[2/17/04]Police created a disturbance in the psychiatric unit at River Region West Campus on Sunday, the supervisor on duty said.

The hospital administrator, however, said the matter will be handled internally and no complaint will be filed.

Jean Rampy, a registered nurse for 20 years, said it is longstanding policy not to allow firearms in the locked area for psychiatric patients at the hospital and that two officers guarding a city prisoner taken to the unit during the weekend complied without question.

A third, however, identified as Patrolman Riley Nelson, insisted on keeping his service weapon when he reported for a shift.

“He refused to disarm and go in the unit, and I wouldn’t let him,” Rampy said. When she refused to provide the code for the electric lock, “he told me he was going to handcuff me, have me arrested and booked for obstruction of justice.”

Rampy said Nelson, on the police force for less than a year, then called his supervisor, Sgt. Jarvis Mosley, who went to the hospital and also threatened to have Rampy arrested. “I was doing my job,” Rampy said. Weapons are universally prohibited at hospitals where mental patients are housed due to the risks of a confined person obtaining one. The same is true of jails and prisons, including the Warren County Jail, where police must place their guns in lockers before entering areas where inmates are held.

Police Chief Tommy Moffett, who was in Raymond at a conference Monday, said he had not heard about the incident.

“I’m not aware that we’ve done anything wrong,” he said. “There isn’t a complaint from the hospital. If there’s any conflict between our policy and their policy, I feel like it’s nothing that couldn’t be worked out.”

Moffett also said the suspect was the first the VPD has had in custody in the psychiatric ward during his two years and four months as chief. It has likely been a number of years since the previous such case, he added.

River Region CEO Phillip Clendenin confirmed that the hospital had not filed a complaint with the police department and said that it would not do so. Such a situation “has rarely come up,” he said.

The hospital would work with the VPD to “have a process in place that meets the needs of both parties,” Clendenin said.

Police were to guard the suspect in custody around-the-clock, Rampy said. The officer who was guarding the patient had disarmed, but his replacement at 11 p.m. Sunday would not.

“We had nothing but chaos because of the Vicksburg Police Department,” she said. She said it lasted for about two hours, until about 1 a.m.

She said the chaos ended when “one officer, who was a very nice person, agreed to disarm and stay with the patient until 7 a.m.” The officer who was to be0 relieved stayed on duty inside the ward until then, so the patient was at no time left unguarded, she said.

“I would never risk the lives of the patient, the staff or any other patient to let a police officer in” with a weapon, Rampy said, adding that the ward had 19 other patients at the time.

“He was totally out of line with what he did,” she said.

Moffett said the suspect may have made his initial appearance in city court as early as Monday afternoon. If he did so and the court ordered the case “bound over” to a county grand jury, the Warren County Sheriff’s Department would have taken custody of the suspect from the police department.