Lawsuit: Man died at Santa Rita jail after being denied medications

The family of a man who died last year at the Santa Rita jail filed a lawsuit against Alameda County Monday, blaming his death on jail staff who they said failed to give him prescriptions he needed for a diagnosed mental illness.

The relatives of Maurice Monk, 45, said they warned Alameda County sheriff’s deputies that their brother needed several medications while in jail and that he had been under a doctor’s care, according to the federal civil rights’ lawsuit filed. Yet they said their pleas for help went unanswered, resulting in Monk’s death on Nov. 15, 2021, just 35 days after being booked into the jail, the lawsuit said.

“This is a case, this a matter, this is a death that should not have happened,” said Adanté Pointer, an attorney for the family. “What we have here are jail staff turning a deaf ear to the pleas of Mr. Monk’s family to get him the prescribed medication that he needed in order to make sure that his health was maintained and that he came out of Santa Rita alive.”

Monk was jailed on Oct. 11, 2021, on a warrant for missing a court date after being detained after getting into a verbal disagreement on a bus about not wearing a mask, according to the lawsuit.

Monk’s death ranks among nearly 60 at the Santa Rita jail since 2014 — a tally that has prompted waves of lawsuits against the county and allegations that the jail provides inadequate care for its inmates, especially those suffering from mental illness and who are suicidal.

Earlier this year, a federal judge approved a sweeping settlement to improve mental health care at the jail and address complaints of “excessive use of isolation, providing an insufficient amount of out-of-cell time and programming, inadequate classification systems, and a lack of due process protections,” among other concerns.

Check back for updates as this story develops.