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An Act Of Casual Cruelty Raises Suspicions About Jail

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 14, 2008

There is no excuse for the behavior captured on video at the Orient Road Jail: A deputy dumping a man out of his wheelchair as supervisors watch indifferently.

The disabled man flops helplessly on the ground, his clothes askew. No one runs over to see if he's all right. Rather, two deputies casually begin the process of patting him down, then flip him over to frisk the other side.

Sheriff David Gee, fortunately, makes no excuses. He has apologized. "I'm embarrassed," Gee says. "Common sense and human decency would tell you not to dump someone out of a wheelchair."

The sheriff's office has suspended the deputy without pay, and three supervisors, too. An investigation is under way to determine whether further punishment, even criminal charges, is justified.

But it's going to take more than suspensions and apologies to restore public confidence in a jail operation that has enjoyed a reputation for professionalism and efficiency.

Areas Gee should scrutinize:

•Why no training on how to frisk suspects in wheelchairs? Col. David Parrish, who oversees jail operations, says deputies are trained to follow the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires disabled inmates to be assessed by a nurse upon admission. But deputies receive no specific training on how to frisk people in wheelchairs.

Parrish may be right that it should not be necessary to instruct someone "not to throw someone out of a wheelchair," but when a 22-year-veteran does just that, it indicates training protocols need to be far more rigorous.

• Has this happened before? Parrish says the jail handles hundreds of people in wheelchairs each year - it currently has 31 - and has never had anything remotely similar occur. But the deputy and supervisors in the video appear awfully relaxed about what's going on, suggesting such behavior is not out of the norm.

Gee's office should review the videos to determine whether other incidents have happened.

• Why didn't the supervisors report the incident? It occurred Jan. 29 when Brian Sterner, who was partially paralyzed in a 1994 wrestling accident, was booked for blocking an intersection with his vehicle and fleeing an officer.

Parrish and Gee didn't learn about the incident until a TV station reported Sterner's accusations this week. Were the supervisors trying to cover up the incident? Did they think it was no big deal? Only a thorough review will satisfy the community's concerns.

The deputy, who has a clean record, maintains she was "not wrong," but it's impossible to imagine any justification for her actions, even if she believed that Sterner was faking or was being abusive. Dropping a quadriplegic onto the floor risks serious injury to that person, especially when their limbs are rigid from atrophy.

Parrish pioneered direct supervision at the jail, which emphasizes humane treatment of inmates and allows one officer to oversee 64 prisoners at a time.

He seems genuinely distraught. "This goes against everything we teach," he says. "We try to normalize the treatment of people instead of shuttling them along like cattle. ... It doesn't matter what they did on the outside ... In here they are to be treated with dignity, like you would want your mother, father, sister or brother treated."

Admirable sentiments, but no one wants their family members treated as callously as Sterner was.

The Sheriff's Office needs to examine how this outrage occurred and ensure it never happens again.

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