Pubdate: Fri, 26 Mar 2004
Source: Courier-Journal, The (KY)
Copyright: 2004 The Courier-Journal
Contact:  http://www.courier-journal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/97
Author: Brian Moore
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

OFFICERS NOT INDICTED IN DRUG SUSPECT'S DEATH

Shepherdsville Police Struggled With 21-Year-Old

A Bullitt County grand jury, citing insufficient evidence, has declined to 
indict two Shepherdsville police officers in the death of a man they 
struggled with during an arrest last August.

Rodney Gray, 21, of Decatur, Ill., collapsed on Aug. 19 moments after 
police walked him into the county jail. He had wrestled with Officers John 
Bradley and Jason Paulley at a truck stop after Bradley spotted illegal 
drugs in Gray's car.

Officers used pepper spray on Gray and hit him once in the leg with a 
baton, Chief Ron Morris has said.

After collapsing at the jail, Gray was pronounced dead at Norton Audubon 
Hospital in Louisville.

The officers were placed on paid leave as internal and criminal 
investigations began. Bradley and Paulley were off the job for three days 
before Morris reinstated them, saying preliminary findings showed no police 
misconduct.

On Sept. 5, a toxicology report found that Gray likely had died from a 
reaction caused by cocaine and methamphetamine - not from the use of force.

Police investigators turned over the case to Commonwealth's Attorney Mike 
Mann in November. A grand jury decision was needed to close the internal 
and criminal investigations.

Mann presented the case to the grand jury last week; the panel's report was 
released Wednesday. It stated that the grand jury found "insufficient 
evidence to support criminal charges in this matter."

The decision ended the criminal investigation, and Morris said the internal 
investigation could close as soon as next week. The chief would not allow 
the officers to speak with a reporter.

The grand jury decision ends months of uncertainty for Robert Gray of 
Decatur, Ill., Rodney Gray's father. Though Robert Gray has said that he 
believed that his son's death was the result of drug use, the medical 
examiner's report said that positional asphyxia could not be ruled out.

Asphyxia is a loss of consciousness caused by too little oxygen and too 
much carbon dioxide in the blood, a condition that can be caused by 
suffocation. Gray was told there was a small chance that his son's position 
in the police car might have resulted in asphyxia.

Gray said Wednesday that the grand jury decision helps assure him that 
Rodney's death was not caused by a struggle.

"As I've said, I know those guys have a very, very difficult job," Gray 
said of the officers. "It's a relief that there won't be charges, because 
that would have opened up a whole new can of worms that I would have to 
deal with."

Gray said he knew that his son struggled with drugs. Rodney Gray began 
taking them to help deal with a rare compulsive disorder called 
trichotillomania, his father said.

People with the disease cannot resist pulling their hair and eyebrows out. 
Rodney began to show symptoms of it at age 12, and his ensuing years were 
painful and stricken with depression, his father said.

Though the jury handed up no indictments, it outlined a series of 
recommendations for police agencies countywide, for emergency medical 
personnel and for the jail.

It urged police to review procedures for restraining people, and it 
recommended that "hogtying" suspects - cuffing someone's hands and feet 
together - be banned.

Gray was restrained in that manner in the police car as he was taken to 
jail, Morris said. There have been cases when suspects have suffocated 
after being hogtied, but those usually occur when the suspect is on his 
stomach. Gray was on his side, Morris said.

Shepherdsville police had begun to review policies on hogtying even before 
the grand jury report, Morris said.

The panel also recommended that the jail videotape prisoners as police 
bring them into the building. There was no video surveillance of Gray 
wrestling with jail workers upon his arrival, and no footage of his collapse.

Jailer Danny Fackler said yesterday that he had not seen the grand jury 
recommendations but that he would consider them. The only part of the jail 
building under video surveillance is a medical room for inmates at risk of 
committing suicide.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager