Maricopa County approved a multimillion-dollar settlement for the in-custody jail death of a man in the throes of a mental health crisis.
The Board of Supervisors voted Wednesday to give $4,050,000 to the family of Akeem Terrell.
Akeem Terrell died after he was placed and left in a prone position while handcuffed by Phoenix police and Maricopa County Sheriff’s detention officers.
“There was no reason for him to die,” said Jesse Showalter, an attorney who represented Terrell’s family, when he first filed a lawsuit. “He should not have died. He came into the jail alive, and what these officers did left him dead.”
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Maricopa County’s settlement is in addition to $800,000 that the City of Phoenix previously approved for its officers’ role.
On January 1, 2021, Terrell began behaving strangely at a party with witnesses reporting that he was being paranoid and not making any sense, according to police records and body camera video.
Phoenix officers arrived and told Terrell they would not arrest him if he would leave the apartment. But he refused, and Terrell was placed under arrest.
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When Terrell got to the Maricopa County jail intake facility, he refused to get out of the back of the Phoenix police vehicle. So, officers pulled him out of the car and dragged him into the jail.
Terrell, who was 6’2" and weighed 430 pounds, did not “actively resist,” according to officers involved. Instead, he “passively resisted” by being “dead weight” and “going limp.”
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Officers dragged Terrell into the jail while he continued to shout things that made little or no sense.
Once Terrell got to his feet, officers pushed him into what’s called a “pre-isolation” cell.
Inside, a handful of officers almost immediately grabbed Terrell’s feet, pulled them out from under him, and then piled on his legs and back to change out his handcuffs from police cuffs to jail cuffs.
For three minutes, the officers were kneeling on top of Terrell, whose head and neck were pushed up against the wall. After the cuffs were switched, the officers got up and backed out of the room.
Jail surveillance video shows Terrell was clearly unresponsive and motionless.
Several times officers peered into the cell through a window, but no one would go in to check on him for more than five minutes.
When they did, a medical team was immediately alerted and rescue crews were called. Terrell was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office cleared all officers of criminal wrongdoing.
Neither MCSO nor Phoenix police disciplined any officers for their actions, records show.
Contact ABC15 Chief Investigator Dave Biscobing at Dave@ABC15.com.
