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Spoltlight on Lopezians
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Golf tournament
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VOLUME 35, NUMBER 45 • NOVEMBER 17, 2015
The justice system fails Keaton Farris | Part 1 By Diana Hefley Everett Herald reporter
(Editor’s note: This is part one of a four part series from our sister paper. This is an excerpt from a longer article found at islandsweekly.com.) Keaton Farris was seven miles from home and he was dying. He was alone and naked, dehydrated and starving, locked up in the Island County Jail for forging a $355 check. Keaton, 25, had attended Coupeville High School, less than a mile from the jail. He played football and basketball and ran track. His dad, Fred, is a mailman in the small town. Keaton returned home last year to rest and find his footing after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. His parents believe he was in the throes of a manic episode before he died on April 7. Keaton was behind bars for 18 days, shuffled among three other jails before he was sent to Island County. The Coupeville jail didn’t
get his medical records. He didn’t arrive with any medication even though he had a new prescription in his pocket when he was arrested. Fred Farris and Tiffany Ferrians weren’t allowed to see or talk to their son. They frequently called to check on him and told corrections officers he was bipolar and needed his medication. The Island County Jail chief later claimed his staff didn’t know Keaton was mentally ill. The chief ’s statements and details about Keaton’s incarceration are part of the 700-page report compiled by Island County’s veteran detective Ed Wallace. His investigation found that corrections officers documented how Keaton refused water and meals. They reported that he talked to himself, cried in the corner of his cell, ate crumbs off of the floor and wiped his face with his underwear. He ate a bar of soap and dumped water on his head. He was found
naked on the floor of his cell pretending to swim in a half-inch of cold water. After that, officers shut off the water to his cell’s sink and toilet. They didn’t do hourly checks. Because there are gaps in the records, it’s hard to know how often the officers gave Keaton water when they did check on him. No one noticed him wasting away, though he lost about 20 pounds. Corrections officers didn’t make him drink water and they didn’t weigh him even though he repeatedly refused meals. A supervisor didn’t monitor the officers’ notes. One corrections officer said she’d never seen another inmate act like Keaton, yet no one called for a mental health professional. His parents were assured their son was being seen by a nurse. That wasn’t true. A nurse didn’t see Keaton until the day before he died. He’d been there 12 days. Keaton told the nurse he
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needed medical help. She stood outside his cell for two minutes, peering at him through a window. She didn’t touch him or take his temperature or check his skin’s elasticity for dehydration. She told staff his color looked good and he was breathing fine. The next day, on April 7, Keaton was dead. It took nearly a full shift for corrections officers to notice. Keaton died because he was labeled a behavioral problem, a danger, and an inconvenience. He died while he was in a mental health crisis and unable to care for himself. He needed help from the people paid to care for him in the jail. He needed water, food and medical attention. He was denied those things. Two corrections officers forged records and lied about when they’d last checked on Keaton. They were put on leave and later resigned. The Whatcom County prosecutor is inves-
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Preview: 12 noon & 7:30pm Nov.Nov. 8-9-10 18 atat7 7:30pm. p.m. Students $10, $15 (admission by Adults donation) Tickets online at Performances: communityshakespeare.org, Nov. at 7 p.m. Also at 19-20 Paper Scissors Rock Nov. 21seats at 2 p.m. &7 p.m. Remaining sold at 6pm at the door: Lopez Center for Community & the Arts Students $10, Adults $15 Lopez Center for Community & the Arts Tickets: communityshakespeare.org and at Paper Scissors Rock
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tigating to determine if someone should be charged with a crime. The FBI also is reviewing Keaton’s death. Island County Sheriff Mark Brown, who oversees the jail, fired a corrections lieutenant. The jail chief retired and the nurse left her job in the midst of a health department investigation. Island County has spent $20,000 for a corrections advisor to review jail operations. Brown made changes to improve medical and mental health screening. He apologized to Fred Farris and said Keaton died because of a “systematic breakdown.” Keaton’s story is not an isolated incident. He is one of the estimated 2 million people living with mental illness who are booked into the nation’s jails every year. Mental illness is three to six times more prevalent in jail than in the general population. Suicide continues to be the leading cause of death among inmates and has been on the rise for a decade. The National Institute of Corrections and behavioral health experts say jails and prisons have become the country’s largest mental health institutions since the nation shut down psychiatric hospitals in the 1980s and failed to adequately replace them with community resources. Jails and prisons aren’t designed to properly care for peo-
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ple in crisis, or treat those with severe mental illness. Corrections officers often aren’t knowledgable about mental illnesses, and jails often lack adequate medical staffing. Inmates can be reluctant to report their mental illness because of the stigma. Sometimes a symptom of a person’s illness is to deny its presence. The 58-bed jail in Coupeville is just across the water from Snohomish County, where reforms have been under way at the jail after a series of deaths. Snohomish County has paid $3.7 million to settle lawsuits with the families of two young people who died after being denied adequate medical attention. Other lawsuits are pending. Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary has taken up the campaign for changes, saying any strategy that starts with the jail as the first step is wrong. Jails for too long have been used to hide mentally ill, drug-addicted and homeless populations. Keaton’s symptoms were so severe on April 1 that he couldn’t be arraigned for identity theft. The San Juan County judge urged Keaton’s mom not to bail her son out of jail. His public defender assured Ferrians that Keaton was safe in jail. The judge ordered him to be evaluated by a psychologist at Western State Hospital. But long delays plague the state psychiatric hospital in Pierce County, which is under a court order to admit inmates sooner so they don’t languish, untreated, in jails. Fred Farris regrets not paying Keaton’s $10,000 bail. “If I would have been allowed to see him for one minute, I would not have left,” Farris said. “It would have just taken one person to do the right thing.”
A life interrupted
Keaton grew up on Lopez Island among gardens, woods and neighbors whose SEE KEATON, PAGE4