All across the United States, city and state governments have increasingly turned to fines and fees to make up for budget shortfalls. This has required a corresponding explosion in police department budgets, creating a perverse cycle where local governments must consistently expand policing in order to continue to pay for policing. Rural America has not escaped this trend, and a new Vera Institute report has found that small and rural counties are now the main drivers of growth in the prison industrial complex. According Vera’s research, the boom in county jails appears to be driven by an increased amount of people who are either held pretrial or warehoused for federal, state, or other municipal authorities.
Stephen Janis and Taya Graham of Police Accountability Report join Rattling the Bars to discuss these findings in light of their own reporting on rural policing. In a wide-ranging conversation, Stephen and Taya help connect the dots between the rural jail boom and the rural police boom, the opioid crisis, and the decades-long economic crisis in rural America.
Dramatic video shows a Texas police officer brutally beating a man who refused to turn over his phone to police. The victim was not suspected of a crime and was voluntarily cooperating with police. Nevertheless, the police turned on him. The attack raises even more questions about the tactics of rural law enforcement and the failure of the police to police themselves.
Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Adam Coley
Transcript
Taya Graham: Hello. My name is Taya Graham, and welcome back to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose: holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. But to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible.
And today, we will achieve that goal by showing this video of a man who was attacked during an interview with police. The attack occurred as the victim voluntarily sat down with cops to discuss a crime for which he was not even a suspect. But it’s not just the attack itself, it’s the circumstances that led up to this moment and what happened after that we will unpack for you today.
But before I get started, I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com. And please like, share, and comment on our videos. You know I read your comments and that I appreciate them. And of course, you can always reach out to me directly @tayasbaltimore on Facebook or Twitter. And, if you can, please hit the Patreon donate link pinned in the comments below, because we do have some extras there for our PAR family. Okay, now we’ve gotten all of that out of the way.
Now, if there is one area of the country that we have encountered a disproportionate share of police overreach, it has to be Texas. The Lone Star State seems to have a penchant for aggressive policing and protracted prosecution that has been the ongoing subject of our efforts to expose police malfeasance.
I mean, I could run off a laundry list of cases that we have covered in the state, including the arrest of Otto the Watchdog for holding a sign, cop watcher David Boren for filming a car stop, the arrest and the assault of the Holguin family in El Paso, Texas, and this disturbing video that you’re seeing right now of Travis Bateman enduring a beating from a Paducah, Texas, sheriff during an arrest that can be best described as the result of questionable circumstances. But nothing in our past coverage prepared us for this video which we are showing you now.
It was sent to us by a viewer who was not even accused of a crime. Instead, he was voluntarily cooperating with the police in an investigation, and for his efforts he had to endure a seemingly brutal beat down. His story starts in Nacogdoches, Texas. There, Corey Roland agreed to speak to the Nacogdoches sheriff’s deputies about a series of thefts near his home involving a person who is living with him. However, during the interview, police asked to access his cell phone, a query that Roland said made him uncomfortable.
For one thing, Roland was not a suspect, but police also failed to give him any possible justification for taking his property. Roland was willing to show the officers his screen, but unwilling to hand over his phone. For that reason, Roland refused – As is his right – To allow police to rummage through his private data and personal interactions. Still, police apparently found his assertion of his Constitutional rights to be offensive, because when he declined the seizure of his property, they began to escalate. Let’s watch.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Sheriff: [inaudible] Anything, there’s anything like that on there. We’re just wanting to see the conversation about our cases here.
Corey Roland: Look, it’s just pressure. I’m in the compressor. No, you can’t have my phone. You can look, but cannot have my phone.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Now, it should be noted that it has been well established that a cell phone is protected by the Fourth Amendment, which bans unreasonable searches and seizures. That means police simply have no right to browse your phone without your consent or a warrant. And there have been a series of rulings which have reaffirmed that access to the contents of our phones is expressly protected by the same amendment.
But clearly, as we have seen in many cases we have covered involving Texas police and sheriffs, they either find the Constitutional rights inconvenient, or simply chose to ignore some of the pesky guidelines designed to protect us enumerated in our Constitution. Instead, when Roland flatly refused to turn over his phone, the Nacogdoches Sheriff’s department decided to respond with violence. Take a look.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Corey Roland: [inaudible] Pressure. I’m in the compressor. No, you can’t have my phone. You can look, but cannot have my phone.
Sheriff: [inaudible]. Hey, hey. You get back. Move. Get back.
Corey Roland: What the hell?
Sheriff: What’s wrong with you?
Corey Roland: What the hell?
Sheriff: We’re going to take it as evidence right now. What’s wrong with you?
Corey Roland: I didn’t do shit.
Sheriff: Yeah. You did.
Corey Roland: You took my phone. That’s my personal property.
Sheriff: Because I see.
Corey Roland: That’s my personal property.
Sheriff: Well, that’s the evidence.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Now, let’s remember, as we watch this brutal assault again, Roland was not, had not, and did not threaten violence, or even have the means to initiate a violent act. He hasn’t reached for something in his pocket or made a furtive movement, actions police often use to initiate force. He had not even been in the least disrespectful or uttered a single word that justified this response. Yet still, the sheriff attacked. Take a look.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS].
Corey Roland: [inaudible] In the compressor. No, you can’t have my phone. You can look, but cannot have my phone.
