Lawton County Jails Inhumane Protocol

‘’Ms. Taylor, put your hands behind your back”, was a phrase I had been so proud of my whole life not hearing. I found myself getting arrested this past week for the first time. I am a 38-year-old journalist. Usually most assumed I had gotten arrested for some astonishing abolitionist mission, but that was not the case. I was booked in on a “Domestic Violence” misdemeanor after a heated argument with my father's third personality “Tom Kat”. My father, “Free Thomas Landreth”, as most know him, had just finished serving a total of 32 years in various Oklahoma prisons. He came out of prison with a mixture of health problems, both physical and mental, with Schizophrenia being the biggest mental health hurdle he has reentering society after serving so much time in prison. Approximately 84.21% of my life my father was incarcerated. I wore my accomplishment in my journey of never being arrested like a badge of honor, especially coming from Oklahoma.

Oklahoma incarcerates more women and children every year than any other state in the United States, and some years we make #1 on the list of incarcerating more women and children than anyone else in the world. For four generations, I was the first person on my dad's side of the family to have never spent a night in jail. I broke that generational curse relief streak serving six days in the Lawton Oklahoma County jail. My initial arrival at the Lawton city jail was around 9 am, I was taken to Comanche County Hospital before my first jail introduction. The officer who handcuffed me jerked and twisted my right arm where I had a previous injury that affected the first, second, and third vertebrae in my upper neck. It left me completely numb on my right side. A Lawton Police Department transportation officer sat outside the door of my hospital room guarding my every move as if I was a top priority inmate.

I was greeted by an emergency room nurse who was very polite. My assigned nurse would not have the same humanity as my check-in nurse did, I found out very quickly that patients brought in by law enforcement would not be treated the same as civilian patients treated at Comanche county hospital. I remember the way the ER doctor, DR. Jernigan, spoke to me as if I was in the middle of executing some strategic plan worked out in my head to escape police custody and ditch my days in jail. I remember specifically the ER nurse I was stuck with smiling in such an evil manner when the transportation officer cuffed me for my ride to jail after being told I had degenerate disc disease vs the documented known injury I did have, left me checked out as “ok to be detained”, that smile will be what I remember every time I am chosen to be a voice for the voiceless. That nurse's smug evil smile will be burned in my brain every time my boots hit the ground in the name of justice.

I will remember one officer for life in a positive light, Officer Phillis. She was an older black lady in her third week on the job. She had come to check on me right around the time I started seeing signs in my body of dehydration from not having water for so long in solitary confinement. I describe her in this manner because, in my 38 years of life, black women have always popped up in my life like angels to be a comfort so I can make it another day. Just like she would. I was crying, being self-righteous. I thought of all the people I had helped, and no one had called to look for me, it had been three days, and I didn’t know at that point I was not booked in so no one could bond me out. I thought all my people left me, even God. Ms. Phillis said. ‘’I don’t care if we are not supposed to pass messages, your family has been calling for you, we just are not allowed to tell you.” That small act of kindness made me put my chin up, calm down, and focus on how I could make anyone hear me and that I needed help.

The moment I was brought into jail, which would be a milestone memory in my life, I instantly went into journalism mode. For every person I passed that was detained I introduced myself as an ally and a point of contact if they ever wanted their story told outside the walls once I got free. That announcement of my innocent ignorance of the power police officers have would leave me sitting in my blood for three-plus days, in solitary confinement without a working toilet or running water. I had no idea what a police station's booking process was, so I just assumed that once I was taken to a cell, I was officially a booked inmate. I later learned that I had not been booked, I was documented as “refusing to be booked”. This left me without my one phone call or any of my family members including my kids knowing where I was. I later learned that you cannot get a jail-issued code to the facility's phone without a booking and jacket number, and I was not booked until my second to last day in jail.

While in solitary confinement I could hear women and men talking through vents and toilets, yes, the plumbing system is often used as a form of communication just like in the movies that part is real. But The sounds that will forever haunt my heart mind and soul are the cries of a woman begging for LPD to give her daughter her medication. These cries for help turned into begging by the second day then into despair by 48 hours until the cries were gone. I did not know until day 5 after finally being booked and taken to a general population cell on the third floor of the Lawton Oklahoma County jail that those cries were from a woman booked the same day as me with her daughter. Her daughter, Tshante GoingSnake Gonzalez would take her last breath in that jail, but her name would not be silenced, the moment I made it to a pod every woman in that cell was her voice. ‘’The 2nd shift officers left her in her feces and blood for two days, it broke our heart”, inmate Unique Owens reported. “Her mom kept trying to get them to understand she was not withdrawing from a drug, she had lupus and needed her medication”, Ms. Owens continued to say. Inmate “Beth” followed Unique's testimony to me, the only person that would hear these lady's accounts of the days before Tshante would take her last breath until now, Beth added,” In here you are treated guilty before trial, as an addict before you ever try drugs, and crazy before your story is ever told”. “They let her die and until she was coding not one officer even thought about rendering help even though help was asked for hundreds of times”, Beth ended.

Silly me, this whole time I thought I had been put in jail to overcome the past traumas my father being in prison my whole life had in my life and currently still affecting me, not until I got to pod three did I understand that this experience was not for me at all, it was meant for me to be present in the Lawton city jail on May 8th, 2023 for the sole reason of reporting to the public the tragic, preventable, painful death Lawton Oklahoma resident Tshante GoingSnake Gonzales endured while being detained by Lawton Police Department. Jail Administrators reported yesterday that Ms. Gonzalas was booked on May 3rd around 7 pm. They also reported that Ms. Gonzolas requested medical attention from the male nurse working 2nd shift one time during her stay at the Lawton County jail. Inmates in pod three report Tshante and her mother both requesting medical over 10 times. Ms. GoingSnake Gonzales only made it out of the Lawton Oklahoma County jail after she stopped breathing. Ms. Gonzales was arrested for aggravated trafficking reported by the jail administration.

The rumor going around the jailers was that Ms. Gonzalas had overdosed. Some guards snickered at the death others were silent. Inmate Unique Owens asked during our interview, “If that lady was overdosing, why did they not take her out after she became unresponsive? Why would that make a difference? But she was not overdosing, her mom kept saying she needed her lupus medication”. If jail officials did leave Ms. Goingsnake in a cell for two days because they assumed she was withdrawing, or overdosing, that would not be a reason to not send her out to the local hospital. That should be an emergency mandatory reason to send her out. If it is proven that is how the Lawton Oklahoma jail employees handled Tshante GoingSnake Gonzalas’s long painful death could each person working, there for that period of 5 days be investigated for criminal charges?

The biggest lesson I learned while I endured my first experience with jail during my stay at the Lawton Oklahoma County Jail was, red, yellow, black, or white, if poverty or addiction is present you are treated like a convicted criminal the moment you put that orange jumpsuit on. I didn’t realize how much the clicking uncomfortable, tightening feeling of those handcuffs on while getting arrested for the first time would turn into an uncomfortable tightness in my soul to be a voice for Tshante Gonzalas and for every person who has been left and disregarded by Lawton County Jail officials until the day I got to pod three. Now I know that uncomfortable will be my fighting force to be a voice for any who needs me.