Santa Clara ~!uards Beat Another Inmate To Death

Posted: Tuesday, September 29, 2015 6:47 am | Updated: 9:00 am, Tue Sep 29, 2015. Inmate in Northern California jail found dead in cellAssociated Press | SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Authorities are investigating the death of an inmate in the same Northern California jail where a man was beaten to death last month. KNTV reports (http://bit.ly/1LMjZLN ) Tuesday that an inmate at the Santa Clara County Main Jail died in custody Monday morning. Sgt. James Jensen with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office says corrections staff administered CPR while fire crews were en route.The inmate could not be resuscitated and was pronounced dead at 11:04 a.m.Monday's death remains under investigation, and Jensen says the sheriff's office isn't releasing additional details until the man's family is notified. The incident comes a month after inmate Michael Tyree was allegedly beaten to death by three deputies in the same jail on Aug. 27. The three correctional officers have been charged with murder. Two were released on $1.5 million bail each on Monday. http://www.recorderonline.com/news/state_news/inmate-in-northern-california-jail-found-dead-in-cell/article_58641d02-02b4-5b1d-9521-c171fffb66dd.html

Twenty Prisoners Sign Affidavits Saying They Witnessed Guards Beat Inmate To Death

You are here: Home » Cover-Up Nearly Twenty Prisoners Sign Affidavits Saying They Witnessed Guards Beat Inmate To Death August 18, 2015 5:36 pm· A full 19 different inmates locked up in New York’s Fishkill Correctional Facility have signed sworn affidavits that say they witnessed guards brutally beating Samuel Harrell to death. Michael Winerip and Micahel Schwirts of the New York Times write that the inmates described nothing short than what Shaun King of the Daily Kos says was “a living hell on earth not just for Samuel, but for so many of their peers who are locked far away in poorly managed prison.” Last April 21st, 30 year old Samuel “J-Rock” Harrell was killed – beaten to death by prison guards. King days that Harrell was “often out of touch with reality, and five years away from his sentence ending.” He didn’t understand the situation he was facing, day-to-day, behind bars. “Samuel packed a bag and told the guards his beloved sister was there to pick him up,” King explains. “Of course she wasn’t, but sincerely didn’t seem to know that.” Not long after, he got into a confrontation with corrections officers, was thrown to the floor and was handcuffed. As many as 20 officers — including members of a group known around the prison as the Beat Up Squad — repeatedly kicked and punched Mr. Harrell, who is black, with some of them shouting racial slurs, according to more than a dozen inmate witnesses. “Like he was a trampoline, they were jumping on him,” said Edwin Pearson, an inmate who watched from a nearby bathroom.Mr. Harrell was then thrown or dragged down a staircase, according to the inmates’ accounts. One inmate reported seeing him lying on the landing, “bent in an impossible position.” The inmates say the guards were immediately trying to cover their tracks and construct and agreed upon alibi. http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/08/nearly-twenty-prisoners-sign-affidavits-saying-they-witnessed-guards/

