The family of a woman who died last year at Sky Harbor International Airport while in police custody has filed $8 million wrongful death claim against the city of Phoenix and the police department. This is the first step taken before a wrongful death suit is filed.
The Arrest
Forty-five year old wife, and mother of three, Carol Gotbaum was traveling from New York to Tucson to enter an alcohol rehabilitation facility when she missed her connecting flight in Phoenix. When gate attendants were unable to seat Gotbaum on another flight, she became angry, allegedly throwing a hand-held PDA, which narrowly missed another person. She stormed off, but police were summoned. Surveillance video shows Gotbaum struggling with officers as they tried to arrest her and then escorting her to a holding cell. The footage shows Gotbaum handcuffed and apparently screaming as she is lead off.
Detainee Privacy and Police Policy
The surveillance video of Gotbaum’s arrest is the last footage of her alive. Because there are no cameras placed in holding cells to allegedly respect the privacy of detainees, it is unclear exactly what happened next. Police contend that Gotbaum was placed in a holding cell, searched, and shackled to a bench with her hands still cuffed behind her back while she was still screaming.
It is police policy to check on detainees every fifteen minutes when they are left alone. An initial police report states that sometime in those first fifteen minutes after they left her alone, Gotbaum somehow worked the cuffs to the front of her body and “pulled the chain from the shackle across her neck area” and subsequently choked herself. It is believed she was trying to escape custody. Authorities tried to revive her, but Gotbaum was pronounced dead when firefighters arrived. An autopsy showed that Gotbaum had a blood alcohol content three times Arizona’s legal limit, as well as prescription drugs in her system when she died. The medical examiner ruled her death an accidental hanging.
Wrongful Death Claim
The claim Gotbaum’s family filed accuses the police of “excessive and unreasonable force” and handling an obviously disturbed person’s arrest poorly. It states further that Gotbaum was treated in a manner akin to that of a “dangerous criminal, rather than as [the] sick, intoxicated and vulnerable person she was,” and that “she had no weapon and never threatened anyone.”
Phoenix city attorneys claim that, not only did police act in a proper manner while restraining Gotbaum, but that, had she not hid her mental and medical condition, something her family has admitted publicly, the results might well have been different. They say police “responded exactly the way her husband knew they would respond because they did not have critical information known only to the Gotbaum family.”
While it seems reasonable to want to protect detainee privacy in holding rooms, if nothing more than to have them cool down, having cameras in the room in this case would show definitively just how Carol Gotbaum died. However, the manner in which Gotbaum died is only part of the story here.
Had the police known exactly what Gotbaum’s situation was, rather than believing she was just some drunk woman throwing a temper tantrum, maybe they would have handled her differently. The claim states the police failed to follow its own procedures in how they handle disturbed people, but how are these types of people handled? Should the police have checked on her every five minutes? And, had the police treated Gotbaum differently, would she have made it to Tucson to get treatment for her illness that, admittedly, plays a huge role in this story?
If you have lost a loved one and believe their death is the result of someone else’s negligence, please contact an experienced injury lawyer in your area.
