Nearly two years ago, Maurice Monk, unable to afford his $2,500 bond, sat in a California jail for 34 days. He had missed a court appearance following an argument with a bus driver.
Before he entered Santa Rita jail in Alameda county, Monk had regularly taken prescription medication for high blood pressure, diabetes and schizophrenia. During a previous time at Santa Rita months before his death, he had received his prescriptions as usual.
During this stint in November 2021, however, Monk lay face-down unattended for three days after staff at the jail allegedly failed to give him his prescription medication. Despite the escalating medical emergency, jail and medical staff allegedly noticed Monk in his bunk surrounded by unopened meals, water, medication, urine and feces and did not act.
In those final days, as the ink from his attire stained the mattress beneath him, Monk experienced what his family called a “slow, torturous death”.
Earlier this month, Monk’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court against the Alameda county sheriff’s office, 15 sheriff’s deputy employees and Santa Rita jail workers, and Wellpath Community Care, a for-profit company that provides medical care to dozens of California jails and has been the subject of lawsuits and federal investigations for providing substandard care. The family’s lawsuit alleged that the father of two’s death at the notorious facility, one of the largest jails in the country, represented an “unconscionable failure of the entire Santa Rita Jail staff, from law enforcement supervisors to medical staff to deputy and sergeant sheriffs”.
Between October and November 2021, Monk’s sister Elvira Monk, who feared that her brother’s health would “rapidly decline” if not given his prescriptions, “repeatedly contacted” Santa Rita jail to tell them about Monk’s medication needs. They “rejected” her efforts and sent her through a “series of frustrating bureaucratic processes that led to no results”, the family’s lawsuit noted.
The latest filing came more than a year after Monk’s family initially sued the county and others for their roles in Monk’s death. Since then, attorneys reviewed footage from more than 150 body-camera videos from a civil lawsuit. A spokesperson for the Alameda county sheriff’s office declined to comment, noting the case is “still in active litigation status”. In a previous 2022 court filing, Alameda county noted that Elvira sent a record for a medication but denied that she “made any further efforts” to get in touch with jail staff. In a separate filing that year, attorneys for WellPath denied the allegations. The company has not responded to a request for comment.
A sheriff deputy wrote in a report that Monk needed to be evaluated by Alameda county’s adult forensic behavioral health unit but the lawsuit notes that no records showed that the evaluation took place. Still, during his time in jail, medical staff with WellPath “failed to prescribe” Monk’s medications for schizophrenia, despite the fact that several staffers and deputies “had access and were aware of Mr Monk’s medical conditions”, the lawsuit noted.
Monk was in a housing unit meant for people with mental health needs, which required wellness checks every 30 minutes. Court records indicated that Monk had left his cell on 5 November for recreation time – the last time he would ever leave his cell – and then two days later, he received blood pressure and diabetes medication for the last time. The lawsuit alleges staffers left medication for Monk in paper cups on his cell’s floor and recorded it as “receiving” or “refusing” medication.
The lawsuit claims that jail and medical personnel allegedly forged compliance logs and timelines that detailed when staff checked on Monk. Body camera and surveillance footage showed that as staff checked on him and called out his name, Monk remained unresponsive. On 12 November, three days before he was officially declared dead, sheriff’s deputies conducted a wellness check. Despite observing Monk, who remained unresponsive while they called his name, a deputy said he was not “freaking out” because “I could see him breathing.” Another deputy noticed Monk’s head “slightly raised” while face down and reported Monk was “just sleeping”.
By 15 November, staff members visited his cell and he remained unresponsive. An inmate who was serving food told a deputy that Monk had been laying for several days and asked a sheriff’s deputy: “Are we just waiting for him to kick the bucket?” Staff members later entered Monk’s cell and repeatedly yelled as they checked on him and talked about whether he had eaten. A deputy noticed he was “stiff” and checked for a pulse. An autopsy found he had developed bed sores from not moving for a period of time.
Monk’s death at the Santa Rita facility, which holds about 2,000 people each day, exposed another act of devastation at a facility rife with health and safety violations where more than 60 people have died since 2014. In 2022, three months after Monk’s death, a judge put the facility under federal supervision for at least six years, with the aim toward reforming mental health care at the jail. At least five inmates have died at the jail in 2023.
