FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — On Thursday, three federal lawmakers from Georgia sent a letter urging the U.S. Department of Justice to put more of a priority on its investigation of the Fulton County Jail.
On Jan. 10, detainee Michael Anthony Holland was found unresponsive in his cell. He’d been in custody at the jail since May 4, 2023 on a $55,000 bond.
As previously reported by Channel 2 Action News, Holland was arrested by the East Point Police Department on one count of aggravated assault against a law enforcement officer when engaged on official duty and three counts of willful obstruction of law enforcement officers by use of threats or violence.
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In a new letter from Sens. Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, and Rep. Nikema Williams, Holland’s death is the seventh at the Fulton County Jail since the opening of the USDOJ’s civil rights investigation in July 2023. Georgia Senators have also set up a special committee to investigate issues at the jail.
With Holland’s death on Jan. 10, the Senators and Representative are urging the Dept. of Justice to put more of a priority on its investigation of the jail, particularly after the 2023 death toll and the jail hit 10.
In 2022, 15 detainees of the Fulton County Jail died either at the jail or in a hospital, the letter says.
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Conditions at Fulton County Jail have been widely reported on by Channel 2 Action News for several years, even before the Justice Department opened its investigation.
Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat campaigned for election on fixing issues at the jail, including a plan to expand it and increase staffing and medical needs.
Recent discussions with the Fulton County Commission included a multi-billion dollar renovation and rebuilding plan to address ongoing structural and care deficiencies at the jail facility on Rice Street. As Channel 2 Action News reported, Labat has said since his election to office that the jail needed serious help to fix the problems inmates, staff and officials are experiencing and observing within it, and has repeatedly asked for the funding to take steps to address it. The commission and the sheriff have not seen eye to eye on the issue’s solutions.
An audit of the jail shared with Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne revealed “flooded cells from burst pipes behind the walls, exposed wiring and crumbling infrastructure, among other problems.”
The proposal was presented on Dec. 6, 2023 and pitched as Labat’s “Vision for a New Facility that provides a Safe, Humane, and Sustainable Environment reflecting Best Practices in Pre-Trial Detention.” If the new jail plan is approved for construction, the new facility would be nearly four times larger than the current jail on Rice Street, the sheriff’s proposal showed. The plan notes that the detainee population is expected to grow, while additional detainees “will continue to be outsourced.”
According to the proposal deck, the new facility would increase the number of beds available to detainees while replacing the current jail location on Rice Street. In 2023, the sheriff’s office confirmed to Channel 2 Action News that the jail has at various points lost power, had holes broken through walls by inmates, attacks on staff by inmates, suffered several incidents of inmate-on-inmate violence, and had 10 people in sheriff’s office custody die.
Five of them died in just August 2023, which is noted by the letter sent by lawmakers to the Justice Department.
The feasibility study provided for the presentation says explicitly that the jail is “obsolete, overcrowded, deteriorated, and unsafe.” The plans to increase capability and improve the overall jail structure were estimated to cost more than $1.75 billion if “optimal.”
Channel 2 Action News has reached out to the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office for comment on the new letter from Sens. Warnock and Ossoff and Rep. Williams, and are awaiting their response.
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