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@prisonabolition
One of the hunger strikers in California died this week. Billy Michael Sell, known as “Guero" died on Monday in solitary at Corcoran prison. I’m feeling rage and sadness. His life must not have been lost in vain. We have to win
SPLC lawsuit: Massive human rights violations at Mississippi prison
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit today on behalf of prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, describing the for-profit prison as a filthy, dangerous facility “operating in a perpetual state of crisis” where prisoners are at “grave risk of death and loss of limbs” and often resort to setting fires to receive medical attention.
The class-action lawsuit describes how prison officials have known of these conditions for years but failed to protect the health and safety of prisoners. The facility in Meridian, Miss., is supposed to provide intensive treatment to the state’s seriously mentally ill prisoners, many of whom are locked down in long-term solitary confinement.
The lawsuit describes a facility where prisoners are often locked in filthy cells and ignored even when they are suffering from serious medical issues. Many cells lack light and working toilets, forcing prisoners to use trays or plastic bags that are tossed through slots in their cell doors. Rats often climb over prisoners’ beds. Some prisoners even capture the rats, put them on makeshift leashes and sell them as pets to other prisoners.
Although designated as a facility to care for prisoners with special needs and serious mental illness, the East Mississippi Correctional Facility denies prisoners even the most rudimentary mental health care services. One prisoner is now blind after the facility failed to provide his glaucoma medications and take him to a specialist. Another prisoner had part of his finger amputated after he was stabbed and developed gangrene.
Prisoners also are underfed. According to the lawsuit, a correctional health expert notified the Mississippi Department of Corrections of this problem after reviewing prisoner records that showed a pattern of prisoners losing significant amounts of weight at the prison – some more than 20 or 30 pounds.
Despite evidence demonstrating the adverse effect of long-term solitary confinement on prisoners’ mental health, the prison continues to place prisoners in isolation for weeks, months or years at a time with little stimulation or access to showers and medical care. Prisoners in solitary confinement frequently set fires or flood their cells to get attention for medical treatment.
Complainants include:
Jermaine Dockery, whose medication was increased after a suicide attempt without ever been seen by a doctor.
A 16-year-old inmate who was was beaten in his cell by six adult men, and denied medical treatment by staff.
A man who suffered a multiple rape so horrific I will not recount it here.
It was too late for a man committing suicide who was maced by guards instead of helped, and for several days after his death staff reports listed him “in good health and condition".
This is a **for-profit prison** run by The Management and Training Corp.
This is not just this jail, btw.
This is most jails.
fuck america. may god curse all the fuckers in power.
Yes but, gawd bless our “freedoms". When will people understand (and care) that all jails in this country are for-profit?
If you think this is a special case?
It’s VERY true that this is fairly common for prison conditions.
If you think “prison is supposed to be bad"?
About 10,000 innocent people are convicted EVERY YEAR.
If you think these people are no one you know?
Over 2.3 million are Americans incarcerated; 1 out of every 32 Americans is on parole, probation, or currently in prison.
WHO are they?
60% of prisoners are racial and ethnic minorities; 2/3 of all prisoners are in for drug offenses, NOT violent crimes.
WHY is this happening?
It’s making a handful of people billion upon billions of dollars.
It happens, probably a lot more than we think.
This is my call to the outside world from behind these rusty bars, in this monstrous cell. Does the world know what is happening in this prison?
Despite the long years we the prisoners have spent in this place from 2002 to 2013, the American government does not seem interested in solving the...
Prison Labor Exposed: From Starbucks to Microsoft - A sampling of what US prisoners make & for whom May 21, 2013
Tens of thousands of US inmates are paid from pennies to minimum wage—minus fines and victim compensation—for everything from grunt work to firefighting to specialized labor.
The breaded chicken patty your child bites into at school may have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners. At the UnionCorrectional Facility, a maximum security prison in Florida, inmates from a nearby lower-security prison manufacture tons of processed beef, chicken and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE), a privately held non-profit corporation that operates the state’s forty-one work programs. In addition to processed food, PRIDE’s website reveals an array of products for sale through contracts with private companies, from eyeglasses to office furniture, to be shipped from a distribution center in Florida to businesses across the US. PRIDE boasts that its work programs are “designed to provide vocational training, to improve prison security, to reduce the cost of state government, and to promote the rehabilitation of the state inmates.”