Sheriff: [inaudible] Hey, hey. You get back. Move. Get back.
Corey Roland: What the hell?
Sheriff: What’s wrong with you?
Corey Roland: What the hell?
Sheriff: We’re going to take it as evidence right now. What is wrong with you?
Corey Roland: I didn’t do shit.
Sheriff: Yeah. You did.
Corey Roland: You took my phone. That’s my personal property.
Sheriff: Because I see.
Corey Roland: That’s my personal property.
Sheriff: Well, that’s the evidence.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: In fact, this aggressive assault is so outside the boundaries of use of force protocols, that it would not be unreasonable to characterize it as nothing less than a crime itself. But what’s even more disturbing about this video is how the officers responded after the attack. Because as you can see, the assorted members of law enforcement just sat around like nothing happened. That’s right. After what was an obvious violation of both Roland’s rights and his persons, the fellow deputies simply said nothing.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Sheriff: I see.
Corey Roland: That’s my personal property.
Sheriff: Well, that’s the evidence.
Corey Roland: Oh. [inaudible]
Sheriff: No. We’re not done here. You’re trying to scroll real fast from that.
Corey Roland: I’m not trying to scroll fast. I was just scrolling. Shit.
Sheriff: Is there something on the phone that you don’t…
Corey Roland: There’s nothing on my phone. It’s just mine.
Deputy: And we understand that. That’s why we at least want to see the conversation, but you [inaudible].
Corey Roland: I was trying to show him the conversation. I was trying to show him the conversation.
Deputy: I mean, when there’s suspected stolen property on the phone and we asked for the phone, you can’t sit there and try to remove possible…
Corey Roland: I wasn’t trying to remove anything.
Deputy: …Evidence from the phone. Okay?
Corey Roland: I wasn’t trying to remove anything. There’s nothing. I mean, the phone is the phone.
Sheriff: Why was it a big deal for me to look at it?
Corey Roland: Because I don’t trust Nacogdoches County.
Sheriff: Okay.
Corey Roland: Period.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: And, as you will learn later, he was not offered medical attention or even the option of seeking care. So, soon we will be talking to Corey Roland about how this ordeal has affected him, the consequences, and what he is doing to fight back. But first, to learn more about what happened and how police are justifying this use of force, I’m joined by my reporting partner Stephen Janis, who has been reaching out to the police for an explanation. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: So, Stephen, you have reached out to the Nacogdoches Texas Sheriff’s office. What did they say?
Stephen Janis: Well, I sent them a very detailed question about the issues raised in the lawsuit and about what we saw in the video, and their big answer to me was, no comment at this time. So, at this time, they are not commenting, and I don’t think we’ll get a comment from them, honestly, given the way they responded.
Taya Graham: So, based on your extensive reporting on use of force, what stands out to you in the video we’ve just seen?
Stephen Janis: Well, you can’t use force to obtain evidence. That’s a number one rule. You can’t literally punch a person to give your phone or punch a person. The only time you really can use force as a police officer, mostly, is when you feel like someone’s life is in danger. And I don’t see that here. I don’t see anybody’s life in danger. I think they just saw… Now, if you could do a no-knock warrant, if you say there’s obviously a problem if evidence would be destroyed, but that’s not the case here. The guy was sitting there with his phone. He’s not going to throw his phone in the toilet while he’s sitting there facing the cops. So, there was absolutely no justification for this.
Taya Graham: So, I have to ask. You’ve reported on at least half a dozen cases involving a variety of Texas law enforcement departments. Are there any trends that stand out to you?
Stephen Janis: Well, just anecdotally, looking at what I report on, there seems to be this idea with the Texas police that we make the law up as we go along. In other words, a lot of the judicial restraint – If that’s even a thing – That you might see in other jurisdictions or other states, maybe don’t apply to any of the cases we’ve seen in Texas. Kind of like, hey, I make up the law. I’m not worried about judicial oversight or some lawyer coming in. I’m just going to do what the hell I want. And if you push back against me, I’ll make you disappear into a system where you’ll never see the light of day forever. So, I think what scares me about Texas police is how little regard they have for the law, and seemingly how little training they have. So, it’s a little scary.
Taya Graham: And now, to get more on the sequence of events that led to this disturbing video and how it has impacted his life, I’m joined by Corey Roland. Corey, thank you so much for joining me. So, first, can you explain why you were at the station with the Nacogdoches Sheriffs? What were they looking for? What were they investigating?
Corey Roland: They were investigating a guy that was staying with me, him stealing stuff. And I went up there to clear my name, and then they did what they did.
Taya Graham: Were you there voluntarily? And what kind of questions were they asking you?
Corey Roland: I was not under arrest, nor was I being detained. First question asked [inaudible] message with me and Seth. And I started showing them messages between me and Seth. It is what it is.
Taya Graham: Why did the sheriff suddenly grab your phone?
Corey Roland: He said he saw a picture of something stolen in the messages, but in the messages there wasn’t anything stolen, but he thought there was.
Taya Graham: What were you thinking when the officer started punching you? What was going on in your mind?
Corey Roland: Really didn’t know what was going on. It happened so fast. And I only remember him hitting me one time, but when he hit me, my head hit the wall. So, I blacked… It knocked me out for a few seconds.
Taya Graham: When he started punching you, it looked extremely painful. Did they offer you any medical attention?
