From NPR:
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
When police took Carlos Yazzie to jail on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico after his arrest on a bench warrant in January 2017, he needed immediate medical attention. His foot was swollen and his blood alcohol content was nearly six times the legal limit.
But law enforcement decided that he was fine, jail records show. They put Yazzie in a cramped isolation cell at the Shiprock District Department of Corrections facility instead of taking him to a hospital and then left him unmonitored for six hours without periodic staff checks as required, according to an investigative report. When a guard handing out inmate jumpsuits the next morning stopped at Yazzie's cell, the 44-year-old day laborer was dead. It would later be determined in an autopsy that he died from acute alcohol poisoning, which is easily treatable by medical professionals, experts said.
"These correctional officers are basically holding these lives in their hands with their decisions," said Chris Yazzie, Carlos' brother, who once worked as a correctional officer at the jail where his brother died but did not know the specific officers. "I don't think these people are prepared." Continue reading >>>
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