And Each month, California inmates process more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken products, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread, and 2.9 million eggs (from 160,000 inmate-raised hens).Starbucks subcontractor Signature Packaging Solutions has hired Washington prisoners to package holiday coffees (as well as Nintendo Game Boys). Confronted by a reporter in 2001, a Starbucks rep called the setup “entirely consistent with our mission statement.”
Texas inmates produce brooms and brushes, bedding and mattresses, toilets, sinks, showers, and bullwhips.
In Texas, prisoners make officers’ duty belts, handcuff cases, and prison-cell accessories. California convicts make gun containers, creepers (to peek under vehicles), and human-silhouette targets.
A stitch in time: California inmates sew their own garb. In the 1990s, subcontractor Third Generation hired 35 female South Carolina inmates to sew lingerie and leisure wear for Victoria’s Secret and JCPenney. In 1997, a California prison put two men in solitary for telling journalists they were ordered to replace “Made in Honduras” labels on garments with “Made in the usa.”
Open wide: At California’s prison dental laboratory, inmates produce a complete prosthesis selection, including custom trays, try-ins, bite blocks, and dentures.
Constructive criticism: Prisoners in for burglary, battery, drug and gun charges, and escape helped build a Wal-Mart distribution center in Wisconsin in 2005, until community uproar halted the program. (Company policy says, “Forced or prison labor will not be tolerated by Wal-Mart.”)
On call: Its inmate call centers are the “best kept secret in outsourcing,” Unicor boasts. In 1994, a contractor for gop congressional hopeful Jack Metcalf hired Washington state prisoners to call and remind voters he was pro-death penalty. Metcalf, who prevailed, said he never knew.
Federal Prison Industries, a.k.a. Unicor, says that in addition to soldiers’ uniforms, bedding, shoes, helmets, and flak vests, inmates have “produced missile cables (including those used on the Patriot missiles during the Gulf War)” and “wiring harnesses for jets and tanks.” In 1997, according to Prison Legal News, Boeing subcontractor MicroJet had prisoners cutting airplane components, paying $7 an hour for work that paid union wages of $30 on the outside.
Full article
fuck this also fuck that the article had to use the rhetoric of “right in this country!!” “not even outsourced to people you don’t care about!”
**Fight Censorship on YouTube** Aileen Carol Wuornos, a highway prostitute and serial killer who was executed in 2002 for killing seven men in the state of F...
Incarceration in the United States
I don't feel like this is surprising when examining the U.S. and its global relationship with power. The U.S. continues to parade itself as a global 'superpower' and continues to commit grievous atrocities to maintain its global control/enterprise. U.S. domestic law reflects the same investment in power and control. Each law breaking act, no matter the reason behind it, is almost always considered an attack against the state. The U.S. has no intrest in having low incarceration rates because that would not bolster the edifice of control and domination that, in order for the U.S. to continue being a global authority, needs to legitimize its power through the punishment of its own citizens.
Willie Manning Granted Stay of Execution
From The Atlantic:
By a vote of 8-1, the Supreme Court of Mississippi this afternoon halted the scheduled execution of Willie Manning just hours before the convicted murderer was to be put to death by lethal injection at the Parchman prison in Sunflower. In their brief order, which you can read for yourself here, the justices did not give any reason for blocking the execution, and it is unclear at this time exactly how the case will proceed from here. (For The Atlantic's coverage of the case, please see the "More On" box below)
Manning, who is black, was convicted in 1994 for the murder of two white university students in 1992. He has maintained his innocence ever since, amid troublesome (and growing) questions about the accuracy and reliability of the evidence on which his conviction and death sentence are based. Manning's long-ago trial was marked by racial bias in jury selection, for example, and a jailhouse informant, who incriminated Manning in 1994, has since sought to recant his trial testimony.
