Jail guard who alleged coverup in death of inmate settles lawsuit with Jackson County
A jail guard who exposed an alleged coverup surrounding the death of an inmate three years ago at the Jackson County Detention Center has reached a settlement in his racial discrimination lawsuit against the county.
The county legislature on Monday agreed to pay Charles Obasi and his attorney $85,000 in exchange for the lawsuit being dropped.
Obasi, who is black, was fired in 2017 for falsifying records to make it seem as if he and the jail’s medical staff had followed proper procedures during the hours before inmate Richard Degraffenreid died of a drug overdose at the jail in downtown Kansas City.
Due to staff shortages, Degraffenreid wasn’t being checked at the proper intervals while locked in his cell alone in the early morning hours of July 21, 2017.
When a nurse discovered that he had stopped breathing an ambulance was called. While awaiting its arrival, Obasi alleged that a supervisor instructed him to fill out forms to make it appear that the inmate had been checked on regularly. Obasi said he was later fired for falsifying the document.
He alleged that he was treated unfairly because another jail official, who is white, kept his job even though he also had participated in the alleged coverup.
Degraffrenreid was so intoxicated when he arrived at the jail in the hours before his death that his head had to be held up for the booking photo.
Obasi alleged in his lawsuit that the now-former head of jail operations, James Eickhoff, replaced that photo on the jail’s public website with another one taken from an earlier arrest showing Degraffenreid in good health.
Eickhoff admitted in a 2018 interview with The Star that he made the switch on orders of then-Corrections Director Joe Piccinini and Whitney Miller, a member of the county’s legal department who is now director of tax collections.
He did not speculate on the motivation for that order and the county declined comment at the time on behalf of Miller and Piccinini, who is now chief of park safety.
Degraffenreid’s family filed suit against the county and the jail’s medical staff provider at the time alleging that he should not have been jailed but taken to a hospital after being evaluated at his booking. According to a sheriff’s office investigative report, on arrival at the jail his body convulsed. He grunted and groaned. And his pupils were “the size of pancakes.”
The county settled the case with a $150,000 payout to the family. Degraffenreid’s heirs and estate later settled with the medical care contractor, Correct Care Solutions, for an undisclosed sum.
All told, county taxpayers have paid $1 million in the past three years to settle lawsuits relating in some way to the mistreatment of inmates by guards or other prisoners, or due to allegations of insufficient medical care.
Still pending is another wrongful death lawsuit against the county and Correct Care Solution filed by the heirs of a woman detainee who died in custody, also in 2017.
County officials have changed medical providers since then and, after several audits and a grand jury report, say staffing and other conditions have improved at the detention center. Plans are underway to build a new jail in the next couple of years.
