Lawsuit claims Milwaukee County Jail Guards Murdered Black Man 'by Intentionally Denying Him Water' - Tortured for 6 Days
/
From [HERE] and [HERE] Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. and shenanigger [step and fetchit servant of white supremacy] is the target of another federal lawsuit over a death in his jail, as family members of a mentally ill Black man who died of thirst claim he was tortured in solitary confinement. Inmates said he was begging for drinking water days before perishing in custody.
A 25-page complaint filed Thursday in Milwaukee federal court alleges that white staff at the Milwaukee County jail repeatedly ignored 38-year-old Terrill Thomas’ requests for water for days.
Thomas’ children – Terrill Barnes, Curtis Piggee and Amari Thomas-Acosta, a minor, along with his mother Michelle Thomas-Acosta – sued Sheriff Clarke, Milwaukee County, the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division and Armor Correctional Health Services Inc. Richard E. Schmidt, inspector for the sheriff’s office, and two corrections officers are also named as defendants in the wrongful-death lawsuit.
On April 14, 2016, Thomas was arrested by Milwaukee police after officers responded to reports of shots being fired at the Potawatomi Casino, according to the complaint. Thomas was charged and transferred to the Milwaukee County jail the next day.
On April 27, he was supposed to undergo medical evaluation to determine if he was competent to stand trial for five counts of charges against him. But this didn’t happen because on April 24 he was found dead in his solitary cell.
Thomas’s body showed no injuries, but his “biochemistry testing revealed profound dehydration,” the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office said. The death was ruled a homicide.
When he arrived at the county jail, correctional staff immediately placed Thomas in the special-housing unit of the jail. According to the complaint, inmates in the special-housing unit are segregated from other prisoners, locked up 24 hours per day in solitary confinement in one-man cells.
Inmates told Thomas’s family that before dying he had begged for drinking water, the family told WISN, a local ABC-affiliated television station.
His water tap was reportedly shut off because he had previously flooded his cell, Marcus Berry, an inmate, told the Journal Sentinel newspaper. Berry epeatedly urged corrections officers to give Thomas water the day before he died, they claim.
“I could tell he was getting weaker,” Berry said. “One day he just lay down, dehydrated and hungry.”
“Mr. Berry was in a cell across from Terrill Thomas the last six days of Terrill Thomas’s life. Mr. Berry’s urging and pleas were repeatedly ignored by the defendants,” the complaint states.
By April 24, 10 days after his arrest, Thomas was reported unresponsive in his cell during a routine check by a guard.
When medical staff arrived, Thomas was lying naked on the floor of his cell, which was noted as “normal behavior” by the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, according to the lawsuit.
Jail staff reportedly noted upon finding Thomas that he had “dried blood around his groin and trailing down his right leg, which was clearly visible upon inspection of his naked body.”
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner ruled his death by dehydration a homicide, according to the complaint. His family says Thomas was “subjected to a form of torture by being intentionally and/or recklessly denied hydration.”
“Prisoners confined near Terrill Thomas’s cell overheard his cries for water for days, yet correctional, medical and psychological personnel ignored those cries and never gave Terrill Thomas water, presumably as some misguided form of punishment or retribution for the alleged crimes that brought him to the justice facility,” the lawsuit states.
Thomas’ children say Clarke, Schmidt, the jail staff and Armor Correction Health Service all directly participated in depriving Thomas of water.
They seek compensatory and punitive damages, as well as a consent decree specifically prohibiting correctional staff from depriving inmates of water and other conduct detrimental to the health and safety of inmates. The family is represented by Walter Stern III in Kenosha, Wis.
Sheriff Clarke said in an email to the Associated Press that he had no comment but noted Thomas’ alleged criminal record.
“I have nearly 1000 inmates. I don’t know all their names but is this the guy who was in custody for shooting up the Potawatomi Casino causing one man to be hit by gunfire while in possession of a firearm by a career convicted felon?” he reportedly said. “The media never reports that in stories about him. If that is him, then at least I know who you are talking about.”
As stated Thomas was held pre-trial and none of the allegations had been proven to be true.
According to local news reports, Thomas was one of four people to die in the Milwaukee County jail during a six-month period in 2016.
In one incident, inmate Shadé Swayzer, who was eight months pregnant, gave birth alone in her maximum-security cell and her baby died hours later as a result of correctional staff’s alleged refusal to provide care.
Sheriff Clarke was sued in December over the death of the newborn.
Clarke was most recently sued last month by a Wisconsin man who says the sheriff illegally detained and questioned him about his political views after he shook his head at Clarke during a flight from Dallas to Milwaukee.
Clarke is a traitor to Blacks, SNigger and coin operated negro, sambo. A walking corpse engaged in self hatred, who carries out Step-n-Fetchit type activites/actions (shenanigans) for the dominant immoral majority (the psychopathic white power semi-organism), i.e., the Rhodes, Rothschild, Anglo Saxon Zionist power clique, unknowlingly at the expense of him/herself and knowlingly at the expense (sell-out/buy-out) of his people and culture. [MORE]
The conservative sheriff [conserving what black man?] is a ball washer of President Donald Trump, who was recently passed over for a top Department of Homeland Security position in the president’s cabinet.
