Lawsuit: Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital subjects patients to violence, drug trafficking
TRENTON >> Current and former patients at the Morris Plainsbased Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital have filed a federal class-action lawsuit alleging they have been subjected to a culture of violence, illegal drugs and overcrowded confinement in violation of their constitutional rights.
The lawsuit, filed Dec. 17 in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, names Gov. Phil Murphy, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal and other high-level state officials as defendants and seeks to improve patient care and services at Greystone while also demanding “other equitable and further relief as the Court deems just and proper.”
The New Jersey Public Defender’s Office helped four plaintiffs file the lawsuit, which cites data from the last six years that show Greystone had an “astronomical rate of violence,” according to the complaint.
“In 2016, 1,816 assaults were reported; of those, 654 were with injury,” the lawsuit says of the Greystone violence.
The lawsuit further alleges that the governor and other highlevel state officials “purposefully ignore the drug trafficking” that allegedly takes place at Greystone. For example, a patient circa 2007 died of a heroin overdose before he could be transferred to the Ann Klein Forensic Center in Trenton, another staterun facility that has its fair share of problems.
Greystone has a long history of trouble. The lawsuit mentions that an oversight committee in 2000 “found deplorable conditions existed at Greystone: patients were forced to use dirty bathrooms, forced to sleep in overcrowded rooms, forced to sleep on bare floors, were unsupervised, and were involved in serious physical altercations.”
The 60-page complaint paints a sad commentary as it lays forth reason after reason arguing why patients at Greystone allegedly had their statutory and constitutional rights violated. One of the plaintiffs was discharged from Greystone earlier this year, while the other three plaintiffs were still housed at the psychiatric hospital as of Dec. 17, according to the lawsuit.
A spokesman for the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office had no comment for this story.
Greystone has 450 beds in a “new state-of-the-art psychiatric hospital,” according to the state’s website. The facility is located in northcentral Jersey and straddles the two towns of Morris Plains and Parsippany in a multi-acre park setting. It is one of five psychiatric facilities throughout the state that make up the New Jersey Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services.