NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The Latest on a New Orleans City Council hearing on the suicide of a 15-year-old jail inmate (all times local):
6:30 p.m.
Court appointed monitors have filed their latest report on reform efforts at the New Orleans jail. And it reads a lot like past reports, citing a “troubling” lack of compliance with reforms aimed at preventing inmate harm from suicide and helping inmates with mental illness.
Tuesday’s report was filed in federal court, where Sheriff Marlin Gusman reached a 2012 agreement to improve jail conditions to settle a lawsuit by inmate advocates and the Justice Department.
The report said monitors are eager to start working with Gary Maynard, the former Maryland corrections official tapped as the jail’s new “compliance director,” with broad management authority at the jail.
Maynard started Oct. 1.
He was among officials at a Tuesday City Council hearing on last week’s suicide of a 15-year-old murder suspect.
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5 p.m.
A New Orleans City Council hearing on the suicide of a 15-year-old jail inmate raised questions about why he wasn’t under closer surveillance when he died, and why he spent nearly a month after being brought to jail before he had a bond hearing.
Jaquin (jah-KWAHN’) Thomas faced a second-degree murder charge when he hanged himself with a mattress cover on Oct. 17.
A jail attorney said Thomas was being held in a tier where all inmates were under 18 and that Thomas had shown no suicidal tendencies. Blake Arcuri told council members that the suicide was captured by a surveillance camera. But he said it was a distant view, and he didn’t know whether the camera was being monitored at the time.
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9 a.m.
New Orleans City Council members are set to discuss the latest inmate death at the city’s jail - a teenage murder suspect’s suicide.
Council member Susan Guidry scheduled a meeting of the council’s Criminal Justice Committee for Tuesday afternoon. Guidry said in a news release that the meeting is in response to public inquiries about the death of 15-year-old Jaquin Thomas.
The Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office said Thomas died last week after using a mattress cover to asphyxiate himself.
It was the second suicide at the jail since inmates were moved into a new facility in September of 2015 - a move that officials hoped signified progress in preventing suicides and curbing inmate violence.
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