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Article published Sep 30, 2007 $1.5M suit alleges arm broken by Blount jailers
By Mark Boxley of The Daily Times Staff EDITOR'S NOTE: Caution: This story contains language which might be offensive to some readers.
After months of trying to resolve a million-dollar lawsuit involving a severely broken arm allegedly injured at the Blount County Jail, Jamey Southerland made a decision to go public with his story Thursday.
His decision comes, he said, after a mediation that day with defendants from the county turned out to be a failure. Resolving the issue without going to trial does not seem to be a possibility now, he said Friday.
Southerland, 34, Morristown, filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Knoxville earlier this year, naming Blount County, Blount County Sheriff James Berrong, the Blount County Sheriff’s Office and unnamed jailers and supervisors as defendants. The suit stems from an incident in October 2006 when Southerland was arrested by a Maryville police officer on a charge of DUI. He was taken to the Blount County Jail, where he alleges his arm was broken during an unprovoked altercation in the “pat-down” room. Afterwards, he was held for hours and was not given medical attention for his injuries, Southerland said.
According to his suit, Southerland is seeking $500,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.
A break came in his case months after filing the initial complaint when Southerland found that the Maryville officer who initially arrested him had not turned off his in-car camera or microphone, allowing the moments leading up to the alleged abuse to be captured on tape. The pat-down room does not have a camera installed, Southerland said, but the Maryville officer’s vehicle was parked in such a way at the jail that it was able to record the incident. And because the officer had not turned off his microphone, most of the audio in the room was also recorded.
According to reports filed by jailers James Latham and Gary Sparks, at the time of the incident Southerland was “being uncooperative,” “aggressive” and “acted as though he was about to strike (one of the jailers).” Latham and Sparks have since resigned for reasons separate from this incident, according to information from the sheriff’s office.A different story
But the video of the situation appears to tell a different story.
The video from the Maryville police cruiser, which was reviewed by The Daily Times, starts with Southerland sitting calmly in the back seat. It continues as the Maryville officer opens the car door, waits for Southerland to exit and escorts him without incident to the pat-down room at the jail. Based on the video, once inside Southerland does not appear to disobey orders from jailers and does not appear combative.
He is told to keep his head on a mat on the wall several times while a jailer pats him down but does not ever appear to become aggressive toward jail employees.
At one point, Southerland can be heard saying that he didn’t appreciate them “f------ slamming” his head against the wall, alluding to when one of the jailers pushed his head against the wall when the man failed to keep it there.
At that point in the recording, one of the jailers interrupted him and yelled, “Then do what the f--- you’re told.” The jailer can then be seen approaching Southerland and moments later say loudly, “If you want to do anything, bring it man, right the f--- now, or shut your f------ mouth.”
While continuing to stand toe-to-toe with Southerland, the jailer then says, “I’m talking to you, you got a f------ problem?”
While a use of force report filed by Latham and Sparks after the incident indicates that the jailers were responding to Southerland moving his “arms around in an aggressive manner” and Southerland appearing to act “as though he was about to strike officer Sparks,” the video does not seem to support this version of events.
Less than a second after the first jailer asked if Southerland had a problem, a second jailer says, “Get your hands out of your f------ pockets.” The two can then be seen to grab Southerland immediately and push him aggressively against a wall on the other side of the pat-down room, holding his left arm behind his back in an “arm bar” restraint — a term used by the Latham in his report on the incident. It is at that point that Southerland alleges his arm was broken so severely that he had to wear an arm-length cast for three months and still has a plate and seven screws in his arm.Loud snap heard
A loud snap is audible in the video, and Southerland said during an interview with The Daily Times Friday, “that’s my arm” breaking. It is not clear from the video if the snapping noise is a breaking bone or some other extraneous noise in the room.
The use of force report states that “there did not appear to be any injuries to the inmate (Southerland).” But in a collect phone call to his mother that was provided by Southerland’s attorneys to The Daily Times, the first thing Southerland says is that his arm has been broken.
“Oh my God, the mother f------ broke my arm,” Southerland tells his mother. “This s--- is sticking out like crazy.
“Mom, I’m telling you, they broke my arm.”
“Well, how come they’re not taking you to the hospital?” she asks later in the call. “Yeah, they need to,” Southerland responds. “I’m telling you, I need somebody to come get me out of here, please.”
An incident report filed by the Maryville officer indicates Southerland was arrested and taken to jail without incident. Because the officer is a potential witness in the lawsuit, Maryville Police Chief Tony Crisp said the man could not comment on the case. But it did not appear that the Maryville officer had any problem with Southerland in the time leading up to his alleged injuries. “Based on that report, there was not,” Crisp said.
Southerland is alleging in his suit that jail employees knew he was injured and did nothing to help him. This assertion is backed up in part by a separate incident report filed by Latham saying “The inmate called his mother and complained that we had broke his arm.” The report also says Latham made at least one other jail employee aware of the prisoner’s injury complaint. The report does not indicate that anyone at the jail offered Southerland medical care.
In an interview Friday, Southerland said he was not able to go to the emergency room until his mother came and bailed him out, at which time he crossed the street and went to the Blount Memorial Hospital emergency room.
“They left me in there,” he said. “They didn’t take me to the hospital or anything.”
Because the incident is subject of an ongoing lawsuit, Blount County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Marian O’Briant said the office could not comment.
According to Southerland’s Knoxville attorneys, Michael K. Atkins and Brent A. Morris, the county has not taken any responsibility for the incident. In Blount County’s answer to the civil complaint filed in U.S. District Court, it denied that Southerland was injured in the jail.
The “calloused attitude” of the jail employees “seemed to be pervasive among the whole staff,” Morris said. “No one even asked him whether he was injured.”
Southerland and his attorneys didn’t have much proof of what they say happened until they stumbled upon the Maryville police officer’s in-car video. Now Atkins and Morris feel they can prove what happened to their client while he was in the jail.
“The stars were aligned just right for us to have that video,” Atkins said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have anything.”
Specifically, Southerland is accusing the defendants of “both an egregious assault that was unjustified, excessive force and a deliberate indifference to a serious medical need.”
Atkins and Morris said they plan to file an amended complaint next week in the case. They did not specify what would be amended from the initial complaint in next week’s filing.