This makes me hate people.
Anna Brown had visited several hospitals complaining of pain in her legs. When she was ignored at St. Mary’s Hospital, she refused to leaved, screaming and yelling that she was in pain. The hospital had her arrested. The police dragged her out of the hospital and into a squad car. At the Richmond Heights Police Department, she cried that she couldn’t stand up or get out of the car, so the officers dragged her out of the car, into a jail cell, and left her there.
Fifteen minutes later she was dead from a pulmonary embolism:
RICHMOND HEIGHTS • Anna Brown wasn’t leaving the emergency room quietly.
She yelled from a wheelchair at St. Mary’s Health Center security personnel and Richmond Heights police officers that her legs hurt so badly she couldn’t stand.
She had already been to two other hospitals that week in September, complaining of leg pain after spraining her ankle.
This time, she refused to leave.
A police officer arrested Brown for trespassing. He wheeled her out in handcuffs after a doctor said she was healthy enough to be locked up.
Brown was 29. A mother who had lost custody of two children. Homeless. On Medicaid. And, an autopsy later revealed, dying from blood clots that started in her legs, then lodged in her lungs.
She told officers she couldn’t get out of the police car, so they dragged her by her arms into the station. They left her lying on the concrete floor of a jail cell, moaning and struggling to breathe. Just 15 minutes later, a jail worker found her cold to the touch.
Officers suspected Brown was using drugs. Autopsy results showed she had no drugs in her system.Six months later, family members still wonder how Brown’s sprained ankle led to her death in police custody, and whether anyone — including themselves — is to blame.
There seems to be no simple answer.
St. Mary’s officials say they did all they were supposed to do for Brown. Richmond Heights police said they trusted a doctor who said she was fit for jail.
Brown’s mother, Dorothy Davis, isn’t sure what to think.
“If the police killed my daughter, I want to know,” she said. “If the hospital is at fault, I want to know. I want to be able to tell her children why their mother isn’t here.”
Davis also faults the St. Louis County Family Court, which she said forced her into a heartbreaking dilemma after the state took away Brown’s children on a claim of neglect. Davis could take in her grandchildren or her daughter, a judge said, but not both.
“I’m mad at myself because if I hadn’t listened to the courts, she would still be here,” Davis said. “If she had been here at this house, she would be here today.”
They did all they were “supposed” to do for her. Not all they could do for her. Horrific.
Just in case the past three weeks of the Trayvon Martin affair hasn’t demonstrated exactly how invaluable black lives are to some people, Anna Brown should cement the notion. She was profiled, deemed to be a drug seeker, and cast aside as if she were irrelevant; dragged away from life-saving care to her death on a cold floor in jail, in the same way that the Sanford Police Department left Trayvon Martin face down in the grass while they tried to figure out how to absolve George Zimmerman of blame.
Somebody should make Scalia watch this video. Anna Browns will be de rigueur should the ACA be repealed. It’s unfathomable.
*** See Youth Revolutionary Council for action items.
[via SandraRose]
Absolutely Disgusting. Those doctors should be ashamed. And I am ashamed that my first thought after reading this was “I’m glad I’m not black.” I am so sick of this shit. When do I get to live in a country populated by real human beings? Beyond the obvious racism AGAIN, institutionalized and backed up by the authority’s immediate “we did everything we should”, is the fact that their little puritan tight assholes couldn’t stand the thought of someone scoring pain meds who might possibly want them for mental rather than physical pain. With such principles, we should just execute everyone accused of a crime — better than a hundred innocent perish than one guilty go free, amiright? Ugh.
“Invaluable” means “very valuable – so much so that a value cannot be placed upon it.” Unless the writer’s being very sarcastic, I think they mean “valueless.”
That being said – this is unconscionable behavior. Black homeless woman = “whiny drug user trying to score some pills” by default. Though I’m not sure that any homeless individual in an ER would not have been dumped just as unceremoniously, regardless of race or sex. There’s a tacit assumption that the homeless are just out to cadge a bed or some oxy when they show up in an ER with a pain complaint. The fact that no-one ever thought “hey, this woman really can’t stand up” rather than “stubborn bitch won’t walk” is just fucking depressing.
But, but, but, ACORN, death panels, Chicago-style thuggery, Bill Ayres, Muslim-atheist, Black Panthers, communist-nazi, Bill-Maher-said-mean-things-about-Sarah-Palin, voter fraud, poverty pimps, where’s-the-birth-cerificate, I want my country back!!!!!
