In the wake of a murder suspect’s suicide at the Peoria County Jail over the weekend, Sheriff Brian Asbell said the facility’s staff makes every effort to prevent detainees from self-harm.
Michael Dyer, 59, was found dead early Sunday in his cell. Peoria County Coroner Jamie Harwood said Dyer died of asphyxiation from hanging himself.
While not speaking specifically about Dyer, Asbell said inmates who are perceived as a threat to end their own lives have any items that could be used in that manner taken away.
“If there's a known risk where someone is thinking of self-harm, you're not going to have really anything. When someone goes on suicide watch, it is bare minimum,” said Asbell. “You go to tear-resistant blankets, but I've even had situations where a tear-resistant blanket has been torn.
“Nothing is fool-proof; if somebody wants to hurt themselves, they will. We try to do everything in our power to stop that.”
Asbell said Illinois has a guidebook with standard operating procedures for all detention facilities that include a requirement of checking on each inmate twice every hour.
“A lot of people say, ‘Well, it's every 30 minutes.’ Well, not really,” Asbell said. “You could do a check at 8 o'clock and do another one at 8:59 and there'd be a 59-minute gap, and you'd still be compliant with the jail standard. And it doesn't take long for asphyxiation; these death can occur less than three minutes.”
Asbell said the mental health of detainees becomes a factor in instances of self-harm. He said sometimes an outside influence or an unfavorable court ruling can put someone on a destructive path.
“I’ve been here 26 years and I can tell you this: Any time there has been any forewarning of someone that was thinking about self-harm, they've never been successful,” he said. “We have a protocol and we put them on that protocol. It's the unknown factors … if there's no outward signs, it it's really hard to mitigate that risk.”
Asbell said sometimes jail staff have to rely on other inmates to detect when a detainee may be in danger of harming themselves.
“We kind of depend on the other inmate population to kind of look out for each other, and often that is the case,” the sheriff said. “When they're housed together, they'll come up to a corrections offer and say, ‘Hey, you know, the guy in cell 1, he's been off; he's not coming out for lunch.’
“They'll see those signs sooner than I would, and it's really about having that relationship where they would openly tell someone so we can take the action.”
Illinois State Police is handling the investigation of Dyer’s death.
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