The City of East Point has paid $2.1 million to settle a lawsuit over the death of a 23-year-old woman in police custody after she did not receive medical attention for a drug overdose, attorneys for the family said this week. They now say the case has exposed alarming systemic failures in the jail’s operations.
Olivia Hannah died while at the jail on April 9, 2021 after being arrested for shoplifting.
“The City’s indifference to Olivia’s medical crisis deprived her of the opportunity for redemption that everyone deserves,” said Jeff Filipovits, an attorney at Spears & Filipovits, the law firm representing her family. “We urge the City to conduct a complete and thorough review of the training provided to its employees who operate the jail. This death, and those that preceded it, demonstrate a failure of past leadership that the City now has an opportunity to correct.”
From the press release:
Despite jailers’ discovery of suspected drugs in Hannah’s pocket while she was being booked into the jail, they did not thoroughly search her, leaving her with what was later determined to be fentanyl hidden in her clothing.
Jailers placed Hannah in solitary confinement, denied her requests to shower, and repeatedly denied her menstrual hygiene products. Although jailers knew that Hannah had recently used drugs and was beginning to have withdrawal symptoms, they ignored a nurse’s recommendation that she be transferred to another facility better equipped to deal with her withdrawal.
Alone and in pain, Hannah cried out to her mother, Melinda Pitts, for help. She told her mother that she had swallowed some of the hidden drugs in a desperate attempt to force the jailers to provide her with the medical care she needed. Pitts called the jail, where one jailer spoke to Hannah and confirmed she had swallowed drugs. Yet the jailers did not call an ambulance or administer Narcan, the widely known opioid overdose medication. The jailers also failed to monitor Hannah by increasing wellness checks after she reported swallowing drugs – and even falsified jail records to include checks they never made. They found Hannah’s body many hours after she had died.
Hannah’s death could have easily been saved by giving her Narcan, medical experts later told family attorneys. Narcan is readily available and administered by City EMS workers. But jailers did not call EMS. A longstanding failure to supervise officers at the jail meant that there were no consequences for the jailers’ failures until the civil suit was filed.
Hannah’s tragic death was illustrative of the systemic failures at the East Point jail, according to the lawyers at Spears & Filipovits, LLC. Intoxicated arrestees are not unusual at East Point jail, which houses people charged with misdemeanors and often serves as the place where police from surrounding cities in Fulton County leave people who are intoxicated to sober up. Months before Hannah’s death, another person incarcerated in the East Point jail died of an overdose despite being intoxicated to the point he was unable to walk into the jail. Nevertheless, following that inmate’s death, the City did not conduct an investigation, change its policies, or provide any training to its jailers in recognizing and avoiding overdose deaths — decisions that proved deadly for Hannah.
“The people in the City’s jail have generally been arrested for low-level offenses and are often people who are experiencing a mental health or substance abuse crisis,” said Wingo Smith, an attorney at Spears & Filipovits. “The City has a responsibility to the public to ensure that its employees can competently handle the life-threatening complications caused by opiate overdoses. Regardless of whether someone has committed a crime, those incarcerated in the City of East Point jail deserve to know that jailers will not abandon them when they are in the midst of a medical crisis.”
Hannah was more than just another victim of the opioid crisis. The Newnan resident was known for her love of cooking holiday meals with her family and was engaged to her longtime girlfriend. Like many Americans, she struggled with drug addiction, which led to her arrest for a minor shoplifting charge and her fateful encounter with the East Point jail system.
“Olivia was a loving daughter with her whole life ahead of her,” said Pitts, Hannah’s mother. “She made a mistake, but she didn’t deserve to die alone and in pain. The officers’ failure to act robbed us of the chance to help her overcome her addiction and build the future she dreamed of. No family should have to endure this kind of loss. We hope that by speaking out, we can prevent other families from experiencing the same heartbreak.”