Corey Roland: No, they did not.
Taya Graham: Do you plan on filing a complaint against the officers involved?
Corey Roland: I already have him under federal lawsuit.
Taya Graham: What is your federal lawsuit contending? What’s the basis of the case?
Corey Roland: Official [inaudible] and assault. And they did an internal investigation, and then they straight up lied on their paperwork on that. In their internal investigation, it says I was non-compliant and he hit me in the right arm and right shoulder to get me to comply. I wasn’t supposed to get the body camera, but I did. So, the guy that’s sitting on the right in the video, he’s a constable for Shelby County, his lawyer kept trying to get him out of the lawsuit said, well, if you watch the video, you can tell he didn’t do anything. My lawyer said, what video? And he said, you don’t have a copy of the video? And he said, no. So, he sent it to me. My lawyer requested it 43 times from Nacogdoches County and they never would give it to him.
Taya Graham: Has this officer actually faced any disciplinary action?
Corey Roland: He has not missed a day of work yet.
Taya Graham: So, what happened after he took your phone? Did you receive your property back?
Corey Roland: They kept my phone. They said they were going to get a warrant for it. I said, well, until you get a warrant on it I want my phone back. They said no.
Taya Graham: Did they ever get a warrant to go through your phone? I know they forced you to give your pin code.
Corey Roland: That happened on March 5. They got the warrant. The judge signed the warrant on the 17th of March, but it wasn’t filed with the district clerk’s until the 24th of March. But it wasn’t actually filed with the district clerk’s office until the 24th [inaudible]. It was 12 days after they hit me that they got a judge to give a warrant and, was another then seven days after that before it was filed with the district clerk’s office.
Taya Graham: So, they had already gone through your phone…
Corey Roland: They sat there and went through my entire phone. [inaudible] Whole hour and a half video of the body camera footage now.
Taya Graham: Are you aware of other people having problems with the Nacogdoches Police Department or Sheriff’s Department? I mean, are they known for being aggressive with the public?
Corey Roland: They have six different… My lawyer has six different known complaints filed against them right now for them jailers beating up people in jail, protocols, and one custodial death.
Taya Graham: Has this interaction changed how you feel about law enforcement? You were there to help the police voluntarily. So, has this incident changed the way you think of police?
Corey Roland: I’ve always been skeptical of Nacogdoches County, but I showed up. I don’t trust none of them now.
Taya Graham: Now, usually when I report on cases like the abuse of Corey Roland, I often receive pushback that has less to do with the circumstances and more to do with the severity of the police overreach we just witnessed. So, what I mean is that because there are so many examples of even worse police behavior in this country, sometimes people will simply say, why should I care about his case when he went home alive? Well, I think that’s a fair question, and one that I will try to answer.
First, I think it’s important to understand that when it comes to systemically bad policing behavior, there are often clues and cues that hint at broader, more intractable problems that might not be readily apparent at first glance. In other words, an act that seems otherwise compartmentalized to a specific case such as Mr. Roland’s is often just a symptom of a more serious disease.
So, what do I mean? Well, consider the shocking and alarming case of false murder convictions unfolding in Chicago right now. There, prosecutors just asked a judge to vacate the sentences of eight – Let me repeat this, eight – People convicted of murder. You heard me right. Law enforcement there has concluded that no less than eight people serving out decades-long sentences are more than likely innocent. It is, in fact, one of the broadest mass exonerations in the history of the US justice system, a sweeping indictment of our criminal justice system, and its capacity to protect the innocent while in the pursuit of the guilty.
So, how does this story of widespread injustice relate to the story I just shared with you? Well, simply because all the tossed convictions and apparently innocent people who were previously deemed to be murderers were all put behind bars by a single cop.
That’s right. All the unjust convictions and personal mayhem wreaked upon a group of innocents stemmed from bad behavior of one rogue officer. His name is Reynaldo Guevara, and he was a former Chicago police detective and officer who was involved in roughly 36 cases which have now been overturned. A former cop who, since he retired, has not been punished, despite pleading the Fifth each and every time he has been asked about his work which led to the illegal and unconscionable imprisonment of dozens of innocent people.
And might I add, a man who Chicago authorities have set aside $75 million to defend, and perhaps for payout settlements in response to lawsuits filed by his victims. A cop whose reputation was questioned by those same victims decades prior, but who were ignored by the same city that is now prepared to use taxpayer money to pay for their past negligence.
So, as you can see, this example gives us a really good reason to highlight bad behavior by cops as much as possible. Why? Because if there is one lesson Detective Guevara’s case teaches us, it’s that our country has given enormously spectacular powers to individual cops. And I’m not talking about the power to stop you unlawfully and ask you to hand over your ID or the power to hand out speeding tickets. No, I’m talking about the power to put someone in a cage for decades who didn’t do a damn thing wrong.
The type of power I am referencing here is the type of broad overreach once afforded to kings, the absolute right to simply annul the freedom of an individual, falsely accuse them of a crime, destroy their lives in the process – Oh, and, incidentally, let the actually guilty party roam free. And then, on top of it, make these same people immune from any accountability, and make taxpayers who had to suffer through their destructive behavior pay off the people they abused.
