Pete Earley

Dear Mr. Earley,

I am writing about Natasha McKenna and her death in the Fairfax County Detention Center. (I have provided you my contact information so you can confirm who I am and my credentials, but I ask that you withhold my name for reasons that will become obvious.)

Why was she “managed” by trained professionals in a manner that was so callous & inhumane? Why was she shocked repeatedly with a Taser while posing no serious threat to the men who had her on the floor? How were the deputies able to overlook and disregard her pathetic, desperate cries, whimpers and gasps?

How did this happen? There were six men directly involved and several others looking on, only a few feet away. Any one of them could have interrupted what was happening, but there’s no indication that anyone objected. No one said, “Put away the Taser – we don’t need it.” Nobody said, “One time with the Taser is enough!” (or two times, or three, or even four). There was no sign that anyone said, “She’s scared, this isn’t working. Let’s stop and think about a better way to get this done.” Equally important is the fact that the Lieutenant in charge didn’t stop to say, “This is going bad. I’m going to call my Captain for guidance, or my Major, or my Colonel, or the Sheriff.”

Why did this happen?

Are these men (and women) sadists? Are they sociopaths? Are they inexperienced? Are they stupid? Are they racist murderers?

I know them personally, I work with them and my answer to these questions is “No, no, no, no and no.” I’ve had conversations with them in our workplace about our kids, about our jobs, and, in some cases, we’ve shared both laughs and secrets. We are not bad people.  The deputies that did this are not much different truthfully than most of our friends and neighbors – your friends and neighbors too. We are ordinary Fairfax citizens.

So how could these deputies treat another human being this way?

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 A grieving father determined to change our system speaks out, a detailed examination of what’s happening in Pennsylvania since that state began shuttering its mental hospitals, and an alarming expose by The New York Times about Africans with psychiatric conditions, who are being chained for years in “prayer camps,” are three recent stories that I want to call to your attention.

James Cornick sent me an e-mail describing the ordeal that he went through trying to get meaningful help for his son, Jeff, who ended his life in a jail cell. James told me that his son’s death could have been prevented and he was going to do his best to demand county officials improve local services. A reporter with the Des Moines Register happened to hear James telling his story and the result was a moving newspaper account: Grieving Father: Stop Jailing People For Mental Illness. 

Within two months of the death, Jim Cornick started standing up publicly, demanding that society stop sending people to jail for being sick. The retired Meredith Corp. magazine publisher has met with the sheriff, the police chief, judges, lawyers, probation officers, county supervisors, legislators and the governor.

He doesn’t vent anger or claim that his son was harmless. He speaks calmly, offering specific proposals:

• Families should be able to tell mental health professionals what they see happening in the lives of their ill relatives, he says. Commitment laws must be changed to make it easier for families to get patients in for help and to keep them in treatment for more than a few days.

• Police and jail staff members should have more training in handling those with mental illness. People shouldn’t have to wait weeks or months for assistance. And if police come across someone whom a judge has ordered into treatment, the officers should automatically be notified of that order so they can take the person to a hospital.

His normally steady voice shakes when he is asked what he’s trying to accomplish. “I feel like maybe I can make a difference, move the needle a little bit, raise some awareness,” he said in an interview at his South of Grand neighborhood home.

His son didn’t mean to hurt anyone — including their family — by committing suicide, Cornick said. “He did it because he’d given up hope. He’d worked damned hard to get better, and he just couldn’t.” (read more here.)

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Duplicity

By Newt Gingrich and Pete Earley

(Copyright 2015) Published by Center Street/ Hachette Book Group

Prologue

The city of Dera Ismail Khan

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan

“You’re here, I assume, to tell us everything we do wrong?”

Prison Superintendent Shaukat Abbas’s words were posed as a question, but the irritated tone of his voice turned them into an accusation. Abbas leaned back in a shabby office chair behind a worn, gunmetal-gray desk inside the drab, institutional walls of the warden’s office at the provincial prison and lit a Morven Gold cigarette. He did not offer one to the guest seated before him.

Christopher King was not offended. An avid jogger, King didn’t smoke. He considered it a nasty, dangerous habit and tended to worry about damage from secondhand smoke. Abbas noticed King fidget and began amusing himself by blowing a series of perfectly formed smoke rings toward his visitor. King already wasn’t feeling well, having recently contracted a bout of bacterial diarrhea while touring the prison in Bannu, a town northwest of Dera Ismail Khan that bordered the so-called lawless area of Pakistan. The strong smell of tobacco mixed with the stench of human sweat and unrecognizable odors that seemed to ooze from the walls of the ancient prison did little to calm his churning stomach or improve his darkening mood.

“Tell me again about this organization of yours,” Abbas said.

King had already gone through his spiel, but he robotically repeated the description that he had given every superintendent whose jail or prison he had visited in Pakistan during the past two weeks.

“The International Equal Justice Project,” he said, “is a nongovernmental, nonpolitical, nonprofit, international organization that monitors living conditions in jails and prisons worldwide. We were invited to Pakistan by your nation’s new internal security director.”

“I’m correct, then,” Abbas hissed, flashing a smug half grin that revealed crooked and cigarette-stained teeth. “You’ve come here to tell me everything I’m doing wrong.”

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What happens when the United States’ first woman president chooses politics over national security to help give her struggling re-election campaign a jumpstart?

In Duplicity, the result is a Benghazi style attack on a U.S. embassy by terrorists that puts the lives of American hostages in danger and threatens to destroy the careers of Washington’s most powerful leaders.

Duplicity is the first book in a series of novels that I am writing with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. We merge his Washington insider knowledge with my reporting about spies and criminals. Think House of Cards meets Jason Bourne!

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I recently published a blog critical of Bryan Wolfe, the Republican candidate for Fairfax County (Va.) Sheriff running against incumbent Sheriff Stacey A. Kincaid, a Democrat. I wrote that quotes attributed to Mr. Wolfe, a retired police officer who has Crisis Intervention Team training, showed a lack of understanding about jail diversion. Mr. Wolfe felt my blog mischaracterized his views. Here is his response. 

CIT, Jail Diversion and the Sheriff’s Office

Several weeks ago Pete Earley posted a blog about comments I made during an interview with a Fairfax Times newspaper reporter.  Mr. Earley questioned my understanding of a crisis intervention diversion program.  Unless you are a law enforcement officer, it’s difficult for most citizens to understand the true meaning of a diversion program.  So let me take a moment to explain my views.

First you must understand that a fully operational diversion program requires an incredible amount of funding to get started. It must also be a collaborative effort by the local government, judicial system, community mental health treatment facilities and local stakeholders. Unfortunately Fairfax has just now started a new Diversion First program and it will take several years for all the stakeholders and the funding for it to become fully operational. People suffering from mental illness are being swept up in our criminal justice system – right now. Keeping them safe is not something that we can wait to do and there are several changes that need to be made right now.

The police and sheriff’s office have different roles. Our police are responsible for enforcing the laws and making the community safe. They are the first responders when dealing with persons who are mentally ill. The sheriff’s office turned over all law enforcement responsibilities in our county to the police department back in 1942.  Deputies are not responsible for making arrests or investigating crimes. The sheriff’s main responsibility is running the jail. With that being said, the sheriff should be focusing all of her time on how to keep jail inmates safe and secure.  The police are the ones and the only ones deciding who and when a person is a candidate for the diversion program. You may have noticed that I haven’t written one word about the role of the sheriff or her deputies in diversion. That is because the deputies have no involvement or discretion about who is brought to the jail.  

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