New bodycam footage after in-custody death reveals frustration with discharging hospital
By Ezra Kaplan
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PORTLAND, Oregon (KPTV) — Newly released body cam footage shows the last hour of a man’s life who died in police custody on Dec. 13. The audio and video paint a picture of officers frustrated with emergency room staff who insisted on discharging a man who seemed to be very unwell.
“Their mindset there is ‘he is just another tweaker’. It does not matter if they are another f—’n tweaker,” one officer is heard saying after administering CPR to no avail.
Jean DesCamps had been discharged from the Providence Milwaukie emergency room but police were called when he reportedly refused to leave. Body camera footage revealed that when police arrived, DesCamps was nearly unresponsive and drooling while laying on a gurney. He didn’t respond to his name nor commands issued by police officers.
The Milwaukie police department released the nearly two hours of video footage after they reviewed it and redacted the bodycam footage, including obscuring the identities of uninvolved people since much of the footage was taken in the emergency room.
The footage laid out a timeline that shows police repeatedly uncomfortable with the situation and frustrated with the medical personnel who were saying there was no medical problem.
Police struggled with where to take DesCamps and after calling a supervisor, decided to transport him to Unity Center for Behavioral Health.
When they arrived, the officers found DesCamps unresponsive and began CPR. He was declared dead in the early morning hours of December 13.
Providence provided a statement after the video was released saying in part, “In this case, we fell short of our goal of providing safe, reliable, compassionate care to our patient. The Milwaukie Police Department video is difficult to watch, and Providence is committed to doing all we can to learn from this and improve our response to our most vulnerable patients.”
The Milwaukie Police issued a statement as they published the video saying in part, “Through our initial and ongoing review, we see every indication that our Officers were trying to improve Mr. Descamps situation by getting him additional care and treatment.”
In the bodycam footage, conversations are recorded that illustrate the frustration of the responding officers.
One of the officers is heard explaining the situation to a nurse at Unity.
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“My supervisor, and three other cops there are going ‘this is bullshit’. So the supervisor is like ‘take him back in the hospital.’ And they refused him. So then we are like “you are going to drop him off at the bus stop and let him freeze tonight? He’s not verbal, he’s not talking, he’s got involuntary drool. And they are like ‘there is nothing wrong with him.’”
The nurse responds, “you guys did everything right”.
The officer continues, “they used the words ‘he is medically fine’. We are like ‘he is not medically fine.’”
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