Marty Atencio's family fights back and files suit.

Thanks JJ and the AZ Republic for keeping up with this tragic case...and to Marty's family for holding the real bad guys accountable...

Marty Atencio

Marty's memorial page here.

-----------from the Arizona Republic-------------

$20M claim alleges excessive force in AZ inmate's death

by JJ Hensley
Arizona Republic
June 8, 2012

The family of a man who died in December following an altercation with police and detention officers in a Maricopa County jail has filed a $20 million notice of claim against the city of Phoenix, the Sheriff's Office and the county agency responsible for health care in the jails.

The claim, filed Friday, alleges that excessive force, coupled with a series of failures by medical professionals to tend to Ernest "Marty" Atencio, contributed to the 44-year-old's death in December.

Atencio died four days after he was removed from a "safe cell" in the Fourth Avenue Jail.






The notice of claim (WARNING: Contains graphic images)

The Maricopa County medical examiner last week issued a report that concluded that Atencio died of cardiac arrest, acute psychosis, medical problems and "law-enforcement subdual," but the report did not list a manner of death.

Atencio's family believes that the manner of death was homicide, committed at the hands of sheriff's detention officers in an altercation that began when two Phoenix police officers began to struggle with Atencio after he refused to remove his left shoe. They wanted the shoe removed to be scanned as he prepared to enter the jail.

The Phoenix officers took Atencio to the ground, and surveillance footage shows the detention officers dragging Atencio into a safe cell, where the number of officers in the small cell obscured their actions from the camera.
A safe cell is a room designed to reduce inmates' ability to injure themselves or others.

The claim contends that at least one officer punched Atencio and that another officer shocked Atencio with a stun gun six times, with several of those strikes coming within inches of his heart.

The notice of claim is a necessary precursor to a lawsuit against a public entity. State law requires a claim to list a dollar amount for which it can be settled. Atencio's family set that amount at $5 million for Phoenix police and $15 million for the county agencies.

The Sheriff's Office is continuing to investigate the incident and declined comment.

A pair of Phoenix police officers contacted Atencio twice on the night he was detained.

During the first contact, outside a convenience store, officers noticed that Atencio was acting erratically and told him to go home. Moments later, the officers received a call about a man kicking at a woman's apartment door in the 2800 block of West Laurel Lane. The officers recognized Atencio as the man they had encountered outside the convenience store, and they arrested him after the woman requested prosecution.

When Atencio arrived at the Fourth Avenue Jail's intake area -- where inmates are screened for medical and mental-health concerns and the most serious are supposed to receive immediate attention -- officers recognized his signs of mental illness but failed to respond, according to the claim.

"She (mental-health professional Monica Scarpati) admitted that she did not complete a full assessment of Marty and sent him to an isolation cell," the claim states. "Ms. Scarpati and (Correctional Health Services nurse Bill McClean) fell below the applicable standard of care by, in RN McClean's words, 'accepting' Marty into the jail and not doing anything to make sure that Marty got the immediate medical attention that he so obviously needed and deserved."

According to the claim, as Atencio waited for further processing, other officers noticed his mental state and began mocking him. According to an interview with an inmate who was nearby at the time, one officer thought Atencio's mug shot could be featured on the Sheriff's Office website that posts booking photos.

"An MCSO lieutenant stated in an interview that the process of taking Marty's photo was, 'Ah, you know, it's kinda comical,'" according to the claim.

As Atencio prepared to leave the booking area, he became uncooperative with Phoenix officers but was not violent or combative, according to interviews with officers contained in the claim.

Surveillance video shows that when a Phoenix officer placed his arm around Atencio's neck and took him to the ground, nearby officers joined in the effort to subdue Atencio. His family called the events that followed a "jailers' riot."

The claim does not request any damages from the Medical Examiner's Office, but it does allege that the office attempted to shield the county from liability by failing to name a manner of death from one of the four descriptions: suicide, homicide, natural causes or accidental.

"The medical examiner's report is part science and part defensive doublespeak designed to deflect and limit the county's liability," the claim states. "The notion that Marty's manner of death is 'undetermined' is a farcical sleight of hand by the county. The cardiac arrest was induced by the 'law-enforcement subdual,' so it was obviously a 'homicide,' i.e., caused at the hands of other human beings."

Arpaio's Deaths in Custody: Misogyny back on trial.

This guy Vogel - who should have been taken by the cops to the psych hospital, not to jail, died over ten years ago after fighting off a bunch of guards trying to dress him in pink - and yet they still do this kind of thing to frightened, vulnerable, mentally ill prisoners today.  Apparently when this case first went to court, his trauma from that incident wasn't really fully explored - the 9th Circuit Court seems to think that the use of the pink underwear is indeed abusive, however, and relevant, so it's being returned to the lower courts for a new trial - with Arpaio as the defendant. As articulated by Justice Noonan:

 

 "Unexplained and undefended, the dress-out in pink appears to be punishment without legal justification," he wrote. "It appears to us that this question is still open for exploration at trial on remand."

To use the color pink - long associated with the feminine - as  a means of humiliating male prisoners is pathetic and disgusting and says a lot about not just Arpaio's homophobia and hate for people who are gay/transgender/queer, but his deep contempt for women in particular. How can women with any political awareness at all justify allowing Arpaio and the MCSO to continue like this?

