The Prison Thread

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Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

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poo poo Battlemaster, I remember you telling about that :smith:

It's hosed up that everything has come to this.

# ? Apr 23, 2011 20:09

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# ? May 30, 2024 08:24

BattleMaster: Aug 14, 2000

Oh yeah, I think I mentioned it in the last Cops on the Beat thread.

Just to elaborate a little, I was grabbed and held in place while the attacker felt up my breasts and crotch. I wasn't hurt, or threatened with a weapon or anything but it was definitely non-consensual. It was only about 5:30pm but being in December it was quite dark so I never got a great look at the guy - the streetlamps really suck in my area. It didn't last very long before he had his fun and let go at which point I ran home as fast as I could.

If I knew I was running the risk of getting arrested myself I would not have called the police. I figured I'd have a better chance of avoiding abuse as a victim rather than a suspect but thanks to this situation and others I've read about I now know better. I've spoken in person with victims of police abuse and I definitely walked away from this assault in better shape than they did from their police encounters. This encounter put me in a bad mood for weeks and I've never felt so violated and I'm still afraid to go outside when it's even a little dark, but some police victims I know are still incredibly traumatized years later even to the point of sudden panic attacks when seeing police officers or police vehicles.

BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Apr 23, 2011

# ? Apr 23, 2011 20:35

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

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BattleMaster posted:

Oh yeah, I think I mentioned it in the last Cops on the Beat thread.

Just to elaborate a little, I was grabbed and held in place while the attacker felt up my breasts and crotch. I wasn't hurt, or threatened with a weapon or anything but it was definitely non-consensual. It was only about 5:30pm but being in December it was quite dark so I never got a great look at the guy - the streetlamps really suck in my area. It didn't last very long before he had his fun and let go at which point I ran home as fast as I could.

If I knew I was running the risk of getting arrested myself I would not have called the police. I've spoken in person with victims of police abuse and I definitely had a much better time than they did. This encounter put me in a bad mood for weeks and I've never felt so violated and I'm still afraid to go outside when it's even a little dark, but some police victims I know are still incredibly traumatized years later.

It seems like the sensible thing to do would be organizing citizens support groups, and encourage people to talk to someone who's not a cop, then. This is so hosed up I can't get my ahead around it..

# ? Apr 23, 2011 20:37

Son of Emhak: Sep 11, 2005; We say there's no parting for us, if our hearts are conveyed to each other.

Are officers trained to treat any individual as a potential perp? Are they looking to arrest people who call them because they might be attention whores? It seems like the perfect example of an Orwellian nightmare, where innocence is guilt. So many people I know like to talk about all the nice, sweet cops they know. I am sure any fat, well fed pig is kind enough, until they get a chance to feed their gun toting notches.

# ? Apr 24, 2011 01:45

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

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I can't speak for the U.S. but here in Denmark regular officers are instructed to be "alert and suspicious" - this involves sussing out citizens just minding their business until you can be sure they're not likely to have been involved in criminal activity - but once that happens, they have to leave you alone.

Of course, this is not always the case, particularly with undercover and riot cops.

# ? Apr 24, 2011 02:46

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

A.S.H. posted:

Are officers trained to treat any individual as a potential perp?

From what I recall from the previous incarnations of the cop thread, it's a combination of warped perception from being around real criminals all the time, messed-up training and policies that are designed more to protect police from citizens than the other way around, and militarization of police forces. That and the well-known fact that authority turns a lot of people into complete assholes.

# ? Apr 24, 2011 04:34

Pope Guilty: Nov 6, 2006; The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

I'm sure it comes as no surprise, but look, the NOPD are literally monsters:

http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2011/04/orleans-city-jail-police posted:

Something terrible lies at the heart of New Orleans - a rampant, widespread and apparently uncontrollable brutality on the part of its police force and its prison service. The horrors of its criminal justice system from decades before Hurricane Katrina and up to now lie somewhere between, with little exaggeration, Candide and Stalin's Gulags.

Spit on the sidewalk here, and you may be arrested - New Orleans has the highest incarceration rate of any city in the United States - and if you're poor and black and can't pay bail, you will enter a place where any protection under the American constitution and the Bill of Rights is stripped away. You will wait weeks or months to be charged, whether innocent or not, and in the meantime you will be subjected to foul, overcrowded jail conditions, prisoner-to-prisoner violence and the brutality of the deputies who guard you. God help you if you have a medical condition, or a mental-health problem, or if you're pregnant (you may deliver in leg chains - it has happened). "A minor offence in New Orleans," one civil rights attorney told me, "can get you into a hellish place."

On 17 March this year, the federal department of justice (DoJ) decided that enough was enough and it has made moves to have the New Orleans police department (NOPD) placed under the supervision of a federal judge. The New Orleans jail system will likely follow.

The department released a report covering only the past two years and ignoring several current federal investigations of police officers for murder. It says, more or less, that the NOPD is incapable on any level; that it is racist; that it systemically violates civil rights, routinely using "unnecessary and unreasonable force"; that it is "largely indifferent to widespread violations of law and policy by its police officers" and appears to have gone to great lengths to cover up its shootings of civilians. "NOPD's mishandling of officer-involved shooting investigations," the report says, "was so blatant and egregious that it appeared intentional in some respects."

The department can't even handle its sniffer dogs: "We found that NOPD's canines were uncontrollable to the point where they repeatedly attacked their own handlers."

There has been a New Orleans season on British television. There is Treme (pronounced "tre-may"), named after a district in the city. This is the journalist-turned-TV-writer David Simon's successor to The Wire, and is currently showing on Sky Atlantic. Its subplots deal with these themes - the disappearance of people without trace into the criminal justice system, the bullying police. But, because of their nature, neither Treme nor Spike Lee's four-hour documentary When the Levees Broke, which aired here in February, can match print for the chilling forensic details of the New Orleans horror story. For prisons, you must read the deeply shocking reportage and oral history published in 2006 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called Abandoned and Abused. And it is a print journalist, A C Thompson, who, remarkably, has pieced together what many policemen and white vigilantes thought they'd got away with, during and after Katrina.
The gallant South

This month, two policemen were up in court, one accused of the killing and both of its cover-up in July 2005, a month before the flood, of Raymond Robair, a 48-year-old handyman from Treme. He was, it is alleged, viciously beaten and dropped off by both of them in a wheelchair in front of Charity Hospital. He died there of a ruptured spleen from the beating he took.

