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Pima County in court over inmate suicide

TUCSON — The mother of a Tucson teenager claims officials at the Pima County Jail ignored several warning signs about her son’s suicidal tendencies, leading to his death just days after he was incarcerated.

Daryl Marie Kramer is suing the county, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik and Correctional Medical Services, a St. Louis-based government contractor that administers medical care in the jail, on behalf of her deceased son, Brian Kramer.

In November 2007, Daryl Kramer grew concerned about her son’s mental health while he was on probation, the complaint states. It does not mention the details behind his probationary status.

She called her son’s probation officer and told him to return Brian to the jail as an act of “tough love.” She claims she told the officer that Brian had attempted suicide three times recently, including once in the previous week. She claims she asked the officer to put him on suicide watch.

When Brian Kramer was admitted, jail officials noted that he had a small wound on his wrist that he had purposely re-opened, according to the complaint. This and other jail reports revealed several “red flags” that should have alerted the jail to Brian Kramer’s problems.

He was placed on suicide watch initially, the complaint claims, then removed and put into the general prison population a few days later. The complaint also claims that he was not receiving Zoloft or other medical treatment for his mental health.

Two days later, Brian Kramer tried to hang himself in his cell. He was taken to the hospital and pronounced brain dead upon arrival, after which he was taken off of life support and his organs were donated for transplants.

Daryl Kramer is suing for negligence and wrongful death. She is represented by Tucson lawyers Michael and Jack Redhair. The case is before Judge Michael Miller.

Catfight brews over pet cemetery

TUCSON — An outside investor group wrested control of one of the city’s largest pet cemeteries away from its original owner, thanks in part to its connections at the Bank of Tucson, a recent lawsuit claims.

The court action comes from Darla Norrish, who ran the Pet Cemetery of Tucson from 1998 until last May. She claims an investor group comprised mostly of officials from the Bank of Tucson conspired against her to gain control of the business, and she is asking Pima County Superior Court Judge John Kelly to give it back.

The roots of her complaint date back to December 2006. That’s when Norrish says the group, led by business broker Lea Marquez-Peterson, approached her with an offer to invest in the cemetery . The cemetery is located just south of Fort Lowell Park near Craycroft and Grant roads.

At the time, Norrish says she was licensed to provide cemetery, mortuary and crematory services there for pet owners in Tucson. But she had outstanding debts.

So when the investor group offered her a $134,000 loan, she accepted and used the money to clean up the debt. They included $40,000 in delinquent taxes, $78,600 in outstanding loans for cremation equipment and other liabilities, and a $15,000 consulting fee for Marquez-Peterson, according to the complaint.

But only weeks later, relations between Norrish and the group allegedly soured. She says a sales agreement was never reached, but that the investors did not demand she repay the note.

That demand came later, in December 2007, Norrish claims. Two months later, Dennis J. Clancy named himself the new trustee under the cemetery’s deed of trust and put the business up for sale at public auction on the same day, the complaint claims. The basis for the sale was that Norrish had failed to pay off the loan.

Norrish claims she never received a notice of breach prior to the sale, or that the sale notice was posted on the property. When the auction was held in May, the investor group bought the cemetery. The group is comprised of Sylvia E. Cotton and Patricia A. Taylor, who are a director and an officer for the Bank of Tucson, respectively.

But the saga continued. Norrish claims she was physically removed from the property on the day of the sale, and that she was barred from retrieving her car and other items. They included a 1993 Ford Taurus and eight pot-bellied pigs.

She was allowed to remove the pigs three days later, but one of them died. Norrish also claims the investors threw some of her remaining personal items into the pigpen during monsoon season.

Norrish says all of this was done "with the purposes of wrongfully acquiring The Pet Cemetery, acquiring its goodwill and customers, and crippling [Norrish] financially so that she could not compete with [the investors] and could not challenge [the investors'] misconduct."

She is asking Judge Kelly to void the sale and grant her quiet title to the cemetery, along with any compensatory and punitive damages. She is represented by Tucson lawyers Michael A. Fleishman and Ned Garn.

