I seriously don’t understand how this sort of thing happens:
A New Mexico man who said he was forced to pull his own tooth while in solitary confinement because he was denied access to a dentist has been awarded $22 million due to inhumane treatment by New Mexico’s Dona Ana County Jail.
Stephen Slevin was arrested in August of 2005 for driving while intoxicated, then thrown in jail for two years. He was in solitary at Dona Ana County Jail for his entire sentence and basically forgotten about and never given a trial, he told NBC station KOB.com Tuesday night.
“‘[Jail guards were] walking by me every day, watching me deteriorate,” Slevin said. “Day after day after day, they did nothing, nothing at all, to get me any help.”
Slevin’s medical problems extended beyond his dental issues, he said. His toenails started curling around his foot because they were so long, he told KOB.com. And his countless requests to see a doctor for depression medication were ignored, he said.
I just don’t understand- they had to feed him and account for the cell space, and you would think from a straight up budgetary standpoint someone would know he was there. And what about the people who walked by him every day? I just do not get it.
BGinCHI
I think what we have here is a failure to communicate…..
I’m pretty sure someone somewhere said that you can judge a society based on the way it treats its prisoners.
I assume that we have been found wanting.
Villago Delenda Est
I don’t get it, either. You’d think they’d have to account, on a daily basis, for every inmate they’ve got. Never tried? Just arrested and thrown into a cell and forgotten? What is this, 18th Century Tsarist Russia?
Is there any adult supervision of any kind in Dona Ana County New Mexico?
BGinCHI
In other fuck the people news, Indiana House approves Right to Work bill, which means it’s going to pass.
Hoping for a good post from Kay on this.
Fucking GOP assholes and the stupid fuckers who vote for them. Let’s see how quality of life in the Hoosier state goes now.
pragmatism
that amount will prolly go down after appeal, but whiskey tango foxtrot?
danimal
Whats infuriating is that a not-insignificant number of Americans will not care about the denial of justice. Instead, they will be upset that ACLU-types are being soft on criminals for expecting our justice system to provide basic medical care and provide timely access to a fair trial.
Linda Featheringill
What don’t you get, John? There were people who saw him and people who knew he was there. He wasn’t invisible. They just didn’t give a damn. Really.
I guess he’s lucky they fed him.
mclaren
America is descending into barbarism, John. This is what barbarians do.
Within 5 years, expect the guards to set a guy like that on fire and then place bets on how long he’ll take to die. Barbarism means tying cats to poles and lowering them slowly into a bonfire in front of hooting leering crowds as entertainment.
It’s barbarism, John. Barbarism. That’s where Shithole America has arrived in the year 2012.
Comrade Dread
Prisoners are seen as subhuman vermin who deserve whatever they get. Whether or not they get a trial or are actually convicted.
It’s why we, as a society, can tolerate asset forfeiture.
Why we willfully ignore torture.
Why we make jokes about prison rape and laugh about it.
They deserve it because they’re prisoners per this mindset.
General Stuck
People are assholes, sometimes cops are the biggest assholes of all. man sues and wins 22 million, bet these cops don’t do this again.
^unless gets appealed to the supreme court and Scalia et al throws out the result because they can.
Arclite
Wow, crazy. And he wasn’t even a brown man.
I’m sure the guy suffered and deserves compensation, but $22m is a lot of money. Is that a typical settlement for something like this?
James Gary
As a native New Mexican who moved away immediately upon reaching the age of 18, I have to say: this kind of thing happens all the time. “Efficiency” and “mindfulness” are not concepts familiar to most New Mexicans. Sometimes the effect is charmingly laid-back, and sometimes people get accidentally locked in jail for two years with no trial and have to pull their own teeth.
barath
Don’t worry. Such societal failures won’t happen once President Gingrich establishes a permanent moon colony. No need to solve the problems we have here; let’s give up and start over on other planets.
abo gato
Wow, just wow. A horrible story. So many people failed this man. I hope he can keep that money and try to build back his life after losing two freaking years.
Mclaren is right. This is barbarism.
cathyx
This kind of problem will only get worse as more prisons get privatized.
JC
It’s clear that they knew him – he got food and water, after all.
What the hell, I…just don’t even begin to comprehend how this can happen. It’s just unfathomable.
And then, the standard disclaimers – “we don’t comment on personnel matters”. “We will be appealing the judgment”.
