(HANNAH) Hello and welcome to AZPM Presents, Death Behind Bars.

I'm Hannah Cree, and behind me is the Pima County Jail.

In this episode, we partnered with Arizona Luminaria for a look inside the extensive reporting done by their journalist John Washington.

His work sheds light on the unusually high number of deaths inside this facility and we'll hear from family members, the Sheriff, and other community stakeholders about how recent changes and some potential systemic solutions can prevent this from happening again.

We'd also like you to know we'll be showing you some intense body-cam footage from inside the jail.

While it does depict the real-life experience for these individuals, it may be a bit disturbing for some.

Viewer discretion is advised.

♪ Ominous Music (John) I think it was late 2021, maybe early 2022.

And just someone I knew in the community reached out to me and said she knows a lot of people keep dying in the jail.

And I didn't know, but decided I should start looking into it.

Someone put me in touch with a mom who had lost her son.

She put me in touch with three other moms who had lost their sons in the jail.

And we met and had a long talk, and they told me about their sons, and they told me the little they knew about what had happened.

And really laid out how much they wanted someone to look into what was going on, and that was when I started digging.

I tried to learn as much as I could about who had died in the jail.

I tried to understand who the people were behind those numbers.

And I think that was when I was really alerted to how serious the problem was.

That in comparison with other jails, far more people were dying in the Pima County Jail in 2020, 2021, 2022.

My first story published in Fall of 2022 and there was an immediate response.

A lot more families reached out to me and all of a sudden stories became almost too many to keep track of.

Since 2017, at least 58 people have died in the Pima County Adult Detention Center.

That's as of early November 2024.

On any given day, inside the Tucson jail, there are between 1,600 and 1,900 people locked up.

(Amelia) The people in jail are mostly people who have not yet been convicted of a crime.

(John) Amelia Cramer is a retired Chief Deputy Pima County Attorney who's currently serving as Tucson's NAACP Vice President.

(Amelia) About 90 to 95 percent of the jail population is people who have been arrested and are presumed innocent.

And they are in the jail during the pretrial period before they have their trial.

As to some of these people, they've been alleged to have committed violent crimes, dangerous crimes.

They present a significant risk to public safety.

But the vast majority of folks have been arrested for low-level, non-violent misdemeanors.

(John) According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in any given year there are upwards of 7 million jail bookings and around half a million people are held in jails across the country at any given time.

And across the nation in 2019, about 1,200 inmates died in jails.

According to a recent county memo, the Pima County Jail saw nine deaths in 2020, 10 deaths in 2021, and 12 deaths in 2022.

According to the same mortality methodology used by the Bureau of Justice, the Pima County Jail had a per capita death rate of almost four times the 2019 national average.

That's a per capita mortality rate higher than New York City's notorious Rikers Island Jail, which had 19 deaths in 2022.

In December of 2022, Sheriff Chris Nanos wrote a memo to the Pima County Board of Supervisors saying that the jail was in a "full-blown crisis."

And the inmate population had reached a "life-threatening level."

(Anchor 1) We have some breaking news to bring you right now.

An inmate has died at the Pima County Jail.

(Anchor 2) An investigation is underway after an inmate died last night.

An investigation is underway following the death of an inmate at the Pima County Detention Complex.

The Jail.

(Nanos) I remember one day a reporter asked me, "Sheriff, are you doing everything you can to stop the deaths in your jail?"

And that hit me hard.

And I thought about it, and thought about it, and I said, "No, we're going to have mandates."

(John) COVID-19 was an especially dangerous threat to people locked up in jails and prisons.

And a lot of these institutions were slow to provide PPE.

It's also nearly impossible to practice social distancing behind bars.

I'm sure I'm the only sheriff in the state that said, enough of this.

We've had too many COVID deaths.

We've locked everybody down.

Nobody can move Nobody can come in.

Nobody can come out.

They've got masks.

All the cleansing process.

I'm the only sheriff who said, enough of this.

I will mandate my employees to have Vaccine mandates.

(Nanos) Vaccines.

Right That wasn't an easy thing to do.

And you got pushback for it.

Absolutely.

But you know what?

I don't make decisions based on whether people are going to like it or not.

(John) These measures appeared to have an impact.

(Nanos) Our last COVID death was January 4th, 2022.

The fact that it brought it to zero isn't really because you have a great sheriff and a great department and all that.

I don't have the power to stop death.

I have the power to try to eliminate those causes as best we can.

But in 2022 and 2023, most of the deaths, there were still a high number of deaths in the jail.

(Nanos) So we had-- And they weren't COVID related.