Both men pleaded not guilty. It was Thompson who doggedly pursued this and other stories over 18 months, with the help of many local activist groups, and reported it in the Nation magazine. Then there's Mary Howell, a civil rights lawyer on whom the Treme character Toni Bernette, played by Melissa Leo, is based. Howell has been litigating against the NOPD and the city's prisons for 30 years. In Treme, policemen leave the restaurant when Bernette walks in.

Howell told me: "I tried at the time to get the justice department to investigate the Robair case and to no avail. Essentially, after 11 September 2001, certainly here in New Orleans, virtually all federal government civil rights enforcement stopped and everybody was diverted into anti-terrorism. Only in the summer of 2008 - when Thompson's pieces started appearing - did they start investigating.

�Without him and without Obama being elected, none of this would be happening. The last time I looked there were 11 different investigations that the feds were conducting here and at least 20 different police officers who were either indicted or found guilty of a variety of federal offences coming out of Katrina and the immediate pre-Katrina period."

Henry Glover, a 31-year-old African American, was shot by a police sniper as he picked up goods behind a shopping mall during Katrina. He was taken by his brother, a friend and a passer-by to a nearby school that police were using as a special operations centre. There a Swat team let Glover bleed to death and beat his rescuers. Another policeman took the body in the rescuer's car to the levee and torched it, putting two shots into the body (he later called that "a very bad decision"). The incinerated car with Glover's remains inside it lay a block from the police station for weeks.

Last December, three policemen were convicted for the crime: one of manslaughter, one of burning the body and one of falsifying evidence. Eleven other officers who admitted they had lied in testimony or withheld knowledge were reassigned to desk duty or suspended.

That the police force in New Orleans is "a significant threat to the safety of the public", as the DoJ says, is obvious. But the same problems can be seen all over the South, from Miami to Mississippi to Alabama; and the same nationwide, according to Paul Craig Roberts, a former editor of the Wall Street Journal and former assistant secretary to the treasury under Ronald Reagan, who wrote recently: "Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists as the greatest threat to the American public."

In New Orleans the culture of systemic brutality is old and deep. In 1970 a producer friend went to sign the great pianist James Booker, then in Orleans Parish Prison. He came into the warden's office shackled, walking on his knees. In the mid-1990s what Howell calls "a series of horrific events" culminated in roughly 20 police officers being prosecuted for major felonies, state and federal: rape, arson, kidnapping, bank robbery. "We had a cop who was doing bank robberies in his lunch hour," she says. "We have two now on death row, one of whom is there - a first for the US - for having a citizen murdered for filing a complaint against him for misconduct."

Howell adds: "Going into Katrina, our police department was a train wreck - in terms of the police, in terms of the jail, in terms of what was going on in the courts. It was just a deeply dysfunctional system. Katrina didn't cause the dysfunction in the system, it just exposed it."

A young civil rights lawyer, Chloe Cockburn, who spent time working for criminal justice reform in New Orleans, recently wrote a term paper on the subject of the return of corporal punishment to American prisons.

The movement towards rational punishment - from a time when segregation from society was considered punishment enough - has been abandoned in favour of retribution, Cockburn argues. "There's evidence across the culture of people accepting the brutal treatment of prisoners, an idea that because you committed a crime you deserve everything you get," she says. "I think it's impossible for Europeans to truly comprehend how horrible it is here."

You could take the "squirrel cages". These are used in the prison in St Tammany Parish, one of the richest districts in the New Orleans conurbation, and an area to which many white people fled from the city in the 1980s. The metal cages measure 3ft by 3ft and are 7ft high, meaning the prisoner can stand but can't lie down.

New Orleans, according to the ACLU, is a city "without mental health care". The cages are therefore used for prisoners who report being suicidal, have some mental disturbance or are simply being punished for a misdemeanour.

Until August last year at least, there were six of them in the booking area of the jail. Katie Schwartzmann, an attorney with the ACLU, established that prisoners were kept in them for a minimum of 72 hours and often for "days, weeks and even over a month". She added: "I spoke to one prisoner a few days ago who went completely crazy when they put him in there. He started banging his head against the wall as hard as he could and had to have eight staples."

Boatloads of goons

The ACLU sent a letter to the parish, noting that "the cages have frequently been used to hold more than one prisoner at a time and that staff often ignore prisoners' requests to use the bathroom, forcing people to urinate in discarded milk cartons". It also pointed out that the St Tammany Parish code states that dogs must be kept in cages at least 6ft by 6ft, with "sufficient space to lie down". Sick prisoners in the parish were being afforded a quarter of the space afforded to animals. Following the ACLU report, the parish said it would use the cages only in an "emergency".

Then there was "Camp Greyhound", a detention facility known for organised brutality - a little-known, near-exact facsimile of Guantanamo Bay, set up in the bus station in downtown New Orleans. There are few photographs of it - it came and went in a few weeks - but there is a detailed description of it in Dave Eggers's non-fiction bestseller Zeitoun. The book gets its name from an American Muslim, a Syrian-born building contractor who had lived in New Orleans for 11 years. Abdulrahman Zeitoun had sent his wife and their children to Baton Rouge and stayed back to check on his properties.

A boatload of goons from the various militias - government and not - that had started patrolling the city in boats after the hurricane arrived at Zeitoun's flooded place. They arrested him and three companions, one a fellow Muslim Syrian by birth called Nasser Dayoob. The charge sheet he saw many weeks later read: "Looting." Roughed up - face in the mud, knee in the back - handcuffed and shouted at, they were taken to the Union Passenger Terminal bus station in the centre of New Orleans. A wooden sign outside said: "We're taking our city back." One of Zeitoun's companions asked a passing soldier: "Why are we here?" "You guys are al-Qaeda," was the reply.

