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How does somebody cuffed in the back get their hands to the front of their neck to strangle themself?? I've been sitting here trying to maneuver myself to do that and it's not happening.





New York Politician Says Stepdaughter-in-Law 'Manhandled' by Phoenix Police Before She Died



Monday , October 01, 2007

By Catherine Donaldson-Evans





The family of Carol Anne Gotbaum said Monday that the mother of three appears to have been "manhandled" by Phoenix police when she arrested and handcuffed for disorderly conduct at the Phoenix airport — and that contributed to her mysterious death in a holding cell.

Gotbaum's stepmother-in-law, New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, also revealed that her son's 45-year-old wife was on her way to rehab for alcoholism treatment when the tragedy happened.

"We are not jumping to any conclusions, but the circumstances surrounding Carol's death appear to be unusual enough to raise serious questions and warrant a thorough investigation. Carol, who was only 5'7" tall and 105 pounds, appears to have been manhandled by the Phoenix Police Department," Betsy Gotbaum said in a statement released Monday afternoon.

"She was a loving and devoted mother of three children under the age of nine who was on her way to an alcohol rehabilitation facility to seek treatment for herself. She cried out for help at the airport, but her pleas appear to have been met by mistreatment."

Phoenix police and the Gotbaum family were awaiting an autopsy report that could determine how Carol Anne died while handcuffed. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner's office said Monday that the exam had been rescheduled for Tuesday morning at the request of the family.

"They want to have a representative there," Dave Boyer, acting director of the medical examiner's office, told FOXNews.com. "We should have at least a tentative result by tomorrow. If the doctor has a cause and manner, we'll release it. If we're awaiting toxicology results, we'd let you know."

The autopsy examination could take up to a couple of hours, Boyer said.

Gotbaum had been taken into custody for disorderly conduct Friday at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix after reportedly becoming irate and out of control when she couldn’t get on her flight.

Several witnesses reported that 45-year-old Gotbaum was “yelling and screaming and running around the concourse before Phoenix police, who have a bureau at the airport, got there, Sgt. Andy Hill told FOXNews.com. The two officers who arrived on the scene were unsuccessful in calming her down, so they took her into custody for disorderly conduct, he said.

Gotbaum continued to scream and yell in the department holding cell — where she was locked up alone, according to Hill, a Phoenix police spokesman. When she stopped shouting after about five or 10 minutes, officers became concerned, checked on her and found her unresponsive, he said. Efforts to revive her failed.

“No one knows what happened yet. All I know is the way she was found, Hill told FOXNews.com. “She was handcuffed behind her back and somehow she got them up around her neck area.

He said Gotbaum was discovered with her arms up and her handcuffs “pressed up against her neck area, and added that it’s not unusual for people handcuffed at the back to maneuver their hands around to the front.

Police didn’t use a Taser or pepper spray in Gotbaum’s arrest, according to Hill, and policy prohibits video cameras in holding cells — so there were no eyewitnesses to her death.

The Maricopa County Medical Examiner was conducting an autopsy into the cause and manner of death, but there was no word on when pathologists would have the results.

“According to investigators, it appeared as though Ms. Gotbaum had possibly tried to manipulate the handcuffs from behind her to the front, got tangled up in the process, and they ended up around her neck area, Hill wrote in the police press release on the incident. “She went into medical distress, where she lost consciousness. Again, this is a possible explanation only from investigators, and the medical examiner will have to make a determination as to the manner and cause of death.

It wasn’t immediately known whether Gotbaum was under the influence of any medication, illegal drugs or alcohol, or whether she had any mental problems. Hill said the autopsy report and the family would hopefully help fill in the blanks, but police were refraining from speculating until the investigation was complete.

“Was she under the influence of drugs and alcohol? Was she not under the influence of drugs and alcohol? Was it intentional? Was it accidental? Hill said, making a check-list of what the autopsy and investigation would look into. “We know there were some issues because she was screaming and running around the concourse.