Cruel & All Too Usual A Terrifying Glimce Into The Life In Prison As A Kid

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/cruel-and-all-too-usual/ - WARNING: The Following Video, Obtained By The Huffington Post, Show The Rough Treatment Of A Minor By Correctional Officers & May bE Disturbing To Some Viewers. If You are In A public Place Headphones Are Advisable: - http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/cruel-and-all-too-usual/ - >Cruel & All Too Usual A Terrifying Glimce Into The Life In Prison As A Kid By Dana Liebelson. When the video above was filmed, the girl on the bed was 17 years old. For the purposes of this story, I’ll call her Jamie. There was a time when she liked acting in goofy comedy skits at her Detroit church or crawling into bed with her grandmother to watch TV. She loved to sing—her favorite artist was Chris Brown—but she was too shy to perform in front of other people. Jamie, whose mother was addicted to crack cocaine, was adopted when she was 3. At high school, she fell in with a wayward crowd and started drinking and smoking weed. Since she didn't always get along with her adoptive mom, she lived with a close family friend from her church whom she referred to as her sister. One fall day in 2011, they got into a bad fight over their living arrangements. The friend told police that Jamie threw a brick at her, hitting her in the chest, and then banged the brick so hard on the front door that she broke the glass mail chute. Jamie denies the assault—and the police report notes that the brick may not have hit her friend—but she admitted to officers that she was “mad” and “trying to get back in the house.” The Wayne County court gave her two concurrent six-month sentences, for assault and destruction of a building. In a wealthier Michigan county, kids convicted of minor offenses are almost always sentenced to community service, like helping out at the local science center. Doug Mullkoff, a criminal defense attorney in Ann Arbor, told me that prison in such circumstances is "virtually unheard of." But Jamie is from Detroit, and in January 2012, she was sent to the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, a prison that holds inmates convicted of crimes like first-degree homicide. From this point onward, her world was largely governed by codes and practices and assumptions designed for adult criminals. Jamie is 20 now, but her soft brown eyes make her seem younger. When she first came to prison, women old enough to be her mother told her she was cute and promised to take care of her. “They rub on you and stuff, I can’t stand it,” she said. In the seven months before her 18th birthday, prison records show that Jamie was housed with at least three adult cellmates, including one in her 50s who had a history of cocaine possession. Jamie said she was also around adults in the showers and the yard. She had a bunkmate who did drugs she had never been around before, “something you snort.” In this environment, Jamie found it hard to stay out of trouble. And when trouble came, she didn’t know how to explain herself to the guards. According to Chris Gautz, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC), Jamie “failed in every instance” to meet good-behavior standards that under Michigan law allow certain inmates to have their records scrubbed clean after they serve their sentences. In June 2012, Jamie’s special status was revoked and she was resentenced to up to five years in prison for her original crime. In May, Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed a law that limits the circumstances under which kids with Jamie’s status can be sent to prison. However, he stressed that youth can still be placed in prison to “protect public safety.” When this news sank in, Jamie snapped. On June 15, 2012, she started yelling so loud and for so long that a correctional officer complained in the logbook that the noise was giving her a headache. Then she climbed on her sink and threatened to kill herself. A group of officers in gas masks hauled her out of her cell as she begged them to put her down. Chemical gas that had been used to subdue another inmate lingered in the hallway, Jamie later recalled, and she started to cough. The officers pressed a spit guard on her face and fastened straps on her arms and legs and chest, a practice known as five-point restraint. Jamie became more and more distressed, but at no point did the officers attempt to calm her or even explain what they were doing. “[There was] snot coming out of my nose. I’m trying to sit up,” she said. “I’m coughing and crying at the same time, and basically the officer said I spit on her and they still tied me down.” She recalled pleading with the guards, “I’m like only 17, you can’t do this to me.” A page from a guard’s observation log on June 15, obtained through a FOIA request. After Jamie had been restrained, the logbook shows that she was left tied to a bed for nearly 24 hours. No therapist appears to have visited her during this time. Jamie said that on another occasion, she was restrained for days and urinated on herself. “I’ve had dreams about being held down; nobody can hear me or nothing. It’s terrifying,” she said. The MDOC declined to comment on detailed questions related to her treatment because they concerned “pending litigation” and “personal medical information.” Jamie had never attempted suicide until she went to prison and her fellow inmates taught her how to cut herself. Over the course of several weeks in June, according to the prison log, she tried to hang herself with socks tied around her neck, to cut herself with wall scrapings and rocks and a comb, to eat paint chips off her door, and to scratch a wound on her arm with empty mayonnaise packets. She told a staff member she wanted her arm to get infected, amputated, and sent to her parents. A checklist from the June 15, 2012 incident report when Jamie was placed in restraints.The cause of the incident is marked as "none apparent." The treatment of kids in adult lockups recently received a rare burst of attention with the suicide of Kalief Browder on June 8 of this year. Browder was sent to the jail on Rikers Island at the age of 16 after being accused of stealing a backpack. During the three years he spent there before the charges were thrown out, he was brutally assaulted by both inmates and guards and spent about two years in solitary confinement. His case has drawn attention to what the Justice Department called a “dangerous place for adolescents” with a “pervasive climate of fear.” But the problem runs far deeper than one jail gone rogue. In the course of reporting on a lawsuit against the Michigan prison system, I obtained a series of videos depicting the treatment of underage inmates in adult facilities, as well as hundreds of prison documents through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and other sources. (Jamie is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.) These materials show under-18-year-olds being restrained, held in solitary confinement, forcibly extracted from their cells, tasered, and allegedly sexually assaulted. Some of these incidents would not violate any official rulebook, but are simply accepted practices inside adult correctional institutions. In 1822, when prison reformers in New York proposed the nation’s first juvenile institution, they saw the need to keep children separate from adults as “too obvious to require any argument.” The juvenile justice system was founded on the idea that young people are capable of change, and so society has a responsibility to help them overcome early mistakes in life. More recent science has only confirmed this principle. Because adolescents’ brains are still developing, their patterns of behavior not yet fixed, they have a far better chance of being rehabilitated than adults. And yet this potential is lost in prisons and jails, which barely recognize any distinction between adults and minors. http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/cruel-and-all-too-usual/ In the 1980s and ‘90s, the United States was gripped by panic over the specter of the teenage “super-predator,” and the controversial Princeton professor John DiIulio warned darkly of “the youngest, biggest and baddest generation any society has ever known.” These claims would turn out to be wildly overblown, but during this period many states introduced laws making it easier for children to be prosecuted as adults. Between 1985 and 1995, the number of youth incarcerated in prisons and jails roughly doubled. As of 2013, almost 6,000 kids were held in adult facilities across the country. Compared to kids who do their time in juvenile detention, those in the adult system attempt suicide more often. One study, reviewed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tracked what happened to minors in custody for similar crimes. After they were released, those who had served in the adult system were 77 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent felony than those who were sent to juvenile institutions. There is an increasing body of scientific research showing that when adolescents suffer from extreme stress and trauma, it can inflict permanent damage on their bodies and brains. A study led by the CDC found that children who experienced multiple forms of trauma, such as physical and sexual abuse, had a life expectancy 20 years shorter than their counterparts.

