A civil rights attorney and a local NAACP president are calling for the U.S. Justice Department to investigate what they're calling the systemic abuse of detainees at a county jail in Georgia.
The former NFL quarterback is assisting the family of Lashawn Thompson, a Georgia jail inmate who died last year while covered in insects, civil rights attorney Ben Crump said.
Dozens of inmates have died while in custody at the Harris County Jail, according to attorneys representing victims' families. The FBI has opened civil rights investigations into two of the deaths.
On July 16, a dispute sparked a standoff between Columbus police officers and county deputies at the Muscogee County Jail. But the city police department and county sheriff’s office disagreed over crime suppression details long before that.
On Thursday, Republican members of the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee advanced a plan that adds hundreds of felony charges to the list of violent crimes that require a bond in order for a person to be released from jail before trial.