But the Mississippi court's order Tuesday is likely based upon the scientific evidence that was and was not introduced at trial. Manning's attorneys have long argued that state officials should test DNA and fingerprint evidence from the crime scene -- evidence that has never been tested and that would either incriminate Manning definitively or perhaps identify someone else who may have committed the crimes. The state has consistently refused to undertake this testing even though the FBI has offered to do it, and Mississippi has a remarkable recent record of exonerating criminal defendants in such a fashion.
As a matter of law, the absence of this testing from a shaky case like this was likely enough to warrant a stay of Manning's execution. But the state's refusal to test its DNA evidence was made even more pronounced over the past few days by the intervention of federal officials. Since May 2, the Justice Department has sent three letters to the attorneys in the case announcing that the feds now are backing away from the "ballistics" and "hair fiber" testimony their so-called "expert" testified about at Manning's trial. State prosecutors heavily relied on that now-discredited evidence at trial -- as have state court judges ever since -- as proof that Manning's conviction was secure enough to warrant his execution.
The state came within four hours of executing Manning despite the conceded inaccuracy and unreliability of the scientific evidence against him, despite the willingness of a jailhouse informant to recant, despite racial bias in jury selection. It came within hours of executing the man, even though the scientific evidence that could exonerate him was never tested. No matter what happens now -- and don't forget Manning is still a long way from being out of trouble -- it is a credit to the eight Mississippi justices who voted for the stay that they were willing to change their minds about this case. Last month, by a vote of 5-4, this same court refused to require the DNA testing.
Today's order, by contrast, is a mark of great dishonor to the lone dissenting justice, Michael K. Randolph, who in just a few paragraphs helped illustrate the dubious rationale behind so many of these flawed capital cases. To Justice Randolph, the grave error in this case was not the false testimony against Manning or the lack of DNA testing, it was the fact that his lawyers this week failed to submit affidavits with the letters from federal officials. Then, in a passage as unhinged as any I have ever read in a judicial opinion, Justice Randolph gave full voice to his real frustrations about the result here. Of the Justice Department's timely intervention in this story, Justice Randolph wrote:
The letter also states that the Department of Justice is "assist[ing] [the Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers] in their evaluations." "The Innocence Project supports a moratorium on capital punishment." The "NACDL has been an outspoken critic of the death penalty system. Of critical concern is the language contained in the first FBI report stating that, "[g]iven the abbreviated time frame for review, the FBI requests the Innocence Project (IP) to advise as to whether or not they agree with the FBI's conclusions as soon as possible."
Although the connectivity and expediency by which this review was accomplished is mind boggling, I should not be surprised, given that the families of the victims of the clandestine "Fast and Furious" gun running operation can't get the Department of Justice to identify the decision makers (whose actions resulted in the death of a border agent and many others) after years of inquiry, and that this is the same Department of Justice that grants and enforces Miranda warnings to foreign enemy combatants." [emphasis in original]
While Willie Manning will live for at least a few more months, nothing about today's order guarantees him a reversal of his conviction, or a new trial, or a new hearing about jury selection or that jailhouse snitch or those discredited federal experts, or any DNA and fingerprint testing. Those questions are left for another day, and both Manning's lawyers and state attorneys now are waiting for further guidance from the court on what happens next. We haven't heard the last of Willie Manning, in other words -- or Justice Randolph, either, for that matter.
Source/URL:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/hours-before-execution-a-state-court-grants-willie-manning-a-stay/275631/
Mississippi to Execute Willie Manning Tonight After Rejecting DNA Tests & FBI’s Admission of Error
The state of Mississippi is preparing to execute an African-American prisoner tonight, despite an unusual admission from the FBI that its original analysis of the evidence contained errors. Willie Jerome Manning was convicted of murdering Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller, two white college students, in 1992. The execution is going ahead after prosecutors and state courts refused to allow new DNA testing that could prove Manning’s innocence. The Justice Department sent a letter saying one analyst’s testimony at trial “exceeded the limits of the science and was, therefore, invalid.” Manning’s attorneys argue that no physical evidence ties him to the murders and that testing hair samples and other evidence could identify a different killer. But in a 5-to-4 decision last month, Mississippi’s state supreme court refused to grant a new DNA test, citing what it called “conclusive, overwhelming evidence of guilt.” On top of the denied DNA test, Manning’s attorneys say prosecutors relied on two key witnesses whose credibility has since come under question. Concerns have also been raised about alleged racial bias in the selection of the jury that found Manning guilty. “We need someone to step in,” says Vanessa Potkin, a senior staff attorney at The Innocence Project. “It is unconscionable that an execution would go forward where there is biological evidence that can cut to the truth and show whether or not he did the crime. What is anybody afraid of?”
