On Thursday morning, September 21, 2006, Democratic committeeman and Chief Operating Officer of Cermak Health Services at Cook County Jail David Fagus started a very bad day. You know you're having a bad day when you show up at work and the Feds are hauling boxes of documents out of your office.
But now it's all Happy Daze in the Democratic Party of the 49th Ward. Maybe Fagus doesn't know how to read. Well, the rest of us do!
Read the full report!
Press Release from US Attorney, Northern District of Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald:
Cook County Jail’s Inadequate Security, Health Care and Living Conditions Violate Inmates’ Constitutional Rights, Justice Department Investigation Finds
Full report from the Civil Rights Division of the US Attorney Northern District of Illinois:
USDOJ Letter to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and Cook County Board President Todd Stroger dated July 11, 2008 (98 pages, 4.2 MB)
INADEQUATE MEDICAL CAREYou know you're having a REALLY bad day when a US Attorney sends a threatening note to your boss about your job performance. Ouch!
Jail officials are responsible for providing adequate medical care to inmates. Moreover, a jail may not deny or intentionally interfere with medical treatment. A delay in providing medical treatment may be so significant that it amounts to a denial of treatment. Our investigation revealed that medical care provided at CCJ [Cook County Jail] falls below the constitutionally required standards of care. We found the following deficiencies:
(1) inadequate medical staffing;
(2) inadequate intake screening;
(3) inadequate health assessments;
(4) inadequate acute care;
(5) inadequate chronic care;
(6) inadequate emergency care;
(7) inadequate record keeping;
(8) inadequate medication administration;
(9) inadequate management of communicable diseases;
(10) inadequate access to medical care;
(11) inadequate medical facilities;
(12) inadequate dental care; and
(13) inadequate quality assurance. ...
We are obligated to advise you that, in the event that we are unable to reach a resolution regarding our concerns, the Attorney General may initiate a lawsuit pursuant to CRIPA [Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act] to correct deficiencies of the kind identified in this letter 49 days after appropriate officials have been notified of them.
Dear neighbors, maybe you do a good job at work, and maybe you have some not-so-stellar days, but most days, don't you hope that your services are not so bad that they systematically violate the civil rights of those you are supposed to serve????
So read the report, but not before meals: each of the DOJ's bullet points above is illustrated with copious highly graphic examples. Fagus certainly makes a compelling case for staying out of Cook County Jail.
37 Days and Counting until a federal hammer comes down on Fagus' head!
Mark your calendar - Monday, September 1, 2008 - our US Attorney starts verminating the biggest patronage rathole in Cook County.
Meanwhile, party on, David!
5 comments:
I Googled Chief Operating Officer of Cermak Health Services at Cook County Jail and came up with the website cookcountygov.com
On the page pertaining to Cermak Health Services, it says in the first paragraph, "Cermak Health Services is the daily provider of healthcare to the approximately 11,000 detainees at the Cook County Department of Corrections and the Department of Community Supervision and Intervention. In August of 2006 Cermak also became the provider of healthcare to the approximately 400 children housed in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center."
It goes on to say, in the second paragraph, "Cook County Jail enjoys one of the best records in the prevention of suicides in the nation."
In the report I heard on the news yesterday, the Feds are saying there were numerous deaths and amputations as a result of inmates not getting treatment or not getting treatment/medication in time.
So, I guess it is just how you look at it. Sure, suicides are low - that's because the health care(less) workers are doing the job for them.
How did he get his job? Stoger? What is his connection to Stroger? Just being the Democratic Committee Man?
I hope the Feds find evidence on everyone responsible for this horrific debacle and send them off to prison. But I also hope wherever they find themselves they are treated more humanely than they treated the men, women and children in their care. I can't imagine losing a limb due to lack of treatment! May God have mercy.
- PEACE -
It's almost as if most of the mainstream press is writing about this confrontation without actually reading the report! The Todd Stroger government currently ensconced in Cook County is definitely positioning Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart as the point man in their response to the report, and the press is going along with that. Certainly security concerns are prominent in the report, but if you read the report, by volume it is mostly about gross inadequacies in health care, and aimed squarely at our friendly neighborhood patronage hack David Fagus.
"I hope the Feds find evidence on everyone responsible for this horrific debacle and send them off to prison."
I think it would make a great made-for-TV movie - the corrupt head of a prison hospital is imprisoned and dies of a run-away hang nail gone septic.
Why are the feds picking on Fagus the Political Fungus? After all, we know he must be doing a better job at Cermak Health Services than he is as 49th Ward Democratic Committeeman... the inmates at Cook County Jail are still breathing!
" ... the inmates at Cook County Jail are still breathing!"
problem is, many of them are not
read the report
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