Though Keirstyn was within the throes of a psychiatric episode, she was handled like a felony for lashing out.
The officer swiftly positioned Keirstyn in handcuffs and arrested her on a cost of felony assault on a legislation enforcement agent, alleging that she spat on him in the course of the wrestle. Keirstyn remained in Broward County Sheriff’s Office (BSO) custody over the following 4 months and continued to behave constant together with her documented sicknesses, at occasions resisting jail workers and expressing suicidal ideation.
On October 6, a Broward decide deemed her too mentally unwell to face trial.
Every week later, whereas within the psychological well being unit of BSO’s North Broward Detention Center, Keirstyn reportedly lower materials from her pants and used it to hold herself from the body of her cell bunk. A jail employee discovered her unresponsive in her room, and she or he was pronounced useless 13 minutes later, at 2:30 pm on October 13, 4 days shy of her twenty third birthday.
Keirstyn’s father Jason Bucy and Broward County’s lead public defender Gordon Weekes now allege Broward jails have exhibited a sample of callousness when coping with inmates who’ve psychological well being circumstances.
“Ms. Bucy’s unfortunate death illustrates yet another failure of the mental health system in Broward County,” Weekes wrote in an October 26 letter (attached below) to Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony and Hollywood Police chief Chris O’Brien. “She was arrested because she was sick, and she ultimately died because the system designed to protect her failed.”
Weekes noted that at the time of her arrest, Keirstyn was under involuntary commitment pursuant to the Baker Act, a law that allows people to be detained in a mental health facility against their will for up to 72 hours if they are deemed to be a threat to themselves or others. Weekes questioned why the Hollywood Police Department removed a patient under treatment from the hospital, “the place best equipped” to deal with her illness.
“It is incomprehensible to believe that law enforcement professionals could not distinguish between a manifestation of an acute mental health episode that took place in a mental health facility from criminal behavior,” Weekes writes, describing Keirstyn’s death as “strikingly avoidable.”
Once she was transported to the jail, Keirstyn should have remained under close supervision in light of her severe psychiatric disease and her longstanding history of self-harm and suicide attempts, Weekes says.
His letter demands that BSO review its policies regarding monitoring mentally ill and suicidal detainees.
Keirstyn had a deep appreciation for music and loved playing as a percussionist.
Photo provided by Jason Bucy
BSO did not respond to questions about the jail’s mental health or suicide watch policies. In an email to New Times on October 26, spokesperson Carey Codd wrote that a BSO internal affairs unit is reviewing the incident. The sheriff’s office denied that Keirstyn was under active suicide watch when she took her life.
Keirstyn’s father is calling on the sheriff’s office to make “significant changes” in the way it treats mentally ill inmates.
“First of all, if you’ve got cameras, why aren’t you watching the damn camera?” Jason Bucy asks in an interview with New Times. “They would have seen her cutting her pants… They could have stopped it before it even started.”
According to Weekes, the 22-year-old’s suicide was part of a systemic failure of mental health protocols in Broward jails. In the past year and a half alone, Weekes has sent several letters to Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony regarding deaths and injuries among people with psychiatric disorders in his facilities.
In January 2021, Weekes wrote to Tony about a 43-year-old man in custody with a history of psychiatric issues who was allegedly pepper sprayed in the face and tasered into submission by an officer during a mental health crisis. The man sustained an irreversible brain injury and was left in a vegetative state.
Months later, in August 2021, Weekes contacted the sheriff about a July incident in which a deputy was accused of pouring bleach and other chemical substances into a man’s cell in retaliation for spitting in his face. The man, who had a history of mental illness, was taken to the hospital in “grave condition,” the general public defender stated.
Then, in December 2021, the general public defender referred to as consideration to the case of a 44-year-old man who allegedly tried suicide below jail workers’s care and died in a hospital a number of days later. In one other letter to the sheriff, Weekes stated that the person’s demise mirrored a “disturbing trend” in Broward detention facilities and marked not less than the third unnatural, seemingly preventable inmate demise in BSO jail amenities in 2021.
Other incidents embody an inmate who lower his penis off after being left unsupervised in isolation in September 2018, the general public defender says. According to Weekes, a 17-year-old affected by a psychiatric dysfunction dedicated suicide in BSO custody the next 12 months.
“At some time limit, we have to forged the sunshine of transparency… and begin holding of us accountable,” Weekes tells New Times.
Screenshot of Keirstyn Bucy through Facebook
Jason Bucy remembers his daughter as a vibrant lady who may play the drums earlier than she may stroll.
Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Keirstyn had open coronary heart surgical procedure at 5 days outdated to deal with a congenital coronary heart defect, and she or he was placed on a laundry checklist of medicines at delivery. She confronted medical hardships in early childhood, however got here out with an indomitable spirit.
“She wasn’t afraid of something,” Bucy remembers with fun.
Bucy says that as an toddler, Keirstyn would crawl on him and play on one of many many drum units scattered round their home on the time.
“When she was in the sixth grade, I had an opportunity to teach her with the winter percussion line,” Bucy says. “That kid would be so meticulous in her part, she’d play five measures over and over and over until she got it perfect.”
As Keirstyn grew older, her father started to note some issues had been totally different about her in comparison with different children. Aside from being extra torpid than others, she took specific delight in lining up her toys and sorting them by coloration. When she was sufficiently old, she all the time ensured her bookshelf was completely organized. Keirstyn additionally displayed behavioral points, together with sudden outbursts and an incapability to grasp penalties at occasions.
Still, the daddy remembers Keirstyn embraced her love for music –– and was very specific about it. She finally went on to play every thing from marimba to vibraphones to the bells in class bands.
And she liked to journey horses, fish, and hunt together with her dad.
At 12, Keirstyn was recognized with high-functioning autism, Bucy says. Doctors later decided that she additionally had borderline character dysfunction and bipolar dysfunction, amongst different diagnoses.
When she was 15, Keirstyn moved from Indiana, the place she lived together with her mother, to North Florida to remain full time together with her father. Within the primary few months, Bucy says Keirstyn started to undergo cycles of “excessive highs” and “low lows.” She would go from being a happy-go-lucky lady to reducing herself within the rest room at college, her father says.
Keirstyn was subjected to Baker Act proceedings dozens of occasions within the subsequent years, Bucy remembers. He admits he would typically beg psychological well being amenities to maintain his daughter of their care as a result of he believed she was safer there.
“She could be extremely indignant and hostile and would lash out for a few weeks, after which, in the future, it will be just like the swap was flipped: ‘I like you Daddy. I’m sorry. I’m getting higher,'” Bucy says.
At 18, Bucy says, Keirstyn dropped out of faculty and left house. She remained homeless for a lot of her quick grownup life, whereas nonetheless protecting involved together with her father now and again. Court information checklist her most up-to-date tackle as “at giant.”
After she was arrested in June, she rang her father up from behind bars.
“My little lady referred to as me and requested me to bail her out of jail, and I stated no… I stated you are within the most secure place you could be,” Bucy remembers.