[Puffer Fish]

A woman who blinded herself under the influence drugs shortly after being brought to jail was awarded $4.3 million dollars because authorities in the jail did not protect the woman from herself.

Tanya Suarez was arrested in 2019 after police found her wandering outside a San Ysidro motel where she had used drugs. When she was taken into custody at the Las Colinas women's jail, she was acting oddly and clawing at her eyes, and staff placed her in a cell by herself. A deputy in the jail was watching as the woman tried to remove her eyeball and failed to intervene after she succeeded.

(motel was in San Ysidro. women's jail was in Santee, San Diego County, California, USA. The county government decided to give her the money as a settlement in response to lawsuit she initiated)

https://apnews.com/article/california-0 ... 5aa3adf083
Woman blinded in jail settles with California county for $4M - AP News, October 20, 2022

Question: Should this woman get $4.3 million, should the amount of money be that much? Do police and prison guards have a responsibility to protect the person from themself? And should they be held financially responsible as if they were the ones who caused the harm?

This woman could have easily still harmed herself if they had not arrested her.
Why should government be seen as the ones responsible? Yes, maybe the government could have prevented this, but this woman did this to herself. It was an unfortunate tragic result of her own actions, when she took those drugs.

[Verv]

So the government has no obligation for caring for the people in their custody?

... Prisons can just be places where the mentally unwell slice themselves apart and the guard is only obliged to send a cleanup crew?

Why do we even protect the prisoners in prison anyways? They could just as easily be raped and murdered on the streets of Los Angeles like a homeless meth addict.

But no, rally, if your kid under the influence of hardcore narcotics is trying to remove their eye in the custody of thr government, and succeeds while some guard watches, are you going to just say "well I guess that's fair..?"