In the car park they saw a vast construction of chain-link fences, 16ft high, topped with razor wire stretching 100 yards. It was divided into smaller cages, all brand new. Sixteen of them. "It looked precisely like the pictures he'd seen of Guantanamo Bay," Eggers wrote of Zeitoun, noting that many of the prisoners were wearing orange jumpsuits. "Like Guantanamo it was outdoors, all the cages were visible and there was nowhere to sit or sleep."

Each cage had a portable toilet in the open. Electricity was provided by a stationary Amtrak train engine, roaring 24 hours a day. Bright floodlights lit it at night.

The detention unit was purpose-built for the maximum discomfort of its inmates. As Eggers writes: "In the cage, the men had few options: they could stand in the centre, they could sit on the cement, or they could lean against a steel rack." It was run along Gitmo rules. No one brought here had been charged with an offence; none had or would see a lawyer.

This is where Zeitoun and his companions spent three agonising days, being subjected to humiliating strip searches, the guards pushing ham sandwiches through the wire even though they had been seen praying. They watched as one mentally handicapped inmate was tied up and pepper-sprayed in the face until "he was cowering in a foetal position wailing like an animal, trying to reach his eyes with his hands".

Anyone who complained or touched the wire was dragged out, tied up and pepper-sprayed, or shot with beanbag guns. Eventually the guards just shot at men and women through the wire indiscriminately. The worst torture for Zeitoun and the other prisoners was not being allowed to make a phone call - to reassure their distressed relatives, to check on their families in this disaster. It drove Zeitoun's wife nearly mad with worry: even after he was moved to a "normal" prison, she heard nothing of him for almost two weeks.

The orders were undoubtedly punitive - the prison's rules served no other purpose, and even taking a message from a prisoner was an offence. It was also a breach of the prisoners' rights. A jury ordered the city to pay out $650,000 to two white tourists who had their cellphones confiscated and who, as a result, got lost in the gulag for several weeks. They could afford bail and would have obtained it - they claimed - if they had been permitted to use their phones.

Zeitoun and the three others were moved to the Elayn Hunt Correctional Centre. Then, mysteriously, his wife got a call from homeland security saying he was free to go. It still took an astute lawyer several more days to get him out on $75,000 bail. Nasser, his Syrian-born companion, spent five months in jail; of the other two, one was locked up for six months and the other eight. All charges were dropped.

How and why had Camp Greyhound been built with such speed and efficiency, with its food and portable toilets, when the rest of the stranded population had been abandoned for days by the government and was fighting for food and water? It was constructed by the inmates of Angola, the 18,000-acre Louisiana state penitentiary, a former slave plantation and the toughest of all American jails, where the average sentence is 89.9 years. Burl Cain, the warden of Angola, had brought his labour force of convicted murderers and rapists to the New Orleans bus station, where they slept overnight, and used his own equipment and supplies to construct it. He had it done in two days. "A real start to rebuilding New Orleans," Eggers quotes him as saying. Angola has some of the lowest-paid prison guards in the United States, and few of them have graduated from high school. Cain kept them at Camp Greyhound as part of the package.

Who had picked up Zeitoun and his friends? It was hard to tell. Every gun club in America had responded to the NOPD's call for help. It was the chief of police who had said that babies were being raped in the Superdome sheltering thousands of the homeless after the hurricane; his assistant who had, within earshot of many police officers, said they should "shoot looters". The mayor of the city called, farcically, for martial law to be declared where no such ordinance existed in Louisiana. It was a call to arms, and anarchy. It established a free-fire zone - one white vigilante, since indicted for murder, incautiously described it as being "like the pheasant season in South Dakota".

March of the militiamen

One of Katie Schwartzmann's clients was arrested by a gang called the Iowa Guard. There were also at least five mercenary outfits, all licensed by homeland security, including a firm named, unbelievably, Instinctive Shooting International. It described itself as being staffed by "veterans of the Israeli special task forces". The investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, told me how he met two of these vets outside the affluent gated community of Audubon Place, and saw some of them, with ISI logos on their backs, posted as snipers on adjoining rooftops.

He wrote in his notebook at the time: "Both say they served as professional soldiers in the Israeli military and one boasts of having par�ticipated in the invasion of Lebanon. 'We have been fighting the Palestinians all day, every day, our whole lives,' one of them tells me. 'Here in New Orleans, we are not guarding from terrorists.' Then, tapping on his machine-gun, he says, 'Most Americans, when they see these things, that's enough to scare them.' They were helicoptered in by powerful businessman James Reiss, who serves in Mayor Ray Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's regional transit authority." As Scahill told me: "Reiss was talking openly of the need to change the 'demographics' of NoLa [New Orleans, Louisiana] after the hurricane."

�There are policy decisions that are made because of the fact that we are a largely African-American city," says Howell. "And that's something that was so shocking, that not only did the local authorities not care, [but] every level of government failed. Every level."

Sick system

Camp Greyhound, when it was exposed, was the focus of much retrospective anger in the black population: it made it clear where the priorities lay - a holding jail was more important than food, water and medical help. Meanwhile, the 7,000 inmates of the main buildings of Orleans Parish Prison had been left, more or less, to drown. They very nearly did: the buildings are in the lowest part of New Orleans.

Marlin Gusman, who is still the city's sheriff, refused to evacuate the jail when the floodwaters came. "This is a very, very lucky sheriff, is all I can say - that there were not significant deaths as a result of that," said one activist I spoke to. As the jails started filling up with water, many deputies left their posts, abandoning the prisoners in their cells, in the dark, with no way of knowing if they would get out.

Almost every prisoner reported going without food and water for days after the storm. They lived in terrible heat - with broken air-conditioners and no windows, in stinking floodwater. One said: "I witnessed several inmates with various medical conditions suffer from dehydration - we were forced to live off toilet water and lie in our own waste and body fluids. We were drinking out of toilets because that is all we had . . . When the rescuers arrived, I was still locked in my cell and they had to pry the bars open. I walked out in chest-deep sewer water."

A deputy who came back to try to release the prisoners recalled: "Before the water got to my waist, we put them all on lockdown, and the scary thing about that was the cells wouldn't open back up. We had to go under the water and try to open them manually." The rescuers only just succeeded.

