Colorado County Agrees to Pay $2.5 Million in Jail Abuse Settlement After Inmate Removes His Own Eyeballs
Ryan Partridge's years-long legal battle against a Colorado county is over.
The former inmate—who served time at a Boulder County jail in 2016 in connection to a minor assault—reached a $2.5 million after reaching a settlement with the facility over his 2017 federal civil rights lawsuit against the county and a former sheriff in which he accused them of neglecting his mental health issues.
According to a statement shared by Partridge's attorney, David Lane, obtained by E! News Aug. 9, the former inmate, who was homeless at the time of his arrest, "attempted suicide on multiple occasions" while serving time in prison, alleging that "Boulder jail staff essentially did nothing to treat his active psychosis."
During one occasion, he "plucked his own eyeballs from his head," his lawyer explained, and is now permanently blind.
"The first settlement was against the jail's security staff for $325,000 for repeatedly, over weeks, using excessive force on Ryan," Lane explained, in reference the allegation included in the lawsuit cited by the Denver Post in 2017, "and the second settlement was for $2,225,000 for being deliberately indifferent to his serious psychiatric needs."
The attorney went on to note that the hope is that the settlement sends a greater message to "law enforcement everywhere that when they ignore the serious psychiatric needs of inmates, it will cost them millions of dollars."
In response to the lawsuit, Sheriff Curtis Johnson from the Boulder County Sheriff's Office, who was not the Sheriff at the time of the alleged incident, told E! News in a statement that despite the settlement, he "does not believe any of the staff involved in the incident were at fault or violated the law."
"Nonetheless, it is our hope that the settlement will provide some closure for Mr. Partridge, his family, and the Sheriff's Office employees," the statement continued, "who were impacted by the tragic events in which Mr. Partridge harmed himself during a mental health crisis he experienced in the jail."
The Sheriff's Office also described the case as "an example of the ongoing struggles faced by both jail inmates with severe mental illness and the staff who must care for often extremely violent and unpredictable inmates within the limits imposed by state law."
"At the time of Mr. Partridge's injury, he was under a court order to receive mental health services at the state hospital in Pueblo," they continued. "While Mr. Partridge was in the jail's custody, Sheriff's Office employees repeatedly tried to get him into a facility that could provide him a higher level of mental health treatment than available in a jail setting. Despite those efforts, Mr. Partridge remained in the jail."
They concluded, "Boulder County will continue to advocate for a better state system for mental health treatment."