The Nisqually tribe’s jail is again under scrutiny after a 43-year-old Lacey man, arrested on suspicion of shoplifting, spent 19 days in custody and suffered a stroke, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Tacoma.
The civil rights lawsuit was filed Friday by Olympia attorney Jackson Millikan on behalf of his client Kevin Michael Bell. It seeks unspecified damages, although Millikan previously filed a tort claim in federal court seeking $12 million. He also has filed that claim with the city of Lacey, according to the suit.
“Mr. Bell entered (the jail) on his feet, left in an ambulance and has been wheelchair-bound ever since,” the suit reads.
Bell receives care in an Olympia-based, Medicaid-funded nursing home, Millikan said Tuesday.
In addition to the Nisqually tribe and tribal officials, the city of Lacey and Lacey officials are named as defendants because the city had a contract with the tribe to house misdemeanor offenders in the Nisqually jail from 2014 to 2016.
That contract is still in place. Bell was booked into the jail in 2016.
City of Lacey attorney Dave Schneider said it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment on a lawsuit he has yet to see.
The Nisqually tribe did not respond to request for comment.
This isn’t the first time the jail has been the focus of a lawsuit.
In 2017, The Olympian reported that 19-year-old Andrew J. Westling died in his cell April 12, about 24 hours after his arrest for causing a disturbance at a Yelm service station. Westling suffered from a heart condition and had notified jail staff about it, but he didn’t receive proper medical attention, the lawsuit alleged.
In that case, Westling’s attorney sued the city of Yelm. The city later settled the case for $375,000; the Nisqually tribe paid an undisclosed amount.
Westling’s attorney also sought to challenge the legality of Yelm’s contract with a jail that’s located on sovereign tribal land, The Olympian reported. That sovereignty means the tribe is not subject to public records disclosure, and it was unclear whether Nisqually Jail staff had complied with proper training and regulations as required by counties and cities, according to The Olympian.
Millikan has similar concerns and seeks the “permanent restraining of incarceration of American citizens into sovereign nations.”