I have a hard time understanding how the women in this state - Republicans and Dems alike - have tolerated Arpaio's misogyny for so long - much less why so many vote for him - except that the women here have been very well-trained to comply. Women's rights organizations in Arizona who aren't actively working to end mandatory the pink underwear in the county jail are as much a part of the problem as Sheriff Joe himself is - they should be supporting this suit. The use of pink - the feminine - as something to abuse people with is not a petty issue - it's a symptom of the toxic attitudes towards people (not just prisoners) that defines the MCSO's culture, and it's killing folks.

For those interested, by the way, the actual court opinion on this is linked to at the bottom of the article. Interesting read. Maybe this guy will be the one responsible for reining in Arpaio's expressions of hate in his policies, anyway, even though it sure won't change the man.

 

 

-------from the Courthouse News Service (great resource)-----

Arpaio Isn't Off the Hook for Death of Schizophrenic Man

By TIM HULL
March 7, 2012

(CN) - The 9th Circuit ordered a new trial Wednesday in the case of a schizophrenic Arizona man who had a fatal heart attack weeks after he was forced to put on pink underwear in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's notorious county jail.

     Maricopa County authorities stopped 36-year-old Eric Vogel in 2001 while looking for a burglar in his Phoenix neighborhood. Vogel, who had a lifelong history of mental illness and social isolation, had left the home he shared with his mother that morning for the first time in years. When the officers questioned him, he struggled, shouted "kill me" and said he needed to talk to the president. The deputies arrested him and booked him in Arpaio's jail for assaulting a police officer. Vogel was transferred to the psychiatric unit after he told a psychologist that he was at the World Trade Center and getting messages from satellites, but not before being subjected to a "dress-out" in which four officers forced the struggling inmate to change into pink underwear and other jailhouse garb.

     Arpaio famously requires of all Maricopa County Jail inmates to wear pink underwear.

     Vogel spent a week in the unit before his mother bailed him out. A short time later, he was in his mother's car when she had a traffic accident. Police at the scene warned Vogel that there was a warrant out for his arrest for spitting on an officer during the "dress-out." Vogel left the scene and ran for approximately 5 miles. He died the next day of acute cardiac arrhythmia.

     Vogel's mother sued Maricopa County and Arpaio for violating federal civil rights law and other statutes, including the Americans With Disabilities Act. Yavon Wagner, Vogel's sister, stepped in as the plaintiff when her mother died shortly before the trial.

     Vogel allegedly thought he was being raped by the officers, and that they were dressing him in pink underwear as some sort of preparation for a "gang rape." Vogel had been obsessed with the humiliating jailhouse incident, and that the lingering trauma of the dress-out had contributed to his death, according to the complaint.

     At trial, however, Senior U.S. District Judge Earl Carroll barred Wagner from testifying about her brother's state of mind, finding it hearsay. He also prohibited mention of "rape," "gang rape," and "pink underwear," finding no evidence that Vogel had known the underwear he was forced to wear was indeed pink. The court also limited expert testimony as to the possible effects of the dress-out and about an alleged connection between schizophrenia and cardiac arrhythmia. At the trial's end, "the District Court abruptly eliminated the plaintiff's opportunity for rebuttal argument," according to the ruling. A jury found for the defendants.

     But the 9th Circuit voted 2-1 on Wednesday to reverse the verdict and order a new trial. The San Francisco-based panel found that the lower court had committed a fatal error by limiting the plaintiffs' testimony, and had done so again by refusing to consider the psychological implications of pink underwear.

     "Indisputably, Wagner could have testified at trial about the impact the jail incident had on Vogel, how his mood was following the incident, how disturbed he seemed, and even what he thought happened to him during the incident, all without putting inadmissible hearsay before the jury," Judge John Noonan wrote for the majority. "None of this testimony would have been put forth in order to establish the truth of what he had said. Wagner proposed to testify about how extremely delusional Vogel was following the incident, and more importantly, the emotional impact the incident had on him, including how humiliated he now felt by the pink underwear. She was not asserting the truth of anything that Vogel said had happened to him in jail."

     Because of the "symbolic significance" of the color pink in American culture, the jury should have been permitted the jury to consider the "impact of the dress-out on Vogel apparent from his conversation with his sister," the panel found.

     "When a color of such symbolic significance is selected for jail underwear, it is difficult to believe that the choice of color was random," Noonan wrote. "The county offers no penalogical reason, indeed no explanation whatsoever for its jail's odd choice. Given the cultural context, it is a fair inference that the color is chosen to symbolize a loss of masculine identity and power, to stigmatize the male prisoners as feminine."

     "That Vogel was delusional does not mean that he was incapable of seeing," Noonan added. "If you pricked him, he bled. Just as his eyes saw the pink, so his mind made the association of the color. So at least a jury could infer from the impact of the dress-out on Vogel apparent from his conversation with his sister."

     Noonan suggested further that the District Court may want to consider the legality of Arpaio's underwear rules on remand.

     "Unexplained and undefended, the dress-out in pink appears to be punishment without legal justification," he wrote. "It appears to us that this question is still open for exploration at trial on remand."

