When Vangelina Gloria received a call that her daughter had been arrested in February 2019, she was not surprised. At age 19, her daughter Valentina Gloria was no stranger to the courts — she’d been diagnosed with autism and serious mental illness while she was still a minor, and her past arrests had all stemmed from someone calling the police during previous mental health crises.

She learned that her daughter was being held by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office on charges of assault during one of these incidents. She was worried, but assumed good intent.

But then, an attorney at the Office of the Public Defender gave her a video from December 2018 that shows Maricopa County officers handcuffing a visibly upset Valentina to a table during a mental health episode. Halfway through the video, she spits on one of the officers.

Valentina has spent five months in jail for this act. It’s still unclear from interviews if she fully understands what’s happening to her, or why. Due to her ongoing mental incapacity, a hearing on July 23 ruled that Valentina will have to wait at least another two months, without bail, before a court will hear her case.

In the meantime, Valentina remains in the Maricopa County jail system, forced to reap the consequences of a criminal justice system that was not made for her — at the expense of her physical and mental health.

Trapped in the System

EXPAND Vangelina Gloria with pictures of her 19-year-old daughter, Valentina, who accrued charges after she spit during a mental health episode. Hannah Critchfield

Valentina’s stay in jail began in February, when she was arrested for allegedly assaulting a medical health professional while experiencing an episode at an in-patient facility she’d checked into that morning. From there, she was booked into Maricopa County jail for a probation violation.

Charges were not pressed, but her mother soon learned she would not be released. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office was demanding she be held on felony charges related to a spitting incident that happened two months before. That incident began with an arrest on December 29, 2018; Valentina attacked two nurses during yet another mental health crisis at St. Luke’s Hospital in Phoenix, where she was receiving in-patient care.

The hospital called authorities, and deputies took her to Lower Buckeye Jail, where her arms and legs were restrained with handcuffs and leather cuffs, her body stretched out like the letter X on a bed to limit her range of movement.

Two days later, Valentina was still in jail. It was New Year’s Eve 2018. What happened next can be seen in a video given to Vangelina by Eliana Ray Eitches, attorney at the Office of the Public Defender representing the defendant (Vangelina was subsequently assigned a new attorney when she was transferred to another court).

The video shows a calm, still-restrained Valentina being released to use the bathroom. After she does so, she returns to the bed for uniformed officers to chain her back down. But when it comes time to lift her hands up for officers to handcuff her, she pauses. “It’s cold,” she says.

Within four seconds, the officers force her arms back, and Valentina immediately begins to panic.

She sobs and shakes during the entire process. The correctional employees speak calmly, calling her only by her last name. As an officer adjusts a restraint on her right foot, she spits. It hits his cheek.

The officers yell at her, and place a spit mask over her head. A staff member of Correctional Health Services, which contracts with the jail to provide mental health services, is then seen entering for the first time.

This is the crime for which Valentina remains incarcerated. The charges of assault against the nurses at St. Luke’s were dropped a month later. The prosecutor’s office cited Valentina’s mental state as the justification for dismissing the felonies. But the office is still prosecuting her on two counts of “assault by a prisoner with bodily fluids” and two counts of aggravated assault, which also appear related to spitting.

“I guess people think once you’re an inmate, you’re an inmate, and you deserve to be there, to be punished,” said Vangelina. “But when she’s going through a crisis, she’s not controlling what’s going on, either. You have to give her time to de-escalate, be compassionate. They say the people with the mental illness don’t have empathy, but I think it’s the other way around at this point.”

Several attorneys and disability-rights organizations declined to comment on the legality of Valentina’s treatment based solely on the information the video provides. But the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona did speak out on her behalf.

“The video is appalling to watch,” said Analise Ortiz, campaign strategist at ACLU of Arizona. “This incident exposes systemic problems within Arizona jails and prisons in which people are dehumanized, abused, and treated unjustly. All incarcerated people deserve access to medical and mental health attention, and we hope this incident is properly investigated.”

Nearly 2 million people with mental illness are booked into jails each year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The Virginia-based organization has found that they tend to stay longer than their non-mentally ill counterparts, and often, their mental health conditions get worse while they’re incarcerated.

About 23 percent of the people housed in Maricopa County jails have severe mental illness or need chronic mental health care, according to Maricopa County spokesperson Fields Moseley. Each inmate held by MCSO costs the county $105.15 per day — and the cost is even greater when mental health care is applied.