Early one morning this spring, staff at a Santa Barbara county jail heard screams coming from one of the cells. A 57-year-old inmate was moaning and hyperventilating. She said her “guts are all twisted up”.
Rather than sending her to the ER, medical staff chalked her pain up to opioid withdrawal, since they had taken a prescription opioid away upon her arrival days before, a grand jury investigation later found. They placed the inmate – referred to as CF in the grand jury’s report – on mental health observation and gave her Tylenol. Even as the cell floor became covered in vomit, staff ignored her requests to go to the hospital. The documentation that should have been filled out to explain why her request was not honored was never completed.