Hundreds of prisoners were moved from other buildings to the prison's central lock-up area, where they remained standing in deep water for as long as 12 or 13 hours - mostly because the sheriff didn't have enough boats to transport them to higher ground. For those who went to the Jena Correctional Facility, a former juvenile prison, it was "the beginning of a new nightmare", according to the American Civil Liberties Union. "They were subjected to egregious physical and verbal abuse almost immediately after they arrived . . . At one point in their stay several prisoners were told to line up, place their hands behind their heads and press their groins against the buttocks of the prisoners in front of them. An officer taunted them saying, 'Hard dicks to soft rear end! I know y'all are getting hard, because I am.'"

This makes it appear that the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal was not an aberration - it was a sample export of everyday abuse across the criminal and penal system in the US. But Sheriff Gusman dismissed the entire ACLU report. "Don't rely on crackheads, cowards and criminals to say what the story is," he said.

People in the jails disappeared in their hundreds. Almost every person arrested in New Orleans is sent to jail on a "money bond", and public defenders or state lawyers are required to secure your release or reduce your bond. The system broke down because the money to pay the public defenders - which came mostly from traffic fines - dried up. "There were almost no records of these people, almost no files," says Howell. "So a volunteer group of public defenders and criminal defence lawyers, a sort of Dunkirk rescue mission, got together and started creating their own database, locating people. But even if you found them, you wouldn't be able to get them out necessarily. You had to go and prove their identity, then file court proceedings to get them out."
The big struggle

In 2007, two years after Katrina, when the murder rate rose again - to five times that of comparable-sized cities - there was an explosion of anger at the failure of the New Orleans criminal justice system. "Enough! Officials reviled in public show of mass outrage", declared the Times-Picayune newspaper. The people began to speak with a collective and powerful voice. Hundreds had been locked up for trivial offences and murder kept on rising. Zero tolerance wasn't working; besides, it was very expensive.

But as the New York Times wrote: "There are serious risks in taking on sheriffs in Louisiana, given their political heft." The reason why there are so many arrests and so many people in jail is that the city gives the sheriff a daily payment of $22.39 to house them each night (it's more for taking in state prisoners). And in New Orleans you can be held for 45 days, or 60 days for a felony, before you are even charged.

The jail is every sheriff's power base; it gives him one of the most influential positions in government. It gives him jobs to dispense - non-civil service, non-union jobs - and a large, pliable workforce that can be called on for any task, such as getting the vote out.

Sheriff Gusman (who is black) strongly criticised the size of Orleans Parish Prison when a councilman - before Katrina, it had the largest number of inmates per capita of any city in the US. Later he changed his tune, campaigning to build a new jail with a similar capacity, of 5,500 beds. Building such a jail would cost a quarter of a billion dollars, and involve big contracts. But then Gusman hit a snag.

Some new members had been elected to the city council in 2006, among them James Carter, a prominent young African-American attorney who wanted reform. The council had sought help from the Vera Institute of Justice, a non-profit organisation that advises governments. The leading figure behind the recommendations Vera made was Jon Wool, its local director. He had galvanised progressive-minded government officials as well as community and activist organisations that wanted change.

�It would have been a terrible disservice to rebuild what all would agree is a chronically poor system," he says. "It had to be reinvented. And the whole story turned on the size of this new jail. There was resistance. The prospect of a jail more in line with good practice was seen as a threat to the status quo in most corners of the criminal justice system. But these leaders and community groups stood together in a very effective way and captured the debate."

The counterproposal was to build a jail with 1,438 beds. To make this work, Wool proposed reforms that would reduce the jail population. He set up a pre-trial release system for non-violent crimes which has sped up processing for minor offences from 60 days to five days; summonses have replaced custodial arrests in more than half of minor cases. By December last year there was a drop of 500 inmates from the previous June. The public defender's office - crucial for poorer defendants - was reinvigorated with grants of $4m; lawyers were required to give up private practice and do public work full-time.

Further reforms are afoot which, Wool is sure, will bring the jail numbers in line with his new prison figure. "He was like water crashing over a stone, over and over. He's persistent," said a city functionary who has worked with Wool over the years. The result was that, on 3 February, the city council voted unanimously to pass an ordinance mandating the sheriff to build a new facility limited to 1,438 beds. It was an important turning point - and a victory for community action.

But it's not over. The sheriff is not happy, and Wool sees the window for change staying open for only a short time. Funding could be cut off. Political whimsy could put an end to all reforms. "The real question and the hard part," says Mary Howell, "is making real changes that have a prayer of lasting. We can't wait another 30 years for solutions."

# ? Apr 25, 2011 15:59

Eat This Glob: Jan 14, 2008; God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Who will wipe this blood off us? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent?

Pope Guilty posted:

I'm sure it comes as no surprise, but look, the NOPD are literally monsters:

God drat. I've read that three times in the past 24 hours. Between Angola, New Orleans, and their overall incarceration rate, is Louisiana the last place in the United States you'd want to be a "criminal?"

# ? Apr 27, 2011 05:27

Pope Guilty: Nov 6, 2006; The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

It sounds like the last place you'd want to be.

# ? Apr 27, 2011 05:59

BattleMaster: Aug 14, 2000

Yeah, it's definitely pretty low on my list of preferred destinations in the US. I mean the entire US is pretty unappealing to me but Louisiana is definitely rock-bottom.

# ? Apr 27, 2011 06:24

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Hey now, I've met several rich old white people who think it's positively charming.

# ? Apr 27, 2011 06:37

Donraj: May 7, 2007; by Ralp

When I was growing up in Louisiana we had a saying. "At least we're not in Mississipi."

Then Mississipi passed us up in the national rankings.

Do you have any idea how bad it is when Mississipi is looking down on you for having bad schools?

# ? Apr 27, 2011 09:41

duck monster: Dec 15, 2004

BattleMaster posted:

Oh yeah, I think I mentioned it in the last Cops on the Beat thread.

Just to elaborate a little, I was grabbed and held in place while the attacker felt up my breasts and crotch. I wasn't hurt, or threatened with a weapon or anything but it was definitely non-consensual. It was only about 5:30pm but being in December it was quite dark so I never got a great look at the guy - the streetlamps really suck in my area. It didn't last very long before he had his fun and let go at which point I ran home as fast as I could.