I mean, it is truly amazing to think about the breathtaking power one city bestowed upon a single person. It’s just startling how quickly a police officer can be transformed into a monster of oppression. A single man with a single badge, empowered to falsely imprison, arrest, disparage, and disgrace dozens of people. And that same person, when exposed, is still protected from the consequences of the law that he’s so brazenly imposed on others. And that is why it is important to report on any and all instances of police misconduct we encounter, not just to nitpick or hound a specific officer or department, and not just to create dramatic journalism that will hold your attention. No, the reason we follow up on these types of stories is simply because ignoring them can lead to the same type of overreach we see in the case of Guevara. Deciding that a single questionable arrest and a violation of a person’s rights is just not worth reporting only expands the sense of impunity which has informed the state of policing across this country for decades.
I mean, you heard the mantra over and over again, that we are a nation of laws. It is a philosophy touted by the powers that be as the bedrock of our republic. But I think cases like Guevara’s and the assault we witnessed on video challenges that assertion. If that were indeed the case, why would the people who enforce the law not be subject to it? Why would cops who violently violate people’s rights do so without a sliver of real accountability? And that’s why we will continue to report on cases like Mr. Roland’s, and why we remain committed to holding police accountable, however and wherever it’s needed, so that the idea of a so-called “just society” is a reality for all of us.
I’d like to thank my guest Corey Roland for coming forward and sharing his experience. Thank you, Corey. And, of course, I want to thank intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research, and editing on this piece. Thank you, Stephen.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: And I want to thank mods of the show Noli Dee and Lacey R for their support. Thank you. And a very special thanks to our Patreons. We appreciate you. And I look forward to thanking each and every one of you personally in our next livestream. I’ve missed you guys. And I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct.
You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram, or @eyesonpolice on Twitter, and of course, you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter or Facebook. And please like and comment. I do read the comments and appreciate them. Even if I don’t always get a chance to respond, I promise you I read them. And we do have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below. So, if you feel inspired to donate, please do, because we don’t run ads or take corporate dollars. So, anything you can spare is greatly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham, and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
Mark Akkerman has been studying the militarisation of Europe’s borders since 2016. A researcher for the anti-militarist NGO Stop Wapenhandel, he has published, with the support of The Transnational Institute, several landmark reports on the ‘Safe Borders’ industry. For Mediapart, a PI Wire partner, he looks back at years of European border surveillance policies.
Mediapart: In 2016, you published a first report, Borders Wars, which maps border surveillance in Europe. What’s the context in which you started working on this?
Mark Akkerman: We have to remember that Europe has a long history of tracking migrants and securing borders. As Dutch investigative journalist Linda Polman has shown, it goes back to the Second World War and the refusal to support and shelter Jewish refugees from Germany. Since the creation of the Schengen area in the early 1990s, the opening of the borders within this area was closely linked to the strengthening of the control and security of external borders. Since then, it has been a continuous process marked by several phases of acceleration.
In addition to their use for a racist migration policy, surveillance technologies are also “tested” on migrants who have difficulty asserting their rights. Later, they are then introduced to the wider public.
Our first report emerged during one of these phases. I started this work in 2015 when the term “migration crisis” first appeared, which I would rather describe as the tragedy of exile. Many people, mainly escaping the Syrian war, are trying to find a safe future in Europe. In response, the EU and its member states concentrate their efforts on securing the borders and returning people in exile from European territory.
A significant part of this involves militarising borders, strengthening Frontex’s powers, and increasing its funding. Refugees are portrayed as a threat to Europe’s security, and migration as a “security problem.” This is a narrative largely driven by the military and security industry lobby, which has been the main beneficiary of these policies, with growing budgets and contracts concluded in this context.
Five years after your first report, how do you analyse the European border security policy? Has the pandemic influenced it?
Since 2016, Europe has remained on the same path. Strengthening, militarising and outsourcing border security are the only responses to migration. More walls and fences have been erected, new surveillance, detection and control equipment has been installed, new agreements with third countries have been secured, and new databases have been developed to track exiled people. From this perspective, the policies visible in 2016 continued, intensified and expanded.
The COVID-19 pandemic certainly played a role in this process. Many countries introduced new security and border control measures to contain the virus. It has also served as an excuse to target refugees again, presenting them as threats responsible for the spread of the virus.
As always, some of these temporary measures will become permanent. We are already seeing, for example, the evolution of border controls towards the use of contactless biometric technologies.
In 2020, the EU chose Idemia and Sopra Steria, two French companies, to build a biometric control file to regulate entry and exit from the Schengen area. What do you think of these databases?
There are many biometric databases used for border security. The European Union has been encouraging their development for several years. More recently, it has insisted on their necessary connection, their so-called interoperability. The objective is to create a global system for detecting, monitoring and tracking the movement of refugees on a European scale to facilitate their detention and deportation.
This contributes to creating a new form of “apartheid.” These files are intended to speed up border control processes for national citizens and other acceptable travellers, but above all, to arrest or expel undesirable migrants through the use of increasingly sophisticated computer and biometric systems.
What are the concrete consequences of these surveillance policies?
It is becoming more and more difficult and dangerous to migrate to Europe. Because they are confronted with violence and turned away at borders, these people are forced to seek other — often more dangerous — migration routes, which creates a real market for smugglers. The situation is no better for refugees who manage to enter European territory. They regularly end up in detention, are deported or forced to live in disastrous conditions in Europe or in neighbouring countries.