     Writing in dissent, Judge N.R. Smith argued that the majority had failed to "correctly construe the hearsay rule," and had neglected to give "the proper deference to the District Court's other evidentiary rulings."

     Neither John Curtin, who represented the plaintiffs, nor Maricopa County's attorney, Eileen GilBride, could be immediately reached for comment.

 Link to Court Opinion

Brutalizing the mentally ill: Gerster's Sentencing.

CORRECTIONS/CLARIFICATION HERE

Maricopa County Courthouse (W. Jefferson / 3rd Ave)
March 2011

Went to Kevin Gerster's pre-trial this AM, only to learn that he entered a plea last week to three counts: a misdemeanor for tampering with criminal records (he gave a buddy the address of a guy his ex-girlfriend was dating, and the buddy stalked and assaulted them both), as well as two aggravated assault charges for beating up his mentally ill prisoners (both are just class 6 felonies, though - charging him for assaulting "vulnerable adults", as I strongly urged the prosecutors to do, would have made it a class 2 felony).


Here's what really troubles me, though: even though he's a repeat offender of violent crimes against vulnerable persons, they let him off the hook with "non-dangerous/ non-repetitive" designations on his assaults - how can aggravated assault be "non-dangerous"????


That favor may well be what helps him avoid prison for all this. It sure minimizes his responsibility for hurting people repeatedly - the only reason he can't keep doing so is because he got caught, not because he found God or something. That's one sign of a sociopath - that and the sheer absence of a conscience.


This is all so disappointing - I really thought Prichard and her boss Bill Montgomery had what it took to really get justice in this case. That guy's going to walk with probation and community service, no doubt - despite violating all of our trust, as well as the welfare of his prisoners. God only knows how traumatized his victims still are - they'd have every reason to be afraid of the uniform of the state, now, too - as do the rest of us.


Here's Gerster's sentencing date; be there if you can:

10/21/2011 at 10:30 a.m.,
Judge William Brotherton Jr.
201 W. Jefferson St, PHX
Maricopa County Superior Court

Look for this provision to be pulled out at sentencing, so he has a chance of getting out of there without any felony charges at all (and could therefore become a rent-a-cop at your local high school or mall)

Shame on the MCAO for not prosecuting him for abusing vulnerable adults...

-------------------------

13-604. Class 6 felony; designation

A. Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, if a person is convicted of any class 6 felony not involving a dangerous offense and if the court, having regard to the nature and circumstances of the crime and to the history and character of the defendant, is of the opinion that it would be unduly harsh to sentence the defendant for a felony, the court may enter judgment of conviction for a class 1 misdemeanor and make disposition accordingly or may place the defendant on probation in accordance with chapter 9 of this title and refrain from designating the offense as a felony or misdemeanor until the probation is terminated. The offense shall be treated as a felony for all purposes until such time as the court may actually enter an order designating the offense a misdemeanor. This subsection does not apply to any person who stands convicted of a class 6 felony and who has previously been convicted of two or more felonies.

B. If a crime or public offense is punishable in the discretion of the court by a sentence as a class 6 felony or a class 1 misdemeanor, the offense shall be deemed a misdemeanor if the prosecuting attorney files any of the following:

1. An information in superior court designating the offense as a misdemeanor.

2. A complaint in justice court or municipal court designating the offense as a misdemeanor within the jurisdiction of the respective court.

3. A complaint, with the consent of the defendant, before or during the preliminary hearing amending the complaint to charge a misdemeanor.

Joe's Jail health care audit: Arpaio still fails.

Many thanks to the AZ Republic for this report... Maybe if that $100 million of inmate programs' funds that Arpaio "misspent" had gone into improving services all along, some of the folks who have died there would have made it.

tent city, phoenix (April 5, 2011)

----------------------------

County's jails still falling short on health care, audit finds
Millions already spent improving inmate services

by JJ Hensley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez - Aug. 20, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Despite spending millions of dollars trying to rectify long-recognized problems, Maricopa County still falls short of its constitutionally mandated obligation to provide adequate health care to jail inmates, a court-appointed expert says.

Her report, filed earlier this month as part of a long-standing lawsuit over jail conditions, is a setback for the county Board of Supervisors and the Sheriff's Office. For years, they have pledged to improve a taxpayer-funded health-care system used in county jails, where about 7,500 inmates are housed.

For years, the county has paid millions of dollars in legal fees, settlements and jury verdicts to inmates and their families for death and injury claims.

With a budget of $55 million, the county's Correctional Health Services oversees the delivery of care to inmates housed in the county's five jails and Tent City.

Jail-reform advocates first sued the county in 1977 to force changes, claiming inmates received substandard care. The court in 1981 issued guidelines for the county to follow, and the court has revisited the matter several times.

The 33-page audit by Kathryn Burns concluded that although the CHS has made substantial advances in a number of areas, serious issues persist, particularly within the Mental Health Unit through which thousands of inmates move annually.

An estimated one-third of inmates are on psychotropic medications, which treat mental disorders, said Dawn Noggle, CHS director of mental health.

The county received positive marks for its investments and improvements in staff training, inmate-health assessments and follow-up appointments.

It has increased the number of mental-health employees at Fourth Avenue Jail. Portions of health screenings during bookings are now electronic to better manage patient information. More group treatment is offered.