Too many of what I’m sorry to call my fellow Americans won’t give three shits about this. I hope it gets the play it should, and I hope a bunch of soulless assholes get fired, and I hope the hospital and the county get their asses sued off. That would make me happy. What won’t is the inevitable discoveries! that Ms. Brown was somehow “unworthy” of being treated like a person, that she somehow got what she “deserved”. These last two years have made me truly wonder whether there’s anything left of this country worth trying to save, Then I think of the people who do care about outrages like this, and are trying to make it better. It still feels hard tto keep hoping at times, though.
I was also a 29-year-old woman diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism (back in 2010), but I’m white. The disparity in our treatment is astounding.
I went to the ER complaining of chest pain (which was actually the clot killing the tissue in my lungs). After the ER staff did the mandatory EKG (EEG?) for all chest pain related complaints, I waited in the waiting room for awhile and then was called back.
The doctors drew blood to run some tests and decided to start me on a morphine drip due to my pain level. I was in so much pain, I remember crying (which I hardly ever do) and giving my husband instructions regarding my funeral. I literally thought I was going to die.
The blood tests showed that my blood was unusually thick, and this made the doctors suspect there was a clot somewhere. I was then injected with some purple dye and given an MRI (or CAT scan?) to see if they could detect the clot. Lo and behold, there it was sitting in my lungs.
They admitted me to the hospital, and there I remained for a week. I was given excellent care, blood thinners, morphine, and assigned a pulmonologist for follow up. I remained on the blood thinners for an additional six months until the pulmonologist was satisfied with my progress.
All this to illustrate that (with the difference of Ms. Brown’s pain in her legs vs. mine in my chest) we both went to the hospital with the same condition. Yet, I was not considered to be under the influence of drugs or otherwise “suspicious.” It appears (from my admittedly privileged status as a white woman) that Ms. Brown’s only “crime” was being a black woman demanding treatment for a legitimate medical complaint.
I cannot even begin to convey how angry this story makes me, especially when I know first-hand how Ms. Brown could have – and SHOULD have – been treated.
I bet you didn’t start screaming and demanding to be seen like she did — which is likely what pushed her into the police car, right?
I find it heart-breaking that she found herself (after visiting several health institutions and not getting anywhere, but obviously being in worlds of pain) that she felt that was her only way of getting any attention or help. And I want to vomit if I think about how it might have played out differently if she was perceived differently. It shouldn’t matter AT ALL. And yet, it apparently means the difference between life and death.
I remember two incidents of unknown medical origin when I thought honest to goodness I was going to die. Not from pain but just this weird condition. It passed before the paramedics arrived and they insisted that I go to the hospital for tests. Since the episode passed, nothing was detected but I empathize with you feeling like you would die. I know that feeling and it is scary.
I’ve also been in the hospital with my sister and her infant when she was suffering horribly and the procedure they needed to perform was going to be very painful. We stayed for hours because she didn’t want them to perform it without pain meds. They refused to give her pain meds. She tried to explain to them that her tolerance was high because she had given birth to three children but they just thought she was in there trying to get high.
This also reminds me in the disparity in death rates for AA mothers and white mothers. It isn’t just genetic, this disparity, and other factors play a role, including disparate treatment and the stress of being black in America.
Don’t forget she was homeless and probably disheveled. I have this horrifying feeling that they didn’t bother with standard procedure because of their notion of her likelihood of being able to pay.
Having been dismissed and ignored by doctors myself at various times during my interactions with the healthcare system, this story frightens the bejezus out of me.
The other commenters are probably correct about the biased perception of “drug-seeker” even though my over-educated behind is well aware that black patients request less pain medication and take less of it, too, than whites. They also take less illicit drugs. I’d keep going but it would just devolve into screaming obscenities at that point. #surroundedbyracists
WHAT HAPPENED TO LOGIC AND FACTS OMG GET SOME PEOPLE!!!
I’ll tell you something else, too: Shit like this is why I believe in God. I want there to be a better place; I need there to be a better place.
All I can think of is what this poor woman was going through in the last few hours of her life: the pain, the loneliness, the helplessness, the humiliation. And I don’t want that to be it for her; I don’t want that to be all there is for her; I don’t want that to be how it all ends for her. I want something better for her.
