Suicide under review at Midwest City jail
MIDWEST CITY — Tests found Kathleen Collier-Melchior, 53, with blood-alcohol levels nearly three times the legal limit. She told Midwest City jail staff she was going to hurt herself. A crisis intervention officer was called in to evaluate her. Officers removed her clothes and slipped her into a suit meant to protect mentally fragile people from using their clothes against themselves.
Staff put CollierMelchior, 53, in a cell where she would be monitored both on video and by frequent in-person visual checks.
Protocols, said Midwest City Police Chief Brandon Clabes, were followed to the letter.
Twenty-three minutes after being placed in her cell, CollierMelchior was observed on video walking into an unmonitored toilet area. There, she hung herself with a short phone cord, the first jail suicide in Midwest City since the late 1990s.
Her suicide Sunday raises fresh questions about the state’s fractured mental health system, in which frontline encounters with the mentally ill and those with substance abuse issues often aren’t with health professionals but with police officers and jail staff, said Ryan Kiesel, executive director of the ACLU of Oklahoma.
The Oklahoman reported in 2016 that there aren’t enough beds and facilities available in the state for the increasing number of individuals who need mental health services, meaning mental health patients instead often end up in county jails that aren’t equipped to handle their needs.
“Even assuming that the Midwest City jail officials did everything they were legally required to do here, I think we need to take a long hard look at ourselves as a society and say ‘Is this the best we can do?’ Kiesel said. “I don’t think it is. We can do better and we should do better.”
Clabes, while defending the actions of his staff, doesn’t necessarily disagree with the ACLU’s Kiesel.
A criminal and administrative investigation will entail a review of protocols, which could be changed, he said. For instance, the jail is not obligated to give inmates privacy from cameras while using toilets, but as a matter of human dignity, has chosen to, Clabes said. The jail shortened its phone cords after the late 1990s suicide.
Police arrested Collier-Melchior at 2:20 a.m. for crossing the centerline of a residential road. Officers placed her in a cell at 3:10 a.m. She was continuously monitored up until the point she walked off camera at 3:33 a.m., Clabes said. She was not behaving erratically during her time on camera, lying on a bench and talking with inmates in nearby cells.
Part of the jail’s surveillance video is blocked by a black privacy strip to provide privacy for prisoners using the restroom, Clabes said. Jail staff checked on Collier-Melchior about a dozen minutes after she walked into the unmonitored area. They found she had hanged herself. They tried to revive her with CPR and with a defibrillator, Clabes said.
Clabes said the Midwest City jail houses about 3,000 inmates a year. He estimated 85 percent have a substance abuse or mental health issue.
It’s more often, he said, that the encounters don’t end badly in Midwest City. A few days ago, one potential criminal was diverted into the mental health system, Clabes said. He’d told police he wanted to die at their hands and had come out into the middle of the street wielding knives.
Police shot a bean bag round to subdue him and sent him to a hospital, not the jail, for evaluation.
The Midwest City Police Department has a Crisis Intervention Team. Clabes said a majority of the force has received special training in areas such as de-escalation aimed at keeping the mentally ill out of jail.
A CIT officer was called to the jail to evaluate Collier-Melchior.
During the day, the department has a mental health professional on hand to direct mentally ill inmates into a diversion program that aims to make them productive members of society. She works only with inmates arrested on municipal charges, Clabes said.
A law that took effect a year ago in November required municipal DUIs to be filed as county charges, making those offenders ineligible for the city diversion program.
The ACLU’s Kiesel said he sees some obvious room for improvement.
“The protocols here set too low of a bar,” he said. “What we should really do when someone reports to be in a mental health crisis is to get them in front of a mental health professional as soon as possible and to not leave them unattended any time until that.”