(via Democracy Now)
From the ACLU website (https://ssl.capwiz.com/aclu/issues/alert/?alertid=62643776&type=SW&etname=MS_Action_05062013&etjid=825324) there is a script to email or call Gov. Phil Bryant (R-MS). Reads as followed:
On May 7th, 2013, Mississippi is scheduled to execute Willie Manning despite questions about his innocence. Much of the key evidence that led to Manning's sentence of death has turned out to be a sham. One witness has admitted that he lied in his testimony and there was never any physical evidence Manning was involved in the deaths of two college students. The FBI has conceded that it wrongly testified about a match between a hair found in a victim's car and Manning, admitting science supported no such thing. Since 1994, Manning has been requesting DNA testing that would prove his innocence. The FBI is willing to do the testing. Please grant a stay and allow DNA testing. Mississippi should not execute someone if questions about his innocence remain unanswered.
The Mississippi Gov. Office's phone number is 601.359.3150/601.576.2980, but (today at least) have not lead to any real person.
Department of Corrections, Mississippi, where an actual person will answer is 601.576.3520.
662.745.6611 x4025 Chaplin Bays at Parchman (this led to an answering machine)
X2305 for Superintendent Earnest Lee
Linked here are other avenues of the Department of Corrections of Mississippi: http://www.mdoc.state.ms.us/contact_us.htm
EDIT: In regards to calling, they will put you through the ringer. Some helpful, some not so helpful, the higher you are able to get (for example when calling the Superintendent Earnest Lee) they will begin to rapidly transfer you until they "lose" your call. Good luck, happy calling.
March 18, 2013
On Wednesday, a victim of police brutality filed a lawsuit against a Chicago police officer as well as the city of Chicago. According to Courthouse News Service, in Apr. 2011, Chicago police appeared at Rita King’s door after a domestic disturbance...
Read it and learn!
You are guaranteed that the Government is Prohibited from unreasonable searches and seizures and sets out requirements for search warrants based on probable cause by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States!
Former sex trafficking victim shines light on dark underworld of Super Bowl
Feb. 1 2013
Amid the parties and fun of Super Bowl 2013, authorities say, there is a dark underworld of girls and women being forced into the sex trade. Sitting in the festive lobby of a New Orleans hotel, festooned with San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens decorations, Clemmie Greenlee, a former victim of sex trafficking from Nashville, recalled being brought to cities around the South to prostitute for those attending such large-scale events.
For Greenlee’s pimps, the influx of people provided a massive money-making opportunity.
“When they come to these kinds of events, the first thing you’re told is how many you’re gonna perform a day,” she said Friday. “You’ve got to go through 25 men a day, or you’re going through 50 of them. When they give you that number, you better make that number.”
Having been abducted and gang-raped by her captors at age 12, Greenlee said, she was one of about eight girls controlled by a ring of pimps, men who injected them with heroin and, at times, kept them handcuffed to beds. For trying to run away, she was once stabbed in the back.
Now 53, Greenlee works at Eden House in Uptown New Orleans, the first shelter for sex-trafficking victims in Louisiana; the center opened in October 2012.
“If you don’t make that number (of sex customers), you’re going to dearly, dearly, severely pay for it,” Greenlee said. “I mean with beatings, I mean with over and over rapings. With just straight torture. The worst torture they put on you is when they make you watch the other girl get tortured because of your mistake.”
