Some retribution has been made in a case of police brutality in the United States. Slowly, eyes are opening to the absence of restraint some police officers show towards suspects, innocent individuals, guilty individuals, black individuals, and the mentally ill. Some acknowledgement is being made.
Nine Chatham County deputies in Georgia have been fired after an investigation was made into the death of a 22-year-old mentally ill suspect left in an isolation cell to die on New Year’s Day.
According to NBC News:
“Matthew Ajibade was handcuffed to a restraint chair on New Year’s Day after he allegedly hit his girlfriend and broke a deputy’s nose while in the midst of a bipolar episode. His family alleges police used a Taser on Ajibade while he was restrained in the chair, and then left him there unattended.”
The Chatham County Sheriff, Al St. Lawrence made a statement on Wednesday:
“Additionally, I have instituted numerous policy changes. Those changes include safeguards for those reported to suffer from a mental health illness as well as security cross checks… to ensure immediate notification to onsite medical personnel when a person with medication arrives for the booking process… of when Tasers may not be used.”
When police were called to the original incident, Ajibade’s girlfriend had blood on her cheek and claimed she had been hit. As he was suffering a bipolar episode, he most surely should have been taken to a hospital for mental health treatment and observation. However, he was booked into jail and fought with deputies once arriving at the Chatham County Detention Center.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s statement in January:
“Force was used to restrain Ajibade. Deputies were injured during the altercation. Ajibade was confined to a restraint chair and, subsequently, found unresponsive by deputies.”
Findings of the investigation have still not been made public and most likely will not be made public until it is presented before a grand jury.
According to Chatham County District Attorney Meg Heap,
“I want this case to be tried in a court room, not a court of public opinion.”
I can’t say if this was racially motivated with Ajibade being black because several of the nine deputies are also black. However, this does hit close to home for me. I’m not black, and I will never have to fear being pulled over by police. I will never appear immediately suspicious in the eyes of an officer in a store. I don’t have to worry about picking up a BB gun in Walmart.
However, I’m bipolar too, and at one time I wasn’t medicated. I remember and know how the chaos feels. How the anger is amplified by a thousand times and how quickly all that raw manic energy builds inside of you until you break. I broke, and I was hospitalized in New Orleans after a night of drunk-off-my-ass partying in strip clubs to the point of blacking out and overdrawing my bank account by thousands. I don’t even know how long I was in the hospital. I just remember telling some medical student what they needed to hear to send me back home to Georgia. He fortunately was also from Georgia and could see how badly I wanted to go home.
They released me, and my husband picked me up ever patiently, and we drove home to Georgia. Soon after, I sought treatment with medications and counseling.
Police officers are not trained in a correct manner to deal with the mentally ill… white or black. This list serves as evidence as it is a timeline from 2014 of mentally ill individuals being killed at the hands of the police. The list contains both white and black individuals. I imagine, however, being black and mentally ill puts an individual at double the risk of police brutality. Not only is the individual black, but now add in the disadvantage of being mentally ill. How would I have been treated that night if I was black?
With that, I have to say maybe I was actually lucky that night ending up in the hospital and eventually home back in Georgia and not dead in New Orleans. That may very well be an exaggeration; however, I’m just going to hope that my medicine never quits working and keep fighting against police brutality. Change won’t come soon enough. It never does. But it will come slowly and eventually.
