Worst jail attack we’ve ever seen: Why couldn’t Essex County protect a 22-year-old with schizophrenia? | Edit – NJ.com

The jail inmates who attacked Jayshawn Boyd in Essex County’s lockup on Sept. 23rd had no fear – not only of being caught, but of being interrupted.

Six of them pushed him to the cement floor, punched him, stomped him, and beat him with a broomstick, leaving him in a pool of blood. Then they made leisurely return trips, carrying the heaviest things they could find, like a microwave oven, to smash down repeatedly on his face.

It went on and on like this, recorded in a sickening video. They heaved everything they could at his head, including an industrial mop bucket, drenching him with bleach. And all the while, as they strolled around, without rushing, Boyd lay helpless, his head pinned against the floor, his arms jerking aimlessly.

Boyd never should have been in this unit, exposed to this danger. He had a well-documented history of schizophrenia that was ignored, through negligence or malice, his family’s lawyer, Brooke Barnett, says. And within 10 minutes of being wrongly placed in what she calls “a designated gang unit,” he was beaten into a coma. When you put somebody with paranoid, aggressive delusions in with a bunch of violent gangsters – some of whom were already facing murder charges – what do you expect will happen?

“This is a case of failure to protect,” says Barnett, who counts this among the worst jail assaults she’s ever seen.

Then, while Boyd’s family kept vigil at his hospital bed, the surveillance video went viral on social media. “I couldn’t even finish watching,” his father, Shawn Bouknight, told us. “It was too extreme.”

The incident is now under investigation, but this much is clear: Our treatment of people with mental illness in jails leaves them vulnerable to this kind of barbarity. This case makes that fact impossible to ignore any longer. We need to learn the lessons.

“At the end of the day, these are human beings, these are pretrial detainees,” as Barnett says. It’s a measure of our humanity that we try to do a better job to protect them.

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This was no quick shanking in a food line — what’s so disturbing is how brazen and casual the attack was. And the two minute and 12 second video does not show anyone responding. So how long did it take for corrections officers and medical help to get there?

And what was Boyd doing in this population, despite his clear record of schizophrenia?

He entered the jail on Sept. 9th, did his mandatory quarantine, and was placed directly into that unit, Barnett says — even though she argues evidence shows the jail should have known better.

Boyd was previously imprisoned at Essex County jail in May, and during that time, he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital for delusions and violent outbursts. He remained hospitalized for more than month.

When he was returned to Essex County jail, Barnett says, he was placed on “close watch status,” and mental health staff recorded concerns about his mood instability and potential for agitation and aggression.

They monitored him until he was last released on June 23rd. So the jail’s “deliberate indifference” to his needs upon his readmission to their facility in September was “inexcusable,” she argues.

Jail officials “entered several falsehoods on Jayshawn’s psychiatric intake questionnaire, denying that he had ever undergone psychiatric treatment or that he had a history of aggressive behavior, labeling him a ‘low’ mental health priority,” her law firm said in a statement.

“We contend that everything about this attack, including a complete lack of transparency in its wake, hints at a much larger storm of failures, arising from motives ranging from gross negligence to active malice.”

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About 42 percent of Essex jail’s population has mental health issues and we still need the facts of this probe, being conducted by the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office. The jail’s defense is that they meet national standards in staffing their facility.

Jim McGreevey, chairman of the civilian oversight board at Essex County Jail, says the response followed protocol: “Almost immediately, within minutes, the initial response team entered, the room was secured, and a medical response team arrived on the scene.”

Maybe. But just because something is standard doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. We cannot be satisfied with a system that allows inmates to casually stomp someone into oblivion without an effective response at the ready.

And is this beating unusual? How many other people who are suffering terrible mental illnesses are being abused by other prisoners? Barnett says she hears weekly reports of violence at Essex County Jail, from inmates and guards complaining about the conditions.

The county investigation is welcome, but it’s not enough. The new U.S. Attorney, Philip Sellinger, commands the resources and the skilled staff to take the hard look this case deserves. This should be one of his first moves. It seems like a serious civil rights violation.

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Boyd’s father says Essex County Jail never even told the family what happened to him. His son felt unsafe and had been calling home daily, but after his mother didn’t hear from him for a couple days, she worriedly called the jail, which told her only that he wasn’t there. The family was left hanging.

She then called various hospitals to search for him, and ultimately found him in a coma at University Hospital in Newark. It was three days after the attack when the jail finally told them what happened. And they only learned about the surveillance video when a family friend later mentioned it.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the friend texted Boyd’s father after viewing the footage on social media, assuming his son was dead.

Boyd, who fell into the grips of mental illness a few years ago, had been in and out of jail for resulting offenses like property damage and domestic disputes, Barnett said. The family would call police to come make sure he was all right because he could lose self-control during arguments with his siblings or mother, his father explains. But instead of referring him to treatment, police always locked him up.

“We’d call them to help, and they would never end up helping him,” Bouknight said.

Most recently, Boyd was charged in two such incidents in 2020 with his family, including one in which he wielded a kitchen knife. In May, he was transferred from the Essex County jail to Ann Klein Forensic Center, the psychiatric hospital in Trenton. He was likely to get probation, but failed to appear at his sentencing, according to Barnett. He didn’t trust the system or his lawyer, his father says, attributing that to his illness.

Boyd later turned himself in and was sent back to Essex County jail. His family is still struggling to understand what happened next.

“This type of stuff shouldn’t happen to nobody,” his father said. “The worst people in the world don’t deserve this type of treatment – and he’s far from that.”

Time for an outside investigation with full transparency – one that also explores staffing and mental health policies at this jail. Vulnerable people like Boyd can’t be left to fend for themselves.

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