So COVID goes away in January of 2022 as far as our jail is concerned went down to zero.

There were no COVID deaths.

Our cases went to below 1% there.

And then what happens?

This thing called fentanyl.

(John) Fentanyl getting into the jail system presented a new set of challenges and contributed to the ongoing crisis of inmate deaths.

We're the first agency in the country to have dogs trained strictly on fentanyl.

We didn't have one dog, two dogs, three.

We found four dogs.

So you keep throwing resources, money, ideas.

We're still finding it.

It still gets in.

(John) Despite efforts to prevent drugs from entering the facility, the problem persists.

And this has raised questions about how these drugs were actually getting into the jail in the first place.

(Stephanie) I had an nephew that \was in there, and we- figured, you know, he'll be safer in jail.

It's, you know- you figure he can't get drugs.

Well, you know, he could get drugs.

So this fear of someone dying in jail is not just an abstraction to you.

You've lost some family members in the jail.

I lost two.

Could you tell us about that?

The first one was my husband, Richard Piña.

He'd gone in there for petty theft, waiting just to get his probation.

and then um... one day, my brother-in-law went to go see him and they canceled his visits.

And wouldn't tell us why.

He was brain dead.

He had put in for medical three weeks prior to dying.

But because medical never got to him.

They found him unconscious in his cell and rushed him to the hospital.

(John) It was later determined that Stephanie's husband died from complications due to an infection.

And her nephew, Jacob Miranda died from a fentanyl overdose.

[ DOOR CLOSING ] So almost everyone who goes in the jail right now has to go through a detox procedure where they are more closely monitored by guards inside.

And my understanding is that that has caught a lot of people who are going through the worst parts of withdrawal or maybe even experiencing overdose.

I toured the jail with the sheriff and some of his leadership staff near the beginning of my term.

And it seemed like there were a lot of inmates crammed into small spaces, especially as they were waiting to move into the general population.

It took a lot of knocking on doors, but we were finally able to convince officials that we should get inside the jail and see for ourselves.

And what we found inside is a jail in poor condition.

It's a jail in disrepair without question.

At the same time, we're able to see the human costs of those conditions of confinement.

That is obvious when you walk in the jail.

These people are being tortured.

This is how our community is dealing with the sickest among us, is to keep cycling them through criminalizing homelessness, criminalizing mental illness and substance use disorder.

Why are these folks not being leveraged into treatment through some sort of civil proceeding instead of through a criminal court proceeding where they can be required to get the help that they need?

[ BIRDS CHIRPING ] (Melissa) So I just brought some extra pictures.

This is Wade fishing here at this lake.

This lake.

This is him and his dog here.

Behind the statistics and the systemic issues are real people whose lives have been forever changed by their experiences in the Pima County Jail.

I thought that the jail was there to help people, to change their life, to get them on the right path so they could live.

And now I feel like the jail is like a death trap.

I do not even want people I don't know going there.

You don't want people you don't know going there?

-No one -Because?

Because they're not going to come home.

(John) For families like Melissa Welch's, the loss is personal and painful.

Wade Welch's death, captured on body cam footage, offers a terrifying view of what can take place inside the jail.

Yeah, I got woke up at about six o'clock in the morning with officers there telling me that my brother was no longer alive.

So, they came to your door?

Yeah, they woke me up and told me he was gone.

They wouldn't immediately say what happened.

He just let me know that my brother was no longer here.

And so we found out later when the news came out that they found him in his cell dead is what they said.

And, the stories just kept changing and changing and changing.

And finally it was that- they said they had...

He had been combative and they had to tase him.

And then we found out later on, it was like multiple tasers.

(Melissa) He was saying his heart was hurting and they said he was playing and joking and didn't listen to him.

I think they took their authority.

one step too high because they killed him.

If you're in a position like that, when you're supposed to protect people, you're supposed to be able to separate your emotions from what's happening and they didn't.

According to Melissa, the family hasn't seen accountability or justice.

Here's County Attorney Laura Conover making an announcement more than a year after Wade was killed.

"We will not be seeking criminal charges in this incident against the corrections officers who were involved."

♪ DRAMATIC MUSIC (John) The ultimate authority of the jail rests with the Sheriff Chris Nanos.

But as we were doing this reporting, everything we uncovered, we realized we needed to go back to him to understand whether or not what we were hearing was true.

We've heard a lot of stories about people... being abused or beaten up by the guards.

We got some footage of a person who was multipli-tased and was badly beaten up in order to give him a shot.

And we wanted to show that to the sheriff and ask him what he thought.

