PROVINCETOWN — Jonathan Bridges, the man detained in last winter’s West End barricade incident, has been granted pretrial probation for two years, after which all charges will be dropped if he adheres to certain conditions.
According to the recording of an Oct. 10 hearing at Orleans District Court, those conditions include attending regular therapy sessions and taking medication, living at his family home in Yarmouth, and remaining employed or looking for employment.
Bridges had been facing two counts of kidnapping and one of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after barricading himself and two roommates inside his house and expressing suicidal thoughts.
A fourth charge, possession of a firearm, was dropped on Aug. 29, according to court records. The Provincetown Police Dept. had brought that charge despite recordings of law enforcement communications from the Feb. 28 incident that made it clear that Bridges was in possession of a pellet gun, not an actual firearm.
At the Oct. 10 hearing, Assistant District Attorney Robert Hoffman told presiding Judge Robert A. Welsh III that the mental health crisis Bridges experienced that day posed a “significant hurdle” for prosecution. The Commonwealth sought to support continued mental health treatment for Bridges in lieu of pursuing criminal charges.
Bridges’s attorney, Matthew Kelley, told Welsh that Bridges’s roommate Michael Goff has been “quite the advocate” for Bridges and “doesn’t believe this should be a criminal prosecution.”
Kelley said that Bridges’s health has improved since receiving treatment after his arrest. “This is the best he has been doing in years,” Kelley said.
Bridges had been in pretrial detention for four months, during which he was shuttled back and forth between Bridgewater State Hospital and Barnstable County Jail before being released on June 26.
Solitary at the County Jail
Police arrested Bridges on Feb. 28 following a seven-hour standoff that brought about 40 Cape Cod SWAT team members in full riot gear to the scene. In the following months, he was taken to Cape Cod and Falmouth hospitals, transferred to the Barnstable County Correctional Facility twice, and taken to Bridgewater State Hospital twice.
Bridges told the Independent that the severity of his mental illness stemmed from an untreated hypothyroidism diagnosis, which caused severe depression. When Bridges was first detained at Barnstable County Jail, he was placed under suicide watch.
Suicide watch at the jail, Bridges said, consisted of 24-hour surveillance, known as “eyeball watch,” in a solitary confinement cell. Bridges said that the overhead lights were kept on all night, and he was naked except for what he described as a straitjacket with Velcro on the sides.
“I wouldn’t talk; I wouldn’t eat; I just lay there using my straitjacket as a blanket because it was freezing in there,” Bridges said. A correctional officer always was sitting outside his cell, he said. “Some would play music for me, some would talk to me, but most wouldn’t say or do anything.”
Every day, he said, a mental health clinician would stop by to ask if he was feeling better. “I wouldn’t say anything,” Bridges said.
Barnstable County Sheriff Donna Buckley wrote to the Independent saying that the jail’s suicide prevention protocol “is not to punish an inmate, demean, or dehumanize them. It is to keep them alive.”
Buckley stated that the “solitary-type cell” Bridges was in is called a health services observation cell and is reserved for inmates who are most at risk.
The garment that Bridges wore, Buckley said, “is not a straitjacket,” but an “armless kaftan that can only be closed with Velcro.” In it, she said, the inmate’s arms and hands are free.
Buckley stated that correctional officers have responded to 68 suicide attempts at Barnstable County Jail in the last five years; there have been two suicides in that time.
According to Michael Horrell, a senior staff attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, mental health watch “is not a long-term solution to treating someone’s mental health issues.” In fact, he said, “Being subjected to those conditions over a long period of time can lead to severe decompensation and can exacerbate someone’s mental health crisis.”
The pro forma check-ins common in jails, he added, do not serve a purpose. “You need to have actual, substantive engagement to figure out the root causes of the crisis and work to resolve them,” Horrell said.
Bridges was being held at the jail under the care of a private health-care provider called Wellpath. In late August, Buckley ended Barnstable County’s contract with the company after it proved unable to meet its staffing obligations, with only 20 percent of positions filled.
“I don’t know how they thought that locking me up in solitary with lights on all day and someone watching me but not talking to me was going to make me feel any better,” Bridges said.
In December 2022, the Mass. Dept. of Corrections reached a settlement with the federal Dept. of Justice after a 2020 DOJ report accused the Dept. of Corrections of civil rights violations for failing to provide adequate treatment for prisoners with mental health needs. The DOC’s “use of prolonged mental health watch under restrictive housing conditions, including its failure to provide adequate mental health care, violates the constitutional rights of prisoners in mental health crisis,” the report said.
At Bridgewater Hospital
On the fifth day of his incarceration at the jail, Bridges became unconscious and was taken to Falmouth Hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with hypothyroidism. According to Bridges, he began medication there before being transferred to Bridgewater State Hospital, a state-run medium-security facility for men suffering from mental illness.
There, he said, “at least I could read books.”
Bridges said at Bridgewater he was able to undergo extensive treatment and medication for his mental and physical health.
According to the Mass.gov website, the state Dept. of Corrections, which oversees Bridgewater, still outsources its health-care services to Wellpath, but the contract is set to expire next July.
Efforts are underway in the state legislature to transfer the operation of Bridgewater from the Dept. of Corrections to the Dept. of Mental Health.
The idea arose after a February 2022 report conducted by the Disability Law Center raised health and safety concerns about the facility, including “harmful levels of mold growth,” “illegal chemical and physical restraint,” and a “pervasive culture of punishment and intimidation.”
After Bridges was released from Bridgewater in late June, he said, his family welcomed him back home in Yarmouth. He is currently working at a restaurant there.
He said he feels better than he has in a long time. “I may not agree with the way the police handled the situation, but getting me into the hospital and on medication did help me,” Bridges said.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on Nov. 16, misspelled the last name of Michael Horrell, senior staff attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts.