One prisoner was left brain dead from the abuse

Food and water deprivation, abuse and overcrowding in Michigan’s women’s prison By Naomi Spencer 10 September 2014 A pair of statements issued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and three inmates at the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility describe widespread human rights abuses in Michigan’s only women’s prison. Overcrowding, the regular use of forced restraint and tasers, forced nudity, and the withholding of food water, and sanitation are among the complaints. The ACLU statement, issued to the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) in July and obtained by the Ann Arbor News this week, charges that the prison subjected mentally ill inmates to “barbaric and unconstitutional” conditions tantamount to torture. “Witnesses have reported seeing mentally ill prisoners denied water and food, ‘hog tied’ naked for many hours, left to stand, sit or lie naked in their own feces and urine, denied showers for days and tasered,” ACLU of Michigan Executive Director Kary Moss wrote. Inmates in solitary confinement were denied water, the ACLU states. When prisoners begged guards for water, the Ann Arbor News reports, they “failed to provide it for hours, and possibly days, in some cases.” One prisoner was left brain dead from the abuse, according to the ACLU. “At least one mentally ill inmate who experienced these abuses, specifically water and food deprivation and poor sanitation, was transferred to an outside hospital last month after she was found non-responsive in her cell,” Moss wrote. “Through various sources, we understand she has since been pronounced brain dead.” The statement describes another prisoner being “hog tied” by a guard. “One inmate, who pleaded with a guard to help a mentally ill prisoner who was crying naked on the floor and unable to move—because her feet were cuffed to her hands behind her back—was told that her fellow prisoner would have to stay like that for two hours or more, because she had not learned to behave.” A separate statement was filed as a formal grievance with MDOC by three Huron Valley inmates. The inmates describe being held, along with another woman, in an 8- by 12-foot cell that used to be a “chemical caustic closet” because of overcrowding. The prison was built to hold up to 2,143, but officials have not released the current population count. Inmates in the cellblock known as Dickinson A, where the closet is located, are reportedly housed in extremely cramped conditions on a regular basis. “The cell I’m in is inadequately small for myself and three others, and there are not enough lockers, no privacy, inadequate desks and chairs, and there is no ventilation,” wrote one prisoner. That statement, also obtained by the Ann Arbor News, was made in the form of an appeal in February after an initial grievance was rejected by the state on the grounds that more than one inmate had “filed a grievance about the same issue, and therefore the grievance was discarded.” At the time, MDOC stated, “Two or more prisoners and/or parolees may not jointly file a single grievance regarding an issue of mutual impact, or submit identical individual grievances regarding a given issue as an organized protest. Such grievances will be rejected by the grievance coordinator.” In response to the February appeal, MDOC claimed that the cell was fine. “All prisoners housed in Dickinson unit have been treated humanely and with dignity in matters of health care, personal safety and general living conditions,” the department declared. Conditions in the Huron Valley facility have long been deplorable. In 2012, the ACLU filed a letter signed by 34 human rights and legal organizations calling for the end of “sexually humiliating” and unsanitary strip searches by guards that was contributing to both infections and mental health trauma among prisoners, many of whom had suffered sexual abuse. A class action lawsuit in 2009 on behalf of over 900 women who said they were sexually abused by guards resulted in the implementation of a female-only staffing policy at Huron Valley. Michigan Women’s Justice and Clemency Project director Carol Jacobsen told the News that abuse was “heavy” in the prison, in part because of what the newspaper described as “the near-impossibility of civilian accessibility.” Jacobsen said she had been unable to see the prison’s living quarters for years. Meeting with inmates, she said, nevertheless made clear that the conditions were contributing to an epidemic of mental illness. “It’s gone on for years,” Jacobsen said of the use of solitary confinement. “I’ve been documenting it with various women for years. A lot of these women, they throw them in segregation for months on end, are mentally ill … and then they deteriorate. It’s horrible to see them deteriorate.” Michigan prisons, like prisons across the United States, are pits of abuse, misery and disease. They are also a rich source of profit for corporations. The food service company Aramark, for example, enjoys a $145 million contract with MDOC to provide meal service to the state prisons. Last month, the state of Michigan fined the company $200,000 for “errors” that included widespread food shortages, inadequately trained employees, lax management of utensils such as knives, and serving food that was spoiled and infested with maggots. Aramark reports an annual revenue of $13.5 billion. As the economy of Michigan has deteriorated and social infrastructure spending has been axed, the incarceration rate, length of prison terms, and government spending on prisons have all soared. Over the past several decades, the largest area of economic growth in Michigan has been in its $2 billion-a-year prison system. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Michigan devotes a larger portion of its state general fund budget to prisons than any other state. In 1980, corrections accounted for 3 percent of the state budget; in 2013, Michigan devoted fully 21 percent of spending on prisons. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/09/10/pris-s10.html

