Deputies made jokes about a veteran thrashing in his cell before he died

Two years ago, a man died of an apparent drug overdose after being held at the Clackamas County Jail in Oregon City, Oregon.

This week, video emerged in which sheriff’s deputies could be heard laughing as the man thrashed uncontrollably in a padded cell before he died. They joked that he could be used as a cautionary example to warn students about the dangers of drugs.

“Should we just take him and put him in front of the classroom?” asked one of the officials.

“If you could just wheel him in a cage and wheel him back out,” said another.

“Look what I brought for show and tell today,” one deputy said while laughing.

The one holding the cellphone could be heard saying: “I wish we could show this to his girlfriend like, ‘You love this?'”

The man, Bryan Perry, 31, was a U.S. Army veteran who had earned a Purple Heart, according to a lawsuit filed this week by his mother, Brenda Nordenstrom. The lawsuit accused Clackamas County sheriff’s deputies and the jail’s medical provider, Corizon Health, of failing to deliver prompt medical care or to take Perry to the hospital in time, ultimately leading to his death.

Police reports show that Perry was arrested on Nov. 3, 2016, on a warrant and was cooperative as he was being booked, although he had trouble controlling his movements.

He was then taken to a high-security padded cell. County officials and medical workers checked on Perry periodically during the night, and deputies observed that he was thrashing in a way that suggested he had recently taken methamphetamines, according to jail incident reports released by the sheriff’s office.

One deputy reported that Perry said he had taken “bath salts, heroin and meth.”

The reports indicate that Perry’s girlfriend was also taken to the jail and later to the hospital on Nov. 3, 2016, and that she exhibited similar symptoms and was found to have drugs in her system.

The video was recorded by one of several deputies who, at one point, stood outside of the cell looking in as Perry moaned, yelled, flailed his limbs and somersaulted off his padded bed.

The incident reports indicate that nurses and officials gave Perry water, monitored his vital signs and administered CPR after he became unresponsive. Some time after the video was recorded, Perry was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. It was not immediately clear how much time elapsed from when the cellphone video was recorded to when authorities took him to the hospital.

A preliminary, post-mortem drug screen indicated “levels of amphetamine, methamphetamine and THC,” according to the reports.

“I cannot comment on the pending lawsuit, which focuses primarily on Mr. Perry’s medical care provided by the Jail medical contractor,” Sheriff Craig Roberts said in a statement Thursday. “But I will say this: The laughter, substance, and tone of several comments heard from my employees in that video were inappropriate, and do not conform to our professional standards.”

He said the deputy who took the cellphone video had resigned, and that his office had conducted an investigation and disciplined the employees involved who still worked there. It was not clear how many employees were disciplined and in what ways.

Scott Ciecko, a lawyer representing the county, said “the inappropriate statements made by deputies in the cellphone video are not representative of the level of compassion or care that was provided to Mr. Perry, nor are such statements representative of the values of the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office.”

In a statement, Corizon Health said that “due to patient privacy and active litigation, we are unable to comment on this individual case, but we believe it is important to note that Corizon employees were not involved in videotaping Mr. Perry and the comments on the tape are not those of any Corizon Health employee.”

Nordenstrom did not respond to a request for comment.

According to an obituary, Perry planned to become a welder. He spent his 18th birthday serving as a gunner in an infantry unit of the Army during Operation Iraqi Freedom before he was injured in September 2003, honorably discharged and awarded the Purple Heart.

“He wanted to be a father and spent his last few days on this planet very much in love,” the obituary said. “His tragic death will impact all those who loved him so much.”