Who the hell says stuff like that? The guy lost two years of his life, and you say, “we will be appealing the judgment”? Really? Who the hell is practicing CYA legal speak, in THIS circumstance??
This is an awful crime – a crime – and someone needs to be held accountable.
Linnaeus
The movie for this would be Unlucky Number Slevin.
Villago Delenda Est
I had to account for the soldiers under my command on a daily basis. I of course delegated that to my NCOs, but an accounting had to be made every single duty morning. Every last one.
This is sheer incompetence and or indifference, as Linda suggests. Either way, it should be a firing offense, at a minimum. Not a reprimand, not an admonition, a life changing experience. Frankly, those responsible should be taken and tossed into a cell and forgotten for a few weeks. See how well it plays when the shoe is on the other foot.
dexwood
Hey isn’t current Republican Gov. Susana Martinez the former DA for Dona Ana county?
MikeJ
@Arclite: $22 million is not a lot of money for two years of being locked up without access to family or even doctors. IF anything it’s low.
General Stuck
@dexwood:
Yes. Las Cruces sits on the border of what we call little Texas, or the SE quadrant of the state. It also has a lot of mil retirees and the like. And is fairly conservative, but with a lot of Hispanic dem . Doesn’t surprise me a lot this could happen there, in that part of the state.
Then the northern third of the state is still experiencing the 60’s and is about as far left as it gets in most places. Go figure.
cathyx
I expect this kind of thing on my Spanish Telenovelas, but not in real life.
MikeJ
@Villago Delenda Est: To be fair, all the prisoners who were supposed to be there were accounted for. They just had an extra.
What’s surprising is that they didn’t have to account for the cell. They were one short for two years.
urizon
Well, there’s no way the people who locked him up are just a bunch of fucking sadists, is there?
Sasha
@BGinCHI:
Might be a move to clever. If Dems sweep the elections in November, can’t this be reversed?
Waldo
Prisoner sell-dentistry? Wow. You just know that Sheriff Joe is pissed he didn’t think of it himself.
BGinCHI
@Sasha: There will never be a headline in the Indianapolis Star that goes something like “Dems Sweep State Elections.” It’s Indiana. Dems can come back, but it’s a GOP stronghold. And yes, I know Obama won it, but that’s an anomaly.
I sure hope this raises a lot of consciousness, though, because it’s going to cause a lot of pain and useless suffering.
dexwood
@General Stuck:
Thanks. Thought she worked in that part of NM. Like your description of the northern part.
brettvk
I hope the local taxpayers, who are probably the ultimate source of the settlement and lawyers’ fees here, take this opportunity to clean house at the jail and maybe even create some sort of job that keeps track of the occupants. This sounds like an excellent opportunity for the local Tea Partiers — they could actually do some good.
BTW, Mr. Cole, thanks for the nifty new comment features. Did they come with the self-portrait?
cmorenc
How did they hide this guy from the court system? Wouldn’t they have an immediately accessible record for why each inmate was there. Pretrial? When’s his next court date. Convicted? Of what, and how long’s his sentence. Why did he never get to at least speak to a public defender?
Since they put him in solitary due to presumed mental illness, perhaps there’s the issue of whether he was competent to stand trial. Even so, there should have been a court appearance with counsel in the record at the jail.
What’s frightening is that all our rights as accused under arrest are dependent on the police making a record communicated to the court to trigger appearances and process. If the police lock you up and stick the arrest documents in a drawer…and hold you incommunicado in solitary in jail, you could be there forever, even in this country.
Villago Delenda Est
@MikeJ:
Yeah, but there should have been a chain of custody established the instant someone is arrested and processed for confinement, even if only for a day before they can be brought before a judge for arraignment. Once you’re in the system, you should be accounted for at all times, if only to make sure you haven’t escaped.
Perhaps they just forgot to process him into the facility? Still it’s gross dereliction of duty, because as you said, they’ve got to account for the space. 10 cells, 10 prisoners, each one on a manifest which explains the offense, the status of the adjudication, next of kin, etc. Accounting for prison beds is a big damn deal in my neck of the woods, the County Sheriff is constantly in the news complaining about budget cutbacks that force him to reduce the number of prisoners and release people prematurely in order to make room for new prisoners.