Sex and Super Bowls
In the past year, authorities in Louisiana have been working to raise awareness about the rampant sex trafficking that has historically accompanied the Super Bowl. While there is a widespread perception that human trafficking is a problem only in foreign countries, data from the U.S. Department of Justice show the average American prostitute begins working between the ages of 12 and 14.
Established in 2006, the Louisiana Human Trafficking Task Force, comprised of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, plus faith-based and nongovernmental organizations, has been meeting regularly to try to increase trafficking arrests and rescue the victims.
As a tourist destination, New Orleans attracts sex workers year-round, said Bryan Cox, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in New Orleans. But many of those young women are not here by choice. So, in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, both outreach and undercover efforts have ramped up.
Those efforts have paid off to some degree already. As of Thursday, at least eight men had been booked with sex trafficking and five female victims had been rescued from their clutches, Cox said, noting that such cases are investigated jointly by the New Orleans Police Department, State Police, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, among others.
Two of the women, ages 21 and 24, were brought to Covenant House, a homeless shelter for young people at the edge of the French Quarter, according to executive director James Kelly. After taking a shower and spending the night, however, the women left without accepting the services Kelly and others were trying to offer them.
“We believe they went back to turning tricks,” Kelly said. “We did our best to try to care for them and try to get them to stay, but they were 21 and 24, and there was no way we could force them to stay, and neither could the FBI.”
Such behavior is common, Greenlee said, noting that she had repeatedly returned to her captors after stays in the hospital or jail, mainly out of fear. She said many times, the women are brainwashed; they believe they have no other options, no future to pursue.
“They’re terrified,” she said. “You can say you’re going to save us, you can say we don’t have to worry about the pimps no more. We already know what power they have shown us. So either you come back to them, or you find out two days later they either got your grandmother or they just broke your little baby’s arm.
“There’s no such thing as we want to go back to these guys,” she said. “We do not feel that no one — not even the law — can protect us, and we do not want to die. I’d rather live in that misery and pain than to die.”
Messages on bars of soap
Aside from police sting operations, advocacy groups and local police agencies have been trying to combat the problem by handing out pamphlets to local hotel concierges, bartenders and club bouncers, asking them to be on the lookout for women who appear fearful and show signs of being controlled by the men they’re with. One of the signs a woman is being trafficked is that she is not allowed to speak for herself, advocates say.
Some groups have been handing out to hotels bars of soap that have a sex trafficking hotline phone number on them, hoping that women who are desperate to escape will see the number on the soap bar and take a chance on a phone call that could save them. Other groups have been providing strip clubs with posters that urge people to call in tips.
For Greenlee, her chance at a turnaround came from a similar help card in Nashville. Having run away from her captors in her 30s, she said, they did not chase after her because she had “aged out.” Living in an abandoned house in Nashville, shooting heroin with other junkies and prostituting herself, she had lost all hope of a normal life.
But one woman, a former sex worker who knew Greenlee and had graduated from Magdalene House, a safe house program in Nashville — the philosophy of which Eden House was based on — visited Greenlee almost weekly. She would leave little cards with the Magdalene House telephone number on them. But having given up, Greenlee shunned the woman and her cards.
After about five months of cards piling up, one day Greenlee woke up and realized she needed to take the chance. She was 42 years old. “I went to the phone and I pulled out some of them 99 pieces of paper that girl had left.
“The one thing I had in my head was, ‘If I learn how to live and heal, I can get back and get those girls. I can go back and tell people what they do to us,’” she said. “I’m not ashamed of what done happened to me. I don’t care if I never get a husband. It just don’t make no sense that we had to go through this.”
“It’s not as easy as saying, ‘Call this number, escape,’” said Kara Van De Carr, executive director of Eden House. “But women who have hit rock bottom and realize they’re going to die in that lifestyle will try anything to get out.”
Authorities urge those who suspect trafficking to contact local police or the Department of Homeland Security at 1.866.347.2423. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center also staffs a toll-free 24-hour hotline at 888-373-7888.
It’s really difficult for people to accept that little girls are being sold into slavery here in the US. Especially WOC. it’s so rampant here, and still documentaries are only being made about how horrible so-called third world nations are for having sex trafficking.
