Nine deputies were fired from the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office on Friday in the course of an investigation into the January death of a Savannah man who was in custody at the jail.
Cpl. Maxine Evans, Cpl. Jason Kenny, Pvt. Eric Vinson, Pvt. Abram Burns, Pvt. Christopher Reed, Pvt. Burt Ambrose, Pvt. Paul Folsome, Pvt. Frederick Burke and Pvt. Andrew Evans-Martinez all lost their jobs after an internal affairs investigation into the Jan. 1 death of Matthew Ajibade.
The sheriff’s office released the deputies’ personnel records Friday.
Three other deputies — Greg Capers, Benjamin Webster and Lt. Debra Johnson — were involved in the incident but left the department earlier, staff said.
Capers and Webster were fired for policy violations unrelated to Ajibade’s death. Johnson retired.
Two of the officers fired Friday were reported to the state Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, and the other seven were terminated for general policy violations surrounding the Jan. 1 incident, according to the county attorney’s office.
Meanwhile, Chatham County District Attorney Meg Heap is reviewing files from both the sheriff’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. She said Friday she is asking GBI agents for more information and said the case will go to a grand jury.
Ajibade died Jan. 1 after being put in a restraining chair in isolation after a scuffle with deputies at the Chatham County jail, the sheriff’s office and the GBI said at the time.
In a letter to the sheriff this week, local clergy members say the artist, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was injured, handcuffed to the chair and a Taser was used on him. They say he died unattended.
Ajibade’s cause of death has not been publicly released. An autopsy was performed at the GBI medical examiner’s office in Decatur soon after his death. GBI Special Agent Cathy Sapp, who heads the bureau’s local office, said Friday that Ajidabe’s autopsy results are part of the investigative files that can’t currently be disclosed.
Heap said on Tuesday she and her staff members are examining video, audio interviews and other files. They have also pulled files from the Savannah-Chatham police department, the agency that arrested Ajibade.
“I want every piece of information and every witness available,” she said.
In their letter to St Lawrence on Wednesday, pastors asked the sheriff to release investigative material. Those records, the sheriff maintains, are part of the district attorney’s investigation that could result in prosecution.
On Monday, county attorneys on behalf of St Lawrence and Heap filed an action asking Chatham County Superior Court Chief Judge Michael Karpf to decide which documents in the case are subject to production under Georgia’s open records law.
The action is a response to an open records request submitted to the sheriff’s office Jan. 1 by WSAV.
“The fact that nine people were fired tells us how terrible this incident was,” Will Claiborne, local counsel for the Ajibade family, said Friday evening. “But the family still has no answers about what happened to Matthew. We again call on the sheriff and DA to be transparent while we seek justice for Matthew.”
Heap says it’s unlikely investigative material will be released to the public while her investigation remains open.
“I want this case to be tried in a court room, not a court of public opinion,” she said.
Heap says a grand jury will hear evidence next month, and she has yet to decide whether she will invoke the grand jury’s civil powers as she did in February in the case of a fatal shooting by a local police officer.
If she goes that route, jurors will hear evidence and direct the District Attorney’s office how to proceed. Heap’s other option, she said, is to proceed with a criminal indictment that jurors will consider.
The sheriff’s office released personnel files for all but one fired deputy, Burns, on Friday afternoon. Department spokeswoman Gena Bilbo said his records as well as termination notices for all the officers would be released Monday.
The sheriff says he has instituted new policies at the jail as the result of internal investigations after Ajibade’s death. Included are new booking procedures that will ensure immediate notification to on-site medical personnel when inmates come in with medication, auditing of Taser policy, a review of the Cell Extraction and Removal Team that will focus on discipline and use of nonlethal force, and a clear, written policy on when Taser weapons may be used.
Ajibade, an artist and college student who often went by Matt Black, was arrested by Savannah-Chatham police on charges of battery and obstruction shortly after 6 p.m. Jan. 1.
Officers found Ajibade and his girlfriend, whose face was bruised and who had a bloody nose, according to a preliminary incident report.
Police said he would not release her and became combative when they tried to pull the couple apart. They took Ajibade to the ground and handcuffed him, according to the report.
Two sergeants came to the scene at a convenience store in the 1500 block of Abercorn and medics were called, but both the woman and Ajibade — who police say was not injured — refused treatment, according to the report.
His girlfriend told police Ajibade had been acting strangely all day, but she did not say why she thought she had been attacked. Police said Ajibade was the primary aggressor, and he was charged with battery under the Domestic Violence Act and obstruction by resisting arrest.
She gave police a plastic prescription bottle, labeled as Divalproex, that contained pills. The drug is typically used to treat certain types of seizures or bipolar disorder.
Police took Ajibade to jail, but family members and their lawyer, Florida attorney Mark O’Mara, say Ajibade’s girlfriend told officers he needed to go to a hospital. Such a request is not mentioned in the preliminary incident report.
A spokesman for the sheriff’s office said in January that Ajibade arrived at the jail at 6:40 p.m. Jan. 1, and was placed in an isolation cell after fighting with deputies while being booked.
A female sergeant suffered a concussion and a broken nose and two male deputies suffered injuries consistent with a fight, sheriff’s office staff said.
While performing a second welfare check on Ajibade, jail staff found him nonresponsive. Medical staff started CPR and administered defibrillation while preparing to take Ajibade to Memorial University Medical Center, but he was pronounced dead by the county coroner, according to the GBI.