How did the system break down so badly that this guy was lost for 2 weeks let alone 2 years? This isn’t fucking rocket science, you know. It’s not that complicated.
j
They outsourced the medical services to a “for profit” non-union contractor.
It just didn’t pay to do anything that hurt the bottom line.
http://www.afscmeinfocenter.org/privatizationupdate/corrections-health/?limit=10&offset=30
Holden Pattern
Don’t matter. I mean, he shoulda been in general population gettin’ ass-raped, haw haw haw. Waste of good solitary. And he was no doubt guilty of something — and why should he be getting dentistry anyway? My insurance doesn’t cover it and I never broke the law.
I guarantee that most of the taxpayers of the county will blame the goddam liberal lawyers for suing the county on behalf of a convict, not the jailers.
j
Here is the AFSME blurb:
Mark S.
This sounds like something that would happen in some shitball Third World country hellhole.
God bless America! Well on our way to becoming Zimbabwe North.
Nutella
@dexwood:
Yep, the gov was DA for that county.
Per Wikipedia: In March 2010, Martinez was named New Mexico’s “Prosecutor of the Year”. One element of her platform in the November 2010 gubernatorial election was to secure the United States – Mexico border from illegal immigrants. According to her 2010 gubernatorial campaign website, Martinez is pro-life and is opposed to elective abortion. She supports a balanced budget and lower government spending. She favors putting taxpayer money into a rainy day fund, and refunding taxpayers to attempt to stimulate growth.
I guess she won’t be refunding the taxpayers much after they take this guy’s $22mill out of the budget.
She definitely needs to be grilled about his, along with all of the county officials who had anything to do with the jails, courts, or police. The responsible people need to be indicted. They kidnapped and tortured this guy! Excuse me, they used enhanced incarceration techniques on this guy.
It is barbaric, as mclaren said.
Villago Delenda Est
@j: You can bet that the Commissioners will not feel any pain for their shitty decision to turn this aspect of governance over to an organized crime cartel. Let’s be upfront about this: for profit prisons are an incredibly bad idea.
j
@Mark S.: “…shitball Third World country hellhole.”
A friend of mine went to college in Las Cruces. From what he said, that description isn’t too far off the mark.
rea
@Arclite: $22m is a lot of money. Is that a typical settlement for something like this?
There is, fortunately, damn few cases like this.
Beauzeaux
@Linda Featheringill: That’s my take as well. I don’t believe that anyone cared. As for accounting for prisoners — puleeze, lots of ways to cook the books.
j
@Villago Delenda Est: Just
Google “Prison Health Services Inc. complaints”.
Multi lawsuits in mucho states. They seem to “frankly” (to use Newt’s jargon) suck at what they are supposed to be doing.
In short, they suck up a LOT of tax money and provide no services. BUT they use non trained non-union personnel to do it at minimum wage, so they got that thing going for them.
zzyzx
I spent three years of my life in Las Cruces. I believe this.
Ella in New Mexico
I actually live in DA county, and know people who work/ed in the detention center as guards or nurses. From time to time I provide nursing care to incarcerated offenders when they are transferred to the hospital for health reasons.
Here’s a link to our local paper’s pathetic write up on this story, although it does shed some more light on the details of the case than John’s original post.
http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_19817478?source=most_viewed
John asks “How does this happen?” I’ll tell you how it happens: OUR STATE PROVIDES COMPLETELY INADEQUATE MONEY FOR PSYCHIATRIC AND HEALTH CARE–especially in the jail and prison system. Add to that they pay CRAP to the guards, and you realize just what high quality decision-makers we get to work with these folks. So you get pressure to limit medical expenses–like taking this guy to the ER to get his claims checked out–placed on people who lack the proper training and judgment to figure out which prisoners are serious cases and which ones are bullshitting you. They are always going to err on the side of waiting until it’s a frigging emergency to seek medical attention for a prisoner.
I don’t know the specific facts in this case, and actually, given my experiences with this population, I doubt some of the plaintiffs assertions–it’s obvious that no one “forgot him”. He was in solitary, most likely, for his own protection due to his mental state. Apparently the poorly trained staff at the jail just didn’t believe him when he said he had pain (not an uncommon complaint from mentally ill people with addiction problems seeking drugs. They will lie, fake, pretend to a degree you cannot imagine.)