In the roughly 27 hours from early Saturday to Sunday morning, police in Hayward, Union City, San Jose and San Francisco each opened fire and killed a suspect who either allegedly hit them with a car or drew a pistol.
The most recent clash ended around 3:20 a.m. with a Hayward police officer firing into a Honda that rammed his cruiser, which carried a civilian passenger. About 4½ hours prior, Union City police shot and killed a man who they said pulled a gun on them during a foot chase around 10 p.m.
These deadly confrontations come just days after two Santa Cruz police officers were shot and killed Tuesday by a suspect who sneaked up on them. It’s also been a bloody start to 2013 for California police, who have already seen six officers killed in the line of duty, including those in Santa Cruz, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page.
“Is it because of all these incidents that these officers did what they did? I don’t think so,” said Hayward police Sgt. Eric Krimm. “Would an officer under similar circumstances maybe have it in the subconscious? Absolutely. If people just listened — if they heed the verbal orders and do what the officer is telling them, there won’t be a use of force. But when faced with a deadly situation where someone’s life is in danger, the officer can and may respond with lethal force.”
[Translation: If you don’t respond to authorities with complete obedience, you face an immediate and arbitrary death sentence]
Not to mention Xavier Moore who was killed by Berkeley Police two weeks ago and a woman named Maria who bled to death on Saturday while the OPD watched.
“She made friends easily, she was very charismatic,” said Elysse Paige-Moore of her stepdaughter, Kayla Moore. “It was typical for her to call here five or six times a day, and talk with us. We cared for her dearly. We have no retirement money because we just did what we could for our child. And she loved us.”
Paige-Moore was understandably devastated when she heard that Moore, who was transgender and paranoid schizophrenic, died in Berkeley Police custody in her home on the night of February 12. How she died is still a mystery. “We understand the community’s concern over this incident, and the desire to have as much information about this incident as possible,” but “a thorough investigation takes time,” said Berkeley Police’s Public Information Officer, Jennifer Coats, via email in late February.
It was around 11 p.m. on February 12 when police arrived at Moore’s downtown Berkeley apartment to handle a mental health-related disturbance. This first visit was fairly quiet. When the cops left, Moore was still alive in her home.
But then the police returned an hour later, this time with more officers, for what would be the last, apparently terrifying, human interaction of Moore’s life. Neighbors at the Allston Way apartment building would later report hearing Moore screaming for several minutes, then an abrupt silence that signaled her death. While we don’t know if police were at fault, we do know that, in general, police have a poor reputation when it comes to dealing with people who are transgender and/or disabled. (Though there are countless statistics that show this, here are a couple recent revealing ones: An investigation by two Maine newspapers published in December 2012 found that at least half of the people killed by police in the US each year are mentally disabled; the latest National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 29 percent of transgender people said they had been verbally harassed by cops.)
According to the Oakland Tribune, police “originally were going to take [Moore] to Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley for a psychiatric evaluation, but then they discovered an outstanding warrant for assault from San Francisco.” These officers, whose names have not been released, made a fateful decision: to arrest someone who was known by the department to be paranoid schizophrenic, while she was apparently experiencing a psychiatric emergency. When Moore was told she was going to be arrested, she became combative, police told the Tribune. Almost a month after the fact, we don’t know much more about that night in February. The coroner’s office still hasn’t released a cause of death.
At a community meeting on February 28, a member of the Berkeley Police Review Commission, Veena Dubal, spoke about “a lack of transparency” in how the department has managed the situation. Because it has released so little information, a coalition of local organizations (Berkeley Copwatch, Coalition for a Safe Berkeley, and the Amnesty International chapter at UC Berkeley) is in the process of conducting an investigation of their own.