If I knew I was running the risk of getting arrested myself I would not have called the police. I figured I'd have a better chance of avoiding abuse as a victim rather than a suspect but thanks to this situation and others I've read about I now know better. I've spoken in person with victims of police abuse and I definitely walked away from this assault in better shape than they did from their police encounters. This encounter put me in a bad mood for weeks and I've never felt so violated and I'm still afraid to go outside when it's even a little dark, but some police victims I know are still incredibly traumatized years later even to the point of sudden panic attacks when seeing police officers or police vehicles.

This fucks me off completely. I worked with the ministry of justice in australia dealing with sex abuse and child abuse cases (not as a cop of course, but rather with the courts) and the cops here are trained excellently and the general procedure tends to be to use women cops where possible in dealing with victims (who are generally percieved as less threatening to a rape victim than a powerful armed male). To hear about cops doing that, I honestly got to wonder what the gently caress are they teaching cops over there?.

I'm sorry to hear about what happened to you. Its a stain on everybody anywhere that worked in this sort of field to hear about victims treated like poo poo by the people that are there to (try and) guarantee safety.

I do know we used to have a lot of problems back in the 80s and early 90s, but after a lot of agitation from feminist, victim support and rape crisis groups the procedures improved immensely from first contact right up to how its handled in court (Ie videoing testimony so the victim doesnt have to be in contact with the offender). Surely its a model thats neither expensive or difficult to follow.

# ? Apr 27, 2011 10:25

Gadaffi Duck: Jan 1, 2011; by Ozmaugh

Yes but if she didn't want to be raped she shouldn't have worn those provocatiamkfjgkiahih :suicide:

The average person's view of gender politics is horrible.

# ? Apr 27, 2011 11:19

PTBrennan: Jun 1, 2005; by Y Kant Ozma Post

quote:

God drat. I've read that three times in the past 24 hours. Between Angola, New Orleans, and their overall incarceration rate, is Louisiana the last place in the United States you'd want to be a "criminal?"

Lived in Louisiana all my life (29 years) and if you mean "criminal" as "poor & black" then you'd be correct. But mainly don't gently caress with the Police here or you're in trouble regardless of color. White with money, unless you know someone in the system, your rear end is in as much danger as a poor black person if you cross a cop down here. I had the luxury of being brought up a white male in a middle class family so my experience has been very tame compared to friends but even I've been on the recieving end at times during a night out drinking. Cops literally had/have free reign and like anywhere else you just don't argue with the police if you don't want any problems, just here they can get physical with you and nothing is really done. At least in other states I read about lawsuits/charges/investigations. It took almost 3 years and fellow police officers turning on their own before they finally did something about the Danziger bridge and those Police Officers killed someone AND burned the body. Do what they say and try to sort it out later because something will happen because they can.

It's really disgusting and hope something comes from all this because this really isn't a terrible state to live in, it's just the problems (Corrupt Politicians/Corrupt Police/Economy) make it undesirable. The food, the people, the night life, the atmosphere and the people, it's just amazing and I've yet to find another city like it.

PTBrennan fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Apr 27, 2011

# ? Apr 27, 2011 14:35

KingEup: Nov 18, 2004; I am a REAL ADDICT
(to threadshitting)

Please ask me for my google inspired wisdom on shit I know nothing about. Actually, you don't even have to ask.

My father was mugged in New Orleans whilst we were there on Holiday (from Australia). He was slugged over the head half a dozen times with the handle of a pistol. An onlooker called the police who picked him up, drove him around to some poor black bastards house, bashed the door in and dragged some bleary eyed fucker in his pyjamas out of bed and asked "this him?".

It wasn't.

This was pre-Katrina. Obviously nothing has changed. Interesting system you guys got there.

KingEup fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Apr 27, 2011

# ? Apr 27, 2011 14:50

nm: Jan 28, 2008; "I saw Minos the Space Judge holding a golden sceptre and passing sentence upon the Martians. There he presided, and around him the noble Space Prosecutors sought the firm justice of space law."

duck monster posted:

This fucks me off completely. I worked with the ministry of justice in australia dealing with sex abuse and child abuse cases (not as a cop of course, but rather with the courts) and the cops here are trained excellently and the general procedure tends to be to use women cops where possible in dealing with victims (who are generally percieved as less threatening to a rape victim than a powerful armed male). To hear about cops doing that, I honestly got to wonder what the gently caress are they teaching cops over there?.

I'm sorry to hear about what happened to you. Its a stain on everybody anywhere that worked in this sort of field to hear about victims treated like poo poo by the people that are there to (try and) guarantee safety.

I do know we used to have a lot of problems back in the 80s and early 90s, but after a lot of agitation from feminist, victim support and rape crisis groups the procedures improved immensely from first contact right up to how its handled in court (Ie videoing testimony so the victim doesnt have to be in contact with the offender). Surely its a model thats neither expensive or difficult to follow.

Yes, I would note that even in the US, her story would be an outlier.
Responding to sexual abuse cases is something police are actually trained here and somewhere that police will tread lightly around because they do believe it (well, at least against women who aren't prostitutes but that is another thread) is an extremely serious crime and the officers who think she was asking for it have mostly retired by this point.
What is most disgusting about that story is still true, that officers could do that and not get loving fired. Sure every other officer might think they're a loving scumbag, but they won't actually do anything about it.

KingEup posted:

My father was mugged in New Orleans whilst we were there on Holiday (from Australia). He was slugged over the head half a dozen times with the handle of a pistol. An onlooker called the police who picked him up, drove him around to some poor black bastards house, bashed the door in and dragged some bleary eyed fucker in his pyjamas out of bed and asked "this him?".

It wasn't.

This was pre-Katrina. Obviously nothing has changed. Interesting system you guys got there.

And for all this, in pre-Katrina NO, if you actually killed someone you'd probably walk.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-7/11712631133140.xml&coll=1

nm fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Apr 27, 2011

# ? Apr 27, 2011 16:08

BattleMaster: Aug 14, 2000

duck monster posted:

This fucks me off completely. I worked with the ministry of justice in australia dealing with sex abuse and child abuse cases (not as a cop of course, but rather with the courts) and the cops here are trained excellently and the general procedure tends to be to use women cops where possible in dealing with victims (who are generally percieved as less threatening to a rape victim than a powerful armed male). To hear about cops doing that, I honestly got to wonder what the gently caress are they teaching cops over there?.