The chief of staff for Betsy Gotbaum, who held a brief news conference on Sunday in which she called her stepdaughter-in-law a “wonderful woman, said Monday that the family had spent the past 24 hours telling Carol Anne’s three children about their mother’s death.

“We have no further information at this time, Anat Gerstein told FOXNews.com.

Betsy Gotbaum said Sunday that her stepdaughter-in-law was “sweet and kind and loving.

Carol Anne Gotbaum wasn’t allowed to board her US Airways Express flight to Tucson Friday because she arrived late, according to a report in The Arizona Republic newspaper. She was booked on another flight, but witnesses and airport workers told police that she got into an argument with gate crews and began running through the concourse yelling. She was arrested in Terminal 4.

Hill said police didn’t know that Carol Anne Gotbaum was from a prominent New York City family and treated her the way they would have anyone else arrested for disorderly conduct.

Only 24 hours earlier, police had revived someone with a defibrillator who had gone into cardiac arrest at the airport, according to Hill.

“The officers had just saved a life the night before, Hill said. “And then tragedy struck.

I suspect she was cuffed in front rather than behind.

I've followed this on the news - yesterday the report was she hung herself with the hand cuffs.

Today officials are back stepping - she was hand cuffed from behind loosly.

Being a small framed woman, officials said she attempted to climb out of them.

My 1st question in this - if she was irate - hostile, why would the 2 police officers leave her alone.

2nd question - 2 police officers left her alone - what were the 2 officers doing during this 10 to 15 minutes away from her?

Patsy

Mrs. Gotbaum was hand cuffed from behind, which officers used another pair of cuffs to link her cuffs to a chair.

Officials are ow saying she managed to slide the cuffs around the arm of the chair slip her legs thru - then something went terribly wrong. They assuming (nothing concrete right now) as she released her legs thru the web of cuffs were then pulled tightly that pressed against her throat.

Mrs. Gotbaum strangled herself.

I'll be curious to see if the family demands the where abouts of the arresting officers during this 10-15 minutes lock up period..

Patsy

RedGlitter;703053 wrote: How does somebody cuffed in the back get their hands to the front of their neck to strangle themself?? I've been sitting here trying to maneuver myself to do that and it's not happening.






:wah:

Here's the latest from the evening news

Autopsy as been found inconclusive

the Gotbaum Family doesn't trust the Maricopa County Medical Examiner and will use their own Pathologist.

Toxicology Tests have been performed and will take up to 4 wks for results.

If it comes back positive - then the arresting officer's will need to explain Procedure - as I had stated earlier..

Gotbaum Family is not happy with the procedure or lack of.. Law Suit.

Patsy

She may have hung herself, looks like we will never know. She was very irrate and out of control. Personally I don't think it is physically possible to hang yourself when cuffed in the back and also chained to the floor.

If she did she somehow got them around her neck freaked, and tried to get them off her neck and chocked herself to death. :-3 BUT I STILL HAVE DOUBTS.

Of course my big question is why was she left unattented period in her frantic state?

Scrat I though it was standard Police procedure to monitor people in her condition, or at least have the cell camera going. But if it wasn't your right, they can be better used else where.

Are you willing to pay police officers to babysit people like this? I'm not.

Scrat I think you're assuming because she was an alcoholic that she was a waste of time. Who's to say she hadn't been without booze that day and was having withdrawals and maybe her plane was late and she misunderstood and got upset, all because she was not well? I don't know why someone didn't accompany her, that was stupid. But I don't think it's fair to imply she deserved to die because she was a drunk. At least I think that's what you're implying. And no way am I buying that she managed to strangle herself if she was cuffed in the described manner. I'll be interested to know how this one pans out.

Scrat

I'm not pinning this situation on the Police officers - this will be a main question from the family.

And did the Police follow proper procedure?

I did wonder myself what she was doing that made her late for her flight??

More than likely drinking.

She was on her way to a rehab - I asked why she was by herself, no family member with her or friend??

Her family is the Gotbaum family from New York - next in line to Mayor Bloomberg.