There has been a continuing demand for improvement at the detention center over the past few years, but terrible things still happen there that just shouldn’t because of tight budgets, lack of investment in training, and lack of care for the mentally ill.
I will say one thing, though: our New Mexico juries–made up of the common folk–are incredibly pro-defendant (or in this case the plaintiff) when they smell unfairness and police brutality. So it doesn’t surprise me they came in on the side of justice for this poor dude. :-)
tejanarusa
This is of course why arrested people are supposed to go before a magistrate immediately, and be arraigned within a day or two. Not that that always happens.
I was confused by MSNBC’s careless writing, e.g. that
—
since the main point is that he was never sentenced!!!
The lousy medical and dental care is a separate claim, and it’s horrifying (and yeah, another example of how privatization sounds good in theory but works out pretty badly in practice), but the bigger horror is that he never saw a judge for arraignment, let alone trial. He should obviously have been appointed an attorney, who might have got him out in short order.
Not ever getting before a judge was the basic fact from which everything else flowed.
Just horrifying. Oh, and the immediate conclusion that he was mentally ill probably meant that no one listened to him if he complained that he’d never even been to court.
I’d love to know how the people in Dona Ana Co. knew he “had a lifelong history of mental illness.” He was from Virginia!
eemom
Stories like this are exactly why I found it hard to get worked up over the so-called “torture” of Bradley Manning.
[munching popcorn, waiting for mclaren to explode]
Ripley
I, too, live in Dona Ana County – it’s a poor county (though not the poorest) in a poor state. Getting the cream of the crop in terms of public employees is a long-shot at best, and sometimes the effects of this fact are horrendous and tragic. On the other hand, I lived in Pennsylvania at a time when the Democratic governor made real efforts for social and public service funding to positively affect outcomes, and shit still happened.
Not sure why that is, and any theories I may have about that are beside the point: painting Las Cruces as a ‘third-world country’ stinks no matter which way you say it. Unless you’re Newt Gingrich, baiting the haters of brown people.
jimbo123
Two years in solitary and never even ARRAIGNED? Jeez, I guess the Roberts Court really DID flush habeas corpus down the crapper.
JR
Something to keep in mind: if the jailers had let any medical professional at all take a glance at him–dental issues and curling toenails included–and that professional had decided to let his tooth fester and hacked off his toenails with a Buck knife, he’d probably be hard-pressed to collect a cent for an 8th Amendment violation.
“Deliberate indifference to serious medical need” is a very hard standard to meet, and when the doctor only commits malpractice–misdiagnosis, mistreatment, etc.–the prisoner is almost never going to be able to prevail. You pretty much have to be so bad that anyone passing on the street, seeing a person in your condition, would scream bloody murder and run for the nearest phone to call an ambulance; AND THEN you have to show that, knowing you were in such a state, the jail was indifferent to you (meaning they provided no medical help or “help” that was obviously inadequate, like amputating the hand of a guy with a broken toe).
Our 8th Amendment case law is a shambles, thanks largely to Scalia and Thomas, and it desperately needs a renaissance.
Anne Laurie
@eemom: You are a pathetic excuse for a human being. And proud of that status, too.
delphi_ote
What’s not to get?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
burnspbesq
There are times when the word “inconceivable” ceases to have much meaning.
$22 million? Doesn’t seem like enough. Doesn’t seem like nearly enough.
amy c
relevant article – worth a read, but so depressing.
different-church-lady
@tejanarusa: Yeah, that tripped me up too — how could he be serving a sentence when there was no trial?
If there never was due process, then 22 mil is cheap. And a bunch of other people ought to be going to jail themselves.
Holden Pattern
@Ella in New Mexico:
Clearly, significant tort reform is needed to prevent this kind of jury misbehavior.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
A 2010 study by the Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriffs’ Association found that on average there are 3 times more seriously mentally ill people incarcerated than hospitalized in the United States:
link
Those numbers are a shandah in and of themselves. There is something seriously wrong with a society that criminalizes illness.
As to the judgment of $22 M – it is important to remember that it’s an award rather than a settlement – I’ll be damned if I know why it went to trial. I’d have settled it double quick, though I recognize the resistance. I had to argue pretty hard to settle a case where a corrections officer picked an inmate up by a belly band, held him parallel to the floor and dropped him onto a tile floor from 3 feet up. He suffered a few cracked ribs and was fortunate not to have really severe injuries. But there were those in the administration of that AG section who wanted to try it. I had the support of a cooler head up that chain and we got it settled.
eemom
@Anne Laurie:
oh fuck you, you serial copy machine in the guise of a blogger.
