The video shows a woman tasted many times in Allegheny County Jail after a suicide attempt | News | Pittsburgh

A surveillance footage released by advocacy groups on May 31, 2019 shows a sergeant in Allegheny County Jail being imprisoned many times in an elevator with numerous other police officers. It is revealed that he is tasting Kim Andrews.

A quiet three-and-a-half-minute video was first reported by the Criminal Justice Reform Group, the Abolitionist Law Center. July 23, Trib Live.. In the video, Andrews, who was 20 when the video was shot, was handcuffed and accompanied by two prison officers while in the hallway. One of the police officers was Alicia Tucker. He was a police officer involved in a letter sent to the US Attorney General for tasting and using force against Andrews.

After that, seven more prison officers will join the scene and guide Andrews to the elevator. This is when Tucker pushes Andrews into the elevator and falls on the railing on the back wall of the elevator and hits his head. TribLive then reported that Tucker shot Andrews with a taser gun the first three times, showing no signs of resistance, while other police officers held her in a restraint chair for nine hours.

“This isn’t just my problem. It’s a problem for everyone else. Prisons can’t trust to reform themselves,” Andrews said in a press release. “People need to know what’s really happening inside. Sharing this video is one of the things that reveals the truth and increases the public anger needed to transform the ACJ. It’s a club. ”

NS The video can be viewed in full on the Trib Live website.. According to a press release, the surveillance footage was taken during a 2019 emergency petition filed by ALC to free Andrews from a cell that spent more than 150 days between 2019 and 2020.

Andrews was first placed at ACJ after the battle to resist his arrest in September 2018, and then for someone’s watch, phone theft, and withdrawal of money from his bank card, according to TribLive. It was repositioned.

Andrews has been diagnosed with multiple psychiatric disorders, including PTSD, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, and oppositional defiant disorder. Abolitionist Law Center.. The day Andrews was tasted by Tucker, she returned from hospital care after attempting her second suicide in nine days in her cell. Andrews attempted suicide a total of six times during his isolated time, ALC said.

“You are punished for asking for help. The punishment is not mental health care or rehabilitation,” Andrews said in a press release.

Tucker wrote in her report to the prison overseer that Andrews was resistant and was released from the board during the 2019 encounter. Bradford Hansen, an expert held by Andrews’ lawyer, said Tucker’s remarks did not match the surveillance footage.

The footage was submitted to a federal prosecutor in the Western District of Pennsylvania for investigation.

An Allegheny County spokeswoman told TribLive that both ACJ Warden Orlando Harper and Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald could comment on the proceedings in dispute.

On July 19, ALC and Andrews sent a letter to the United States containing a request to hold Tucker accountable for her actions against Andrews and to investigate the widespread systematic practices of excessive force under Harper’s authority. I sent it to my lawyer Stephen Kaufman.

In 2020, Harper Class action proceedings The prison, filed by ALC on behalf of five prisoners diagnosed with mental illness by the ACJ, “is full of systemic deficiencies that deprive people with mental illness of the necessary care and actually exacerbate their condition. “. “Prison officials used tasers, pepper sprays, and detention chains for prisoners seeking mental health care,” the proceedings said.

Andrews was placed in a restraint chair for nine hours, according to TribLive, after being repeatedly tasted.

ACJ orthodontic officers used restraint chairs 339 times in 2019. This is about four times that of all other prisons in the state. Proceedings filed in 2020..Andrews said Public source She was put in a restraint chair about “half a dozen times” while in prison.

A video of her experience at Andrews and ACJ is now available to everyone, so she hopes it ends the “prison administration immunity”.

“They want you to be afraid and you want them to be afraid. That’s what I felt,” Andrews said. “There is a general culture in prisons where people who are” watching over you “can sin against prisoners without consequences. ”