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Deputies suspended after jail suicide
Report: Suicide of Kevin Burkey
Document
A report from the Mahoning County Sheriff's Office regarding the incidents surrounding the suicide of Kevin Burkey, inmate no. 8757, at the Mahoning County Jail.
YOUNGSTOWN
Two Mahoning County deputies have been suspended for improperly leaving their posts for breaks on the day a county jail inmate committed suicide.
The suspensions, one for 40 hours and the other for 300 hours, are unpaid and effective immediately, said Sheriff Jerry Greene.
Deputy Nicholas Argeras admitted going on break without first checking whether Deputy Tyler Peters would be on break at the same time, according to an internal affairs report from Cmdr. John Antonucci, which was released Monday.
Inmate Kevin P. Burkey, 50, of Lowellville, died by hanging in his cell Aug. 25 after having been jailed on a charge of theft of dangerous drugs from St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital.
Argeras is serving the 40-hour suspension.
Peters admitted leaving his post for a break without being properly relieved.
Peters also admitted he failed to visually check inmates in his pod and submitted to booking a midday head count, which was not obtained from an actual physical head count.
Peters is serving the 300-hour suspension.
The sheriff said the deputies accepted the suspensions he imposed on them without challenging them. The Fraternal Order of Police also agreed on the suspension durations.
Although Argeras and Peters violated departmental policy, Greene said he believes the outcome would have been the same had the deputies properly performed their duties because the suicide was “so instantaneous” that it would have taken only a few minutes to complete.
Inmates in the general jail population, where Burkey was housed, are to be checked on twice an hour under Mahoning County policy. State policy calls for hourly checks.
Burkey was not on suicide watch, where he would have been under constant video surveillance and checked every 10 minutes, the sheriff said.
“Peters got the longer suspension because he did not make the rounds that he was supposed to make per our policy, and he neglected to do two head counts,” the sheriff said.
“Dishonesty was part of it as well,” the sheriff said of the greater penalty for Peters.
However, the sheriff said Peters likely would have won his job back through arbitration had he been fired.
“You have to do a head count before you release the inmates [from lockdown] after you come back from lunch,” he said, adding that Peters didn’t do that.
Two minutes after Peters ended the lockdown at 1 p.m., an inmate informed him that Burkey was lying on his cell floor, according to Antonucci’s report.
Peters found Burkey with a white sheet tied around his neck, with the other end of the sheet tied to his cell desk stool.
Burkey was last seen alive at 11:40 a.m., the sheriff said.
Burkey never told jail personnel he was suicidal, the sheriff said.
However, Antonucci’s report said Burkey told a sheriff’s deputy on the day he died that he needed to talk with a psychiatrist, but didn’t explain why, except to say that nobody knew what he was going through.
The hospital police officer, who brought Burkey to jail Aug. 23, but was not the arresting officer, did not tell the booking deputy about Burkey’s earlier suicidal behavior at the hospital, the sheriff said.
After Burkey was treated for a motor vehicle accident injury in the hospital emergency department, police were called to the top of the hospital’s Park Avenue parking deck in reference to a possibly suicidal man.
There, Burkey complained to police that the emergency department would not treat him for his pain.
A hospital police officer said he ordered Burkey to step away from the parking deck ledge for his own safety and ordered him to drop the medication vials in his hands.
After returning Burkey to the emergency department, hospital police charged him with stealing anesthetic drugs from the hospital lab and took him to jail.
A hospital spokeswoman declined to comment, except to say that the hospital has fully cooperated with the sheriff’s office investigation.
Peters, who has been with the sheriff’s office eight years, has one prior minor disciplinary infraction.
Argeras, who has been with the sheriff’s office less than a year, has had no prior discipline.