I’m a practicing Christian*, but the scary thing is that I don’t know anything. I can only believe, I can only hope, I can only pray that somebody greater, kinder, wiser and more forgiving than we are is out there smewhere—wherever “somewhere” is. The scariest times for me are those times when I fear that there is nothing else, that there’s no greater consciousness or will or being or whatever you want to call it, and that our lives are all that we have, all that there is, and that our last moments, if they happen to be awful ones, are all that some of us get. Religion to me has nothing to do punishment, but everything to do with justice for the downtrodden. I just want Anna Brown to be somewhere better, somewhere worthy of her, somewhere where she won’t ever have to worry about this kind of shit again.
*Not for nothing, but I don’t believe that Cristianity is The Answer, only that it’s what works for me. I think all people are, in the end, reaching for the Truth, and whatever way we have of trying to understand it can only be a hazy approximation. This goes for agnostics and atheists as well; I don’t believe religious people have any monopoly on trying to be decent people; as is easy to see, often religion is nothing more than an excuse creeps and turds use to justify their viciousness.
This horrified me. To think that so many people saw no value in a human life is appalling. I understand that attitude w/the cops, but medical personnel? That doctor who deemed her fit to leave should have his license revoked and the hospital’s emergency procedures should be investigated.
I hope the family can find the right attorney to handle both a malpractice suit against the dr who examined her and the hospital itself, and others against the police dept and jail as well. I think the video speaks for itself.
Mrs Brown was treated like an animal, and this is common treatment. All too common. . . all too often. Its wrong. This makes me feel extremely angry.
Mrs. Brown should never have been treated the way she was treated by the POLICE. And you wonder why people hate them? I don’t hate the police, but I certainly can understand why people hate them, those are DIRTY COPS, not good cops. . . I know quite a few good police officers, and cops like that give the good guys a bad name. So sad. . . Okay, good guy police officers you need to get rid of the bad guy cops! Wouldn’t it be nice if it worked like that.
When I was fourteen, a police officer from SF, on Sabbatical in Dunsmuir CA threatened to rape me (1971-1972).. he was gross and fat, balding with a belly on him, and horrible stinky donut breath (smelled like throw up and donuts). I told on him, and his fellow officers laughed at me. I was mortified because I really believed in the police. This idiot (His name was Gillespi, I’m sure he’s dead by now. I’m 56 now) If someone didn’t shoot the asshole, I’m sure died of bad health. I didn’t believe in the police again for almost 25 years. . .I’m still afraid of them somewhat. . .
This nation is wealthy beyond the imaginings of the Roman Emperors, but we’ve got a poverty of spirit that is going to kill us if we don’t reverse it. The medical personnel and cops wouldn’t have treated a dog the way they treated this poor woman. They didn’t know her, didn’t want to understand what she was going through, and filed her under “garbage” based on her appearance and behavior.
Sad, sad.
over 150 years after slavery, and America en masse still views Black people as little more than chattle. I’m saddened, but not shocked.
I read this story the other day and was once again appalled at the treatment some people (read — usually black people) are subjected to in this country. That doctor was incompetent at best, saying she could walk on her own. The cops dragging her out of the car and then dumping -DUMPING – her on the floor of the jail is beyond cruel.
She was hurting, she was scared, she couldn’t get anyone’s attention so she yelled. Hell, I would have yelled too, but I doubt the same thing would have happened to me because I’m white. But she was black, so she is automatically in the wrong, worth only being dumped on a cement floor in a jail cell.
And the hospital — sure, it did what it was supposed to, if what is was supposed to do was have a sick woman hauled out of there like a common criminal. My mother worked in a hospital all her life, and if she were still here, she would be appalled at this story too. But then, my mother was a compassionate woman. These assholes don’t know the meaning of the word.