“Bear in mind that she’s 347 pounds. It’s hard to imagine, to be honest, that she could pose that giant of a threat to the officers,” said Andrea Pritchett, an organizer with Berkeley Copwatch. Pritchett is particularly concerned about the amount of time the department is taking with its investigation, as she describes what she sees as the cops’ M.O.:
“They circle the wagons, won’t let anyone have any information, stall, delay, and hope that public interest dissipates, and that’s what we’re determined will not happen in this case. It’s a sad commentary on the deterioration of police accountability in Berkeley, I think, because Berkeley hasn’t been known for these types of incidents, yet they’re happening with greater frequency here.”
The Bay Area is celebrated for being the one of the world’s most accessible place for people with disabilities. But, as Pritchett said, “There’s this larger question of how police just kind of get to assassinate, ‘put down’, terminate mentally ill people. The interaction between the police department and the mental health department in incidents involving people with psychiatric emergencies is really important.” In Moore’s case, it seems the mental health part of the equation wasn’t there. Mental health emergencies “don’t always happen during business hours. This episode, if it was an episode, was happening between eleven and midnight. So does that mean if someone’s having a [psychiatric emergency] they’re not going to get any kind of services from our city, and so we’re just going to let police with guns handle it?”
Media reports have mentioned Moore’s drug use, but it’s unclear what role, if any, her drug usage played in her death. “People get confused between drug addiction and mental health issues,” said Paige-Moore. “When you see a drug addict, don’t judge what you don’t know, and understand that if a mentally ill person dies of a drug overdose, or drugs are a contributing factor, don’t make assumptions about their character. They were doing the best they could do.”
Moore’s stepmother and neighbors confirmed that she identified as a woman, although in media reports and Berkeley Police Department press releases and statements about the case, she’s referred to as he and him, a marked sign of disrespect to someone who likely had to fight every day to be understood as female. Back in 2001, Berkeley became one of the first cities in the United States to offer transgender sensitivity training to officers, but when something as basic and vital as using the correct language to talk about someone is disregarded, it’s a symptom that these trainings have failed.
At a February 28 press conference, the public coalition released this statement:
“The effectiveness of the Police Review Commission has decreased, and police responses to situations have become increasingly violent. The situation for people of color, young people, houseless people and those on the margins has steadily deteriorated in recent years.
Likewise, our ability to bring issues to the attention of the Police Review Commission and to have cases heard fairly has decreased. New regulations that are completely biased against complainants make it almost impossible to sustain complaints against a police officer. We can expect more tragic incidents of this kind if nothing changes.
We believe that an unarmed, obese and schizophrenic woman in her own home should have been responded to by, if anything, mental health professionals, not armed police.”
While we don’t know how Moore died, we do know that uncountable disabled and transgender people suffer and die in police custody. We do know that in Berkeley, as in most cities, the numbers are against them: the City of Berkeley’s budget for 2013 appropriates $58.5 million for the police department, while health services is set to receive less than half of that, of which just a fraction goes to mental health services. We also know that reactive responses from police cost more than proactive health services — both in terms of money and lives.
Calling Moore by her preferred pronoun is the least we can do. What we also must do is reconsider our ideas around what constitutes public safety, or else our government agencies will continue to be implicated in the mistreatment of people like Kayla Moore.
The United States DHS has declared that areas 100 miles in from the US border are zones in which the 4th Amendment does not apply.
Major cities like New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and even Houston have been declared by the Department of Homeland Security to be within the official 100 mile ‘border’ of the United States, subjecting 197 million citizens to electronic belonging searches without any suspicion.
lol so pretty much the entire Northeast
well this is a new terrifying thing.
I watched 10 Oakland Police officers watch a woman of color and mother of two bleed out this morning. I watched them watch her die.
She was my neighbor. Her name was Maria. About two months ago, her ex beat the shit out of her and she escaped to her front porch and was crying. When I heard her screaming, I got out of bed, pulled my big boots on, and grabbed a baseball bat. I chased her ex off with the bat and then took care of her and stayed with her while the cops questioned her. I met her kids. I knew her.
She moved out of the house and the abusive ex stayed. I hadn’t seen her for over a month.
At around 5 am, my husband and I woke up to screaming and yelling. We both thought we heard two men fighting and threatening to kill each other. I personally will put myself in a lot of danger to help a battered woman but I really don’t want to get involved in a fight with two dudes who are probably stronger than me and threatening to shoot each other. I stayed in my bed.