They have the money to poke holes in this situation - but didn't have the time to assist her to rehab.??

Patsy

She was had cuffed to a metal framed chair

so the cuffs slid down the railing/arm of the chair in which she released her legs.

but then had to slid the cuffs back up the arm of the chair for the rest of her body - it wasn't going to happen.

she would've been better off releasing her legs and dragging the chair off to the side of her.

Ball & Chain - I believe she did get tangled up in the 2 sets of hand cuffs.

unfortunate accident

Patsy

How does somebody cuffed in the back get their hands to the front of their neck to strangle themself?? I've been sitting here trying to maneuver myself to do that and it's not happening.



Red, If you quit posting for a few days I guess we will have to assume you figured out how to do this.:wah:

YZGI;703989 wrote: How does somebody cuffed in the back get their hands to the front of their neck to strangle themself?? I've been sitting here trying to maneuver myself to do that and it's not happening.



Red, If you quit posting for a few days I guess we will have to assume you figured out how to do this.:wah:


:wah: :wah:

RED

I thought you'd like to search, and attach the surveillance video from Sky Harbor Airport. Police released the video today it aired on channel 3 as special news coverage, the video should be open to the public.

Video has no audio - the video was very interesting and showed a very troubled Mrs. Gotbaum.

Video starts with Gotbaum standing in the middle of the airport screaming - she's very dramatic/hostile. Witness's state she was screamin "I'm not a terroist" F - - -You and a few other choice words. Employees tried to approach her, she backs away screaming & screaming.

Police arrive - it took 4 Police Officers to hold her down to cuff her from behind.

As the Police try to take her to the holding are - she's dragging her legs - she refuses to stand up - fighting all the way.

Its obvious Mrs. Gotbaum shouldn't of been flying alone.



Question: What is proper procedure once a Police Officer has arrested a hostile

individual ?

Scrat - I'm not saying baby sitting - I doubt having to be cuffed to a chair would calm her down. So what did the officers do - throw a wild cat into a locked room & walk away - we're they saying "your on your own chick".??

Patsy

Here's the video...it's difficult to see very well...

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... o1004.html

Knowing the Phoenix police they probably used Copitude with her instead of sweettalking her down a little bit. If they were trained better in psychology instead of just force, they may have handled the situation better.

Scrat

I do understand & agree with your position

its clear she was troubled & she struggled with the Police.

The grey are is leaving her alone for those 10 to 15 minutes - you called it baby sitting - I still go back to proper procedure for this situation.

She was compative - hostile

I agree with you up to the point at the holding cell.

Like I said - its throwing a wild cat into a locked room.??

Patsy

Scrat, I'm not 100% decided on this one either way. I'm just saying the cops probably treated her as a....what's the word I want....a challenge...an antagonist, rather than as a person with instability. I'm saying if they had used calm talk and a little kindness, that may have brought her down a bit so they could have dealt better with her. This is not because I think she was a victim or wasn't responsible for creating a scene. It's because it would have made less of a scene in public and would have reduced the possibility of endangering the rest of the public, had the woman been that kind of person. Or maybe it wouldn't have worked anyway, I don't know, but I do know a lot of cops here are pretty sorry when it comes to finer aspects of dealing with people.

Getting to the issue you guys are talking about though, I don't see how she could have strangled herself if her arms were behind her. Even if she put her legs through the cuffs, that would be a mean feat. I just can't buy it.

Its interesting - 1st day the news indicated / showed this chair she was cuffed to. Now in the news they refer to it as a bench.

On the news - a chair - you could see how its possible - especially one in a frantic condition.

The 2nd set of cuffs could manuver around and release a portion of her body.

The question I have always asked &

Now seems to be a main question for the family

Proper Police Procedure with this situation - what were the officers doing during that time.??

she didn't do herself any favors

Its a unfortunate situation

Patsy

Scrat

Cool we agree - God I love this moment..:wah:

We agree up to the moment of the holding cell.