We recently got some incident report and a body cam footage of an incident that happened in February where someone was in, getting court order treatment.

And I wondered if I could show you the video -Sure -that we got just to see how you assess it and help us walk through, like, what you see when you watch the video?

-Is this at my jail?

-This is your jail, yeah.

(CO) We need a taser.

After the taser [punches hand] We'll go in, you go right behind.

(CO) Alright.

- Up, up or you're gonna get tased Put your hands behind your back!

Put your hands... [TASER BUZZING] [Scuffle] (CO) Stop resisting.

(John) If you skip ahead just a little bit, there's three tases and then about right here.

(Inmate) You're breaking my finger, stop.

(CO) Stop resisting then.

(Inmate) I'm not resisting anymore.

All right, dude, you're breaking my arm.

(CO) All right, big boy.

So he gets the shot.

(CO) Ready for the shot?

(Inmate) I'm not moving.

(Nurse) You guys ready for the nurse?

- Yeah - Yup (Nurse) She's coming in.

[HEAVY BREATHING] - So it goes on for a few more minutes.

We walked down the hall.

Just kind of curious to your reaction, you know?

given the challenges of someone refusing treatment.

How, was the officers use of force appropriate there?

- Well, one, I don't know enough of what you're showing me.

You're just showing the fight.

So I don't know what happened prior to that.

For me to comment on what they did there is-is, would be inappropriate because I don't see the pretext.

What happened before?

And so I think that those COs did what they needed to do to constrain him.

You know, tasers are just another tool.

It's all about trying to gain compliance and gain control.

And it was affected.

- So I mean, just again, like you think that is within the realm of appropriate, the strategy.

- With what you're showing me, and you're told here's a court order, get him, injected.

They have to do that.

And they have to do it in the safest manner, not just for the inmate, but for themselves as well.

And of course the medical staff.

(John) According to a "Use of Force" review conducted by the Sheriff's Department The officer's actions were deemed as "reasonable and appropriate".

Despite guards punching him a dozen times in the face, and multipli tasing him.

Brooks was charged with assaulting staff, disruptive conduct, and four other violations.

We reached out to the Sheriff again for comment but he did not respond.

(Amelia) Our current sheriff and the two predecessors have repeatedly stated that the jail is not a mental health facility.

However, we have, you know, 60% of the inmates suffer from mental illness in the jail.

And it's not the right environment for folks who are not violent or dangerous.

(Nanos) And we have such a high number of population in that jail, percentage-wise, that is substance abuse issues, and another high number that are mental health.

(John) While a significant portion of the jail population struggles with mental health issues, the services within the jail are overwhelmed, and the facility is ill-equipped to handle the needs.

(Nanos) I have no say who can't come in there or who gets to come and go, but my opinion is we still have a lot of them in there who shouldn't be there, that there's other places for them.

[DOOR CREAKING] (Amelia) So the jail is overpopulated, and it's understaffed for a whole variety of reasons.

And then what we have is a lot of the staff members who are undertrained and under-educated because that's the only people the Sheriff is able to hire for these positions.

So you have teens right out of high school with very limited training who are monitoring large groups of individuals who are suffering from mental illness and substance use disorders, who are not well and who do not always behave well because of that.

And they are not trained mental health professionals.

They are barely trained, you know, detention professionals.

(John) You mentioned that a lot of the new COs are really young, and they don't have the training that the folks at the Crisis Response Center have.

They don't have the medical training.

- No, we do.

-And they're forced to deal with people who have - Absolutely.

- Medical problems.

- These young men and women, they come in, we give them mental health first aid, we give them Crisis Intervention training.

They go to schools all the time.

They're very well trained.

But who is better equipped to deal with those people?

Is a 19-year old, 20-year old young man or young woman who looks at a x-ray machine, is he gonna be better off doing that than a radiologist?

(Rex) He was very, very much focused on pointing out a lot of the deficiencies and concerns that he had with the facility during that tour.

So when he came to ask the supervisors to pay for a new facility, no, I can't say I was surprised.

(John) Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos addressed the Pima County Board of Supervisors to provide information on the conditions of the jail and to request their support in passing a half-cent sales tax for the construction of a new jail.

(Nanos) I'm here to do a job, and that's to keep this community safe, and that includes those in my jail and in my incarceration.

The fact that we have so many deaths in that jail is of great concern.

♪ PIANO MUSIC (John) A Blue Ribbon Commission was later empaneled by the county to assess the need and feasibility of building a new facility.

(Nanos) That building is not designed as the safest building possible.

but I just tell the voters, you decide what you want from your community and your jail.

You want to enlarge my facility for those who suffer from mental health?