Sexual Assult At Rikers New York City By Correctional Officers

Suit: New York City allowed Rikers Island corrections officers to commit widespread assault. May 22nd 2015 Two inmates from one of America's most famous jails say New York City allowed Rikers Island corrections officers to commit widespread sexual assault. The women filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against one of the jail's corrections officers and the city saying the officer repeatedly raped them. The women say when they tried to report the assaults, they were told nothing could be done. Part of the suit reads the officer threatened to allow other inmates to beat the women up if they reported assault. The women's attorneys also allege when Rikers officers get reported, "retaliation includes threats and other verbal abuse, deprivation of food for extended periods of time, refusing to permit women to bathe, and placing them in punitive segregation based on false disciplinary charges." Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act -- or PREA -- in 2003 hoping to effectively create a zero- tolerance policy. The New York Times recently pointed out, however, the DOJ took nearly a decade to create "final standards" for the law and many corrections facilities like Rikers are lagging. A public advocate who has petitioned for the city to bring Rikers in line with PREA told Capital New York, "It really doesn't come as a surprise -- the city for a long time has turned a blind eye to unacceptable rates of sexual victimization on Rikers Island." A spokesman for the city's corrections department told CNN the office wouldn't comment on pending litigation but said the department does have a "zero tolerance policy with regard to sexual abuse and assault."

