It had to do with midnight in June 2022 when law enforcement officers appeared at Angela Collier’s door and informed her that somebody anonymously asked for a well-being check due to the fact that they believed she may have had a miscarriage.
Standing in front of the concrete actions of her home in Midway, Texas, Collier, at first barefoot and using a saggy gray T-shirt, informed officers she prepared to see a medical professional in the early morning due to the fact that she had actually been bleeding.
Cops body cam video footage gotten by KFF Health News through an open records demand reveals that the officers then informed Collier– who was 29 at the time and registered in online classes to study psychology– to reverse.
Rather of taking her to get treatment, they handcuffed and jailed her due to the fact that she had impressive warrants in a surrounding county for stopping working to appear in court to deal with misdemeanor drug charges 3 weeks previously. She had actually missed out on that court date, medical records reveal, due to the fact that she was at a medical facility getting treatment for pregnancy issues.
Regardless of her signs and having to do with 13 weeks pregnant, Collier invested the next day and a half in the Walker County Jail, about 80 miles north of Houston. She stated her bleeding aggravated there and she asked consistently for medical attention that she didn’t get, according to a protest she submitted with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.
“There wasn’t anything I might do,” she stated, however “simply lay there and be terrified and not understand what was going to occur.”
Collier’s experience highlights the minimal oversight and lack of federal requirements for reproductive take care of pregnant females in the criminal justice system. Jailed individuals have a constitutional right to healthcare, yet just a half-dozen states have actually passed laws ensuring access to prenatal or postpartum treatment for individuals in custody, according to an evaluation of reproductive healthcare legislation for incarcerated individuals by a research study group at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. And now abortion limitations may be putting care even more out of reach.
Collier’s arrest was “stunning and troubling” since officers “blithely” took her to prison in spite of her miscarriage issues, stated Wanda Bertram, a representative for the Prison Policy Initiative, a not-for-profit company that studies imprisonment. Bertram evaluated the body camera video footage and Collier’s problem.
“Police jail individuals who remain in medical emergency situations all the time,” she stated. “And they do that despite the truth that the prison is typically not geared up to look after those individuals in the method an emergency clinic may be.”
Rather of taking Collier to get healthcare when they came to her home for a health check, authorities handcuffed and jailed her due to the fact that she had exceptional warrants in a surrounding county for stopping working to appear in court to deal with misdemeanor drug charges 3 weeks previously.(Screen grab of body electronic camera video from the Madison County Sheriff’s Office)
After a decrease throughout the very first year of the pandemic,