When Jonas Park was booked into Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail while actively experiencing opiate withdrawal, he was never given the recommended treatment nor seen by a mental health professional. Instead, he was placed in a single, isolated cell and only given the chance to leave it once during the time he spent in custody, according to a new lawsuit filed in federal court.
Sanjay Schmidt, a San Francisco-based attorney representing Park’s family, said he hopes the lawsuit will “deliver justice” to the family and help prevent “a needless death like this from occurring again by promoting robust policy changes that will keep all inmates safe and address all of their mental and medical health needs.”
From 2015 through 2019, at least 14 inmates at Santa Rita Jail died of suicide — a rate more than twice the national average, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. While no detainees took their own lives in 2020, Park was one of two Santa Rita inmates to kill themselves in the first four months of 2021.
According to the lawsuit, those alerts should have warranted referral to an opiate-withdrawal treatment program and mental health evaluation. But, the suit claims, Park was not provided with either of those services.