Abuse At WVDC IN Rancho Cucamonga County Lock Up

West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. By Joe Nelson, The Sun Posted: 02/05/15, 10:28 PM PST|Updated: on 02/06/2015 0 Comments An attorney alleging in two federal lawsuits that deputies at a San Bernardino County jail routinely abused inmates with Taser guns said Friday he will soon be filing a third lawsuit with 35 new plaintiffs. Victorville attorney James Terrell said the lawsuit should be filed within the next two weeks. In May, he and Victorville attorneys Sharon Brunner and Stanley Hodge filed two lawsuits on behalf of 10 inmates at the jail after the FBI and San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department announced in April that criminal and internal affairs investigations had been launched. “The things we have learned from our clients are truly horrifying. The torture and abuse was perpetrated by several very demented and socially deviant San Bernardino deputies,” Terrell said in an email Friday. “The actions of these officers will come to light very soon, we believe, and are so awful that they violate basic principles of human decency.” The new lawsuit comes in the wake of a federal grand jury proceeding in Riverside that Terrell said concluded Wednesday with the testimony of one of his clients. Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, declined to comment, as did San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon, named as a defendant in each of the five federal lawsuits filed to date. Terrell said he and Brunner have traveled up and down the state in the last year, visiting jails, state prisons and federal prisons, meeting with alleged victims — most former food servers in the protective custody unit at West Valley who allegedly were singled out by deputies. Inmates housed in the protective custody unit at the jail wear green jumpsuits and are segregated from the jail’s general population because they are susceptible to violent attacks by other inmates. Inmates say they were subjected to a brutal hazing ritual of Taser gun abuse by deputies — the price they pay for the privileges that come with the title of “chow server” including more television and telephone time and freedom to move around the jail. “Ironically, it was prisoners housed in protective custody for their own personal safety and protection . . . who were singled out by the individual defendants for abuse and torture, presumably because of their inability to retaliate and protect themselves,” Los Angeles attorney Matthew Eanet said in a lawsuit filed on behalf of former West Valley inmate Eric Wayne Smith on Jan. 25. Smith, 28, of Hesperia, is now serving a sentence at Avenal State Prison for buying and receiving stolen property with prior convictions. He was the first to come forward with the allegations that prompted the criminal and administrative investigations, Eanet said. When the criminal and internal affairs investigations were announced in April, the Sheriff’s Department had already fired rookie deputies Brock Teyechea, Andrew Cruz and Nicholas Oakley, who had been out of the training academy less than a year. In October, the department announced that four more deputies had been placed on paid leave during the investigation, but refused to disclose their names. Deputies, the lawsuits allege, would routinely stun inmates with their Taser guns, deprive them of sleep by entering their cells in the middle of the night, stunning them with Taser guns as they slept or by blaring loud music over the jail’s intercom. Smith’s lawsuit alleges deputies also played audio clips of the horror film “Silence of the Lambs” in the middle of the night to taunt inmates. Smith and other inmates also allege Teyechea sprayed pepper spray under their cell doors, causing them to become violently ill or press their faces against a ceiling air vent to avoid the caustic chemicals. Investigators documented Smith’s injuries by taking photographs of burn marks on his body caused by the electric shock of a Taser gun, according to Smith’s lawsuit. Along with Teyechea, Cruz and Oakley, other defendants named in the lawsuits include McMahon, West Valley Capt. Jeff Rose, and deputies Robert Escamilla, Russell Kopasz, Robert Morris, Eric Smale and Daniel Stryffeler. The alleged inmate abuse was institutional, learned and either ignored or condoned at the very top, the lawsuits allege. “Certainly, it’s more than just the three (deputies) who were fired,” said Eanet. McMahon has remained unflappable through it all, standing by the actions of his deputies and how the Rancho Cucamonga jail is operated. He denies a culture of inmate abuse there, chalking the transgressions up to a few bad apples no longer within the department. He hosted a media tour of the jail in May, touting its medical and dental facilities and ongoing upgrades, including electronic kiosks that will allow inmates to file grievances, request medical aid and order commissary items. All units at the jail are also being equipped with surveillance cameras. The San Bernardino County Grand Jury, in its annual report released on July 1, gave the county’s jails a glowing review and characterized relations between inmates and deputies at the jails as “good.” But the Berkeley-based prisoner advocacy nonprofit Prison Law Office sees things differently. It has fielded more than 700 complaints from inmates over the last few years alleging excessive use of force by deputies, shoddy medical treatment and neglect. “We identified problems with medical, mental health and dental care, excessive use of force by deputies, failure to protect inmates from violence by other inmates, and violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” said Kelly Knapp, a staff attorney with the Prison Law Office. “They are failing to provide reasonable accommodations for inmates with disabilities and are discriminating against them from access to certain programs such as fire camp.” The Prison Law Office has been working with the Sheriff’s Department to address the problems and could have an agreement in place within the next month, Knapp said. If the problems are not adequately addressed and negotiations break down, the Prison Law Office may consider a lawsuit. If that happens, the Sheriff’s Department has already agreed not to argue certain defenses in court such as inmates not following the proper grievance process before taking legal action or the statute of limitations lapsing, Knapp said. Through his spokeswoman, Cindy Bachman, McMahon declined to comment for this report, saying it would be inappropriate given the ongoing investigation. But he did say he would be willing to sit down and discuss the investigation after it is complete. About the Author Joe Nelson covers San Bernardino County for The Sun, Daily Bulletin and Redlands Daily Facts. Reach the author at joe.nelson@langnews.com or follow Joe on Twitter: @sbcountynow. http://www.sbsun.com/government-and-politics/20150205/35-more-san-bernardino-county-inmates-allege-abuse