That will be the Family's question - among others - I hope the fault doesn't go against the Police Officers/City etc.. But, it doesn't look good.

Patsy

This article states the husband called the airport and told them his wife was suicidal. Now, if your spouse was suicidal, would you let them go anywhere alone? These dolts had money- they could have hired someone if needed!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/05/airpor ... index.html

Red

I completely agree - she was unstable to fly anywhere alone & the family is at fault here.

I'll bet my bank she was drunk & out of her mind. - I agree Scrat -no doubt..

Her family neglected her

now her family may have a law suit.

Patsy

And

The family may have a law suit - thats sad

It really comes down to the money aspect now.. money talks

heres the law suit.?

What do you think Scrat -

Patsy

I think they put her into that room so she can calm down. When a person loses control, it's hard to regain it with an 'audience'. When a student gets irate in the sped classroom we work in, we make all the other kids leave or escort the student into the 'quiet room' to calm down. Never by force. Sometimes they hit, kick, scream, curse in there, if they can be quiet for 5 minutes we start the talking. I'm thinking the police do the same thing.

This is from the New York Times Opinion section. I'll print it here even though it's long for those who don't subscribe:

October 8, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Terror and Demons

By ROGER COHEN

History happens, but only just. The lives of individuals, as of nations, may hinge on a millimeter’s difference in the trajectory of a bullet, a road not taken on a whim or the random spray of shrapnel. But there is no undoing what is done.

Nothing, for example, can bring back the life of Carol Ann Gotbaum, 45, whose terrible end in a holding cell at the Phoenix airport was chronicled in a Times report by Eric Konigsberg. Depressive and fighting alcoholism, Carol missed a connection by minutes. She became hysterical and was subdued, handcuffed, shackled, abandoned and found dead with the shackle across her neck.

All this happened fast. We can hear her cry: “I’m not a terrorist. I’m a sick mother.

We can see the heavy-handed police officers, their sense of mission redoubled by the alcohol on her breath, muscling Carol to the ground.

In their zeal — for American airports are now temples of zealotry — they would not have imagined her three young children, her distraught husband, much less the dislocated life that had put her en route, alone, to an Arizona addiction-treatment clinic.

As it happened, on another perfect New York morning redolent of the endless summer of 2001 (a time when sunlight mocked pain), I was particularly affected by Carol’s story; and here I am writing about her, rather than brave monks in Burma, because certain signals are too powerful to ignore.

In many particulars — her South African upbringing, her uprooted life, her acute postpartum depression after the birth of her last child, her hard-working and often absent husband, her radiant smile overlying pain and her powerlessness before her own self-destructive urges — Carol resembled my mother.

So having read about Carol, my head filled with her disoriented rage before punitive officialdom, I did something I rarely do. I went back and read my mother’s suicide note of July 25, 1978.

The note reads in part: “It’s as though I’ve turned to stone. I can’t relate, I can’t communicate and I can no longer bear the pain and gloom I cause to those I love most. I feel I’ll never completely throw off this mood and hopelessness and depression. I know I have everything to thank God for and be thankful for, which only makes my ordeal worse and worse.

In conclusion, my mother asks if “my body — any part of it — can be used for research. With that, she downed valium, antidepressant drugs and gin.

That was almost the end of the story, or the start of a different tale of anguish, but my father, a doctor, found her just in time. Her life hung in the balance and was salvaged. Other suicide notes would follow — one of June 15, 1982, says: “I’m just too tired to fight anymore — but never again was the attempt so serious.

Technology leaps forward. Medicine advances. Lives grow longer. Diseases are vanquished. But the brain, and in particular the vagaries of mental illness, present mysteries as deep as the elusive enigma of life itself.

When Carol, raised in Cape Town, had her postpartum depression after the birth of her now 3-year-old son, she was a relative newcomer in New York. When my mother, raised in Johannesburg, had hers after the birth of my sister in 1957, she was new to London, with its chill postwar pall.