You want to build housing for those who suffer from houselessness?

What are you telling your community?

You gotta be arrested to get these services?

And if they're so, that they say, "We don't want a new jail, we don't want to spend the money," I have to live with that, and that's okay, but I need to be able to present that to them.

(John) The commission's report included four final options for the county, two of which were deemed "unfeasible."

The other two options were renovating the main part of the jail for the price of over $600 million or building an entirely new facility for the price of over $850 million.

(Nanos) I'm telling you, if they had a billion dollars today and everybody said, "Yes, build a jail," it's still 10 years out.

That's the other thing is, I'll probably never be around when that new jail is built, but someday you're going to need a new jail.

I want new parks and swimming pools and schools and libraries and my roads, but every half a century or so, you're probably gonna need a new jail, so are we just kicking the can down the road?

(John) The idea of building a costly new facility fueled public backlash.

Community members who have rallied around the family members of those who have died in the jail have held a number of protests outside the current facility.

No justice!

No peace!

No justice!

No peace!

No justice!

(John) While the sheriff has made the argument that building a new jail would improve conditions inside, a lot of people point to the problem not being with the actual infrastructure, and people really made the case that there's other ways to avoid deaths, there are other ways to improve conditions rather than just a new building.

We have not had an assessment yet done of that building.

We've had individuals come and tell us they believe it is in a bad condition.

We have people looking at that now.

We have not had that report.

(John) County Administrator Jan Lesher called for the formation of a new commission that would be tasked with exploring a lower bed capacity as well as alternatives to incarceration.

People in the community saw this as a step in the right direction.

We stopped the building of the jail.

I was involved in that one.

It was a feeling of when one of my comrades called me, I just, I broke down and cried because they want to build a new jail and they want to put $800 million into building a new jail, but why don't we try not having so many inmates?

That should be our goal.

You know what I mean?

I don't want no more inmates, so let's provide the services that we need.

(Amelia) I'm not opposed to holding somebody accountable for committing a crime, but in the right way.

What we need is for these folks when they're arrested to be issued a paper citation and taken to a mental health facility, not to the jail.

They can be held accountable for their crime based on that paper citation.

The same way that somebody is when they're arrested for speeding.

You get a paper citation and you go your merry way.

They don't need to be let go back out on the street, but the place to take them is to the Crisis Response Center or to another facility that can triage their mental and behavioral health needs, get them treatment, and if they need to be restored to competency, then the court system can come in and order that, and while they're in a therapeutic environment, that service can be provided to them at the same time for the purposes of them being held accountable later in court.

It's really hard to get a clear sense of what's going on inside the jail.

You need to listen really hard and learn to sort of read between the lines on a lot of official statements.

All of it is to try to shine a light onto what's happening, and without that light, there really is no accountability.

I think trying to understand what's going on and what people are dealing with inside is one of the reasons we do the journalism we do.

Should people be held accountable for their actions, especially if their actions impact other individuals?

Absolutely.

But, when it comes to dealing with these issues in a comprehensive way that's really going to make a difference, I think we need to make a distinction between the roles of the justice system and the roles of society overall.

(Amelia) The thing I've heard, like you've heard, is, "it's not my job."

and everybody throws up their hands and says somebody else should be doing it.

I don't have all the answers.

There's no way I should even be expected to have all those answers.

It's not one person that has the responsibility to do this or one agency, and that's the problem.

It's going to require initiative and people willing to step out of their comfort zone and do a job that's not familiar to them.

But when people all come together, they can make change happen in a positive way.

(Nanos) I think that you have some very brilliant people, our courts, our judges, our attorneys, that collectively should be able to come up with some answers.

They'll have to have cooperation from every criminal justice agency leader, the behavioral health department, the mental health facilities and departments, and the community-based providers or it won't work.

Everybody's got to come together as a team.

There's a lot of pain in the community and that is going to last a long time, but there's also a lot of resolve and passion to make sure that things get better.

Family members in the community recognize that this isn't a problem that is solved just in the jail.

There's still a lot to uncover about what's going on, and we're going to keep a close eye on what's happening.

That doesn't end because we just move on to another story This is something that needs ongoing vigilance and ongoing investigation, and that's what we're going to keep doing.

(Hannah) To read more about the years long reporting done by reporter John Washington and Arizona Luminaria, you can visit their website where you can get a more in-depth look at the ongoing investigations related to this issue.

You can join Arizona Public Media on all of our social media channels to let us know what you thought about today's episode.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of AZPM Presents and for supporting important journalism in our community.

I'm Hannah Cree, we'll see you again next time.