If you’re like me, your typical morning goes something like this: wake up, take care of the necessities, brush your teeth, get a cup of coffee brewing. Then it’s packing lunches, feeding the dog, breakfast on the table for the kids, and 10-15 minutes of scrolling the news.
One thing I’ve noticed happening on social media is the proliferation of people essentially regurgitating other outlets’ reporting and giving you their take on it. And honestly, I kind of like it — it’s a quick way for me to consume a news story, and someone else giving me their immediate reaction helps me reflect quickly on how it might impact me or things I’m interested in. We all have those friends or trusted interlocutors whose opinions and takes help us make sense of something more quickly, and who sometimes bring out aspects of a story that we ourselves might gloss over. I see this happening nationally all the time, but not locally. So here’s my attempt at being that person for you: I’ll read a story and give you my immediate reaction. They might not always be well thought out reactions, and I reserve the right to change my opinion or understanding as I go throughout my day and interact with other people who may see it differently. But what I hope to accomplish is spending a little more time on a local story you might have otherwise breezed past, or thinking a bit harder about how it might impact you or your community. So, let’s see!
This week’s pick: a KGW/KPTV report on the Clackamas County DA’s Office clearing sheriff’s deputies of criminal negligence in the in-custody death of 47-year-old Gerlinde Spring Lynch, who died in February shortly after being booked into the Clackamas County Jail.
The story: Lynch was arrested twice in one day — first for trespassing and uprooting plants, then hours later for a disturbance at a fast-food drive-thru where she was incoherent, covered in soil and leaves, and resisting officers. After a struggle to remove her from the patrol car and place her in a restraint chair, she became unresponsive during booking and was pronounced dead about an hour after arriving at the jail. The DA’s office concluded her death resulted from a “perfect storm” of methamphetamine toxicity, physical restraint, obesity, and cardiovascular disease — insufficient to meet the bar for criminal negligence. Notably, Lynch had been released from prison just days earlier after serving a two-year sentence for first-degree criminal mischief.
My reactions: I won’t second-guess the DA’s call without seeing the evidence myself, but three bigger-picture issues jumped out at me:
How often people in mental health crisis die after contact with the justice system,
The double standard where prison’s high recidivism rate never gets called a “failure” the way treatment court setbacks do, and
The conflict of interest in having the sheriff’s office investigate its own deputies — which is why I think independent review agencies, like Washington state’s, are worth pursuing.
Here’s the article I read, so you can read for yourself if you’d like. If you have thoughts, let me know in the comments.
Source: KGW.com – DA: No criminal negligence in death of woman at Clackamas County Jail