I'm sorry to hear about what happened to you. Its a stain on everybody anywhere that worked in this sort of field to hear about victims treated like poo poo by the people that are there to (try and) guarantee safety.

I do know we used to have a lot of problems back in the 80s and early 90s, but after a lot of agitation from feminist, victim support and rape crisis groups the procedures improved immensely from first contact right up to how its handled in court (Ie videoing testimony so the victim doesnt have to be in contact with the offender). Surely its a model thats neither expensive or difficult to follow.

To be fair, the victim handlers (don't know if there's a proper title for them) who arrived after those shitheads were male and treated me very well, and were very non-threatening. The detectives at the station who interviewed me also treated me pretty well and took my problem seriously.

But yeah, unless the crime is very, very serious in the future I'm not going to risk calling the police and getting arrested myself in the future. Having those guys bust into my apartment and rummage around bugs me even more than the groping.

BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Apr 27, 2011

# ? Apr 27, 2011 16:30

yronic heroism: Oct 31, 2008

So I'm writing a paper about private prisons, and while the argument against them is pretty easy to make out, I think my professor will want to at least see me entertain the other side of the argument? Anyone know any of any books/sources arguing in favor? (Bonus if they aren't by paid CCA shills.)

# ? Apr 29, 2011 02:50

duck monster: Dec 15, 2004

BattleMaster posted:

To be fair, the victim handlers (don't know if there's a proper title for them) who arrived after those shitheads were male and treated me very well, and were very non-threatening. The detectives at the station who interviewed me also treated me pretty well and took my problem seriously.

But yeah, unless the crime is very, very serious in the future I'm not going to risk calling the police and getting arrested myself in the future. Having those guys bust into my apartment and rummage around bugs me even more than the groping.

Your best move generally is to go straight to a hospital if you've been penetratively abused, or to a sexual assault referal center (or whatever they are called there) and get someone whos sympathetic and professional to handle much of this for you and be your advocate. Neither of these groups ought (unless there is mandatory reporting regimes, like is oft the case with child victims) call the cops without your consent, and both are likely to keep a sympathetic nurse or counsellor around to help you through it when the cops start drilling for info.

To some degree intrusive questioning will happen whatever the circumstances, cos cops do need to cross their t's and dot their i's to be careful of frame-ups (or frame-up defenses by making sure the groundworks done right), but a well trained cop can do this without making the victim feel like poo poo for it. Theres absolutely no need to go poking around your stuff with stupid cop nosiness.

I'm glad you feel comfortable to speak out about it. Many, maybe most, women don't because it can bring back old traumas. What I do suggest is you talk to your local womens group and make sure they are up to speed on the issues with how cops handle sex assault cases. Here in west aust, it was the womens groups (and queer groups too. There was a lot of concerns back in the day about how gay men where being treated when they reported sexual assault, nowdays we actually have a gay/lesbian taskforce of queer cops to deal with the queer communitys concerns*) heavily agitating for reform and training that forced the cops to get up to speed on the right way of doing this, and thats benefitted victims ever since here. Not saying we got it right yet, but its definately an improvement.

duck monster fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Apr 29, 2011

# ? Apr 29, 2011 03:39

nm: Jan 28, 2008; "I saw Minos the Space Judge holding a golden sceptre and passing sentence upon the Martians. There he presided, and around him the noble Space Prosecutors sought the firm justice of space law."

yronic heroism posted:

So I'm writing a paper about private prisons, and while the argument against them is pretty easy to make out, I think my professor will want to at least see me entertain the other side of the argument? Anyone know any of any books/sources arguing in favor? (Bonus if they aren't by paid CCA shills.)

The pro is that the state does likely save money in the short term.

# ? Apr 29, 2011 03:53

HidingFromGoro: Jun 5, 2006

yronic heroism posted:

So I'm writing a paper about private prisons, and while the argument against them is pretty easy to make out, I think my professor will want to at least see me entertain the other side of the argument? Anyone know any of any books/sources arguing in favor? (Bonus if they aren't by paid CCA shills.)

Private Prisons: Cons and Pros, by Charles H. Logan

# ? Apr 29, 2011 05:36

overshottoast: Feb 27, 2007; You mean to tell me there's a fate worse than ingestion??

I don't think I've ever posted here in D&D before now, but I just wanted to say that I've been reading this thread and links in it over the past few days, and drat Goro. You are such an inspiration man, you make me want to get out and do something about this stuff. I didn't even realize this was such an issue until I read this thread. Thanks for opening my eyes up to these horrors and atrocities.

I had a few questions though about the prison gang 'system'. As morbid as it sounds (and I'm not trying to troll or sound ignorant, if it sounds that way), but prison gang life is very intriguing to me on an informational level. I enjoy reading about the types of brotherhood these guys have, and exactly how they take care of or speak to/honor one another.

1. On the outside, there are several different gangs that are made up of the same race/creedo/etc., and they war with each other for different reasons. Blacks killing blacks, whites killing whites, all that jazz. What my question is, is inside of prison, is it like the outside stuff doesn't matter and you are accepted into the big prison gang just because of race? If so, do those members in the gang just up and forget any of the bullshit on the outside and just make it work?

2. In a prison gang, exactly what does it take to move up in rank, and what would it take for someone high up in rank to drop to zero at once, if there is such a thing? Like, what would make a captain become a 'bitch' (I'm just using that term loosely) overnight?

# ? May 2, 2011 02:05

HidingFromGoro: Jun 5, 2006

overshottoast posted:

1. On the outside, there are several different gangs that are made up of the same race/creedo/etc., and they war with each other for different reasons. Blacks killing blacks, whites killing whites, all that jazz. What my question is, is inside of prison, is it like the outside stuff doesn't matter and you are accepted into the big prison gang just because of race? If so, do those members in the gang just up and forget any of the bullshit on the outside and just make it work?