Hitting the 2nd annual Tucson Green Festival

Yesterday I checked out Tucson’s 2nd annual Green Festival, held in La Placita in the heart of downtown.The fest was dubbed Livin’ la Vida Verde, which brought to mind horrible echoes of Ricky Martin’s music, which I have tried hard to suppress. But other than that, it was fun.

The organizers should give themselves a big pat on the back. There were a ton of booths and the turnout was substantial. You could learn about everything from water conservation to stopping the spread of bufflegrass (an invasive weed). There was a guy cooking brownies in a solar powered oven.

Here’s my buddy Ryan at the booth for Technicians for Sustainability, who do rainwater harvesting, solar panels and all sorts of good stuff. Ryan is getting married next weekend, so sorry ladies.

And here’s yours truly test-riding an electric bike, powered up at the Technicians for Sustainability booth, where they had some solar panels set up.

I love this bike. It really has some kick to it.

And you can alternate between electric and pedal power, depending on how lazy you’re feeling.

You’re also retrofitting your existing bike, so if you like your current cruiser, you can add the motor to it and really use it for commuting, if you’re one of those folks that has a real job.

The company that makes this model is called Bionx Inc.

My only thought was that it was a shame this kind of thing should only come once a year. Why not every month?

John Collins Rudolf

Ending poverty and protecting the planet are not incompatible

Today is Blog Action Day, where thousands of bloggers around the world are dedicating posts to one topic – in today’s case, poverty.

Here at the Footprint, we’re weighing in with some thoughts on poverty and the environment.

Can we eliminate – or, more realistically, diminish – poverty, while protecting the environment from further destruction?

Theoretically, yes.

More saliently, on the local level – here in Arizona, for instance – what the hell can we do that’s going to make a mouse fart’s worth of difference?

A lot, I think. And much of that will take place at the intersection of the human and natural world, in our cities. How we design our communities often sets the stage for the worst manifestations of urban poverty — and environmental waste.

(probably the most brilliant take on this phenomenon is Mike Davis’ “City of Quartz“.)

Much of Arizona’s growth in the last thirty years makes for a perfect microcosm of much of what I think went wrong in the 20th century in terms of sustainable urban planning. We have created a fragmented, stratified society that heavily taxes the environment, often for no discernable reason.

We’ve got traffic jams, sprawl up the wazoo, suburbs and exurbs as far as the eye can see, and some long-term water issues that could leave us seriously fucked sometime in the next couple of decades.

We’ve also got poverty issues – our education system is ranked near the bottom in the U.S., our prisons are growing faster than pretty much anywhere else in the country, and the foreclosure debacle is sucking tens of thousands of families down the financial drain.

Right here in Tucson, about one out of five families fall under the federal poverty line, scraping by on about $19,000 a year.

Now, since we can’t exactly scrap the society we’ve inherited and start from scratch – though it would be much easier that way– we’re stuck with what we’ve got.

We’ve essentially got to retro-fit our existing, unsustainable, inequitable world into something that works a little better for all of us, and for the planet.

On a societal level, that means more spending on public transportation, affordable housing, health and nutrition programs, education, green energy and sustainable, local agriculture.

Local, grassroots activism, that produce small but tangible victories, are also the key. One group working toward that goal in Tucson is Just Communities Inc. Check them out here.

It also means embracing community autonomy – as in Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy – and breaking this generation and the next’s addiction to consumer goods that, let’s face it, are an infantile substitution for much more fundamental human longings – for things like belonging, love and personal fulfillment – anyway.

Poverty in America is, after all, not really about scarcity. It is about the equitable – or inequitable – distribution of what we have. And compared much of the rest of the world, we have plenty.

And despite the proclamation of pundits and politicians, the solution to our problems is not always “growing the economy,” particularly when it comes at the expense of our environment and our communities. What we need is equilibrium — balance and harmony.

This is a topic that’s been on my mind for a long time, so I’ll be revisiting it again in the near future. Until then, via con dios, good night and good luck.

John Collins Rudolf

(Photo credit: moi)

updated Oct. 16
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