 David Fulps now has a broken spine and the Sheriff's office refuses to pay for his medical care. | The management of the Tulsa County Jail is costing our citizens multi millions of dollars, and the Regalado administration seems completely unfit to reform the inept system. There was yet another case last month where a psychotic person was booked into the jail as a criminal and continued to digress under incarceration, but instead of getting appropriate evaluations, he was subjected to massive injuries (a broken neck and pelvis) under mysterious conditions. (read the Tulsa World account) Sheriff Glanz had taken jail expansion money for years, and diverted it to pay his lawyers to fight another mental health disaster involving a psychotic man with a severed spinal cord, whom jailers watch thirst to death because he couldn't feed himself. (see story on KOTV) |
| Sheriff Regalado and his jail spokesman have issued conflicting accounts and evidently refuses to release jail surveillance videos of the various incidents they are suggesting led to a life threatening condition. When they finally did send out David Lee Fulps to a medical facility for suspicions of a neck and pelvis injury, they saved a few bucks by sticking him into the back seat of a squad car instead of calling a paramedic ambulance. And the Tulsa Regional Medical Center medical staff who examined him, adamantly refused to let the cops put him back into a squad car to be transferred yet again to a more equipped medical facility for handling spinal injuries. Regalado's staff finally relented and let paramedics handle the transfer. |  Elliot Williams was left to die of dehydration and malnourishment at the tulsa county jail. He was psychotic when he was arrested for being disorderly. He then suffered a broken spine in the Tulsa County Jail. Lawsuits are pending. |
Sheriff Regalado refuses to release jail video of how Fulps was injured. 3 different stories were given. But then Regalado decided that the man they put into solitary confinement for what they described as severely dangerous behavior just hours earlier, was now safe enough to be set free and have all his alleged violent crimes stricken from their records. Regalado now insists that his "very transparent" Sheriff's Office handled everything correctly, but still refuses to comply with Ziva Branstetter of the Tulsa Frontier News, when she reportedly exercised a 'freedom of information' request for jail surveillance videos pertaining to the Fulps case.
Last February, NAMI Tulsa held a candidate forum on mental health and the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office. Mental health advocates (including myself) pressed Regalado and the others about why the severely mentally ill are not getting prompt mental health assessments and diverted to psychiatric facilities to begin with. Regalado had some of the least informed and least assuring responses I heard.
The Voters of Tulsa County are being forced to pay for a new Mental Health wing at the county Jail. What we really need is a jail staff and deputies who really have a basic understanding of obvious signs of mental illness and how to save the taxpayers millions by moving the mentally ill to psychiatric facilities who are professionally trained to treat the underlying conditions impacting behavior.
We are witnessing a growing backlog of lawsuits against the sheriff for serious injuries and deaths arising for inept jail staff and cost-cutting measures (like shoving folks with broken spines into squad cars). Our sheriff's office has lied about training records and it's abundantly clear that they still are not trained or their training is overridden by Regalado's cost-cutting mandates.
Last February, NAMI Tulsa held a candidate forum on mental health and the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office. Mental health advocates (including myself) pressed Regalado and the others about why the severely mentally ill are not getting prompt mental health assessments and diverted to psychiatric facilities to begin with. Regalado had some of the least informed and least assuring responses I heard.
The Voters of Tulsa County are being forced to pay for a new Mental Health wing at the county Jail. What we really need is a jail staff and deputies who really have a basic understanding of obvious signs of mental illness and how to save the taxpayers millions by moving the mentally ill to psychiatric facilities who are professionally trained to treat the underlying conditions impacting behavior.
We are witnessing a growing backlog of lawsuits against the sheriff for serious injuries and deaths arising for inept jail staff and cost-cutting measures (like shoving folks with broken spines into squad cars). Our sheriff's office has lied about training records and it's abundantly clear that they still are not trained or their training is overridden by Regalado's cost-cutting mandates.