Generally speaking, white stays with white, black stays with black, Northern Mexican with Northern, Southern with Southern; and with some exceptions everyone else stays the hell out of the way. You put aside whatever differences you had on the outside and stick with your color, for the most part.

overshottoast posted:

what would it take to move up in rank

Killing people.

overshottoast posted:

, and what would it take for someone high up in rank to drop to zero at once, if there is such a thing? Like, what would make a captain become a 'bitch' (I'm just using that term loosely) overnight?

Snitching. Sometimes failure to follow orders, depending on the order. But the penalty isn't demotion, it's either death or exile to protective custody (to avoid death). Harsh, but really the only way to guarantee the level of trust necessary to make a gang effective and profitable.

HidingFromGoro fucked around with this message at 03:00 on May 3, 2011

# ? May 3, 2011 02:57

shovelbum: Oct 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Is it fair to say that no one should ever call the police under any circumstances, or even fire or EMS because these guys usually bring cops with? I would rather burn to death or die of other injuries than risk the kind of things you can get from contact with the police.

# ? May 3, 2011 06:25

Dean Golberry: Apr 7, 2011

HidingFromGoro posted:

Main facility on Silverlake or the MSF annex on Mission?

45 days apiece. The Mission is much better for people on work/school release (me), but worse for people on the work-gang wing, where I hear there's a lot of politics that you don't even get in the main jail.

# ? May 3, 2011 06:36

JoshTheStampede: Sep 8, 2004; come at me bro

shovelbum posted:

Is it fair to say that no one should ever call the police under any circumstances, or even fire or EMS because these guys usually bring cops with? I would rather burn to death or die of other injuries than risk the kind of things you can get from contact with the police.

No, that is taking it too far. Anyone who says they would rather die in a fire than ever talk to a cop has never been on fire.

If my house gets broken into I am going to call the police. I'm just going to be very careful about who I let in and what I tell them. Because my alternative is "welp, I guess all my stuff is gone". Plus, if you rent rather than own your landlord will call the police anyway to have a record of what happened, so it may not even be in your control.

If there is a fire I am drat sure going to call the fire department, and if I am hit by a car I expect an ambulance to be called. Not doing those just because you (rightfully) don't trust the police is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

# ? May 4, 2011 19:34

BattleMaster: Aug 14, 2000

Dominion posted:

No, that is taking it too far. Anyone who says they would rather die in a fire than ever talk to a cop has never been on fire.

If my house gets broken into I am going to call the police. I'm just going to be very careful about who I let in and what I tell them. Because my alternative is "welp, I guess all my stuff is gone". Plus, if you rent rather than own your landlord will call the police anyway to have a record of what happened, so it may not even be in your control.

If there is a fire I am drat sure going to call the fire department, and if I am hit by a car I expect an ambulance to be called. Not doing those just because you (rightfully) don't trust the police is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Yup. I'll still call the police for serious problems but if it's just another groping it's not worth the risk of being arrested myself. Especially since processing of female suspects in my city often involves arbitrary stripsearches (bras are considered concealed weapons if they have underwires!) and sexual assault.

# ? May 4, 2011 20:01

iceberg sleaz: Apr 28, 2011; AAA

Dominion posted:

No, that is taking it too far. Anyone who says they would rather die in a fire than ever talk to a cop has never been on fire.

If my house gets broken into I am going to call the police. I'm just going to be very careful about who I let in and what I tell them. Because my alternative is "welp, I guess all my stuff is gone". Plus, if you rent rather than own your landlord will call the police anyway to have a record of what happened, so it may not even be in your control.

If there is a fire I am drat sure going to call the fire department, and if I am hit by a car I expect an ambulance to be called. Not doing those just because you (rightfully) don't trust the police is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

If your house gets broken into the cops won't give a poo poo, they'll just write an incident report and ask about the value of the things stolen. If its under 5k they won't really give a poo poo and if its over they might care a tiny bit. Either way your never seeing your poo poo again if you rely on them for any help.

On the other hand if you are smart and stay in the loop in your community then you should be able to find out who has your poo poo, and if you were smart and didn't call the cops you should be able to get your poo poo back and things straightened out. Relying on cops is not only retarded because it doesn't work for poo poo, but they are just as likely to turn you from witness to suspect. They don't believe anyone but other cops and have the power to throw you in a hole. People who say the stuff you do have probably never been kidnapped and thrown in a cold hole in the ground.

Firefighters don't really have the ability to hurt or kill you, not to mention do it legally and get away with it.

edit: If you have an issue with regular fires in your dwelling and not being able to put them out, or being robbed a lot, or generally needing ambos with any kind of regularity... You might be an idiot who's life is merely a collection of poo poo you cause for yourself. In that case you will probably die in a fire regardless.

On a separate note, I know this isn't prison related, but does anyone know if I can go to the US once I'm discharged? I've got to satisfy terms of my probation first but it was a federal drug conviction and I know they aren't hot about letting those types in.

iceberg sleaz fucked around with this message at 21:16 on May 4, 2011

# ? May 4, 2011 21:07

JoshTheStampede: Sep 8, 2004; come at me bro

iceberg sleaz posted:

If your house gets broken into the cops won't give a poo poo, they'll just write an incident report and ask about the value of the things stolen. If its under 5k they won't really give a poo poo and if its over they might care a tiny bit. Either way your never seeing your poo poo again if you rely on them for any help.

On the other hand if you are smart and stay in the loop in your community then you should be able to find out who has your poo poo, and if you were smart and didn't call the cops you should be able to get your poo poo back and things straightened out. Relying on cops is not only retarded because it doesn't work for poo poo, but they are just as likely to turn you from witness to suspect. They don't believe anyone but other cops and have the power to throw you in a hole. People who say the stuff you do have probably never been kidnapped and thrown in a cold hole in the ground.

No, I have never been kidnapped and thrown in a hole, but I have had my house broken into, and while you are correct that the police weren't a huge help, they did get a small portion of the goods back. And to be fair, if I were a minority I probably wouldn't have called them to begin with.

And if you are smart and stay in the loop and find out what pawn shop your stuff went to, you are then in the envious position of having to buy your own property back.

quote:

Firefighters don't really have the ability to hurt or kill you, not to mention do it legally and get away with it.