However, the audit also found continuing problems with inadequate or incomplete admission assessments on medical charts; premature inmate releases from treatment; discharges of detainees without discussion among staff; lack of continuity of care with outpatient providers; and inconsistent and poor quality of treatment within the Mental Health Unit.

In another related audit, a separate court-appointed expert recently reviewed the CHS' medical services.

Lambert King's 34-page audit cited similar improvements and deficiencies, indicated the agency is understaffed and said that technical problems pose a "significant setback" in implementing a long-awaited electronic-records system to better track patient care.

The system is now "indefinitely delayed" because the county needs time to solve the technical problems involving integration of two separate technologies.

Some of those same problems were cited as reasons for the CHS' loss of accreditation in 2008, and a few even were noted as far back as 1977, when the lawsuit was first filed.

Experts say the loss of accreditation makes Maricopa County vulnerable in its defense of legal claims by current and former inmates and their families.

The accreditation comes from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, an independent agency that assesses medical and mental-health care in jails and prisons.
Shield against suits

That accreditation gives jails and prisons a national seal of approval that can help defend them against lawsuits over inadequate care.

Noggle acknowledged that problems persist but said correctional-health staffers are "making good progress" in screening detainees for health problems.

But the strengthened screening, she said, has led to a rise in the number of inmates deemed mentally ill, and that has increased demand on staff and resources. Noggle said the Mental Health Unit now admits 200 to 300 inmates a month.

"When you think about what we're doing on a daily basis, it's extraordinary," Noggle said. "We still have a ways to go, there's no doubt about it. It is an enormous challenge."

Burns' audit noted certain cases to highlight problems within the system. For example, it cited:

- Inadequate screening. An inmate previously had been booked into county jail nine times, and his records contained notes about his suicidal tendencies. The report alleges that staff did not notice those notes when the man was booked again last October. He committed suicide in jail in early December.

- Questionable treatment of inmates withdrawing from drugs and alcohol.

One Friday night last April, a pregnant woman who later tested positive for methamphetamine was booked into jail. Two days later, she demanded to go to the hospital. A nurse ordered Tylenol and sent the woman back to her housing unit. She gave birth to a baby boy in a bathroom of the Estrella Jail.

An inmate in the woman's housing unit said the woman "was in labor for several hours, but detention staff attributed her behavior to withdrawal and/or minimized her pain and discomfort and did not call or send her to medical (care) promptly."

Another inmate wrote that the woman was "in extreme pain and howling in the bathroom but not checked by detention staff."

- Unsanitary conditions. Despite periodic cleaning, cells in the Mental Health Unit had "floors, walls and windows appear grimy and stained with what appears to be dirt, feces and/or blood in some instances."

One mentally ill inmate refused to leave his cell for weeks. "When taken out for emergency treatment, his hair and feet were described as being matted with feces."

Members of the Board of Supervisors, ultimately charged with overseeing health care for inmates, said they were unaware of Burns' findings until contacted by a reporter. Staffers said they likely will be briefed on it next week.

Jim Bloom, chief of staff for Supervisor Andy Kunasek, concluded after reading the audit: "I think it's not so bad. In the past, I think we probably had a D. This report, I think, gets us closer to a C+ or a B-. We certainly have a ways to go, but we're committed to going there."

An Arizona Republic series in 2008 found the Board of Supervisors had failed to adequately respond to problems in the jail system despite having been told time and again through court documents, consultant reports and interviews that the CHS was providing inadequate care.

The CHS lost its accreditation as a result of the problems, and the county has paid millions of dollars in legal fees, settlements and jury verdicts to inmates and their families for death and injury claims against the county.

Burns' report was filed as part of the county's ongoing effort to get the Sheriff's Office and CHS out from under court-ordered oversight that began in 2008 after Judge Neil Wake ruled that conditions in the jails violated constitutional protections.

Since then, county lawyers and attorneys for the plaintiffs, who are affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, have tried to develop a plan that would allow the jails to comply with Wake's ruling without the ongoing oversight.

Burns' audit tour was the first since that plan was put in place, and it was intended to gauge how far along the jails were on the path to compliance, said Eric Balaban, an attorney with the National Prison Project.

The plaintiffs' attorneys weren't expecting wholesale changes to be reflected in the jail system immediately, but they were hoping for fewer references to the same problems that have plagued the jails for decades, Balaban said.

"It's not unusual to take years to turn around a system that was essentially non-existent (at the time of Wake's ruling)," he said.

"We're concerned overall with the provision of health care. We're not going to get into ascribing bad motives to anyone involved here. We will continue to push the defendants as quickly as we possibly can to reach compliance with those markers."

The challenges are significant, Noggle said.

Budget-cutting at all levels of government has affected the CHS' funding.

Still, Noggle said, the CHS within the past year has added nine mental-health professionals, a mental-health supervisor, several psychiatric providers, two psychiatric nurses and six administrative workers dedicated to mental health.

And even as the county's jail population has declined in recent years, the number of inmates who are mentally ill or experiencing substance-abuse problems has increased, she said.

Many of those inmates have never, or only intermittently, sought medical help, making it more difficult to diagnose and treat them.

