Feb. 12--NEW BRITAIN -- Less than two years after the city paid out $200,000 to the heirs of a man who hanged himself in a jail cell, the police department came dangerously close to a second cellblock hanging.
Two nights before Christmas, a 28-year-old woman tried to kill herself in the police headquarters cellblock -- and was saved only after a passing civilian spotted her hanging.
Police records obtained through a Freedom of Information request show that despite a camera system and a police matron who was on duty, the prisoner was able to begin hanging herself with a homemade noose. Officers were able to cut her free, but only after being alerted by a bail commissioner who happened to be walking through the cellblock and noticed her hanging.
The prisoner, Tierra Moore, was rescued before she did any serious damage, police reports say. But the incident illustrates problems that several current and retired officers say have plagued the police jail for years: Badly positioned monitoring cameras, poorly designed cells and long-outdated policy manual that seems to ignore what's wrong.
The city has been reluctant to spend money to modernize the facility at 125 Columbus Blvd. because it's scheduled to close next winter. Police will be moving to a new $40 million headquarters downtown that Chief William Gagliardi advises will have state-of-the-art design and modern audio and video monitoring.
Problems monitoring the cellblock proved costly in 2009, when a despondent 50-year-old man hanged himself with a T-shirt that he tied to bars on his cell. William Rankin had been locked up because of a drunken domestic dispute earlier that day.
His two adult daughters sued, and in 2010 the city council quietly approved a $200,000 pre-trial settlement. Police put most of the blame in that case on a patrol lieutenant, saying he should have ensured more steady supervision of Rankin's cell.
However, a retired supervisor told The Courant last fall that senior commanders had been warned for years that the jail's video cameras miss entire sections of some cells, and that desk monitors for the patrol shift supervisor sometimes give shaky, grainy images. Nothing changed, though, and the system was still seriously inadequate when he retired, the former supervisor said.
"We were worried about this every night," he said in October. "It's a tragedy waiting to happen."
After Rankin's death, the police administration updated the department's 15-page jail management policy -- but made no acknowledgement of the monitoring system's deficiencies. The rulebook still directs jail officers to periodically check in with a computerized Watchman system to prove they've made their rounds through the cellblock -- even though the Watchman equipment hasn't functioned for years.
The latest trouble at the jail occurred late on the night of Dec. 22, 2011. Moore, who was being held on several warrants for failing to appear in court, tore the leg off of a pair of longjohns and tried to hang herself, according to police reports.
John Brick, a bail commissioner, happened to be walking through the cellblock when he saw her and notified the jail matron, Nilda Torres. Torres alerted officers at the front desk, who ran back and cut Moore free with a knife.
"Moore was choking and gasping for air," Officer Paul Uccello wrote in a report.
She was not seriously hurt. Police called an ambulance; Moore was treated briefly at the Hospital of Central Connecticut and then taken back to the police jail. Police assigned the jail matron to sit directly in front of her cell for the remainder of the night.
Copyright 2012 - The Hartford Courant, Conn.