This policy does not only affect refugees. It poses a risk to the public freedoms of all Europeans. In addition to their use for a racist migration policy, surveillance technologies are also “tested” on migrants who have difficulty asserting their rights. Later, they are then introduced to the wider public. Refugees are the guinea pigs for future control and surveillance policies in European countries.
If they flee their countries, the civilian populations exposed to war in these parts of the world will almost certainly be confronted with technologies produced by the same manufacturers as they cross the borders. This is a deeply cynical way of profiting twice from the misery of the same population.
You also point out that the manufacturers who supply weapons to the belligerents in non-European conflicts, which are often drivers of migratory movements, are those who benefit from the border business.
This is what Thales does in France, Leonardo in Italy or Airbus. These European security and military companies export weapons and surveillance technologies all over the world, especially to countries at war or to authoritarian regimes. For example, over the last 10 years, Europe has exported technology to the Middle East and North Africa to the tune of €92 billion, involving countries as controversial as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey.
If they flee their countries, the civilian populations exposed to war in these parts of the world will almost certainly be confronted with technologies produced by the same manufacturers as they cross the borders. This is a deeply cynical way of profiting twice from the misery of the same population.
Which companies benefit most from the European border surveillance policy? Through which mechanisms? I am thinking of research programmes such as Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, in particular.
I identify two types of companies that benefit from the militarisation of Europe’s borders. Firstly, the large European military and security companies, such as Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales, which all have a wide range of weapons and surveillance technologies. For them, the “border market” is one of many. Secondly, specialised companies, which work in niche markets, also benefit directly from this European policy. This is the case of European Security Fencing, a Spanish company that manufactures barbed wire. They get rich by winning contracts, not only at a European level, but also at national and local levels.
Another source of funding is the European Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. It funds projects over seven years and includes a border security component. There are also programmes under the European Defence Fund.
One of your research projects, Expanding the Fortress, looks at partnerships between Europe and third countries. Which countries are involved? How do these partnerships work?
The EU and its member states are trying to establish cooperation on migration with many countries in the world. The focus is on countries identified as “transit countries” for those who aspire to come to the European Union. Europe has many agreements with Libya, including the provision of military equipment. This is a country where the torture and killing of refugees have been widely documented.
Agreements also exist with Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and Ukraine. The EU has financed the construction of detention centres in these countries; serious human rights abuses have been documented on several occasions.
Are these non-European countries as laboratories for European surveillance companies?
No, it is rather the European borders, such as the Evros border between Greece and Turkey, that serve as laboratories. The transfer of equipment, technology and knowledge for border security and control, on the other hand, is an important part of this cooperation. This means that European states provide training, share intelligence or supply new equipment to the security forces of authoritarian regimes.
These regimes can thus strengthen and expand their capacity for repression and human rights violations with the support of the EU. The consequences are devastating for their populations. This then serves as a catalyst for new waves of migration.
Visiting Lassen County Judge Robert F. Moody ruled against the town of Susanville on Sept. 8 in a lawsuit which aimed to stop California Correctional Center (CCC) from closing. Judge Moody’s ruling lifts the preliminary injunction and allows the state to move forward with plans for closure effectively immediately.
On Sept. 2, the state requested an expedited ruling to dissolve the lawsuit, arguing that the court’s stalling tactics were a “disregard of clear law” which amounted to “an abuse of the court’s discretion.” The ruling marks the end of the town’s year-long fight to keep CCC—a six-decade-old facility requiring $503 million in repairs—open indefinitely. Gov. Newsom’s 2022-2023 Enacted Budget mandates that CCC must close by June 30, 2023.
The case has been drawn out, contentious, and has attracted national media attention. In May, people incarcerated in CCC filed an amicus brief demanding the process be expedited, which was rejected by the judge. Incarcerated organizers released a public statement on Tuesday, Aug. 23, which decried the process and asked the court to do “the right thing,” stating it was time to “move on” from this case and shut the prison down. Advocates see the decision in this case as a decisive victory.
Brian Kaneda is the deputy director for CURB, Californians United For A Responsible Budget and a leader of the statewide campaign to Close California Prisons. He is a founding chapter member of California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) Los Angeles and has spent the past decade monitoring and challenging the incarceration crisis and advocating for the rights of incarcerated people.
Shakeer Rahman is an attorney and organizer with the Los Angeles Community Action Network and Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. He represented Timothy Peoples, Duane Palm, and Patrick Noel Everett in their effort to bring the perspective of prisoners inside the California Correctional Center into the City of Susanville’s lawsuit to halt the prison’s closure.
General Dogon is an organizer with the Los Angeles Community Action Network. He previously served 27 years in the California prison system.
Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars I’m mass Mansa Musa, co-host with Eddie Conway. To give you an update on Eddie Conway, Eddie Conway is doing good. And hopefully, answer my prayer, that he makes a cameo here at some point in time.
Imagine this right here. Imagine if you live in the country or state where you could save $500 million monthly in your budget. Imagine also that annually, you could save $1.2 billion in revenue. Just imagine this in the face of the economic repression and economic degradation that’s taking place in this country, it would stand to reason that all citizens in this state will be cheering to have this done.
