Inmate’s death leaves questions

Footage of jailers hitting, kneeling on him released

A day after the Nashville District Attorney’s Office released surveillance footage of Shelby County corrections officers chasing, punching, kicking and kneeling on the back of a naked inmate who had escaped his cell, questions about the incident remain unanswered on Friday.

Surveillance footage, released Thursday afternoon, showed officers at the Shelby County Jail opening cell doors and giving the people inside what appeared to be boxed meals. When they reached Gershun Freeman’s cell, he ran at the officers — biting one of them, according to the Shelby County Sheriff ’s Office — and other officers rushed into the corridor and appear to punch, kick, pepper spray and hit Freeman with the canister of pepper spray.

Freeman eventually escaped the group of about 10 officers before running up an escalator, where an officer pushed him to a wall. That officer was later joined by others, who brought Freeman to the ground and attempted to handcuff him.

After Freeman was handcuffed, an officer kneeled on his back for nearly six minutes. Medical staff eventually arrived and began performing CPR, but Freeman was declared dead in the jail at the age of 33.

An autopsy report indicated Freeman suffered from psychosis and was also recovering from a stab wound on his back before the altercation with corrections officers. The cause of death was listed as homicide, though the report said that “is not meant to definitively indicate criminal intent.

After seeing the footage, Keith Taylor — an adjunct assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former New York City Department of Correction assistant commissioner —

said one of the pivotal questions to be asked going forward is why Freeman was in a cell instead of receiving psychiatric and medical assistance.

“Usually the way that prisoners are determined to placed in housing — that classification system considers their prior actions or experiences with the criminal justice system, their mental health, their physical condition,” Taylor said. “My immediate question when looking at that situation is, if this individual was a serious threat to himself or others, would it not be appropriate to have him receiving medical treatment, or psychiatric treatment?”

Friday morning, Taylor spoke with a CA reporter about some of the best practices for corrections officers to employ when someone has been jailed and experiences a mental health crisis. He pointed to a number of areas for concern in the video, but also acknowledged Freeman was “clearly not complying” with officers and was “willing and able to attack” the officers, despite his vulnerable mental and physical state.

Among the concerns for Taylor is when an officer could be seen kneeling on Freeman’s back for almost six minutes after he had been handcuffed, but even that moment is shaded in the nuance of correctional officer policy.

“When (Freeman) suddenly did stop (moving), and they were able to get him on the ground and start that process for cuffing him and securing him until medical arrives, the amount of time that corrections officer is on his back is a concern,” he said. “Given what we know about positional asphyxiation, looking at what this agency’s direction and guidance to prevent asphyxiation is will be really important.”

According to Taylor, although kneeling on someone’s back is generally not viewed as a best practice, if it is part of the allowed techniques for jailers in Shelby County, then the corrections officers were following protocol. Taylor added that the expectations for how corrections officers use force is different from expectations placed upon police officers.

“That’s why this investigation is really important to look at getting as much information as possible into the process and policies for how individuals are handled in these types of difficult situations,” Taylor said. “The person kneeling on the back of this individual might have been conducting a sanctioned way of dealing with volatile inmates — if that’s what the policies are — though that might not necessarily be best practices.”

The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, which operates the jail, does not publicly provide its policy handbook online and SCSO declined to provide a copy when a CA reporter requested one Friday. A public records request was later put in for a copy, but that request was not fulfilled at the time of publication.

Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner, who is also a Memphis mayoral candidate, was not available Friday to speak about SCSO and jail policies, but his office told a Commercial Appeal reporter he would be open to an interview this week.

In a response to the surveillance footage’s release, Bonner released a written statement on Thursday, saying he plans to wait for additional information from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and Nashville DA’S office — which was assigned the case by the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office to avoid conflicts of interest — before “taking further administrative action.”

“According to the Medical Examiner, Mr. Gershun Freeman suffered from psychosis and cardiovascular disease and died of a heart attack while being restrained,” Bonner said in the Thursday statement. “It is unfortunate that parts of the video are being shown out of context because the full video does show the erratic and violent behavior that led to the need to restrain Mr. Freeman. These corrections officers deserve a fair review of this case, and I will wait for additional information from the TBI and the investigating DA before taking further administrative action.”

SCSO did not elaborate on any administrative actions that have already been taken.

Freeman was arrested Oct. 1, 2022, after he was accused of attacking, threatening and kidnapping his girlfriend. The kidnapping charge came from the woman telling investigators that Freeman forced her into a car at his home and then drove her to another location, where she was set free.

Memphis attorneys Jake Brown, Brice Timmons and civil rights attorney Ben Crump have been investigating Freeman’s death on behalf of his family, but have not filed any lawsuits.

Brown, Crump and Timmons issued a joint statement Thursday, pointing to Freeman’s death as another example of “brutality in the Memphis and Shelby County criminal justice systems.”

“The newly released footage is visual evidence that at least 10 officers brutalized and beat Gershun to death, when he was naked and clearly suffering from a mental health crisis,” the statement said. “Gershun’s family thanks District Attorney Glenn Funk’s office for their transparency in this, and we are confident that their office will bring these officers to justice on the criminal side.”

Lucas Finton is a news reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Lucas.finton@commercialappeal.com and followed on Twitter @Lucasfinton.

“My immediate question when looking at that situation is, if this individual was a serious threat to himself or others, would it not be appropriate to have him receiving medical treatment, or psychiatric treatment?”

Keith Taylor

Former New York City Department of

Correction assistant commissioner