In early March, 1988, five weeks postpartum with my son, who had just taken four days to be born, I woke up with a pain in my back that was so intense, so very painful, that it both made me cry and necessitated my mother’s help just to be able to get into an upright position. I thought I had pulled a muscle while reaching or nursing my child. I had NO idea I had thrown a pulmonary embolism, and in fact, really had no idea until I was in the shower, and watching my left leg turn red and then purple and then blackish purple, and swelling like an elephant how wrong something really was in my body. I can tell you that the pain in my back hurt WORSE than the four day labor. I can also tell you that the sense of panic and impending doom was a literal, incredibly palpable, physical sensation, which got worse as the minutes went by, and NOT something I was making up inside my head, nor exaggerating for effect. By the time my mother got me to the ER (45 minutes away), my blood pressure was 30/50 and dropping because every bit of my blood was either stuck or lumping up like cement in my left leg. I could hear vaguely what was going on around me, but I could not respond in any way. I also had started to enter a tunnel with an extremely bright light at the end of it, and so I know today that I, in fact, had started the process of dying. I had presented at the ER of this same hospital 10 days prior to waking up with the pain in my back with symptoms of malaise, fever, chills, pains in my legs and just generally feeling like “crap”, but was told I was “not taking care of myself” (I am a vegetarian/macrobiotic chef and was a yoga/dance student at the time before I became pregnant, so uh, I kinda doubt that story…), and that I had “pleurisy and pneumonia” and that I should “take these antibiotics and go home and put myself to bed and stay there [and be a good little girl, it was implied]“. The attending physician NEVER even bothered to investigate my symptoms further, and let me tell you this: When a 24 year young woman in PERFECT health reports a level of pain that makes her cry out after just having gone through a four day labour WITHOUT drugs of any kind, maybe some Bullshit Fucktard Male Ignoramous “Doctor” needs to get a clue and to pay some Goddamn attention to what she is trying to responsibly communicate, REGARDLESS of the color of her skin. I KNOW what this woman went through. I know the pain and the fear, and the upset and the terror she must have felt, and I am disgusted and enraged that ANYONE could be treated this way. Unacceptable in her case. Unacceptable in my case. Unacceptable in ANYONE’S case. Time for some physicians (“First, therefore, do ye no harm…” Remember that, folks?) and some police personnel to get some MASSIVE retraining in how to listen and how to be human beings who care.
Just want to “like” your post. Exactly. This.
All people in this matter needs to be prosecuted and fired!
And people wonder why I push so hard for Occupy to work. It’s the indifference the system has for human life. It’s the fact that we have all, black, white, brown, etc been marginalized as statistics. That instead of the system working for the betterment of ALL, the system does the bare minimum, which this case illustrates is simply not good enough. All human life is precious, and all human life should be cherished. And our government should reflect this basic value. So we occupy in the name of social justice. In the name of Anna Brown, Treyvon Martin & millions of others around the world who’s names we’ll never know. It is time for a better way, and for that to happen we MUST hold our system accountable, and work to transform it. Humanity demands it.
Uh, sadly no. What did they do wrong?
They see this kind of behaviour all the time from junkies wanting to avoid arrest. If anything the doctors and police are guilty of not taking it seriously this one rare time when it was actually real. Also, their physical handling of her was in no way as brutal as this article implies.
When she had to be hauled out of the hospital …that should have been enough for them to figure out it was real…..if not real she would have run off as soon as they called the police. Druggies don’t like JAIL…. Dork!
I too, have been in the hospital in so much pain that I was quite literally screaming. Fortunately, I was treated, as all persons coming to the ER ought to be. That’s what the ER is for. The victim knew it and knew she would again be ignored as she had at the past two hospitals. This makes me so sad that a woman in so much pain was literally crying out for help was treated like a bug on a shoe. I hope her family sues this hospital for wrongful death for not treating her symptoms.
the most saddest thing i ever read! Ive had this happen to me before where mcleod hospital in florence sc sent me back only to get worse. That night i went to carolinas hospital to the ER they checked me in and i stayed in there a whole week due to an bad infection on my esophagus and liver in which a few months later required surgeory. SAD! Couldve been avoided!
It would be appropriate if the FBI became the lead agency for this (murder) case. 1. The doctor(s) and nurse(s) hospital personnel file must be looked at: discipline, training, complaints. 2. Hours worked that day. 3. whereabouts prior coming to work. 3. Credit card purchases. 4. Personal medical history file (prescriptions). 4. Home and job computer / phone forensics. 5. Religion and clubs belong to.
The police officers should have called for a supervisor to respond to the hospital. No need to rush. Gather the facts before you react. Big mistake by the police officers. Could be charged with murder. It sounds like these doctor(s), nurse(s) and police officers stereotype / profiled this woman by guessing and not following guidelines. The only way to stop this behavior is sending all parties involved to prison and the biggest lawsuit in history.