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(Aug. 6, 2014) Disturbing new footage from a Denver prison depicts corrections officials using extreme force on a prisoner with mental illness, according to the Colorado Independent (“Videos show brutal treatment of prisoners with mental illness,” Aug. 1).

In the video obtained by the Colorado Independent, Isaiah Moreno, a prisoner on suicide watch, is shown repeatedly slamming his head against a concrete wall.

The corrections officers on duty are shown entering Moreno’s cell with Taser guns and shocking Moreno until he is motionless on the floor. The officers proceed to strap the motionless inmate to a restraint chair strap him to a restraint chair and leave his cell, the video shows. The footage is from September 2013. Watch the graphic video here.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the brutality occurred at the order Sergeant Ned Germain.

“Sergeant Germain gave the order when the inmate was not physically resisting at the time or immediately before the order was given,” according to the institution’s discipline report. “Moreover, Moreno was not posing a threat to himself or others.”

“They went way beyond the force needed to handle a sick person who’s obviously confused and dazed,” Mike Roque, executive director of the Colorado Progressive Coalition told the Colorado Independent. “How many times does this have to happen? How many videotapes like this have to come out before changes are made?”

Indeed, stories like these are becoming all too common in the media. But until real changes are made to our civil commitment laws to ensure that people with severe mental illness stay out of jail the first place, we will continue to see untrained corrections and law enforcement personnel working on the frontlines of mental health.

Read our previous blog about brutality toward mentally ill inmates at Rikers Island in New York.

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