For Star subscribers: The deaths have drawn scrutiny on the jail as family members demand answers.
1 of 3 Family members of Pedro Xavier Martinez Palacios Jr., who died at the Pima County Jail on Jan. 14 from a fentanyl overdose, hold signs outside the facility at a Feb. 11 protest.
The officer noticed he was “cold to the touch,” according to an incident report from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jail. Three of the deaths resulted from medical complications, three from COVID-19, and one from suicide, according to the medical examiner’s findings. Of the 12 inmates, eight were people of color.
“I'm doing these steps to have a little bit of peace because I'm never going to get closure,” Guzman said. “I'm climbing the steps, and when I see another death, I'm right back to step one. I see these families crying, these friends crying for the same thing that my family's crying for. It's an ongoing thing.”
Nanos said every corrections officer overseeing a pod has been given access to Narcan in the last month. The incident report details a conversation with Palacios’ cellmate, who told jail personnel that Palacios had taken eight “Mexican blue” pills — which are counterfeit oxycodone pills containing varying amounts of fentanyl — over the course of three days.
The cellmate told investigators Palacios took a shower the morning of Jan. 10, and the cellmate proceeded to do the same. Before he undressed, the cellmate said, he saw Palacios being placed on a gurney. Perrera, who has headed the behavioral health department since 2018, says the deaths at the jail are reflective of those in the community.
“But it is a tiny pill and sometimes people are going to get that by us,” Nanos said. “We are doing everything we can to keep that nasty drug out of there. But it is tough. It is not an easy thing to stop from coming into your jails.”In Palacios’ case, sheriff’s personnel reviewed the body scan of the cellmate who allegedly provided him with fentanyl and found “a circular anomaly … in abdomen, but it was unclear what it was.
“So we have COs who are trained to be corrections officers, looking at a machine's X-ray vision, doing the best they can to say, I think there's something here,” Nanos said. His office, however, lacks the power to keep people out of the jail, he said. That’s an authority granted to the judges who put them there.
Methadone returning to the jailIn Perrera’s memo addressed to acting County Administrator Jan Lesher, the behavioral health department director wrote: “We speculate that the lack of methadone as a treatment option may be a contributing factor for some of the overdoses within the jail population.” Now, after nearly three months without methadone treatment in the jail, Pima County has obtained a preliminary license from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, to continue providing methadone to inmates.
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