The Mason County Journal has chronicled our pending U.S. District Court federal civil rights case against the Mason County Jail and its associates, arising from the suicide of a Skokomish man while in jail. View full article.

Ryan Dreveskracht is quoted at length:

“(There is a) civil right to not be treated with deliberate indifference and that includes having your known medical illnesses cared for, and here they knew that he had medical issues and they were deliberately indifferent,” Dreveskracht said. . .

“There are numerous instances here where we believe that the county acted negligently and with deliberate indifference,” Dreveskracht said. “We want to hold the county liable for their unofficial policies of ignoring mentally ill inmates and outright failure to implement sufficient suicide prevention procedures. “There was, and still is, a complete absence of training to address mentally-ill inmates, and a lack of funding to provide that necessary training.” . . .

“It happened in 1999 to a young man in an eerily similar situation, yet the county’s policies have not changed,” Dreveskracht said. “We don’t want this to happen again and want to hold the county accountable.”

Ryan Dreveskracht is an attorney with Galanda Broadman, PLLC, in Seattle. He can be reached at (206) 909-3842 or ryan@galandabroadman.com.