Denial of medication in Holding Center alleged in lawsuit over woman’s death
A lawsuit alleges that the Erie County Holding Center denied blood-pressure medicine to a middle- aged woman, causing her to suffer the stroke that led to her death weeks later.
The suit, filed in federal court, says that Marguerite Arrindell repeatedly asked jail authorities for her medicine and that their failure to provide it amounted to abuse, as well as cruel and inhumane treatment, violating her constitutional rights. County Attorney Cheryl A. Green denied the accusations but would not comment further.
The jail’s staff did not report Arrindell’s death in July to the State Commission of Correction, which in recent months and years has focused on the Holding Center’s chronic violations of state standards.
Arrindell, facing a drug-related charge, had already been moved to Erie County Medical Center and released from the custody of the Sheriff’s Office and its Jail Division. That meant her death, at age 54, need not be reported to the state regulators.
When Arrindell fell ill, a sheriff’s administrator called Arrindell’s lawyer suggesting her release so an officer need not be stationed at her hospital room, said attorney Jeanne M. Vinal, who filed the suit on behalf of Arrindell’s estate and her husband, Eustace L. Arrindell. Though Arrindell did not die in Jail Division custody, the State Commission of Correction’s Medical Review Board has been assembling her records for an investigation, said John M. Caher, a spokesman for the commission.
Caher said state rules require health professionals to screen inmates as they are taken into New York jails and to begin their prescriptions without delay, while also verifying the medication with the originating pharmacy or doctor.
Vinal said she has a statement from another inmate describing Arrindell’s requests for her blood-pressure medicine over several days before she was found on the floor of her cell.
The U. S. Justice Department, meanwhile, has been investigating both the physical and mental health care provided at the Holding Center and the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden after a number of inmate deaths in recent years.
Arrindell’s case goes to the heart of complaints by others detained at the Holding Center — they can go days without crucial medicines, and neither they nor their families can penetrate the bureaucracy.
“I was sweating with a fever, freezing cold and vomiting all the time,” said 50- year-old Dale A. Altmann, who said that only after three days in the Holding Center did he receive a substitute for the gabapentin he takes daily for severe back pain.
His wife, Catherine, was unable to figure out how to get him his medicine and received conflicting instructions from Holding Center personnel, Altmann said. He said he was released on the fourth day and told to appear in court later on charges related to a domestic disturbance.
Altmann said the episode was dehumanizing. He said he spent hours with about 30 other people in a small room — the “bullpen” — that had a bench long enough for six people to sit. He sprawled out on the floor before being assigned a cell, he said, and after four days and three nights, he never was allowed to shower.
“We were treated like cattle,” he said. “It was ridiculous.”
Dr. Anthony J. Billittier IV, county health commissioner, provides medical oversight for the county’s lockups. With various lawsuits looming, the county attorney refused to let Billittier be interviewed and insisted that queries be in writing.
In a statement, Billittier explained that inmates not arriving from a hospital are questioned about their health. A nurse examines the record of their answers to decide whether the inmate should see a physician’s assistant. The assistant will prescribe and order the medicines or retrieve them from medicines kept in stock. It’s the wait to see a physician’s assistant that can take days, inmates have complained.
“They don’t have to listen to us. They don’t care about us. They just don’t care,” said Darren K. Van Every, a diabetic, describing his stay in the Holding Center in July 2000 after violating probation with a drunken-driving charge. “In order to actually get help, you would have to fall down. That’s when they would take you seriously.”
A statement by Nkechi Ilogu, a registered nurse at the Holding Center, offers an interesting view of its health care. Ilogu, who has been referred to unkindly in Commission of Correction reports on Holding Center deaths, complained in May to the state Human Rights Division about her suspension, since January. She filed a complaint about alleged racial discrimination.
After all, she reasoned in her complaint, other employees who are not black or African- American or Nigerian distributed wrong medications, failed to provide medical care resulting in an inmate’s death and used cell phones when prohibited — but they were not disciplined.
Marguerite Arrindell was jailed April 16, 2008. She had been ticketed when stopped in a car with drug paraphernalia inside. But she twice failed to appear in court, Vinal explained, and when she turned up at a police station to address the matter, she was brought before a judge who ordered her held after not posting bail.
With her husband out of the country, she lingered in the jail April 16-22, when she was stricken, according to records. While in ECMC, she was released on her own recognizance. She died July 17.
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