Dr. Jeffrey Metzner, a Colorado psychiatrist who evaluates mental-health systems across the nation, said local jails have become de facto mental-treatment centers.

"The number of mentally ill in jails has skyrocketed . . . and the courts have made it very clear that if you're going to incarcerate people, you've got to provide the treatment," he said.

Conditions of confinement: Sheriff Joe's jail is our responsibility, too.

The following is a revised and somewhat more radical version of my post from AZ prison watch earlier in the night. It seemed appropriate for this blog, too. No one is listening to us at the Governor's office or ADC, so try the DOJ now. Please call or write today.

Amnesty International poster: Write a letter, save a life.

For those who missed Stephen Lemons' review of Shaun Attwood's new book, "Hard Time: A Brit in America's Toughest Jail", it's worth the read. I'd post it here but I've already packed in too much for the night. It is, of course, about the Maricopa County Hell they call a jail. Hit Shaun's blog, "Jon's Jail Journal" too, if you haven't already. He posts letters from prisoners there, and is a good friend to many who would otherwise have no audible voice.

As for the conditions of confinement in our jails and prisons: I don't understand why the Department of Justice hasn't held Arpaio criminally responsible for his abuse of so many people over the years - from medical negligence to conspiracies to deprive us of our civil rights. Their failure to do so thus far is akin to the feds' consent for every harm he's done under his tenure, and complicity with every additional prisoner he neglects or kills. I'm really starting to worry that they plan to make some kind of closed door deal with him, then pack their bags and walk away.

The Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act covers prisoners precisely because the People so often end up needing protection from the sadistic cruelty of those wielding power in our name, and few in America are more disenfranchised and vulnerable than those disposed of in jails and prisons - citizens and "aliens" alike. They include our elderly, our poor, our sick, troubled youth, our mentally ill, our developmentally disabled - all those people we once institutionalized elsewhere (and have thrown out into the streets) are thrown into the stew.

Of course, the more vocal idiots in our community argue after every article about prisoner abuse or suicide that because they are in a jail or prison they deserve whatever they get, whatever that may be. Just because those readers like to stone prostitutes, though, doesn't mean they are themselves without sin. Nor do they represent all of us. Those people are twisted bullies hiding behind fake identities looking for someone to kick who's already down. They've probably commented on this blog of Stephen's, in fact.

That's a tangent I can't stop from exploring in this context. The media shouldn't give such people the platform on which to celebrate brutalization, suicide, and murder, including among prisoners, in the first place. That's not supporting freedom of speech - it's just intimidating the voices of reason and humanity into silence. Giving hateful people our shared public space empowers them to use shame to perpetrate cruelty, and it perpetuates the stigma felt by prisoners' families who read "good riddance" from the community after their loved ones die. They screen such things out of printed "letters to the editor"; why not moderate their public forums? Only abusive and rich people seem to get amplified when they speak - the rest of us get censored, even if we head the nightly news.

Frankly, most of "free" Arizona should be locked up, looking at the multitude of laws that require jail or prison for those who break them - and at how unbelievably easy it is to put someone away, especially in this state. We are just privileged or very lucky if we've escaped such a fate so far. Those who think they will never be prosecuted because they really aren't "criminals" need to check out the Arizona Justice Project. There are all sorts of innocent people behind bars.

Once in a while the law reaches out and touches us where we never thought it would - and since it's not a common occurrence in our white, middle class communities, we are sure that there is just a deviant in our midst, or it is a fluke of the justice system that will work itself out. Dad's in an accident while on painkillers following surgery and goes to prison because he had an old DUI. Presumably he will get treatment in prison, but he's already been sober for 5 years - instead he just loses time from his kids' lives and his ability to support his family. The neighbor is arrested for embezzling to save the house from foreclosure and her kids from homelessness - losing everything and everyone in the process. We pay over $20,000 a year to incarcerate her for five years - and God knows how much to put the kids in foster care - while her banker gets a bonus from the taxpayer bailout.  

I hope everyone out there finds those images as disturbing as I do. It happens all the time.

As for the wrongfully-accused: Americans don't really presume innocence, which is why Joe's jail was allowed to get so bad. We recoil from the accused as soon as they hit the news because the possibility that agents of the almighty law might be corrupt or wrong threatens our sense of social order. We sacrifice Innocence like she's the designated virgin just to maintain the illusion that the guilty among us are eventually caught, and that those who are caught are always guilty. 

People who are innocent tend to believe that the truth will prevail, and if it doesn't they end up being punished worse than the real criminals who make a deal. Real-life case in point: Courtney Bisbee, the school nurse accused of touching a 14-year old liar and branded as a child molester, was a feather in the cap of the detective who arrested her and the prosecutor who got the conviction. To assure that the rest of us got our taste of blood, the judge slammed her with 11 years for fighting it out in court instead of taking a plea bargain that would have had her back home with her child by now.

Stephen Lemons even investigated Courtney's case and advocated on her behalf (here and here, too), but no one wants to hear the new evidence that would exonerate her because it implicates incompetence - or worse. For law enforcement's ego and our sense of order, she's been in prison for at least 6 years now. Maybe Romley is the man who will have the courage to help set her free - we'll see. He was the Maricopa County Attorney when she was originally prosecuted, so if he steps up to the plate and looks at it in a new light, I'll be impressed. Andrew Thomas was too much of a political coward.

