(singing in Comanche) - [Woman] All right, we better get started here this morning.
Today's prayer is, "Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for your compassion and help.
Give us the courage to ask you for what we need and want, not just what we think is possible."
My name is Martina Minthorn.
I am the aunt of Christina Tahhahwah who died while incarcerated in the Lawton City Jail here in Lawton, Oklahoma.
(solemn music) This right here is Christina and her daughter, Alita.
This is her.
(laughing) This is her laugh, her smile.
Funny, funny, funny.
Christina was a full of life type of person.
She loved to laugh.
She was so funny.
She didn't know a stranger.
She talked to everyone.
Everybody was aunt, uncle, grandpa.
She would talk to anybody.
We are members of the Comanche nation and so we were just raised in our community with native culture and so she knew a lot of songs, hymns from powwow to church.
And so we'll go ahead and open up some hymns this morning.
(congregation singing in Comanche language) Christina did suffer from bipolar and schizophrenia.
She had her good days and her bad days when she would just go into these trances where she wouldn't talk.
She would just sit there and rock and she would cope by singing our Comanche hymns.
(congregation singing in Comanche language) That was her source of comfort.
I know that was something that she always sing when she put her baby to sleep, that's what she was singing to her.
whenever she went to church, that's what she was singing.
So, she was a avid singer.
(congregation singing in Comanche language) The medication that she was given just put her to sleep and so she would opt not to take her medication just so that she could be able to visit with people or go places.
Otherwise, she would just be sleeping majority of the time.
(solemn music) She was at my grandfather's house and she had started to act up and so my grandfather had to call the law enforcement to be able to help her get regulated going to the mental health facility here and so they had came and they weren't gonna help her unless he had a charge.
So they got her on trespassing even though she lived with my grandfather most of her life.
We have a neighbor that could hear her from the men's side.
Singing, she was singing her Comanche hymns.
That was her source of comfort.
So they were singing men's side to the women's side and they were being told that they were gonna get more time for singing and being a nuisance to others.
And as a form of punishment, they'd handcuff her with her hands above her head in her cell for numerous hours.
She suffered the whole time there in the jail cell.
- My name is Mike Brose.
I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I'm the Chief Empowerment Officer for Mental Health Association Oklahoma.
You're asking sheriffs in rural counties who operate these jails to take care, essentially, of individuals who have untreated mental illness while they're in their jail with almost no resources and there's no mechanism in Oklahoma to require them to take medications while they're in that jail.
And so people make these inaccurate assumptions about what's going on with an individual about their behavior, what does it mean?
What the driver of that behavior and they make assumptions and a lot of times the assumptions they end up on are this person is being a jerk or this person is creating havoc or creating problems while they're incarcerated in that jail and they're not.
They're sick and they need treatment.
(singing in Comanche language) - It's sad to see that why was she punished for singing her songs?
You know, of whenever you're on your last low, you're on the ground, of course she's gonna continue to sing because that was her way of coping.
That was her way of praying.
- [Mike] The Christina Tahhahwah story in Lawton is a very tragic story.
It represents things that happen in incarcerated settings and it's a horrible situation but make no mistake, variations of these happen and we can do a lot better with what we have at our disposal right now but it requires a lot of communication, a lot of planning, a lot of sitting down together, and we see over and over again that just doesn't happen often enough.
(keys jingling) - My niece, Brittany, died in a county jail a year ago.
(sniffling) She was loved.
(solemn music) She had mental illness, addiction.
They found her, she was asleep downtown on the park bench.
They went to wake her up and she had told 'em she was on drugs.
She was on meth.
They took her to jail 'cause she had paraphernalia in her backpack.
They're saying that she got inside the jail with a gun and she committed suicide.
She was shot in the chest but they didn't do their job.
She was bipolar.
But her mother had passed four years before that and that's when her drug addiction and stuff really went downhill.
There were claims that she had hollered out for help and that they had just told her to shut the blank up.
They didn't even take notice and that's what's the problem is is that they treat these people that are going to jail and when they know they're on drugs and stuff like they're nobody, like they don't matter.
- [Mike] I like to say that the mental health community and law enforcement need each other.
So it not only involves the jail.
It also involves the training that comes to bear when that individual has a contact with someone who is in some type of a mental health crisis as a first responder.
So our position, as an advocacy organization, is we want to help those sheriffs out.
Those deputies out, those law enforcement agencies in those small rural counties and provide them a lot more training than they currently receive to be able to more effectively manage those situations.
(sniffling) - [Tammy] There was no reason for what happened to happen the way it happened.
None.
She was not taken care of.
They need to have better procedures when they bring somebody in.
They need to make sure that they're doing their job making sure they don't have anything that can harm them.
(solemn music) - So with Christina's mental issues, it's sad to know that others could be treated the same way.
This could be prevented.
There's just awareness that needs to be brought to the surface and our law enforcement need to know if we're calling 911 to get help for a loved one, how do you help them without hurting them.
- [Mike] We have a huge problem here in Oklahoma.
We're incarcerating people who are mentally ill, and deal with addiction, most of them for non-violent offenses and we're still incarcerating using punitive actions that are not effective.
We need those individuals diverted into treatment and get better outcomes.
Everybody wins on that.
The individual, their families, and the taxpayer.
We need to do a better job of that here in Oklahoma.
- There's mental illness, addiction.
They just don't treat 'em right.
They treat 'em like they're nothing and they don't matter but they do matter.
She was a mama.
She was a sister.
She was a wife at one time.
These people, they have family that love 'em in spite of their difficulties.
Until you walk in the shoes of those people who are going through these things, you don't know.
And there needs to be more compassion 'cause if you knew the person she was, you would of loved her too.