Courtesy Janis Mensah
Janis Mensah took this photo at hospital shortly after being forcibly removed from the City Justice Center.
Video obtained today by the RFT shows the scene outside the City Justice Center last Thursday night when police carried away the vice chair of the jail civilian oversight board.
Janis Mensah had gone to the jail that evening to investigate the death of an inmate in the early hours of the morning, but they were forcibly removed from the building by police and then given a citation.
The moment marked an escalation of the tension between jail administration and the oversight board who have repeatedly called for the mayor to fire the city’s corrections head, Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah.
At the time Mensah went to the City Justice Center, the detainee’s identity had not yet been made public. Mensah previously told the RFT that after they were denied access to security camera footage as well as to the facility itself, they waited in the jail lobby. Around 9 p.m., jail staffers called the police.
Mensah said that when police arrived, “They pulled me out of the bench, pretty forcefully. They said, ‘Stop resisting,’ but I wasn’t moving at all.”
Mensah says the last thing they saw before waking up in the hospital was the floor of the jail. For the entire period captured on video, which begins after Mensah was removed from the jail and taken to the steps outside, Mensah says they were in and out of consciousness.
The video shows one officer appearing to hold the handcuffed Mensah upright on the steps for minutes on end as others mill around, seemingly unconcerned about Mensah’s well-being. Officers then start to pick Mensah up, and one officer says something about how they don’t know where they’re taking Mensah; they don’t have any ambulances. One officer picks Mensah up under their armpits and the other grabs the oversight board member’s feet and they carry them to a police van.
Mensah says they woke up at the hospital later that evening. They’re charged with municipal violations of trespassing and resisting arrest.
In the days since Mensah was forcibly removed from the jail, the deceased detainee has been identified as 55 year-old Terrence Smith, who had been in the jail since January on murder charges.
The RFT reported yesterday that Smith had been the subject of an anonymous complaint made to the oversight board in April by someone concerned for his well being in the jail.
Board member Mike Milton says that a staffer with the Division of Civilian Oversight attempted to check in on the welfare of Smith, but was denied entry into the facility.
“We could have saved this man’s life,” Milton told the RFT.
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