Baby Gabriel’s Mom Taken to MCSO Psychiatric Unit After Complaining About Sheriff’s Controversial “Loaf Program”

Elizabeth Johnson, the mother of missing baby Gabriel Johnson, apparently wasn’t playing too nice with some of the other Maricopa County jail inmates, and as a result, has been sent to the jail’s psychiatric ward after refusing to eat some of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “loaf.”

Despite the sheriff’s public touting of Johnson as the model inmate, Johnson assaulted two other prisoners and was placed on the sheriff’s “loaf” program, Arpaio announced in a press release today.

The loaf program, according to the Sheriff’s Office, was created about 10 years ago to “prevent inmates from assaulting detention officers and other inmates.”

Arpaio says in the press release, “I will not tolerate prisoners abusing my officers or other inmates by throwing urine, feces, or assaulting them. For that type of behavior they will go on bread and water.”

You may be asking yourself, “What the hell is loaf, and why would the sheriff think anyone would eat it?”

“Loaf,” according to the MCSO, is nonfat, dry milk powder, an assortment of fruits and vegetables, chili powder, and bread dough all compacted into one solid brick-like loaf.

Yum.

The loaf program was the subject of the court case Bugoni vs. Coffman, where the plaintiffs claimed that forcing inmates to eat Joe’s “loaf” was unconstitutional.

A ruling in favor of the sheriff was issued on Friday, so what better way to hype one of the sheriff’s minor legal victories than using it to throw one of the county’s most infamous inmates in the loony bin.

According to the Arpaio’s office, Johnson gave a detention officer a document she called “My Advanced Directive’s Will,” in which she said she was starving by refusing to eat Joe’s loaf because it was full of rotten vegetables and worms.

After reviewing the letter, officers determined Johnson needed a trip to the psych ward to be “evaluated.”