You’ve never had an original thought in your life, much less posted one.
kc
arclite @10 (Safari doesn’t show a reply button), 22 mil isn’t enough.
Jay C
So this poor slob Slevin was busted for drunk driving, and got shoved into a solitary cell (apparently without going to trial) and mainly ignored for two years??
Who was in the next cell – the Man In The Iron Mask? The Count of Monte Cristo? Srsly – this sounds like something you’d expect to read about from the reign of Louis XIV or the Czars; not 21st-Century New Mexico. Even though the $22MM award is likely to be reduced, this guy is still owed…. big time.
PhoenixRising
So when does the law enforcement officer of Dona Ana County from this period, now Gov. Martinez, get her opportunity to testify about this error?
I’ll sell the first 10 rows of seats, you all can draw straws for the rest of the room.
smelter rat
@Mark S.:
Um, no…that would be us Canucks. Our fed gov’t is following in your footsteps.
eemom
@Jay C:
This happens ALL THE FUCKING TIME to people who can’t afford to post bond.
It is a huge and pervasive injustice inherent in the system, often with tragic consequences — because people locked up in jail indefinitely end up losing what little they had in the way of a job, home, or vehicle.
And most of the time, nobody gives a shit.
mclaren
@different-church-lady:
You guys still don’t get it.
This is what happens when the president of the united states abandons the rule of law. Obama ordered a U.S. citizen murdered without a trial and without even charging him with having committed a crime.
So why are any of you surprised when another U.S. citzen gets thrown in some black hole of a dungeon for 2 years without even being charged with a crime?
The fish rots from the head down, people.
Wake the fuck up! This is what happens when you abandon the rule of law.
Jay C
@mclaren:
Nice rant, dude; but perhaps you would care to elaborate a bit on exactly WHAT influence or effect President Obama might have, or have had, on the “justice” system in effect in Dona Ana County, New Mexico?
Do you really think that contemplation and analysis of this Administration’s policy decisions reach that far down the LE food chain? To the guards at some county hoosegow?
“Hey Joe! What’s up with that weird guy in Cell 13?”
“Aaah, fuck ‘im – Obama just claimed the authority to attack American citizens overseas with drones; why should we worry about HIS sorry ass??”
jon
I work in a prison, where the inmates are already convicted. The medical care is being privatized, but in the meantime the medical staff is experiencing turnover at an alarming rate, getting whatever other job is possible, but still trying to do the job. The psychiatric and pharmaceutically-maintained and chronically ill inmates are so numerous it’s insane. California had to release tens of thousands from its prisons to the jails and streets over medical issues, and that’s driving my state’s corrections folk. To do what? Change the system. Whether that’s to change the system for cover or change the system to improve is a question for skeptics of all sorts to ponder. But whatever the case, the prisons and jails are filled with people in need of treatment and confinement. What’s the best mix? I don’t know. I started out wanting to see the best in them. Now I always think the worst. Part of me says that I now understand. Another part of me says that I now need to leave that job. I can’t say that either being right negates the other.
I do know that in some instances, there have been mentally-ill inmates who cut themselves open, cut their stitches open after their bodies are repaired, put their own shit in the wounds, and generally can’t even be trusted to be allowed supervised use of a toenail clipper. That sounds insane, but that’s the point. Do these people belong in a prison or a hospital? The answer is yes, and the prison system has such facilities. Is that insanely cruel? Ask yourself, would you want your harmless mentally ill relative in the same hospital as that guy?
Sometimes the other mentally-ill inmates would send razors to those inmates, leading to sandbags around their doors. The sandbags were also to keep the overflowing toilets from affecting more than the cells of those who decide that’s the morning’s entertainment. For the fifth time that week.