No, but if you call the fire department the police come too, and usually get to the scene first. They often come when you call an ambulance as well. Do you think you should avoid calling either of those because it has a high chance of bringing cops as well?

If you were being raped or assaulted in an alley and a cop walked by, would you want him to help you?

# ? May 4, 2011 21:21

Touchdown Boy: Apr 1, 2007; I saw my friend there out on the field today, I asked him where he's going, he said "All the way."

What the gently caress has happened where you cannot call the police without being at risk from harassment or worse

# ? May 4, 2011 22:52

silicone thrills: Jan 9, 2008; I paint things

Touchdown Boy posted:

What the gently caress has happened where you cannot call the police without being at risk from harassment or worse

At this point I would only call the cops if someone was actively breaking into my house, trying to rape me, directly trying to harm me. I will never call them for suspicious activity any more or for someone elses altercation. I hate even talking to transit cops any more and I work for the regional transit people.

# ? May 5, 2011 00:19

iceberg sleaz: Apr 28, 2011; AAA

Dominion posted:

No, I have never been kidnapped and thrown in a hole, but I have had my house broken into, and while you are correct that the police weren't a huge help, they did get a small portion of the goods back. And to be fair, if I were a minority I probably wouldn't have called them to begin with.

And if you are smart and stay in the loop and find out what pawn shop your stuff went to, you are then in the envious position of having to buy your own property back.

No, but if you call the fire department the police come too, and usually get to the scene first. They often come when you call an ambulance as well. Do you think you should avoid calling either of those because it has a high chance of bringing cops as well?

If you were being raped or assaulted in an alley and a cop walked by, would you want him to help you?

Its still the only way you get your money back, and being a part of the commmunity, its on you for making yourself a target-- because if you're known and liked no one should be breaking into your place. Not long ago I knew there was a couple people that wanted to rob or kidnap me but it didn't happen because I know whats going on and kept abreast.

I think that gov't shouldn't be involved in anything they don't absolutely have to be. One of the main reasons being that are incredibly inefficient and expensive in anything they do, that goes for any gov't employee. I routinely see like 2 squad cars and 2 ambos dispatched to 1 drunk homeless guy on a corner, and they usually hang around shooting the poo poo for about 30 minutes... do you know how much money has just basically burned for nothing? Its unbelievable. Firefighters are probably the only gov't employees that aren't more concerned with covering up their incompetence, neglect, or total waste of resource than actually fulfilling their job description. They also happen to be volunteers much of the time, figure that out.

Why would I be getting raped or assaulted in an alley? Is there any likelihood that if I was, there would happen to be a cop strolling by and I'd be able to get their attention, at which point they would save me (and not charge me with anything)?

Thats one hell of a hypothetical.

# ? May 5, 2011 00:55

The Reaganomicon: Oct 14, 2010; by Lowtax

iceberg sleaz posted:

I think that gov't shouldn't be involved in anything they don't absolutely have to be. One of the main reasons being that are incredibly inefficient and expensive in anything they do, that goes for any gov't employee.

So about that privatized police force...

# ? May 5, 2011 01:01

yronic heroism: Oct 31, 2008

iceberg sleaz posted:

Its still the only way you get your money back, and being a part of the commmunity, its on you for making yourself a target-- because if you're known and liked no one should be breaking into your place.

Be sure to be really popular wherever you happen to live, or it's your fault what happens to you... Thanks, prison thread!

# ? May 5, 2011 01:28

overshottoast: Feb 27, 2007; You mean to tell me there's a fate worse than ingestion??

HidingFromGoro posted:

Generally speaking, white stays with white, black stays with black, Northern Mexican with Northern, Southern with Southern; and with some exceptions everyone else stays the hell out of the way. You put aside whatever differences you had on the outside and stick with your color, for the most part.

Killing people.

Snitching. Sometimes failure to follow orders, depending on the order. But the penalty isn't demotion, it's either death or exile to protective custody (to avoid death). Harsh, but really the only way to guarantee the level of trust necessary to make a gang effective and profitable.

Thanks for the info man. Are there any links to videos I can watch online with info on prison gangs? The only other alternative I've found are the prison porn shows, and I feel like they aren't conveying much of anything of importance.

# ? May 5, 2011 01:42

KingEup: Nov 18, 2004; I am a REAL ADDICT
(to threadshitting)

Please ask me for my google inspired wisdom on shit I know nothing about. Actually, you don't even have to ask.

Interesting fact:

quote:

A 2010 Pew Research Center study found that �Incarceration reduces former inmates� earnings by 40 percent and limits their future economic mobility.� http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/04/05/2011/economic-consequences-war

Way to keep the poor, poor.

# ? May 5, 2011 03:05

HidingFromGoro: Jun 5, 2006

overshottoast posted:

Thanks for the info man. Are there any links to videos I can watch online with info on prison gangs? The only other alternative I've found are the prison porn shows, and I feel like they aren't conveying much of anything of importance.

To be honest with you, I don't watch prison documentaries anymore. I used to, years ago, for background noise while doing housework and such. But after really sitting down and watching them critically I've come to dislike them.

That said, there is a Vanguard episode if you like Vanguard. I haven't watched the whole thing, though.

There are problems with trying to really get into gang politics on a documentary, problems with access mostly. Only certain inmates will be allowed on camera by the facility, and likewise only certain inmates will be allowed on camera by the other inmates; things like that.

# ? May 5, 2011 03:49

HidingFromGoro: Jun 5, 2006

Dean Golberry posted:

45 days apiece. The Mission is much better for people on work/school release (me), but worse for people on the work-gang wing, where I hear there's a lot of politics that you don't even get in the main jail.

The important part is that you came out in one piece. You still in the 520? I might have some resources for you, if you need them.

# ? May 5, 2011 03:52

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# ? May 30, 2024 08:24

Quarantini: Aug 9, 2010

Solkanar512 posted:

Here's a thought - why not make the legislators take a drug test? They're being paid from the public coffers, what do they have to hide?

Everyone has their drug, it's just whether or not it's legal. I would imagine most of the people in politics are on anti-anxiety meds, sleeping meds, antidepressants, etc.

I would love to see people in power have to take drug tests with public results. It will never happen though.

# ? May 5, 2011 04:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Prison Thread

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