Family Says Mentally Ill Inmate Needed Protecting

A Los Angeles County Jail inmate who was critically injured in an altercation with sheriff’s deputies is mentally ill and should have been segregated from other inmates, family members said Friday.

One deputy has been suspended with pay pending an investigation of the incident earlier this week at the Hall of Justice Jail in downtown Los Angeles, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.

The inmate, Michael Frlekin, 27, was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon in February and later convicted, but he has not yet been sentenced. He also was charged with escape after he allegedly ran out of a Long Beach courtroom during his trial on the assault charges.

He was scheduled to appear Nov. 7 at a hearing on his mental competence in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Deputy Bill Wehner, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said he could not comment on what medical treatment Frlekin had received at the County Jail facilities.

Frlekin had been found to be a paranoid schizophrenic as a teen-ager and has continued to exhibit symptoms of the mental disorder, his mother said.

He was placed in a jail psychiatric ward this summer but was released back into the general prison population without explanation, family members said.

“As his mother, I would like to see him in a more protective environment,” said Grace Frlekin, 50. “Sometimes the deputies forget that he is a living human being who is loved and cherished by his family.

“I feel like I’m walking in a bad dream,” she said, adding that she had visited her son several times this week at the jail ward at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. She said he is semiconscious, with tubes draining fluid from his skull.

“I have been very afraid for my son because he is not able to fend for himself,” Grace Frlekin said. “It’s inhuman.”

A spokesman at the jail ward said Friday that Frlekin was in critical condition with head injuries.

The incident began around dinner time Monday, according to both a Sheriff’s Department report and four inmates who said they witnessed part of the altercation.

Michael Frlekin was acting “bizarre” and was pulled by a deputy from a line of inmates, said Sgt. Joaquin Herran, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman. Frlekin then attacked the deputy, who summoned four deputies to help subdue the inmate, Herran said.

One inmate, who declined to be identified, said: “I could hear him hollering for mercy. I knew he was in pain. . . . I could hear him holler for his life.”

Other inmates added that they saw the deputies kicking the inmate.

During a jail visit earlier this year, Grace Frlekin said, she had received a warning about the danger her son faced in the jail.

Barbara Bentovoja, a family friend, said she and Grace Frlekin watched through the thick bulletproof windows of the jail visiting area as Michael began cursing at an inmate trusty who was assisting jailers.

As the inmate began pushing Michael Frlekin, Bentovoja said, she told the trusty: “He doesn’t realize he’s doing these things. . . . I’m asking you to understand he’s mentally ill.”

Bentovoja said the trusty shot back: “If we don’t straighten him out and he does this to the cops, they’re going to break his arms and legs.”

Frlekin said her son’s condition improved when he took medication for his illness. But, she added, he had stopped taking the medication after being jailed.

The County Jail infirmary treats the basic health problems of more that 21,000 inmates countywide, including more than 3,600 with serious mental illnesses. The infirmary came under fire last month when state investigators determined that workers there had not followed acceptable practices for the treatment of mentally ill patients.

Dave Meyer, second in command at the Los Angeles County public defender’s office, said it was “standard practice” for mentally ill inmates to be transferred out of the jail’s psychiatric units, simply because the units are nearly always filled to capacity.

“As a general principle, the sheriff has had to contend with the fact that literally thousands of mentally ill people have ended up in their custody facilities,” Meyer said.

Meyer said that housing people suffering mental disorders with the general prison population creates potentially dangerous situations.

“You take some untrained people and put them around people who are ranting and raving, it scares them,” he said. “The sheriff does his best to accommodate those who fit in the (psychiatric) unit. But the sheriff does not run a staff of mental health workers.”

Manual Mora, district chief for mental health programs at the County Central Jail, would not comment on the Frlekin case but said there are mentally ill inmates in the general prison population.

“There definitely needs to be better housing for the mentally ill,” Mora said. “I don’t think anybody would dispute that this in not an ideal setting for housing mentally ill individuals.”

Times staff writers Shawn Doherty, John Kendall and Tracy Wood contributed to this story.