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1. Mother of prison suicide victim sues Delaware County and prison contractors

By Todd Shepherd

The mother of Andrew Little, a 34-year old man who took his own life while in custody at the Delaware County prison two years ago today, filed suit against the county as well as numerous other parties, seeking damages for her son’s death because of “deliberate indifference” and “medical negligence” to Little’s mental state.

The federal suit, filed Friday in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, also names Wellpath and the GEO group as defendants, as well as ten corrections officers. The lawsuit argues that because Little had been in the prison before, the administrators were aware or should have been aware of his history of mental illness.

Why It Matters. Meanwhile, tensions between the county management and the rank and file have been constantly rising since the takeover. After complaining about increasing dangers and sinking morale for more than a year, a group of correctional officers recently launched a no-confidence petition against Warden Laura Williams. As of this publishing, the petition is nearing 500 signatures, although Broad + Liberty is unable to verify how many of those signatures are from current employees of the county.

In 2017, the prison settled a lawsuit for $7 million over the death of Janene Wallace, who took her own life two years earlier. Wallace’s death became a rallying point of the campaign to deprivatize the GWHCF.

Quotable. The lawsuit argues that because Little had been in the prison before, the administrators were aware or should have been aware of his history of mental illness. “Despite such knowledge, Defendants ignored, if not exacerbated, Little’s obvious suicidal propensities and failed to take necessary and available precautions which would have saved his life,” the suit says.

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2. Looking back at Normandy, eighty years later

By Richard Koenig
 

Apart from the ashes I scattered upon Latimore Creek, the stream in Central Pennsylvania where my father first took me trout fishing, his remains rest at Florida National Cemetery. I remember the long cortege our family joined the day we arrived there — car after car, the line trailing slowly when it moved at all, other families also waiting their turns at one of the shelters where a brief ceremony would honor their dead.

Until then it had not struck me how suddenly the veterans of World War II were leaving the rest of us. On that day, however, Feb. 27, 2004, I was seeing before my eyes the departure of a generation to whom our debt is incalculable. Long library shelves are filled with accounts of their sacrifice and their valor, and yet many of their individual stories are surely gone, never to be known and told.

So it is with Louis Richard Koenig. Upon his return from Europe, Dad just wanted to get the war behind him and hurry on. He went though Gettysburg College on the GI bill in three years, an MBA program at New York University in one year. Hardly ever did he talk to me about the war, and it seemed he didn’t want a lot of questions. 

I have nevertheless tried to piece together bits of his experience from the little he told me and others, together with histories and military records. His is one story among those of the more than 100,000 men in the Allied forces who 80 years ago landed on the beaches of Normandy during D-Day.

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3. Don’t let politicians & lobbyists mess with YOUR credit card!

4. Lightning Round

• Andy Bloom: The Democrats and their unconventional means

• Christine Flowers: Verdict or vengeance?

• Thom Nickels: When politics comes between friends

• Beth Ann Rosica: School choice yields high returns for vulnerable students

• Trump campaign opens first Pennsylvania office in Northeast Philly

• Paul Davis: In Philly, even the cops get robbed

5. What we're reading

You may have noticed this already, but President Joe Biden isn’t what he used to be. This week, the Wall Street Journal took a hard look at the question of our aging chief executive and, in a deeply reported piece, found quite a few people willing to go on the record about their interactions with him. 

The prognosis isn’t great. “Some who have worked with him,” the authors write, “including Democrats and some who have known him back to his time as vice president, described a president who appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones.” Administration officials counter that Biden is as sharp as a tack when no one’s around. Opponents say that if this were true, wouldn’t he be out and about more often, showing off his totally functional brain?