As for how an inmate could be in solitary confinement for years, the answer is administrative. For the line officers, they have a list of who’s supposed to be there and it’s checked three or four times daily. Probably many times each hour in solitary units. I’m skeptical that this guy didn’t get seen for two years, but don’t doubt he wasn’t treated. Some inmates manage to put themselves on the bottom of the list with their behavior, some refuse medical service repeatedly, and some just don’t want to get any help until it’s very late. And the system has funny rules about custodial responsibility: the inmate is allowed to refuse most medical care. Since dentistry in the prisons usually consists of pulling teeth rather than fixing them, it’s no surprise that many toothaches fester. All the books that give suggestions to people who think they’re going to prison suggest going to the dentist before entering the system. Most never get that option, but it’s another reason to brush and floss. Don’t know how you tell the kids that, but it’s a valid reason nonetheless.
jon
I don’t suppose it comes across that I really hate my job, does it?
WaterGirl
@jon: That all sounds very depressing. I hope you find another alternative to working there.
redheadedfemme
@mclaren: I’m really beginning to hate that phrase “You just don’t get it.”
That’s just code for “You’re not fawning over me and agreeing with every word I’m saying.”
People might not do this because, I dunno, maybe what you’re saying isn’t true?
mclaren
@redheadedfemme:
Not, it’s code for “You haven’t read your history and you don’t know how it turns out historically when people start abandoning the rule of law.”
And that’s right, redheaded femme, you don’t know. You don’t know because you haven’t bothered to read what happened to the Czars, who thought they could order the murder of people with a trial or charges. You haven’t bothered to read what happened to Louis XIV, who claim “l’etat, c’est mois.” (“I am the state.”) You haven’t bothered to read what happened to Caligula or Nero or the Thirty Tyrants who were put in charge of Athens after the Spartans won the Peloponnesian War.
What happens is that these people get overthrown. They get hung, beheaded, stabbed, assassinated, torn apart by mobs. Because when you abandon the rule of law you descend into barbarism, and that doesn’t work out well for anyone. Not for the victims of the Great Terror or the Grand Inquisition or the Global War on Terror or whatever-the-fuck this week’s polite name for this kind of barbarism happaens to be… And not for the guys in charge, because they wind up like Mussolini. Beaten to death by an enraged mob of their victims and hung from their heels from a goddamn lamppost.
History shows very clearly that once you abandon the rule of law at the top, in a few special cases, the rot progresses steadily down the justice system until you’ve got no justice system left — just torture, beatings, people kidnapped and hurled into dungeons, victims tried in absentia in secret trials with secret evidence and then secretly executed.
Read your history, redheadded femme. The British Star Chamber…the Czar’s cheka…Caligula’s praetorian guard…Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge… They all used the same tactics: murder your citizens on mere suspicion, kidnap and torture your own citizens without charging them with a crime, use secret evidence at secret trials…
And it always ends the same way. The whole goddamn society dissolves into barbarism and collapses because, in the end, people can’t live that way.
Our current Grand Inquisition (misnamed the Global War on Terror) is going to end exactly the same way the original Grand Inquisition ended: in ignominy, with mountains of innocent corpses, and a regime in ruins, discredited, and the nation that presided over the abomination jeered at and universally reviled.
Jay C: opines:
I will do that.
I will tell you exactly what influence or effect president Obama’s abeyance of the rule of law and his abadonment of due process have had on the justice system in effect in Dona Ana County, New Mexico.
Here’s how it works: Obama orders JSOC assassinations and kidnappings of U.S. citizens without a trial and without charging them with having committed a crime. The other generals and colonels working in the Pentagon E-Ring take note. They get a little more lax. Soldiers in Iraq (a while back) and Afghanistan (now) get wider latitude. Don’t take so much time to make certain of that evidence, kick in the doors of those suspected terrorists and take ’em out. More and more atrocities get committed in Afghanistan. (We’re now bulldozing the villages of innocent people and randomly shooting entire innocent families at checkpoints because they’re “suspected terrorist symapthizers.” And when they turn out to be innocent, wellllllllllllllll, that’s war.)
Those soldiers who do tours of duty in Afghanistan come home to America. What do 80% of those ex-soldiers do? They become cops. As cops, they carry along that stop-being-so-picky-ass-about-details-and-get-the-damn-job-done attitude when they kick in doors in America.
And when they get some feisty guy on a DWI? Put him in that cell over there, we’ve got a major drug bust tonight, we have to process this evidence. We’ll get to him later. And later never comes.
Why? Because the whole attitude has gradually shifted from “these people are citizens and we must respect their constitutional rights” to THIS IS WAR AND WE GOTTA WIN IT!
War on drugs. War on drunk driving. War on [fill in the fucking blank.]
