Oldham

Dateline June 27, 2019. Of Jesus Rincon Murietta.

"A mother's frightening story highlights concerns over mental-health care in Arizona prisons."

By Greg Oldham. Arizona Republic. June 27, 2019. 

INTRODUCTION

  The above article was published in national media. An issue specific to just why individuals affected and disabled by serious mental illness should never be placed in any standard form of corrections facility. It is common knowledge that these such institutions are incapable of providing humane conditions when a person is so affected, largely due to the same indifference that all mentally ill persons experience in relation to a vast majority of the greater public, as well as when it comes to state managed mental hospitals and prisons. Of note, too, that in terms of privatized corrections facilities, which are increasingly becoming more and more common, treatment of inmates is potentially going to be even lower then that in public prisons.   

The following is a summation of information that the authors of this blog publication shared beginning in May, 2011. A preventable tragedy that only occurred due to the abjectly administrated Arizona Department of Health Services, most specifically in terms that state agency's authority over the management of Arizona State Hospital. 

Ongoing. As extensively reported in my first blog project, beginning in February, 2012, a seriously mentally ill and disabled patient-consumer (of services to be provided by AZ's health dept., ["ADHS"]) named Jesus Rincon Murietta violently escaped from the AZ State Hospital ("ASH") in late May, 2011. Less then one week after this happened, I personally alerted PHX area media- the editorial desk @AZ Republic newspaper specifically speaking- of the fact that Murietta was at large in the community, and that I had good reason to suspect that ASH administrators had formally decided to keep this critical information out of the public eye as means to avoid accountability. 

The verbatim response to my sharing this with the paper at the time: 

"That's a great tip!"

My concerns about the matter had arisen in the following order as soon as I learned that Jesus' had escaped ASH: 

1) Jesus' safety (he had escaped into central PHX in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on his back, for example, a seriously mentally ill 23 year old man). 

2] The safety of the general public (I was aware of Jesus' potential threat to others due to his given psychosis). 

3] And on the basis of my suspicion that this information had not been shared with outside resources, such as PHX police, etc., and that public safety across the board was at the bottom of ADHS' and ASH's priorities, whereby they willfully failed to report this issue as required by state and federal law so as to preserve their own selfish interests.

Sadly, very sadly, when an AZ Republic journalist named J.J. Hensley contacted ASH's administrative office in order to confirm my report, they categorically denied that any such escapes had occurred. Hensley was thus forced to drop his investigation of this story at that point in time, early June, 2011.

In the following few months, Murietta had several run-ins with PHX police, who only released him each time due to their having no direct knowledge of the fact that he had escaped from ASH that May. Then- tragically and near predictably- eighty eight (88) days after this covered up escape, Murietta brutally murdered a young PHX woman named April Mott in late August, 2010. I was informed of this by a well intentioned and basically ethical ASH security guard the day after Ms. Mott was killed. I then immediately called Hensley and stated, this too verbatim: "Hey, remember that dude I had told you had escaped from ASH last May? You know, the escape they denied when you contacted them? Well, he is on the front page of your paper this morning."

Murietta now sits- presuming he is not dead- rotting away somewhere in the bowels of the AZ prison system, when he should have been returned to ASH at those points in time when he had had run-ins with the cops prior to Mott's death: and now April Mott is dead, her family in perpetual mourning, and on the list of direct impacts of this scandal goes.

Since that time, there have been no less then three preventable deaths of individuals hospitalized at ASH (these are only the ones we actually know about right now). One (Barbara West, 2015), a suicide in a common day room setting when she was to have been afforded close monitoring on the basis of her known suicidal tendencies (less then 10 days after she was admitted to ASH); another (Mary Baker, 2014), who died after staff had forced a horse pill into her throat, choking her to death when she was suffering a crisis in relation to an attendant physical condition, COPD specifically; and the third (Chris Blackman, 2013), who died due to ASH staff's refusal to transfer him to an emergency room despite knowing that Chris had ingested a broken up CD case (this- ingesting such stuff- only one bright line aspect of his mental diagnosis and condition).

While in 2015, seven state employees functioning in association with the operation of ASH- including several who were directly involved in enabling the preventable murder of April Mott, namely Cory Nelson (CEO at the time) and Donna Noriega (CQO at the time)- were summarily fired on the basis of far overdue oversight and accountability. These individuals had been focused upon since the earliest days of this blog as individuals with no legitimate sense of ethics, as well as a number of highly entrusted medical doctors- psychiatric staff, in particular- who were not subject to oversight despite being 100% involved in the issues at stake in that time period.  

Indeed and very disturbingly, persons such as then and still ASH chief medical officer Dr. Steven Dingle and virtually all other senior ranking medical staff at ASH and any number of individuals working at the helm of the ADHS system, avoided being held response despite the fact that they were all well aware of all decisions made in a context of this scandal as it initially arose. Sitting on their hands, flaunting their given responsibilities, while Jesus Rincon Murrieta was at large in the greater Phoenix community. 

And it is equally crucial to realize that a then acting representative of the Office of the Arizona Attorney General, Joel Rudd, who did at the time function full time and on-site at ASH, was equally involved in this scandal. Rudd has since moved into the private sector, very possibly due to my having contacted his superiors in 2012 and informing them of his role in it all. 

Bottom line. Could not make any of this chit up if I had to.

There is no excuse whatsoever for we the American people to not take these issues seriously. All persons in state managed mental hospitals are human beings, as are all as persons incarcerated in American jails and prisons whether mentally ill or not; all of them with families, and all of whom posses the same degree of human rights that we all have coming to us in USA today. This is spelled out in the constitution (the 8th amendment, e.g.), and other such treatises designed to preserve our general well being and status as American citizens.I have never meant anything more sincerely then this in my adult life.

This, we do.

IN CLOSING

Currently employed individuals in the the highest aspect of the Arizona public agency construct, namely those working in association with the state's prison system, the administrative offices of AZ Department of Health Services, and as it follows via the text of Greg Oldham's investigative article, "A mother's frightening story highlights concern over mental health care in Arizona prisons", Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, all share the same degree of responsibility in terms of ensuring that human and reasonably lawful care practices be provided to any person incarcerated or otherwise included in the state's overall public agency network/system.  Why, in fact, these such officials are willing to flaunt the dictate of American and international human rights law and policy, is no less a mystery to me, Paolo Jack Reed, then it was when this blog project founded. 

Abject lack of ethos, arguable contempt of law, and gross dereliction of duty in relation to the public trust. Period. End of story. 

   paoloreed@gmail.com