Here to talk about the closing of the California Correctional Center in Susanville, which is a recently came out opinion from the courts came out saying that the state has to go forward, can go forward with closing it, here to talk about it are three people that’s in this space and has something to do with the closing of it or live there. I’m going to let them introduce yourself, starting with you, General. Introduce yourself to the Rattling the Bars audience.
General Dogon: Good morning, first and foremost. Thank you for having me. My name is General Dogon. I’m a Fight Back organizer here on Skid Row with the Los Angeles community action network. I’m also a former California prisoner. I did 27 years in the California prison system from level one all the way to a level five of men’s most dangerous row in a [inaudible] program.
Mansa Musa: Okay. Shakeer, introduce yourself to Rattling the Bars, or tell us a little bit about yourself.
Shakeer Rahman: Hey, all. Thanks for having me. My name is Shakeer Rahman. I’m an attorney and organizer here at the Los Angeles community action network and with [inaudible] peace fine coalition. I represented three men who are currently incarcerated at the California Correctional Center in Susanville, in their efforts to bring their perspectives about what’s going on inside the prison and the stakes of the efforts to keep the prison open. So that was the lawsuit that just resolved last week.
Mansa Musa: Okay. And Brian, introduce yourself to the Rattling the Bars audience. Tell a little bit about yourself.
Brian Kaneda: It’s a pleasure to be here. My name is Brian Kaneda, and I’m the deputy director of CURB, Californians United for a Responsible Budget. We’re working on a campaign to close California prisons. And we are saying that it’s time for California to close at least 10 prisons by 2025.
Mansa Musa: Okay. Let’s start with you Shakeer, because, like you said, this decision that came out after the struggle of the community in Susanville fighting to keep the prison open. Walk us through the process of the finality of this particular litigation.
Shakeer Rahman: Yeah. I mean, as I said, the case finally ended this week. And the thing about it is that it never should have gotten this far. Basically, the city of Susanville, as soon as the governor announced pursuant to the legislature, told him California’s prison infrastructure needs to be shrunk, it needs to be much smaller, and you need to prioritize especially old, dangerous kinds of prisons to shutter. So the governor then announced another prison as well as CCC in Susanville as the first two he was going to close. And he announced that kind of early, giving the city extra notice to start preparing for that shutdown.
Immediately, the city’s residents and the city’s officials, the city’s government sued the state, saying that the state doesn’t have the power to close that prison, or they should have chosen a different prison. All kinds of claims that, basically, because of the effect of closing the prison and their, more than anything, the city’s kind of financial stake in needing for that prison to be there, needing for the prisoners to be there, needing for the prison to be full, and because of their financial reliance on the revenue that they get from that prison, the revenue that they extract from people being caged there, for that reason, the prison needs to stay open.
It needs to stay open as long as they financially need it. And so, as soon as that happened, prisoners at CCC, organizers incarcerated at CCC started mobilizing against this, writing to the judge, bringing in their perspective of, first of all, these are the conditions inside the prison. And second of all, this argument that a prison needs to stay open because of the revenue that it’s generating for people… And people, by the way, the city of Susanville is a predominantly white community. Obviously, as we know, from the reality of incarceration in California, the population of CCC, the incarcerated population, is disproportionately Black, disproportionately Indigenous, disproportionately Brown, and poor.
And a lot of them shipped from places like Los Angeles, all the way up to Susanville, which is kind of on the Nevada-Oregon border, far away there. And so, yeah, bringing up the point that this kind of argument is akin to the logic of slavery. And this is the [crosstalk] that slavers were saying of, oh, you can’t get rid of slavery because that’s going to upend our way of life. So they were bringing that perspective in, but the judge kept ignoring it. So then we decided to support with an amicus brief formally laying out these arguments.
Mansa Musa: And General, he spoke on, he just spoke on… I mean Rahman, excuse me, Rahman just spoke on the conditions of the prison that’s being closed. Can you educate our audience on some of the conditions that exist in that particular plantation?
General Dogon:
Yes, for sure. So when I went there, it was quite a while ago. It was 1996, and I was a parole violator. I was there. I went there for my addiction. I think I had a nine month parole violation. And so I’m surprised to hear that, you know, talking about conditions, because back in 1996, I could tell you right now. So first of all, as soon as I got the docket saying that I was going to Susanville, everybody’s like, oh, you’re going to lose your girl world. I was like, what? The prison was nicknamed lose your girl world because it was so far, just like you said, you got to go all the way out to the Oregon border. The bus went all the way out there. We had to go outside the California line and then come back in, go around, come back in to get to the prison.
And I remember being shackled up for all that long time. It is like you’re on a slave trip, because halfway there you run out of water. The bus stop only two – I mean, well it’s the guy that drives the bus, the guy that sits in the front with a gun and the guy that sits shotgun in the back of the bus and they ain’t stopping that bus to give you no water or nothing, he’ll be like, oh no, that’s security reasons. So they push all the way on, man. We had to go there, starving, hungry, people using the bathroom on themself, all kinds of stuff. And so then when we got to the prison, the prison was very old. It was my first time there. I believe it was a level two and three prison. And so the majority of the prison was dorm living and stuff like that.
But it had triple, they had already started the triple bunks, they had already started… They had already closed down the gym and were putting bunks in the gym. And as you walk through the prison, I mean, it was like, I went to Folsom. And when you go to Folsomy you see old gunshot wounds on the wall, you see blood stains on the wall and stuff like that. And Susanville was no different. It was an old prison. So you see stuff all chipped up, paint that ain’t been fixed in, I don’t know how long, decades have gone by, it looked like you were walking through an old castle.
