we hear about people who are in detention in emergency situations over and over again, and officers who do not know that there is this date, and that they end up in prison, or end up killing at the hands of the officers or the use of force, because law enforcement and prisons cannot reach this basic date of multiple emergency residence.”

However, in the Camat body clips to arrest Smolod, one of the detention officers can be heard while speaking to one of the missionaries who share how Smallwood escaped from a treatment center on the same day.

“They were looking for him,” the sender tells the officer, who later puts Smallwood in a car on his way to prison. After closing the door to their detainee, the two officers who arrest the arrest agree better than they believed.

Gondo said this was the first “multiple failures.”

Even if they did not know the well -documented history of Smallwood on mental health issues, the officers could have returned to the hospital. Or when the Sharif office arrived, they could do the same. Instead, five officers worked together to connect Smallwood with a chair of restraint, although the shots that turned out to have been easy to drive and are compatible.

Moreover, according to the records reviewed by The Guardian, the prisons did not complete the query required for the continuity of care on Smallwood, which would have used an online system to review its history of mental health care. Moreover, according to the official schedule of events, at least 16 minutes have been passed between two examinations that prisons have to document when someone is in restrictions. The standards of the Texas Committee on prison call for checks “every 15 minutes, as a minimum.”

Sharif’s office did not respond to the comment.

In the Capitol building in the state, there are some legislation that can help people with mental illness, including a draft law presented by Democratic Representative Donna Howard. DraftAnd that it needs to be removed from the committee before voting on it, that would allow the paramedics to be detention of people who believe that they are temporarily suffering from the mental health crisis. The legislator speaks with Republican colleagues in an attempt to sell legislation, and says some of them accept – especially those who hear law enforcement officers overwhelmed by mental health calls.

“This is not related to saying that the paramedics should be police officers,” said Howard. To approach [mental health calls] With more than the general health axis approach than the law -focused approach is in fact the comprehensive goal here. “

Meanwhile, John Smallwood is not waiting for new bills to find a kind of justice for his brother.

“Life has been blurry since my brother’s death,” he said. “I still did not deal with it, to be honest.”

He often wakes up in the morning with pain in his chest, and for this moment, he feels that Glin’s death happened again. It seems that he just got the call that came almost two years ago.

He said: “He is my big brother.” “I was born in this world his knowledge. I think about it all the time. I have always given me advice and encouragement. I believed in me, and I can rely on him for support. I lost all of this. I have now gone forever.”

“When he died,” John added, “A piece of me died.”