Emergency buzzer disabled in man’s prison death: report

An emergency intercom in the jail unit of a young Halifax man who died of a methadone overdose had been improperly disabled by guards who regarded it as a nuisance, according to a corrections investigation.

The report says a cellmate found 23-year-old Clayton Cromwell unconscious on April 7, 2014, and yelled at other inmates with an intercom in their cell to press the “red button.”

But there was no response for 10 or 15 minutes, inmates said, and they had to start kicking doors and yelling to get attention of officers at Halifax’s Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility.

According to the report, released to The Canadian Press under freedom-of-information legislation, the intercom had been cut some time earlier, in contravention of provincial rules.

“They used to have intercoms in there,” a captain is described as telling the corrections investigator. “They were a nuisance for the most part.”

He told the investigator that if someone needed medical attention or had disabilities, they had a special cell with a working intercom, but otherwise inmates “get ahold of us by yelling, banging, waving their towels...”

The investigator quoted the cellmate as saying he shouted to ask other inmates to use the emergency intercom to get the attention of guards.

“They were trying to press buzzers ... I think the intercom only in the handicap cell works,” the investigator quoted the inmate saying.