“We’re torturing very sick people”
In an editorial published by The Oregonian, the newspaper describes a county-run facility in downtown Portland as “a chilling real-life cuckoo’s nest” tucked away near a Starbucks and a trendy vegan restaurant.
The editorial demands attention to the facility’s repeated use of violence and solitary confinement as a means of controlling inmates with mental illness:
One schizophrenic inmate was so badly beaten by a deputy that jail staff wrapped his fractured face in a blanket so as not to traumatize the public when he arrived at the hospital. Another deputy tackled a mentally ill inmate, dislocating his hip and shattering the socket, yet he wasn’t provided medical care for more than six hours.
Another inmate who’d attempted suicide days before being charged with trespassing spent 14 months at the center, mostly in solitary confinement. Alone for hours on end, his conditioned worsened to the point he wouldn’t eat and pulled out his own tooth.
A psychiatric fellow, Dr. Wil Berry, described the abuse this way: “we’re torturing very sick people. I hate myself for being part of it, and then I feel I don’t want to be there, and I feel guilty for leaving those patients behind.”