In these ways the brutality of our courts, Joe's jail, and Ryan's prisons hits home. It's not a freakish thing for families to be ripped apart by "justice" in poor and minority communities - it's all too common. The legal system works exactly as it's designed to there, oppressing resistance to white supremacy and defiance of the rules of capitalism at every turn. Justice is the sheep's clothing that America dons to promote the interests of the few, and the myth that we are a model of democracy is what blinds us - and Her - to the deceit. 

But Justice is not supposed to prey on the rest of us "ordinary Americans"- it is supposed to protect us. It only seems to be when we fall from grace ourselves (or get falsely accused and imprisoned) that we begin to see the system for what it is. We get inside and see people doomed to spend the rest of their lives in prison for charges as petty as fraud, while murderers walk away with money in their pocket after 15 or 20 years. Looking around, we also realize that the majority of the people behind bars are not a public safety threat - most are public nuisances, eyesores, "sinners" and surplus laborers who legislators thought would be better hidden away. Those still claiming their innocence are all too often out-maneuvered by the state in legal proceedings, and seldom have the luxury of an attorney to help them once appeals are exhausted. 


Look closely and you'll see that America's prisons and jails have, by and large, replaced our mental hospitals, poorhouses, and plantations. And they are major money-making machines for those in power, as long as they skimp on human rights and basic needs like food and health care. That's why the prisoners who would expose them are discredited, discounted, and silenced in every way possible.

Never mind that the desperate and vulnerable are being relegated and abandoned in these hellholes to sociopaths who will rape and torture them for the fun of it, or even kill them just to score a new gang tattoo. To the private and public prison industries alike, each new body is just an addition to their growing empire - they have no interest in anyone's innocence or special circumstances, and no reason to help prevent or reduce the effects of crime in our communities. 

Despite lamenting about the high recidivism rate (usually as an excuse to be better funded and more brutal), jails and prisons are just as well-paid for recycling the people they chewed up once already. Buying the industry's line of BS, a terrorized public decides that parole officers and prosecutors are always professional and responsible and work in a functional system, so it must be the criminal's own fault for getting put back in - he should have learned his lesson the first time. Our perceptions are too often shaped by the expectation that what we pay nearly 10% of our state budget for includes some effort at "rehabilitation" (hence the AZ Department of Corrections' designation as such, not the "Department of Confinement"). The criminal justice system isn't rehabilitating anyone - they're spending our money lobbying the governor and legislature to pass more laws and assure more prison sentences for less serious crimes than ever.

The prison industrial complex as a whole (of which Sheriff Joe is actually just a small part) cultivates the rest of us to feel exploited and victimized, though, so that we seem defenseless and helpless without them. Then they glorify themselves as our protectors (though they usually arrive after the crime, not in time to prevent it), and we willingly pay them some other kid's lunch money to keep it up. It's a racket. Actually reducing crime and making us all more safe would just cut into their power and profit margins.  

Anyone who believes such a system really upholds justice or promotes the public good is delusional or has been duped. Law enforcement is an integral part of the fascist decimation of our rights, not the power protecting them. We - the People - are the only power that will protect liberty and justice for the future, but only if we have our eyes wide open and are ready to risk jail, prison, defamation, and even execution in the process. If we are not, then we have surrendered that which is most important in life for nothing more than illusion. We are on a leash, instead of in a cage. At least some prisoners, with their integrity intact, mange to remain free.

The DOJ is grossly negligent for failing to act aggressively under CRIPA against the MCSO, and therefore shares the blame for emboldening our greedy, bigoted, fear-mongering lawmakers and enforcers to continue to imprison, injure, and kill those of us whose nationality or skin color or gender or politics or religion they hate. But we are also responsible for letting this go on so long without holding either the feds or Arpaio accountable ourselves. So, here are the names and contact info for the people at the DOJ who should be investigating the real public enemies - and taking action - under CRIPA, regardless of what else they're doing. Please call or write on behalf of those fighting  a losing battle to defend their lives. Don't wait for your loved one to end up in trouble: he or she may be the next prisoner of the MCSO or Arizona Department of Corrections to die.

So could you or I.

------------------------

DOJ - Special Litigation Section

Mailing Address

Special Litigation Section

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, PHB
Washington, D.C. 20530
For FEDEX: 601 D Street, NW, Washington, DC 20004

Telephone Number
(202) 514-0195
toll-free at (877) 218-5228

Fax Numbers
(202) 514-0212
(202) 514-6273

---

Acting Chief
Judy Preston
(202) 514-6258
Principal Deputy Chief
Tammie Gregg
(202) 616-2009
Deputy Chiefs
Julie Abbate (Acting)
(202) 353-4637
Mary Bohan (Acting)
(202) 616-2325
Luis Saucedo (Acting)
(202) 353-0299

ARPAIO's Jail Health Care Crisis Continues.

In Arpaio's Jails, the Most Basic Healthcare is No Better Despite Years of Lawsuits and Investigations

by Lauren Gilger  

Phoenix New Times

Thursday, Apr 15 2010

When Bertha Oropeza was arrested last summer for marijuana possession, she didn't expect it to nearly cost her life.

