The family of a man who said their loved one died after being stripped naked and beaten in a Connecticut prison is demanding the state release footage of the incident to the public. The video shows the moments leading up to the death of 31-year-old J’Allen Jones at Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown on March 31, 2018. According to CT Insider, a state Department of Corrections report states that officers were preparing to transfer Jones, who was a diagnosed schizophrenic, to a mental health unit for psychiatric monitoring and support. According to the report, Jones had been acting oddly and had not been taking his medications. A video screenshot shows J’allen Jones being forced back onto a bed at the Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown, Connecticut. (Photo: Connecticut Department of Correction) The DOC reviewed a 50-minute video that an officer recorded with a handheld camera showing a restrained Jones with handcuffs behind his back. Jones was calm until he was told he would have to undergo a strip search, the report states, but he protested and said he couldn’t do it before beginning to chant and shout incoherently. A 25-minute portion of the video showed officers push, pepper-spray, knee, and punch Jones at least 10 times in an effort to make him compliant with their orders, the report said. Officers also placed a spit mask over Jones’ head, which is a safety veil that’s used to protect others from the wearer’s saliva. During the incident, Jones’ breathing became labored, and his body became limp. At some point, a nurse couldn’t find a pulse and began CPR, according to reports. The state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner concluded that Jones’ cause of death was “sudden death during struggle and restraint with chest compression and pepper spray exposure in person with hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.” His death was also classified as a homicide. However, Connecticut State Police ultimately ruled it wasn’t a criminal matter. A DOC investigator concluded that the officers involved never used excessive force but that each action was “reasonably related to the need for force.” According to a DOC regulation cited in the report, “Use of Force dictates that, ‘A Department employee may use physical force on an inmate to maintain discipline, order, safety and security while in the performance of the employee’s official duties.” The report added that DOC staff members waited too long before administering CPR. Jones “was in apparent medical distress for 7 minutes and 16 seconds before life-saving measures were initiated,” the report states. Jones’ girlfriend and the executor of his estate, Lynette Richardson, alongside Jones’ mother, Jessica Jones, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against nine DOC staff members in August 2018. The suit alleges that eight corrections officers and a prison nurse violated Jones’ Eighth and 14th Amendment rights, subjected Jones to cruel and unusual punishment, and showed a deliberate indifference to his medical needs. The family also cited a second opinion from forensic pathologist Dr. Stahl-Herz, who attributed Jones’s death to an inability to breathe because the pepper spray inhibited his breathing, the spit veil became saturated with “fluids” and pepper spray, and chest compression that also inhibited his breathing. The family’s attorneys are now working to get the footage of the incident released to the public. The Connecticut chapter of the ACLU has joined their efforts, arguing for the video’s unsealing. The footage is currently under a protective order. In a motion filed this week, attorney Ron Murphy argued that the state is reluctant to release the footage because it would “pose a safety and security concern to the Department of Corrections because the general public would be ‘inflamed’ and ‘incensed.'” The motion also states that the DOC failed to mention specific details in its incident report, like the fact that “Jones was Black and eight of the nine defendants are white” and that Jones had not “hit or threatened any of the defendants involved in his death.” Murphy added that the public would likely be upset by certain parts of the footage, like officers holding Jones down while he’s struggling to breathe, images of him “flopped over to the side” in a wheelchair while “unconscious,” the seven-minute period before officers started CPR, and several moments of inaction while Jones was undergoing a medical emergency. “The events in the video are as disturbing as the events in the video of George Floyd’s death,” Murphy wrote. “But in some ways, the video of J’Allen’s death is worse as the defendants struck J’Allen repeatedly, violently threw him down twice, sprayed him twice directly in the face with pepper spray while his face was covered by a safety veil — all while J’Allen was naked, handcuffed behind his back, shackled at his ankles, hogtied, and having a schizophrenic episode in the psych ward of a Connecticut prison.” Jones was serving a 10-year sentence for first-degree robbery. ‘As Disturbing As George Floyd’s Death’: Family Demands Release of Video Showing ‘Hogtied’ Black Man Beaten and Pepper-Sprayed to Death in Connecticut Prison