What happened to my mother in the 1950s — insulin shock therapy, electric shock treatment, hospitalization in harrowing wards; things about which she could never speak without a shudder — were of that time. Nobody would have treated Carol’s despair, or anybody’s, like that today.

But the riddle remains, etched in radiant mothers’ faces clutching laughing children, faces that seem to mock the very idea of panic, delusion and suicidal self-hatred, but contain them nonetheless.

You can look at Carol’s end in many ways: as an innocent’s devastating encounter with terror-obsessed police, as a ghastly but haphazard event, as a death foretold.

In the days of the Irish Republican Army’s terrorism in London, my mother was thrown into what amounted to a holding cell at Fortnum and Mason, the department store, after she left a bag unattended. Under questioning, she became hysterical, confused, unhinged — and was locked up. There was no shackle, however.

Thus do the affairs of the world intersect with individuals’ pain. The upshot then rests on a razor’s edge. Lives veer into a vortex.

Carol Ann Gotbaum and June Bernice Cohen are dead. Cancer took my mother in 1999; she viewed the illness as a trifle beside depression. Her favorite book, unsurprisingly, was “Anna Karenina. Her favorite line was from “Othello: “What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

•

Wow

I believe her funeral was this morning, what a eulogy.

Well, to sum up how I feel - Shame on the family for allowing her to travel solo.

Noticed the article stated " absent husband".

And unfortunately authorities are not trained for mental illness - there's no babysitter as Scrat stated.

And unfortunately somewhere theres a loop whole for the concerned family to sue

I see this as a terrible accident - self inflicted accident in a rage

Patsy

I think it's only because they're moneyed that we'll continue to hear about it. If it happened to Joe or Jane Lunchbucket, the news would have been a flash in the pan.

Red

I totally agree - its their money - of course and - shame on them..!!

Maricopa Police Dept. stated their Airport arrest anywhere from 8-10 people daily - daily !

During a Holiday Travel Time - @ 10-over 20 Daily.

Those stats amazed me.

Patsy

Well the News allowed the family's attorney request all witness's to this incident to come forward etc. etc.

I don't agree with their seperate investigation. I still say Shame on the family.

Red - well you have your answer to the money issue - money talks.

Me - I assumed a prominent family would sue. I haven't seen evidence of wrong doing, so I don't agree - too bad the family didn't spend $$ to accompany her..

Scrat - Stats are @ 10 people daily are arrested - Police followed procedure.

I purpose a toast Let's Lift Our Jar of Pickle Juice and watch it play out..

Here's to Ya

Patsy

This is more what I was trying to say:

From New York Times (opinion:)

October 11, 2007, 10:25 pm Where’s the Safety Net?

Tags: airports, carol gotbaum



I just can’t get out of my mind the story of Carol Gotbaum, the 45-year-old Manhattan mother of three who died in a Phoenix airport holding cell on September 28th on her way to alcohol rehab in Tucson. Her funeral was held this past Sunday on the Upper West Side. At the start of it, Rabbi Robert Levine of Congregation Rodeph Sholom said, “The central teaching of both Judaism and Christianity is to love your neighbor as yourself. But at that airport ¦ there was no such love offered to our Carol.

This lack of basic agape is, far beyond what the police did or didn’t do, or her family did or didn’t arrange, or what the already contested autopsy report will or will not find, the disturbing crux of Carol’s story. The base level of lovingkindness, decency, compassion and empathy that most of us assume, or at the very least hope, we and our loved ones will encounter in life appears to have been entirely absent from the boarding area where Carol lost it completely, after repeatedly being denied access to a connecting flight. She became hysterical, was arrested and locked up and, within a matter of minutes, was dead.

The seeds for the tragedy that has now left her three young children motherless were sown before the police showed up and wrestled her to the ground. They’d blossomed well before she was left alone, handcuffed and shackled to a bench in her cell. They were planted when airport personnel called the police, rather than attempting in any real way to deal with her on a human level. As she bent herself double, threw her Blackberry and screamed, did it dawn on no one that she was a woman who needed help?

