NC sheriff’s office losing insurance coverage after 11 jail deaths, costing county
Editor’s note: This story contains reporting about suicides, a topic that will be disturbing to some readers.
Eleven deaths in the county jail, a subsequent lawsuit and criminal charges against an employee proved too much for an insurance company to keep the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office as a customer.
The Rockingham County Board of Commissioners had warned the sheriff if this were to take place it would place a greater financial burden on taxpayers.
But now it’s too late.
On Tuesday, Rockingham County Safety and Risk Manager Chris Elliott wrote to Sheriff Sam Page that the sheriff’s office will lose its insurance on July 1.
Page, who was first elected as sheriff in 1998, recently lost the Republican primary election for North Carolina lieutenant governor. He considered running against Senate leader Phil Berger for his seat in the legislature but decided to stay in the lieutenant governor’s race. Both Page and Berger are from Eden.
“Today I was notified from Travelers (Companies) that they would not be renewing our Law Enforcement Liability Insurance coverage,” Elliott wrote to Page in an email obtained by The News & Observer. “I have been working with the Sheriff’s staff today to fill out a Law Enforcement Insurance Application to send to other potential insurance companies.”
Travelers notes on its website that law enforcement liability insurance covers “bodily injury, personal injury or property damage caused by a wrongful act committed by or on behalf of a public entity” during the course of law enforcement operations.
This can include anything from the operation of the jail to damage of a person’s belongings during arrest to failure to provide first aid to “coverage for pure mental anguish.”
“I wanted to let everyone know what was going on regarding Travelers denial to cover the Sheriff and his operations,” Elliott said in his letter.
Records obtained by The N&O through public records requests show Rockingham County officials first learned about the potential loss of insurance coverage in mid-May and have been fighting since then to keep it.
Why do officials say the insurance is being revoked?
On May 20, all five of Rockingham County’s commissioners sent Page a letter saying the insurance was at risk for three reasons:
Failure to report claims or potential claims;
Criminal charges against an employee;
Information uncovered in ligation regarding a different employee who the letter said was terminated for “having sexual relations with inmates outside the jail.”
They asked Page to take corrective action and to appear before them to report on how he plans to address the concerns. That has yet to happen.
On Wednesday afternoon, after The News & Observer first broke the story, Page released a statement that didn’t directly address the insurance coverage loss, but said he takes “any and all allegations against our organization seriously.”
“We have the utmost trust in the judicial process, and that is where all of the facts in this matter will be brought forth at the appropriate time,” he said in a statement.
Both in Wednesday’s statement to the media, and in a previous email when contacted by The N&O Tuesday, the sheriff’s office referred all comment on the insurance to Elliott.
Elliott, along with Rockingham County Manager Lance Metzler, spoke with The N&O Tuesday morning, before learning the insurance company’s final decision.
“It’s not a great sign if you get something like this,” Elliott told The N&O, of the warning letter they were sent, dated May 9.
He added that when one of the nation’s largest insurance companies denies coverage, it is not clear who will provide insurance instead. And no matter what, he said, it will raise the county’s costs.
“This is a huge deal,” Elliott said Tuesday morning.
In Elliott’s email Tuesday, copied to Metzler, he added that Travelers noted the county’s “stellar record on the other lines of coverage” and agreed to keep the county’s insurance for all other liability policies.
Travelers also agreed to keep the sheriff’s vehicles on the county’s auto policy but would raise the deductible from $1,000 per accident to $2,500 per accident.
The county has until July 1 to find new coverage for the sheriff’s office.
Deaths, lawsuit and arrests
Elliott first alerted Page to the possibility of losing his and his office’s insurance in a May 17 email, records show.
“They are not happy with the history of deaths at our jail facility and the recent lawsuit from the Kepley family has brought his case and the many others from the past to light,” Elliott wrote in that email.
The Kepley family is suing after Kyle Kepley, 35, died by suicide at the jail. The lawsuit alleges the jail was notified multiple times that Kepley was at-risk of suicide but left him alone for more than an hour, giving him enough time to take his own life. The lawsuit also alleges that the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services advised the jail that it had not complied with state law on observational rounds.
Kepley was one of five inmates to die by suicide in the past three years. The other six inmates’ deaths stemmed from three drug overdoses, two heart conditions and an unspecified medical condition. One of the women who died from a drug overdose had drugs hidden within her body.
In Elliott’s May 17 email, he flagged to Page that two of the defendants in the Kepley family lawsuit have been terminated: one for sexual battery and assault and the other for having sex with inmates.
Capt. Marcus Shane Bullins was dismissed from the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office after Stokes County deputies arrested Bullins, charging him with four counts of assault on a female and two counts of sexual battery.
Elliott also noted in his email to Page that, though an incident didn’t make the news, they also terminated a different detention officer for “having sexual relations with inmates outside the jail.” Elliott received this information from a “claims adjuster/defense attorney” during an investigation of a claim, he wrote.
Days after sending the email, Rockingham County deputies announced in a news release that they also dismissed Neletta Davis-Barnette, a third detention officer who was charged with providing contraband to an inmate. A sheriff’s office news release said that an investigation began in January, and Davis-Barnette was let go in March.
Elliott told Page in his May 17 email that while reviewing claim information provided by the insurance company he found several incidents that county officials, including himself, were not told about. He said that prevented him from fulfilling his own reporting duties for safety compliance and insurance purposes.
“I want to ensure that Travelers will know of every incident that relates to a death or an employment issue will be reported to them,” Elliott wrote.
The commissioners also addressed this in their letter to Page, saying both Elliott and county officials only just learned about some of the incidents cited by Travelers. And they said commissioners and county staff had told Page and his staff several times over the past few years to ensure they were notified of any potential claims.
Elliott provided reporting practices recommended by the county attorney if there is injury to or death of an inmate or employment practices that could result in legal actions.
Those include notifying the county manager, county attorney and risk manager and keeping records related to jail bookings, the rounds made by officers, calls to EMS and videos from jail cameras.
Elliott, who sits on the board of directors for the North Carolina Public Risk Management Association, said he can’t recall another sheriff’s office having their insurance pulled in his 24-year career.
“I’m appalled,” Elliott said.