That’s how it happens.
Little by little, gradually, the ex-military guys who used to shoot whole families at traffic roadblocks in Afghanistan and if they were innocent, well, fuck it, this is war, get sloppier and sloppier, less and less concerned with the picayune details when they become cops here in America.
Picayune details like: processing that poor sonofabitch in the cell over there. Because fuck it. It’s WAR! War on drugs, war on drunk driving, whatever.
That’s how it works.
Got it?
Is it clear now?
The Tim Channel
Well here’s something to add to the discussion that I don’t think has been addressed. What about all those US military prison guards who were abusing those innocent Iraqi people in search of Bush’s fantasy WMD’s? Those guys are coming home and taking prison and law enforcement jobs based on their experience in the military. I’m sure the degree of sensitivity isn’t going to increase with their addition to the mix. Having left the US a couple years ago has saved me the wonder of whether the vet living down the street from me was once engaged in torturing toddler’s testicles in Iraq (under Bush’s authority with Yoo’s approval) to secure false confessions from their parents. I never worry what part of my tax burden goes to support illegal drone operations and the killing of innocent children in foreign lands either.
Enjoy.
The Tim Channel
@mclaren: I agree and see you beat me to the punchline. The real tragedy is that so many of those same vets are now mentally damaged and will end up in jail where they will soon find themselves being abused by the very guys who they used to go on missions with. Given the large numbers involved and the laws of chance, it’s probably already happened or is happening as I type this.
It is all about the rule of law and how it doesn’t apply anymore if the crime you commit is large enough or if you commit it from a place of prominence that is regarded ‘off bounds’ to the jurisdiction of civil law enforcement.
But neither of us need to invoke a fantasy future scenario where all this is happening, because we see that indeed, it is happening right now. And the easiest way for me to describe it to my foreign hosts is this:
Bush: We don’t torture.
Bush: A few bad apples might have done some horseplay the press called torture.
Bush: As it turns out, we did torture a bunch of people.
Bush: Not only did we torture people, but it was at my behest and I’d do it all over again. Now go fuck yourselves.
This bit of kabuki theater played out right before the big bank implosions. Nobody guilty (even charged) with any malfeasance there either. You’re either a member of a group that is too big to fail or too big to prosecute, or you’re too small to give a dam about in the first place.
Enjoy.
Paul in KY
@Ella in New Mexico: What about a trial on the charges? Didn’t he have to appear in court some time?
From what I’ve read, he was never sentenced for anything. He was awaiting trail on a DUI or something like that.
mattH
You do realize that this whole nasty event took place between 2005 and 2007 right?
But hey, don’t let the facts get in the way of a satisfying self-righteous rant.
The Moar You Know
If they’d just shot him for “resisting arrest” at the outset, they’d be a lot less poor today.
Rafer Janders
@Villago Delenda Est:
Firing offense? Some of the people at that jail need to be arrested and charged with kidnap, assault and false imprisonment. People need to go to prison themselves for this.
Rafer Janders
@mclaren:
I will tell you exactly what influence or effect president Obama’s abeyance of the rule of law and his abadonment of due process have had on the justice system in effect in Dona Ana County, New Mexico.
See, now if you read the post, you might have noticed the bit that says “Stephin Slevin was arrested in August of 2005…”.
President Obama took office in January 2009. I’m sure that in some way he was able to reach back in time three and a half years to affect the justice system in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, but I’m just not sure how exactly he did that.
Pococurante
@eemom:
Why yes, yes it is. But do remember to share a slice with Kola Noscopy.
brantl
@eemom: You really are a shithole of a human being aren’t you? Just because this guy had it worse, doesn’t justify what they did to Manning, you idiot.
kaylaspop
If I’m not mistaken, Gov. Susana Martinez was the DA down Dona Ana County way whilst this was going on.
JR in WVa
In my book, Manning’s supervisors are responsible for providing a PFC with access to data that he should never have had. They were reprimanded for their lack of supervision, so this isn’t just my fantasy – it’s what ground out of the Military Justice system.
If Manning was allowed appropriate access to information he was working with specifically, each working day, how much damage could he have done? But no, they gave him access to a whole pot of special secret s–t, and were surprised when he sent it to Julian at Wikileaks.
And then Julian messed up and released stuff in such a way they were able to ID Manning… sad, all the way along.