betsy gotbaum

Phoenix police were investigating Sunday how a 45-year-old woman died over the weekend while in police custody at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport.


Carol Ann Gotbaum, in an undated family photo, may have accidentally strangled herself while in custody.

Carol Ann Gotbaum may have accidentally strangled herself while trying to get out of her handcuffs, Phoenix Police Department spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill said Saturday.

"According to investigators, it appeared as though Ms. Gotbaum had possibly tried to manipulate the handcuffs from behind her to the front, got tangled up in the process, and they ended up around her neck area," he said.

Witnesses told police that Gotbaum was "yelling and screaming" and running through the terminal Friday. She was arrested for disorderly conduct.

While handcuffed, the New Yorker became "disruptive" and she was taken to a holding room, where she was left alone, Hill told CNN affiliate KTVK.

Investigators said officers went to check on her five to 10 minutes later. Police policy requires that be done every 15 minutes.

Finding Gotbaum "unconscious and not breathing," Hill said, officers performed CPR.

"Sometime during the time she went into custody, she went into medical distress," he said.

Gotbaum was the mother of three young children and the daughter-in-law of longtime New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.

Betsy Gotbaum called Carol Ann Gotbaum "a wonderful, wonderful person" and a great mother. She said the family was dealing with the situation "the best way we can."

A spokeswoman for the Maricopa County medical examiner said an autopsy would
The city is failing to make emergency contraceptives easily accessible to women who often lack insurance or cannot afford prescription medication, a new study finds.
In Queens, four out of five city-funded health clinics failed to offer next-day access to a pill used to prevent unwanted pregnancy after unprotected sex or prophylactic failure, according to the study by Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum's office.


The lack of immediate access to this pill is especially troubling in light of the fact it is usually only effective 72 hours after sexual intercourse, Gotbaum said.
"We have the tools to stop unplanned pregnancies before they occur," the public advocate said. "Women shouldn't be forced to scramble in the case of an emergency."
For the study, investigators posed as young women with no medical insurance and called 38 city health clinics and 11 Department of Health sites to ask whether they provided emergency contraceptives, birth control pills and female condoms.
Their results show that while most clinics in Queens offered the morning-after pill, only one in five made it readily available, and two out of the five offered it by prescription only. Other clinics in the city charged as much as $35 for the medication.
Of all the New York City sites, only one provided an advance prescription for the morning-after pill in case of future emergencies. This, despite a 2005 announcement by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that all of the city's Health and Hospitals Corp. clinics would provide the prescriptions.
"Given that the city invested in a new outreach campaign," Gotbaum said of the mayor's $1 million initiative, "it is disappointing to find so few city facilities providing EC (emergency contraception)."
The study also found that while every site in Queens offered some form of prophylactic, usually condoms, none of them stocked female condoms.
In some cases, phone numbers for clinics were incorrect or difficult to find on the city's Web site. In other cases, investigators reported that clinical staff were inaccessible or even unprofessional and insensitive.
Responding to the study, HHC officials contended that their clinics do, in fact, provide access to emergency contraception.
They added that the methodology used in Gotbaum's report was flawed, since it confused the agency's so-called "teen" health centers, which provide pediatric care, with adolescent health centers, which practice reproductive and adolescent medicine.
At the same time, officials vowed to train all clinical and non-clinical staff on how to better respond to inquiries about the availability of emergency contraception in the future.
But Gotbaum believes the HHC should do more ― including sending its employees to sensitivity training classes and offering free emergency contraception, birth control pills and female condoms at every facility.
Doing so, she said, "is not just a good city policy. It's the right thing to do."