![]() Walker County Sheriff Nick Smith is interviewed by a reporter with ABC 33/40, a Birmingham, Alabama-based television station, on a broadcast that aired in March. With so many people addicted to illegal drugs in Walker County, the power of the sheriff’s office and threat of arrest loom large. It gives people a list of treatment resources when they’re released, he said, and has doubled medical supervision in the jail from eight to 16 hours a day.ĭrug possession and distribution, Smith said, are crimes he’s tasked with enforcing. Smith also said that his office helps people with addiction. He has deployed resources to boost the number of narcotics officers from two to five, and his staff has made about 2,500 drug arrests to date, Smith told KFF Health News. He also touted his drug arrests in a paid political announcement published in 2021 in the Daily Mountain Eagle, a newspaper in Jasper. Walker County Sheriff Nick Smith, first elected in 2018, campaigned to keep his job in last year’s election, in which he was unopposed, by saying he’d “confronted the drug epidemic head on” by “taking criminals off the streets and putting them in jail where they belong.” Over time, people moved on to illicit drugs. The county was among the communities that pharmaceutical companies flooded with millions of pain pills in the 2000s. Walker County, nestled in northwestern Alabama’s Appalachian foothills and dotted with coal mines, has one of the nation’s highest nonfatal overdose rates. Subscribe to KFF Health News' free Morning Briefing.Ĭrime and Punishment: ‘People Are Scared to Say “I Need Help”’ His death has sparked a debate in Walker County about the treatment by law enforcement of people with addiction and mental illness. In jail, Mitchell was “denied access to medical treatment,” the suit said, citing video footage from the jail, and he died in custody. On Facebook, the sheriff’s office posted that “Mitchell brandished a handgun” and, from the scene, a deputy published a photo of his arrest, the suit said. Mitchell had “spiraled into worsening drug addiction,” the lawsuit said, and his cousin called 911 to send an ambulance to his home because Mitchell “appeared to be having a mental breakdown.” Instead, sheriff’s deputies arrived and then a SWAT team, the lawsuit said. In January, Anthony Mitchell, 33, allegedly froze to death after spending 14 days in the tank, according to a federal lawsuit his family filed in February against Sheriff Nick Smith, his deputies, and other jail employees. Anthony Mitchell, who would later die in the custody of the Walker County Sheriff’s Office, is shown in a photo provided by his family. More than 5,000 people were arrested in Alabama on drug charges in 2021, and more than 90% of those were for possessing drugs rather than selling them, according to state data.ĭunn survived her stay in a holding cell in Walker County’s jail that’s known, she said, as the “drunk tank,” a concrete room that lacks water, a bed, or a toilet. ![]() That’s especially true in Alabama, which has some of the toughest drug laws in the country. jails and are often left to endure withdrawal in concrete cells rather than in medical facilities. “I was literally praying to God to end me,” Dunn said about the pain and despair she felt. And each time, Dunn said, she was forced into drug withdrawal in her cell without medical care. She said she has had more than 30 stays in Walker County’s jail, a brick building in downtown Jasper. Eventually, she said, she was arrested on charges related to her illicit drug use, such as trespassing. Shortly after the baby’s death, Dunn said, she started using pain pills again. “From then on, I went into this, like, PTSD, depression,” said Dunn, now 28. Six weeks later, Dunn said, he died of sudden infant death syndrome. It can be republished for free.Īfter dropping out of high school, she gave birth at age 19 to a son she named Preston.
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