Mansa Musa: Let me ask you this, let me ask you this, General. Are you surprised, then, that the court has come out and ruled that they should close it? Are you surprised at that? In 2020, we’re talking about in 2022.
General Dogon: Back in those… Back in, when I was there, inmates were filing complaints about the prison. Like I said, the only reason, and it was a majority of all white males that was working there, and you could clearly tell the prison was the town’s bread and butter. And then also I’d just like to say real quick, though, my prison number is C65343. Here’s my card right here. So when I came to prison, it was like 1981. When Al Capone came to the California prison system was in the ’30s. So I came 50 years after Al. When Al came, he had an A number, I got a C number. So I only went through one letter and a half in 50 years. Right?
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
General Dogon: The time that I got there from the early ’90s, from ’92, all the way to where it is now, they would flip the alphabet. Within 10 years, they would flip the alphabet and start doing double numbers. And all this was because of the war on drugs. And I remember PIA prison industry authority in ’82 when I went there was a multi-billion dollar industry then. I don’t know what it is now. So yeah, we need to get rid of some prisons, California has the largest prison system in the world. When you look at it, over 85% of the people that’s in there are for a non-violent offense. People are in there for medicating and stuff like that. And so it’s the 13th Amendment all over again, where it is slavery. They found the way, justify slavery under the new 13th Amendment. And they build these prison systems. And in California, being leading the nation in many years for this. And it’s just not Susanville that’s got bad conditions, a lot of those old prisons like Tehachapi there means still toe up like that. Chino, CMC, CRC. I can do roll call on them –
Mansa Musa: Hold up, hold up on roll call, hold up on the roll call. And rightly so, you can do roll call. And this is a great day for us. And that’s why we want to go with Brian. Brian, as I opened up, I talked about how much money is going to be saved by the closure of CCC. And I talked about the fact that if you lived in a state where you were going to save this money, which ultimately would be reinvested in the infrastructure of Medicaid, housing, and other things that society would need, it stands to reason that people would be cheering. Why do you think, and walk us through your role and in terms of responsible, budgeted – Walk us through your organization and how your organization fits into this design to get rid of the prison industrial contracts in California.
Brian Kaneda: Yeah. Thanks for that. And I’m here for the roll call too, because we can name all kinds of prisons that need to shut down. And we can make an argument for every single one in California, because more than anything, we know that prisons are racist. And we know that so many people from our communities are being disappeared into them. And that’s been the case for decades. And cost is real, not just human costs, but closing CCC, for instance, is going to save Californians at least $122 million per year. And ,Mansa, you really said it. We’re not looking to save that money. That’s not going back into the government. We want them to spend the money. We want them to spend the money on services. We want them to spend the money on the things that we know actually keep people safe like healthcare, housing, all of the things that we actually know build strong communities.
And this isn’t just us saying this as advocates and organizers, the state’s own nonpartisan legislative analyst office produced a report in November of 2020 that outlined at least $1.5 billion in annual savings if California committed to closing five prisons by 2025. And that’s where we come in, CURB, Californians United for a Responsible Budget. We do budget advocacy. We know that the state spends upwards of $18.6 billion on corrections annually, and we and our allies and member organizations, people inside prisons who organize with us, we’re saying that there is a more responsible way to spend this budget other than human caging.
Mansa Musa: And Shakeer, in terms of the litigation – And I think that it’s final in this regard, the prison is supposed to be closed in 2023. Has the city or has Susanville filed any type of appeal to try to keep it open? Because that’s the reason why, like you say, it shouldn’t have been going on this long, but it’s their bread and butter, so they’re really fighting to maintain the plantation.
Shakeer Rahman: Yeah, I mean the prison was supposed to be closed in June 2022. It was supposed to be closed three months ago. That was the original announcement back in 2021. And it was only delayed because of this bogus lawsuit and the judge giving the lawsuit a lot more air than it deserved. So the prison already should have been closed. The prison’s right on the line of the… It’s in wildfire country, so it’s imperiled by the wildfire season that’s starting. It’s a whole nother year that it’s going to exist, that it was never supposed to exist. And it’s only because of this kind of opportunistic lawsuit that the city filed. I mean, hopefully the decision this week is the final word on all that. But the city of Susanville is trying everything, has not shied away from frivolous claims to try to keep the prison open.
Mansa Musa: And General, all right, going back to you, look, we are going to go, because you are the expert in terms of these decadent conditions, living conditions and environment. So in your mind, what would be the next one up to close? If you had to go down the list, we ain’t talking, we know we want Quentin closed. We know we want Folsom closed, but what would be the next logical prison, to your knowledge, if you have any insight, that you think should be closed?
General Dogon: So most definitely, I think they need to dismantle death row, the death house and all that. I know that Newsome came through and took some of the stuff out. But most definitely San Quentin. San Quentin probably still, one of the old prisons. Tehachapi probably would be another one. And then you got some like Chino. Chino was down here. I mean, Chino was so bad when I was there and they continued to keep it open. It was destruction, it’s like about to fall down on itself. It’s probably older than Rome. So any of those old prisons like that, the ones with the bars.
