News of the Week
DECEMBER 5-12, 2013
county
FATHER IN PAIN: Richard Detty, flanked by photos of his son, said he’s unhappy with the settlement, explaining he wishes the lawsuit would have led to more change and disciplinary action.
Wrongful-Death Suit Settles for $1.25 Million
Clifford Detty Case Sparks Big Changes for County Mental Health
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BY N I C K W E L S H
ather than running the risk of going to trial, the County of Santa Barbara agreed to settle the wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the father of Clifford Detty, the 46-year-old North County resident who died in April 2010 while in custody at the county’s Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF), for $1.25 million. The settlement became official October 24, though the broad details had been arrived at in August, shortly after the case was scheduled to go to trial in federal court on civil rights charges. Detty had been picked up the evening of April 28 in the throes of an apparent psychotic breakdown. After it was determined he posed a threat to himself or to others, Detty was dispatched from Marian Medical Center’s emergency room in Santa Maria — where he’d been medicated — to the county PHF unit in Santa Barbara for treatment and a 72-hour involuntary hold. While there, Detty — who alternated between sleeping and screaming and threatening — was placed in physical restraints and put in a secluded room where he was twice administered two powerful anti-psychotic medications. Within 10 hours, he was dead. According to the lawsuit filed by his father, Richard Detty, a retired insurance company executive, PHF medical personnel failed to follow their own protocol, which required that they take Clifford Detty’s vital signs every 15 minutes. Instead, medical records indicated Detty’s vitals were taken only once. Detty had an enlarged heart and had methamphetamine in his system. The two medications he was administered via intramuscular injection can sometimes cause respiratory failure when given together. In about 10 hours, Detty had been given the 10
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maximum dose allowed for a 24-hour period, said his father. Among other things, the Detty case triggered two top-to-bottom inspections of the county’s much-maligned PHF unit by federal regulators who threatened at one point to shut the facility down unless drastic remedial steps were taken. Santa Barbara has only 16 PHF beds, considerably less than the 45 needed to accommodate the county’s monthly demand. As a result, the county spends $1.3 million a year sending Santa Barbara’s mentally ill to facilities in Ventura County. As a result of these federal enforcement actions, Ann Dietrich, then the county’s chief of Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services, lost her job. Detty’s death also gave rise to two major internal audits — conducted by outside consultants — as to how mental health and drug abuse services could be better dispensed. Detty’s father said his son began experiencing mental health problems in his mid-thirties after developing a habit for pain medications following two knee surgeries. Increasingly, he said, his son ran afoul of the law, racking up 17 arrests for relatively minor offenses. Detty would learn later that his son had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, but by that time, securing help from county mental health professionals was easier said than done. Detty said he visited county mental health offices six times, twice in the weeks immediately preceding his son’s death. Nothing could be done, he was told, unless Detty brought his adult son along. When Detty was taken to PHF, he was placed in a room where he could be monitored by video camera. But it turned out there was only one audio track for all four of the facility’s video units. County officials signed the settlement stipulating that they acknowledged no
december 12, 2013
wrongdoing on their part. In court papers, they noted that the coroner’s report showed that Detty died of acute exposure to methamphetamine. And they argued that the county’s protocol requiring vital signs be taken every 15 minutes for restrained patients was somewhat contradictory and ambiguous. Detty takes no satisfaction in the settlement, saying, “I was screwed.” He claimed he was strong-armed by his attorney, David Feldman, to accept a settlement that he’d opposed and that he’d been threatened with legal action by an insurance adjuster hired by the county’s insurance company. Likewise, he claimed that his lawsuit failed to bring about change at the PHF unit or any disciplinary actions against the doctor in charge at the time of his son’s death. (That doctor, on-call during evening hours, had phoned in the orders to give Detty’s son the anti-psychotic drugs without seeing him first and without fresh vitals being taken. That doctor still maintains office hours at the PHF unit.) Feldman disputed the accuracy of Detty’s allegation but declined to engage in a war of words. He insisted that PHF intake forms have been changed in response to the lawsuit to require vitals be recorded every 15 minutes. Likewise, he said, the facility no longer uses audio/video monitoring. Not coincidentally, the number of patients placed in seclusion and restraints has dropped significantly since Detty’s death and the subsequent federal inspections. “The truth is, it was a tough case, and it was a great victory not just in terms of the amount but in terms of the changes made,” Feldman said. “Now, people will have their vitals taken every 15 minutes. ■ That’s huge.”
PAU L WELLM AN F I LE PHOTO
by KELSEY BRUGGER, TYLER HAYDEN, LYZ HOFFMAN, MATT KETTMANN, and NICK WELSH, with INDEPENDENT STAFF
news briefs LAW & DISORDER
A Santa Barbara police officer shot a 26-year-old male suspect multiple times after he allegedly assaulted the officer with a deadly weapon around 11:30 p.m. on 12/6 at Stalwart House, a sober living and recovery home at 1227 San Andres Street. Officers were responding to several 9-1-1 calls of a subject brandishing a deadly weapon inside the residence, according to police spokesperson Sgt. Riley Harwood. Harwood said the suspect sustained multiple gunshot wounds and is receiving treatment at Cottage Hospital. The suspect is expected to survive, Harwood said, and the officer was not injured. No other details on the incident were made available. Weldon Fewell, a 52-year-old San Diego resident, was shot Wednesday night by one or more law enforcement officers during a confrontation in the area of Patterson Avenue and Agana Drive in Goleta. He is currently being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, and no deputies or officers were injured in the incident. Authorities have so far released very few details on the shooting. Shortly before 8 p.m., the California Highway Patrol issued a “be on the lookout” alert for a wrong-way driver in the area of Patterson Avenue and Calle Real. The vehicle, a red, full-size pickup truck, was reportedly traveling northbound in a southbound Patterson lane. A Sheriff’s deputy and a Highway Patrol officer spotted the truck and “attempted to stop the vehicle,” said Sheriff’s spokesperson Lt. Kelly Moore. “During the attempt to stop the vehicle, several shots were fired at the vehicle.” Authorities declined to elaborate on those statements, citing the ongoing investigation.
A man who allegedly stabbed his business partner last week then jumped off the Winchester Canyon overpass to his death had filed a lawsuit against that business partner and a second partner this past summer, according to Superior Court records. Thomas Hutchison, Jr., who was 66, alleged that stabbing victim Rubel Trevino, 56, and Frederick Gallagher broke their business contract and committed fraud, among other claims, and he asked for their partnership to be dissolved. The lawsuit was dismissed. The three men worked together at the Goleta-based About the Children, a legal-assistance company plagued by dozens of complaints in the last few years. Trevino, who said he is recovering from his injuries and that the company will continue, declined to elaborate on the lawsuit but spoke about Hutchison: “He was a great man. He was a friend. We had some business challenges. May he rest in peace.” Carlos Ruano, an All Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church employee seized by Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) officers after his sentencing for felony false imprisonment on 11/15, posted $20,000 bond on 12/6 to be released from an ICE detention center in Adelanto, CA. Ruano is now at home with his family, said church member Alan Hopkinson. The bond was paid for by 40 church members, who have stood by Ruano since his trial in September for molesting his step-granddaughter; that trial resulted in a hung jury. ICE has recommended that Ruano, a Guatemalan citizen, be deported. Now that he is released from custody, Hopkinson said, Ruano’s immigration fate could take several years to be decided.