“If the airline or the police authorities had treated Carol with some modicum of sensitivity and grace, or if one single person at that airport had put an arm around her shoulders, sat her down and given her some protection, she might still be with us today, her husband, Noah, said at her funeral.

Perhaps witness reports will eventually show that some such care was shown to Carol. But none have emerged thus far and, frankly, there’s every reason to assume the worst. For we all know what air travel is like today. For passengers, it’s one petty insult and indignity after the other.

And that’s when things go without incident.

In the past, when faced with the frustrations of air travel, passengers had, if not the right, then some ability to fight back. If, say, you were seated on a trans-continental flight 10 rows away from your four-year-old, you could raise the issue, and if you were ignored (as you often were), you could kick up a fuss and pretty much embarrass someone into setting things right.

Now that’s all over. You voice a complaint and they threaten to call security. This is enraging for anyone, under any circumstances.

Imagine what it would do to you if you were already depressed, even suicidal. Imagine some bit of typically maddening airline officiousness happening to you on a day when you were already feeling embarrassed and ashamed. You were all alone – half a continent away from your husband and children, and the friends who were supposed to meet you hadn’t shown up. Imagine, under these circumstances, that you got to your gate one minute late. You learned that your seat had been given away. A man then offered you his seat on the next flight out, but the gate agents wouldn’t let you take it, because to do so, they said, would be a “security breach.

“I’m not a terrorist, Carol Gotbaum screamed. She was, she said, just “a pathetic, depressed mother.

You may say that you’d never lose your cool like Carol Gotbaum. You’re not an alcoholic. You’re not a depressive. You are supremely self-controlled. Good for you. Right now. Today.

But have you never had the experience of being close to losing it? Have you never felt yourself starting to crack when, say, you’ve been fighting with your husband and your credit card’s rejected, or you’re worried about your health and you’re late for a long-scheduled, absolutely critical doctor’s appointment, and they cancel it, and won’t reschedule it? At times like this, if there’s something bigger going on — and at times like this there often is — it’s very easy to snap.

It’s easiest to snap when you feel you’ve been trying to do your absolute best. This, I imagine, underlay some of the rage that Carol Gotbaum felt when she saw herself stranded in Phoenix. Think about it: the sole reason she was in that airport, instead of having flown directly to Tucson as planned, was that she’d decided at the last minute to see her children off to school for one final morning. She’d had to take a later, non-direct, plane as a result. (And to the many readers who will say – as people around the country have already said – that Carol’s husband should have been there on that plane with her, I would just suggest that perhaps he wasn’t there because Carol wanted him, in her absence, to be in New York, close to their kids.)

Carol, of course, can’t tell us any of this for herself. But it doesn’t take a whole lot of soul-searching to imagine what she must have felt.

A friend of mine, newly divorced, has been struggling a great deal lately with the financial and emotional stress of being a single mother. Recently she found herself screaming at a man in a parking lot who, she believed, had drawn his car in too closely to her young son. She’d berated the man until he started screaming back.

“Am I losing it? she asked me a few days afterward.

“Yes, I said. “You have to be careful.

You have to be careful – because it’s never a good idea to yell at strangers, particularly when you don’t know the mental state of the stranger who triggers your explosion. You have to be careful, because, as a woman, you are always at a physical disadvantage. You have to be careful because, as a mother, you cannot afford to put yourself in a position of danger.

When we have our wits about us, we know all this. We may often enough feel like we’re about to “lose it, but we don’t, because, when push comes to shove, a self-preservation instinct prevails.

But what if it’s precisely that instinct that’s gone missing?

Who, then, will catch us if we fall?

Scrat, you and I agree on this part. You'll never hear me defending a drunk driver, ever. But this woman was on her way to get help so I credit her with that much. Getting away from the issue of Ms. Gotbaum, I am in total, TOTAL agreement with you that these repeat drunken morons need to be sh*tcanned. It's not like it's something new we didn't know about but yet they still do it. No Excuse!!!! !!!!