By Lise Olsen
Houston Chronicle
HOUSTON — A former Harris County jail inmate has sued the county in federal court, one month after a surveillance video captured three jailers breaking his nose and fracturing the bone around his eye socket on Sept. 4.
Jerome Bartee Jr., a 28-year-old Houston father of three, had been locked up only a day after being arrested on a felony drug and a felony gun possession charge when the lawsuit claims he requested treatment for a “severe” toothache and instead received a pummeling.
The jail’s newly installed, $5 million high-definition video cameras captured the incident, but the Harris County sheriff’s department has refused to release its video to the public.
The lawsuit claims the video shows three people beating Bartee, and another seven Harris County employees “engaging in, encouraging or supporting the county-sponsored mob violence.” The lawsuit adds that at the end of the beating, one employee looked up at the surveillance camera and attempted to have another employee turn it off.
After the beating, Bartee lay in a “pool of his own blood” and suffered nasal bone fractures, a left orbital floor blowout fracture, cuts and bruises and a head injury, the lawsuit alleges. Bartee later underwent surgery to repair the fractures on both sides of his nose and have a metal plate implanted to repair his eye socket, the lawsuit said. He is seeking damages for his injuries and for the county’s failure to protect him from excessive force.
Harris County sheriff’s officials did not immediately comment on the federal civil lawsuit. But in a press conference in September, Sheriff Ron Hickman publicly addressed concerns raised by Bartee’s family and announced that he had suspended three detention officers with pay in connection with the beating.
“We feel that that part of it was not done properly,” Hickman said at that time. “We feel there was punching involved that was not necessary.”
Hickman also confirmed that the jail’s camera equipment provided him with the information he needed to find that “unnecessary” force was used.
Bartee v. Harris County Lawsuit by Lise Olsen on Scribd
The Harris County sheriff’s office so far also has refused to provide a copy of the video even to Bartee’s civil attorneys.
“We would like the county to release the video so that everyone can see ... just what happened to Mr. Bartee. He’s entitled to have that. There’s no reason to keep secret the video,” said Don Kidd, Bartee’s civil attorney.
Harris County Court records show that Bartee also was criminally charged with assault of a public servant for causing bodily injury to a guard on Sept. 4 - the day of the videotaped beating - by striking a county employee “with his hand"during medical screening. But that charge was dropped Sept. 8 because of “insufficient evidence,” records show. Bartee’s criminal defense attorney did receive a copy of the video, but under a protective order.
The lawsuit claimed that the violent incident began when one guard pushed Bartee into a door in the clinic hallway. After Bartee reacted verbally, that guard and two others “began to inflict an unnecessary and excessive physical beat-down of Bartee in the hallway of the jail’s clinic.”
Hickman has been sheriff since May 2015.
The Harris County jail has been under Department of Justice monitoring since 2009 because of continuing reports of excessive use of force and deaths in one of the nation’s largest local jails.
Bartee also separately filed a complaint to the civil rights division of the Harris County District Attorney’s office and that complaint remains under investigation, his attorney said.