Police officers have a legal duty to obtain prompt medical care for people they arrest, detain, or restrain when those individuals are clearly suffering medical distress. This duty exists before, during, and after arrest. When officers ignore obvious medical emergencies and transport someone to jail instead of a hospital, the consequences are often fatal.
Collins & Collins, P.C., represents individuals and families in the most serious cases involving police failure to obtain medical care. Because of the severity and complexity of these cases, we only accept matters involving catastrophic physical injury or death.
What This Duty Requires
When a person in police custody shows signs of medical distress, officers must take reasonable steps to obtain immediate medical evaluation and treatment. This includes transporting the person to a hospital rather than a detention facility when the circumstances require it.
Jails are not hospitals. Booking staff are not emergency medical providers. Delivering a visibly ill or injured person to a jail instead of a medical facility can delay life-saving care and turn a survivable condition into a fatal one.
We have handled cases where officers dropped individuals who were clearly in medical crisis at a jail rather than taking them to a hospital. Those decisions resulted in preventable deaths.
Common Fact Patterns We See
These cases often involve individuals who are:
• Unconscious or semi-conscious
• Having trouble breathing
• Experiencing seizures, overdoses, or extreme intoxication
• Exhibiting signs of internal injury, infection, or organ failure
• In obvious distress after the use of force or restraint
When officers choose jail intake over emergency medical care in these situations, it can constitute a serious civil rights violation.
Our Intake Limitations
Unfortunately, we cannot accept cases based solely on emotional or psychological injuries. Our practice is limited to cases involving catastrophic physical injury, permanent impairment, or death resulting from police conduct or medical neglect.
How This Relates to Other Civil Rights Violations
Failure to obtain medical care often overlaps with excessive force and failure to provide medical care after force. A decision to take someone to jail instead of a hospital can compound earlier misconduct and directly cause death.
If your case involves the police force, you may want to review our page on Excessive Force.
If your case involves delayed or denied treatment, you may also want to review our page on Failure to Provide Medical Care.
Why These Cases Matter
These cases expose systemic failures in training, policies, and accountability. They often reveal a culture where expediency is prioritized over human life. Under New Mexico and federal civil rights law, agencies can be held responsible when officers make medical decisions they are not qualified to make, and people die as a result.
Our Focus
We litigate cases involving:
• Obvious medical distress ignored by police
• Transport to jail instead of a hospital
• Catastrophic injury or death
• Preventable outcomes supported by medical evidence
If a police encounter resulted in catastrophic injury or death because officers failed to obtain medical care, contact us to determine whether the case meets our criteria. Our firm also represents clients who have suffered serious abuse in prison or correctional facilities.