But after 10 hours in Maricopa County's Fourth Avenue jail, Oropeza was unconscious, in cardiogenic shock with acute kidney failure at Good Samaritan Hospital. Meanwhile, no one at the jail could tell her family where she was. "She's been released" was their refrain.

Oropeza, 45, had been straightforward with jail personnel about needing medication, which is reflected in jail and hospital records, as well as in Oropeza's recollection.

When she was arrested, she tells New Times, she clearly remembers telling the officer who took her purse that she would need to take her pills again in an hour.

He told her to wait until she got to the jail.

As Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's guards took her through the intake process "they asked me when I last took it, and I told them," Oropeza says. "I'm thinking, 'Okay, they're gonna give me my medication.'"

They didn't, so she tried again, telling the guard checking her into the jail that she needed her pills.
"Well, you don't need them right now," he told her. "It's your own fault. What do you think this is, a hospital?"

Oropeza's medical history is summarized in Good Samaritan Hospital records, released by Oropeza to New Times: She was in a car accident in west Phoenix in 2005 that left her disabled and with chronic back and leg pain.

Oropeza says she spent a month in a coma and five months in the hospital after she was thrown from the passenger's side of a car. Her hip "came completely out of socket," she says, and she suffered extensive head trauma after hitting the pavement.

She regularly takes the painkillers morphine and oxycodone as well as the muscle relaxant carisoprodal, according to hospital records.

Jail employees definitely knew about her condition, county records show. At 9:49 a.m. — about the time Oropeza was booked into the jail — a note was entered in her file recording that she was on medication for chronic pain in her legs and back due to a car accident.

Still, she didn't get help.

Oropeza knew what would happen next: The pain in her legs would come back, her stomach would reject anything in it, her muscles would seize up, and her lungs would tighten.

"If I don't take my medication, then I get a withdrawal right away," she says.

She had no power to stop it from coming. It did.

In the first holding cell, waiting to be fingerprinted, Oropeza asked for a bag to throw up in. A guard handed her one.

She sat on the concrete floor in the corner of the cell, vomiting into the bag until it was full, unable to move as the pain in her legs crept back and the painkillers wore off.

When she asked for a second bag, a guard told her to use the trash can on the other side of the cell. But she couldn't get up to walk over to it.

"Just don't throw up on the floor," he told her.

She was struggling to breathe and still throwing up when another woman in the cell began to kick the door to get the guard's attention. Oropeza, afraid of angering the guard, begged her not to.
"No," the woman said. "You need help. You need help now."

When the guard finally came, he walked Oropeza down a long hall and told another guard on duty there to "take her down to medical," Oropeza remembers.

Standing at the end of the hall with the new guard, Oropeza felt increasingly dizzy. She grabbed a nearby chair because she felt like she was going to faint.

"Don't touch that chair," the guard yelled.

"You don't need nothing to hold on to. You just stand there," Oropeza remembers him saying.
She asked him whether she could hold onto the wall. He told her no.

"All you're doing is putting on a show to get out of here. We get it all the time," he said.

When he took her out of the hallway, it was to yet another cell — this one right outside the medical unit, where she could see the nurses through a window.

Oropeza begged the nurses for help, miming that she couldn't breathe. She says Arpaio's guard just laughed at her. The nurses didn't come.

By about 1:30 p.m., after at least three hours of vomiting and dry heaving in a cement jail cell, Arpaio's guards finally turned her over to Correctional Health Services, the medical unit of the jail, according to records.

She was handcuffed to a gurney. When she complained of being cold, "they threw paper over me," she says.

At a few minutes before 7 p.m. on June 2, CHS staff called an ambulance to come for Bertha Oropeza. It arrived at 7:30 p.m., according to records, a full six hours after she had entered the medical unit...

--------------------------finish article at PNT: worth it -----------------------

Sheriff Joe's Circus at Cronkite

 Just a reminder that this is an action coming up, folks (for a lot of groups). Looks like a good opportunity to confront the abuse of his office to repress first amendment rights...this should be an interesting protest. I guess tea partiers and minutemen will be counter-protesting.

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Large crowd expected at live interview of Arpaio

Nov. 27, 2009 11:13 AM
Associated Press

 

A live interview with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in downtown Phoenix has drawn so much interest that organizers are making it available on a large video screen and the Internet.

Three professors with Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication are set to interview the sheriff at 7 p.m. Monday.

A Cronkite school spokeswoman says the event was going to be open to the public, but Phoenix police told school officials earlier this week that they expect large crowds, citing a Facebook page protesting Arpaio and showing about 400 people saying they would attend. Another 440 were "maybes."

Meanwhile, the capacity of the interview site is 210 people.

Maricopa County Jail

No sooner were we celebrating a small victory ending the use of outdoor cages in AZ state prisons then the story hit about Maricopa County Correctional Health Services inadequacies (Read this article!). At least there's already been an inquiry and a number of good recommendations made. The question is why our board of supervisors isn't following them. They've been warned of possible grave consequences to prisoners if they don't. Since 1998, we've had to shell out $13 million for legal fees and claims settlements to families, and we still haven't responded to expert recommendations for getting our health services for prisoners into decent shape. We even lost accreditation by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care last fall.