Then there was screaming. A lot of it. Then there was silence. Then there was a man screaming. He was yelling, “Oh my god, why did you do that? You’re bleeding!” and so I assumed someone had been stabbed. Then the cops came.
I’ve been doing Copwatch for a couple of years now. I unfortunately had every single one of my cameras stolen in a home robbery in December, so I couldn’t tape anything. But I could watch. So this is what I saw from my front porch.
I saw Maria laying on the ground by her house. I saw at least 10 police officers walking around the house, one taking pictures, all of them shining their flashlights around. Some were talking to the upset ex. I heard him tell them that she tried to climb through the back window and cut her arm on the glass. Obviously I don’t know if I believe that cuz, you know, he BEAT HER two months ago, but that’s kind of irrelevant.
I thought she was dead already. I thought this because no one was in any hurry. They were taking pictures of the front of the house while she was on the ground. Not once did I see anyone crouch down to check on her, to talk to her. They stood above her and shined their flashlights over her body. That image will stay with me for the rest of my god damn life.
It took 15-20 minutes for an ambulance to come. I should have timed it, that was a rookie mistake, but like I said, I thought she was dead already. The fucking idiot cops had parked their cars in the middle of the street so the ambulance had to park half a block away and I watched them LEISURELY stroll up to the house with a stretcher and then LEISURELY stroll back to the ambulance. I basically only really knew she was alive when I saw that 1. she wasn’t in a body bag and 2. she was moving on the stretcher.
I live across the street from a children’s hospital. I mean, literally across the street. I mean I live 25 yards away from a children’s hospital.
I watched the cops watch a woman die this morning. A black woman. A mother of two. A domestic abuse survivor. I watched them watch her die.
A neighbor told my husband this morning while he was walking the dog that she didn’t make it. The neighbor, also a single mother of two and a woman of color, said to him, “I guess it’s not like the movies where everyone rushes around and they save you right there on the ground.” My husband nodded but didn’t say what we all know to be true:
“They do if you’re white.”
Prison Rape For a convicted criminal, whatever his or her offense, to be raped in prison is every bit as unacceptable and abhorrent as a high-school girl being raped after the prom. Rape is rape. It can never be justified or excused. Which makes it all the more worrying that the rate of sexual victimization inside America’s prisons and jails is increasing and that the Attorney General has so far failed to fulfill recommendations from a congressional commission to tackle the problem. He probably thinks there are no votes to be had here and, indeed, its a subject that has little ‘public appeal’. A study by the Department of Justice estimated that 88,500 adults held in Americas chronically overcrowded prisons and jails are sexually abused annually, either by staff or fellow inmates. That’s a truly horrific figure, and probably very much on the low side because most rape goes unreported, yet it causes hardly a ripple of concern in the media or among the general public. In fact its become almost an expected and acceptable part of our sick culture. Cops in dumb Hollywood movies routinely threaten scared young suspects with homosexual rape in prison. Sniggering jokes are made about ‘not dropping your soap in the shower’. Every vile little reference normalizes something that’s hideously wrong and helps to enable the rapists. The state , on our behalf, takes away a persons liberty and their ability to defend themselves and therefore has an absolute duty to protect them at all times. People in prison aren’t all homicidal maniacs and violent thugs, although in this context it wouldn’t matter if they were. The rape victim could be someone who ended up in the system because they needed help and didn’t get it. It could be your brother or father or sister fallen foul of the crazy ‘war on drugs’. Whoever it is, whatever they’ve done, nobody ever ‘deserves’ to get raped. If you’re in prison your punishment under law is loss of freedom. That’s it. That’s enough. I know there are people who couldn’t care less what happens to prisoners in our over-crowded prisons. They deserve whatever happens to them, right ? No. Totally and utterly wrong. When the state representing you and me turns a blind eye to the rape of defenseless people then it makes us all dirty. Rape is wrong, whoever its done to and whatever the circumstances. That’s not so hard to understand. Ellie
abolish the prison system because it’s a nightmare.
