The corruption in Dauphin County goes back decades. But now there is a coalition ready to confront that troubling history - and fight for the inmates at DCP.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What happened to John Powell in prison?
It seemed like an interesting coincidence. Nothing more. Then a few years later, he received a letter. By then, he moved on from working at the prison and got a job on an Air Force base in Georgia. This letter, it looks serious. It was from the Pennsylvania Department of State in Harrisburg. Dana took it to the lawyer on the base.
And she spent a lot of time looking at this and she said, son, this is very serious. This is a legal document. They're going after your medical license.
The Pennsylvania Department of State was charging the medical staff listed in John Powell's file, including Dana, with medical malpractice. She advised me to hire a private attorney, which I did. This was all very troubling for Dana. He could lose his medical license because of a patient he never saw. Why was Dana's name in John Powell's file in the first place?
Chapter 2: What charges did Dr. Dana Powell face?
His boss, Dr. Carl Hoffman, knew exactly why. Carl was both the head doctor and the owner of the company providing medical care at the prison. He had also been the physician on call supervising John's care. After he died of dehydration, Carl had taken a look at his records and saw a missing entry right before his death, which meant that he and his staff had failed to check in on an at-risk inmate.
So Carl backfilled an entry, wrote in an after-the-fact medical instruction. Shower twice a day for fluid intake. Below that, he wrote, per Dr. Dana Powell.
I was upset. I mean, there's no way of getting around that. It was wrong. It was a lie.
With help from his attorney and testimony from a nurse he'd worked with, Dana went before the medical board and got the charges dismissed before the case could go to trial.
My whole life had to change, and I was $30,000 in debt just to get my name cleared.
Carl Hoffman also had to face the medical board. He argued that he'd simply amended the record to reflect what he thought actually happened. the medical board didn't believe him. Instead, they noted that Carl likely panicked after John Powell died and made a quote, misleading, deceptive, untrue entry to make it seem as though the inmate had received the appropriate amount of care.
In the end, they fined him $1,000 for manipulating medical records and issued a formal reprimand on his medical license. Now, John Powell hadn't died at DCP. This happened at a state prison. The Department of Corrections banned Carl Hoffman from the grounds of any state prison.
An internal investigation, they said, had raised, quote, very grave concerns about the adequacy of medical care provided to Mr. Powell. The department ultimately forbade Carl's company from bidding on any future contracts. But that wasn't the end of Dr. Carl Hoffman. He lost his state prison contracts, but he kept his contracts with the county jails, including DCP.
Only after this scandal, his company rebranded. It became PrimeCare. When Justin Douglas became commissioner, one of his first questions was, how was a company with that history, with its ongoing record of complaints, lawsuits, and inmate deaths, able to keep its contract with Dauphin County for decades? It turned out, PrimeCare had a man on the inside, a Dauphin County commissioner.
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Chapter 3: How did Jeff Haste's connection to PrimeCare affect his role?
But when Lamont got to the point where Tyreek made it to DCP, he found pieces of the story that he and his family had been missing for years. According to the report and videos submitted as evidence, what happened to Tyreek was far from natural. It detailed how more than once an officer put his knee on the back of Tyreek's neck while he was in handcuffs.
It's no different than George Floyd. He was handcuffed. The man couldn't go anywhere. There was no reason to apply that type of pressure. It's total disrespect. It's disrespectful. I mean, what are we doing? Are we in the business of killing?
As Lamont read on, he was flooded with a mix of emotions. He was glad to finally see the truth. But it also hurt.
As I got further down, further down, man, you know, it was just sad to see something like this happen and pretty much cover up because they led us to another direction to believe that it was natural, this was going to happen to him.
Tyreek's family hired a forensic pathologist to take a second look at all of the autopsy materials. And he completely disagreed with Graham's findings. Graham had said that inflammation in the brain, encephalitis specifically, was the cause of death. But according to the family's forensic pathologist, not only was it not the cause of death, he couldn't see encephalitis anywhere.
The story just didn't sound right because he paid more attention, more so than the physical marks that were on Tyreek's body. So again, seeing this, it's like, wow, it's a shocker.
But the forensic pathologist went further. He said that the injuries caused by the officers during the confrontation with Tyreek had played a role in his death. After reviewing all of the materials, he determined that the manner of death was homicide.
This man can't be trusted. You know, he's marking deaths as a certain way. When they do a second look at it, a second examination, they come back as homicides. And someone like that does not need to be in a position like that.
But Graham was just the end of the chain. His findings protected all the people at DCP who were involved in the deaths that took place there, preventing any accountability. Lamont thought about all the work he had done at the prison, all the times he was in meetings with jail administrators and corrections officers.
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Chapter 4: What revelations did Lamont Jones uncover about Tyreek's death?
Chapter 5: How did the county address corruption and medical neglect?
He felt like he'd heard this all before.
So here's where I could say. My little cousin Donnie, you did his body. Tyreek Riley. It took you four months to come back.
And do you know why?
No, but hold on.
No, no. Do you know why? Why? Because we took it down to a cellular level. See, but you're not a doctor, though. At all. I have one of the best forensic... But you're not a doctor, though.
No, no. No, no. Nicole and her family kept making the same request. We want to see Justin's body. And Graham gave in. Kind of.
Okay, this is what I'm going to do. I will show you a picture.
That's not what she's asking for. Okay, that's fine. Hold on.
Well, you're not going to get it.
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Chapter 6: What was Justin Douglas's response to the corruption?
In the case of DCP, they determined that the coroner's office appeared to have habitually misclassified in-custody deaths as natural, even when attributable to traumatic violence. This was especially true for cases involving deceased black men. They also found that the jail appears to have subjected black prisoners to injurious and potentially lethal violence at higher levels than white prisoners.
We reached out to Graham Hetrick numerous times for this series and did not receive a response. That could be because Graham's got a lot on his plate at the moment. He now has a challenger for the Dauphin County Coroner's position for the first time in 16 years. During a candidates forum in March, Graham was asked about DCP.
He responded to the repeated questions by saying it was quote, not my job to advocate or call out problems he sees at the jail that lead to bodies showing up in his morgue. Pennsylvania law requires coroners to determine the cause and manner of death. but also to identify where a death may have, quote, resulted from a criminal act or criminal neglect. Graham tends to leave that second part out.
It isn't Garth or Samantha or Imhotep or Lamont's job to speak out about the jail. It wasn't Justin's job until after he was elected. In fact, no one who you heard from during this podcast had an obligation to come forward and expose the problems they saw at DCP. But they did it anyway because they felt it was the right thing to do.
As one community member said after the forum, we all have an obligation to call out problems when we see them so that change can be made. Graham isn't the only one who is going to be on the ballot in November. Lamont was sitting at a table, in the kind of place where all great political ideas get their start, a sports bar.
Next to him were his friends and advisors, who helped him get elected to city council.
We had some wings and watching some football, and then I just kind of like sprung it on him. Like, hey, I'm thinking about running for mayor. Yeah. Like everybody stopped him like mid-drink or mid-biting their chicken. I was like, are you serious? And I'm like, yeah.
If Lamont's meteoric rise in Harrisburg politics hadn't been shocking enough, he wanted to go even bigger.
We need a better leadership, one that really works for us. It just takes more of a person that really cares. I don't have a hidden agenda. I have no special interests. I'm looking at the field of candidates right now that are out there. You know, respectfully, I don't think any of them can hold a candle to the passion that I have for our city and to see it flourish. This is much bigger than me.
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