This one can't be blamed on Sheriff Joe. He may control the jails and therefore the living conditions, but not the budget or operation of Correctional Health Services. It looks like gross negligence on the part of the county administration and supervisors for not funding those services adequately. I guess the question is: who has to die for them to take action?

And who has to care? People are still on hunger strike over the conditions in the county jail, and we aren't all taking the day off of work to go storm the MCSO or Board of Supervisors meetings, though a core group of activists and community members have done so more than once this spring. What does it take for them to be listened to?

The hunger strike is about Arpaio's racial profiling as well as the jail conditions themselves. I can't believe he's so powerful that the Board of Supervisors quake (except Wilcox - she deserves a little credit). Not only is that guy being investigated for civil rights abuses, but he's often featured in the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Hatewatch" blog. History will not look kindly on Arizona for electing him. And for giving him a gun.

Which gets back to the racism issue. In most cities "criminal" is code for "black". Here it's code for "illegal immigrant" (or "Latino"), the worst kind of criminal one can be, short of being a felon. Characterizing the immigrants in jail detention as both "illegal" and "felons" or "facing felony charges" is deceptive. Many - if not most - are in pre-trial holding. What is the "felony" most undocumented immigrants are charged with that makes them such a danger to society that they have to be dressed in pink underwear? Smuggling themselves? That's our legislature's response to illegal immigration?

We originally came up with that law to protect people from human smugglers, not to ensnare them for "conspiring" with one to get them over the border. If threatened with a felony charge for just being here, why would an undocumented immigrant ever go to police for help if their loved one was raped or murdered by a coyote? That's about as brilliant and believable as charging a bunch of Food Not Bombs members as terrorists under the Minnesota version of the PATRIOT Act. That's not what the people intended. Stealing other people's identity so they can work? How lethal is that? Their employers should be paying taxes into their victims' social security accounts.

But calling them both "illegals" and "felons" seems to work to dehumanize people. So, I guess then that neither foreign nationals nor felons have basic human rights guaranteed under the US Constitution? I don't know. The Constitution isn't always right. First it accommodated the enslavement of African Americans, then it explicitly made convicts slaves of the state - so, consequently, more blacks ended up being criminalized after the Civil War. We institutionalized the exploitation and oppression of prisoners because of racism and fear, which is fed by someone else's greed. Not a lot of people know that history.

And then we actually pay to incarcerate them. I frankly don't think it's worth $45 a day of taxpayer money to lock up a father of three who's doing an honest days' work just because NAFTA obliterated his community's ability to sustain itself. Apparently not everyone shares my sentiments: private prisons are booming in the immigrant detention business, and the legislature wants to give Joe more money to round people up. Even public entities are renting out their extra jail and prison space because someone is always willing to pay.

I know we live in a society which regularly debases human life and dignity. But I think our jails have enough poor people and people of color in them to begin asking if our societal neglect of basic things like health care isn't symptomatic of our institutionalized racism and classism, which we can't sit back and wait for Obama's administration to solve. We treat the poor on the inside the same way we do on the outside - suspiciously, skeptically, and with a tendency to think they have no "right" to complain - they're lucky we're as generous as we are.

I don't think they're lucky, of course. The poor, free and in chains, are totally vulnerable to violence from law enforcement officers and mobs alike. Sometimes the mob is there to liberate them, but most of the time they're there with a rope. I think we're just about to kill another prisoner through negligence, punitive policies, and poor management; the county Board of Supervisors has been duly advised on how to avoid such tragedies as Marcia Powell's. The recommendations are fairly straightforward. With the 1.6 million dollars Arpaio expects to get to round up more day laborers, some of those issues could be remedied. I'm sure the undocumented persons being detained have enough medical needs that federal dollars can be thrown into the mix - how can you detain them if you can't afford to treat them?

I can't imagine that federal standards for medical care to prisoners are all that high; it disturbs me that we aren't even going to try to meet them any more. Arizona is in the Old Deep South of the New West, digging in our heels and pulling out the shotguns to try to stop millions of people from seeking equality and freedom; people who came for the American Dream that we dangle, then jerk away. Our state has the right to deal with prisoners as it wants - the hell with US laws or standards. No wonder we are regarded as being littered with idiots. Despite our New American University, we're being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

It's okay so long as business needs their labor, whether it's through slavery or perpetual servitude; most people will just look away. But things have changed. Our relationship with immigrants has always been one of capital's convenience. Now that we don't have so many jobs we don't need to exploit their labor to drive down the cost of wages. Even Americans will work for cheap now, the economy's so bad. We've been through this cycle many times before. We treat foreign nationals like our own poor: as disposable.

I'd like to see the accrediting body's report on Correctional Health Services, and listen in on county supervisor meetings where it was addressed. How do you justify decreasing prisoner access to health care services when so many die in custody? How many of those "natural causes" were survivable heart attacks and strokes that maybe didn't get medical care quickly enough? Was mental health care provided to those who ultimately committed suicide in jail? Had anyone even recognized the risk? And what about the staff recommendations that were made - why were they never implemented?

Who is policing Correctional Health Services? The Arizona Republic? Is that all?

Now is the time to get in touch with our county supervisors and tell them we expect better health care in our jails as well as our communities, and that we will hold them accountable for these folks' lives.