2-20-15 Natasha McKenna, a 37 year-old African American woman with schizophrenia, was struck multiple times in the head by a sheriff’s deputy during an altercation in the jail on January 31st.
I first reported this disturbing fact in a blog on February 10th that I wrote to alert the Washington media that McKenna had been tasered more than four times in jail causing her to experience cardiac arrest.
The Fairfax Police Department and Sheriff’s Department issued a press release yesterday about McKenna. They acknowledged in that statement that McKenna “assaulted” a deputy on January 31st.
But the statement did not provide any details of that “assault,” nor did it acknowledge that during that confrontation a deputy struck McKenna multiple times on her head, even though the deputy followed standard jail procedures and wrote an incident report that described the altercation.
Why didn’t the police and sheriff’s office release a copy of that report? Why haven’t they admitted that a deputy struck McKenna?
This was not the only omission in the joint press release.