‘They’re treated like dogs.’ Relatives of Richland County jail inmates tell their stories

Sekeyna Walker’s body was racked with sobs. Her voice shook and she looked upwards, offering an apology to anyone who might be listening.

“I thought my son was exaggerating, but then I hear all these stories and now I know he’s actually telling the truth,” Walker said.

Her son is in jail in Richland County’s Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center. The survivor of a St. Patrick’s Day shooting, he navigates the jail with a walker.

As Walker spoke, her son was still in lockup, lacking regular access to food and medicine, she said. He often isn’t fed until 3 p.m., leading to flare-ups of his Crohn’s disease. His toilet had overflowed with feces, he suffered from nightmares and complained of rats in the cells. A portion of the ceiling had fallen on him, Walker said.

But her son’s story was familiar to any one of the eight family members who spoke to the media before a Richland County Council meeting Tuesday night. Those who spoke were mothers, friends, wives, brothers and sisters of inmates at Alvin S. Glenn, many who have been there for months if not years. All have been diagnosed with mental illness.

The family members were gathered by Disability Rights South Carolina , a nonprofit that provides advocacy and legal assistance for people with disabilities in South Carolina. The group has filed a federal lawsuit against Richland County alleging it has violated the civil rights of inmates with mental illnesses. On Tuesday, attorneys and two family members of inmates addressed Richland County Council with their concerns about the situation at the jail.

“The last time I saw my son, he was walking,” said Marie King, the gold crucifix on her chest rising and falling as she held back tears. “He’s not walking right now. I’m still asking them the questions, what happened to my son? Why is a mental health patient in a jail with an aggressive person?”

Angela Brannon’s son Dashan King had been placed on an anti-seizure medicine that had caused him to drop dangerous amounts of weight. He told his mom that he rarely got to bathe, and sometimes jail officers demanded he send them money through CashApp, a mobile payment app, in order to get his meals.

Joshua Steven McGraw, an inmate speaking through a phone held by his wife, said he went days without water while on suicide watch. Water often didn’t run from the taps, and when it did, it was brown while toilets overflowed with waste, McGraw said.

‘They’re treated like dogs,” said McGraw’s wife, Tamara.

One of Sharon Williams’ loved ones, an inmate at Alvin S. Glenn, found a bloody Band-Aid inside of a piece of cornbread, she said Justice Gibson said his brother had been attacked by corrections officers.

“Our men and women are coming home mentally destroyed from sitting in there years at a time,” Walker said.

Roughly two thirds of the Alvin S. Glenn diagnosed with mental illness, said attorney Stuart Andrews, one of the lawyers for Disability Rights SC.

“You have a constitutional obligation,” Andrews, of the Burnette Schutt McDaniels law firm, told the Richland County Council. “When you take someone’s freedom you have to provide all of the health care, all of the medical care that they need. And the over 600 people at the county jail that are in need of mental health care are not getting an opportunity to have that full range of care.”

The Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center has drawn criticism for years because of deaths , violence , poor conditions and understaffing. In November, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it was opening an investigation into whether conditions at the jail violated inmate’s civil rights.

“Over the last 15 months, I‘ve held the hands of family members who had to bury their loved ones,” Adair Buroughs, U.S. Attorney for South Carolina, said at the time. “I’ve spoken to law enforcement officers that do not feel safe entering these spaces, and I’ve met with community advocates who are deeply concerned about what appear to be consistent constitutional failures in these facilities.”

For their part, the Richland County administrators maintain that they are continuing to make progress on improving conditions at the jail.

“I would like to vehemently disagree with with how he (Andrews) has presented Alvin S. Glenn,” County Attorney Patrick Wright told the media Tuesday night. “There were some concerns. They’ve been addressed and they’re being addressed.”

The state Department of Corrections, which inspects the jail, has recognized that significant improvements have been made, Wright said. Eleven staff members at the jail were arrested earlier this year in a crackdown in contraband .

Significant upgrades have been made to the kitchen as well as several housing units, but Wright admitted there were delays because of supply chain and vendor issues as well as the logistical challenges of fabricating and retrofitting an operational jail.

Wright emphasized that the county’s responsibility was to maintain the jail as a short term facility. While there were people who had been there for as long as five years, “that shouldn’t be happening,” Wright said. Many inmates are awaiting placement at state mental health facilities or their cases have remained stuck in the backlogged court system, Wright said.

“We are not the Department of Mental Health, we do not have a facility to house mentally ill people. We have staff that is trained to deal with short term detention, that’s what it is a short term facility.”