So now I’m surprised because I know the system has changed towards these prisons that are more like gas chambers, ones that are isolated, where they can use these gas when people lock cells and stuff like that, pepper spray and all that kind of stuff. So the more isolated type gas chambers that the prison system is creating now. So they’re getting rid of the old prisons with the bars and stuff. But the ones with the bars are the ones that have the oldest and the worst, probably, conditions that are in them.
And then a lot of them are just bad because of overcrowding right now. Now the medical issues that are in prisons are really bad. People are dying in prison because they can’t get the right treatment and stuff like that.
Mansa Musa: And if memory serves me correctly – And Shakeer, you can probably talk about this – They did file a lawsuit, dealing with the 8th Amendment. They did raise a couple of 8th Amendment claims pertaining to the inhumane conditions in California prisons. I think they got a ruling that came out that gave them the court’s ruling in their favor, that California prisoners had made an 8th Amendment claim on a class action. Do you have any knowledge of that?
Shakeer Rahman: Yeah. I mean, Brian can speak more to the broader picture across the prison system in California, but every day prisoners are filing 8th Amendment claims about conditions that they’re experiencing. There’s been a number of class actions. The Brown v Plata litigation that took a very long time was about grave neglect of both mental health and other health access within the prisons. And what was monumental about that decision is it was the first time that the US Supreme Court ordered a massive reduction of prison, saying, along the lines of we’re all saying, and coming from a conservative Supreme Court, that there’s no way you can humanely deliver health services and meet the basic kind of dignity and needs of prisoners at the level that they’ve got. And the only way to address that is not reform, is not putting more resources into it, but it’s just to reduce the prison population.
Mansa Musa: And Brian, and in terms of, because in this whole conversation, the reality is – And I think you best represent this reality – Is that we’re talking about saving money. We’re talking about saving taxpayers money, and we’re talking about eliminating a system that relies on human suffering to be able to provide jobs for people. From your perspective, where do we stand at now? Do you think we got the momentum to see more prisons? Because I read in the decision that other prisons need to be closed. Newsome has said that other prisons will be closed. Do you think that, from your organization’s perspective, that we got the momentum to start dismantling the California prison-industrial complex institution by institution?
Brian Kaneda: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that’s what we’re trying to harness now is that momentum. And prisons that could close in tandem at the same time with CCC are already being actively discussed in the public sphere. So I really think that this is a rare, ripe, perfect opportunity to go as hard as we can and demand that we close as many prisons as possible over the next few years. And I think it’s important to remember we’re talking about which prisons to close. There’s no such thing as a bad prison to close, but CDCR should expand the criteria for prison closure to include the voices of impacted people. The General was just talking, clearly people who have been inside these prisons are some of the most informed to know why they should close. And that’s why we did a survey of over 2,000 system-impacted people that helped rank what people inside were saying, or the primary issues that should influence which prisons should be selected next.
And that included unsafe health conditions, so we’re talking about water contamination, poison, asbestos, mold. Which prisons are the most overcrowded, the cost of incarcerating people there, and the location of the prison. We talked earlier about distance from loved ones and being inaccessible and travel. And the highest number of homicides and suicides, because we know prisons are deadly. We believe CDCR should be incorporating these criteria for closure.
But all state prisons are toxic and California would collectively cumulatively benefit by any state prison closing. And that’s one of the reasons why we’re demanding a concrete plan to close more prisons from the Newsome administration, hopefully by the January budget. So we want him to outline the plan for which prisons will close next. That can’t just be an announcement about closures. We want that, but we also want a plan for how the cost savings is going to be captured to best support people who have been impacted by the incarceration crisis, people who are formerly incarcerated, and also to create new opportunities in prison towns that are reliant on these economies.
We know that everybody deserves the right to dignified employment if that’s what they want. So even these people who are the ops, we’re not trying to leave anyone behind. And with the state’s leadership, these closures could actually be a much more smooth process compared to what happened in Susanville where there was this outcry, a reasonable outcry in terms of the fact that it’s scary when anybody loses a job, it’s scary when you don’t know what your future’s going to look like. But economies that depend on human caging and the people who profit from them need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and start thinking about what’s next.
Mansa Musa: And you know what we had, we had a conversation with Nicole Porter from the Citizen Project, and to resonate your point, Brian, she did a study on repurposing the prison. And in her articulation, she made it known that it’s the state’s responsibility to do just what you said, to find alternative ways to provide an income or economic impetus in the society. Because we’re not trying to make people unemployed. We’re not opposed to people working. We’re just opposed to people working in the plantation and becoming the chattel.
But Shakeer, where do we stand now in terms of monitoring and watching the outcome of this particular announcement and the potential closing? Where are y’all positioning ourselves now in the event we have another year delay or we have another justification for why they’re dragging their feet? What are, from the legal perspective, what are y’all plans? Or are y’all preparing for something like that?
Shakeer Rahman: Yeah, well June 2023 is a deadline. So that’s the latest that the prison can remain open. Hopefully CCCR is working on shutting that place down like they originally had planned. It was already supposed to be shut down. We haven’t had an opportunity yet to really strategize about any other kind of legal tricks that the city might pursue. Hopefully none of that’s going to happen, but CURB and others are going to be obviously watching it closely. And hopefully CCC and the other prison that closed, the Deuel Vocational Center, are the first of several that the state will continue closing.
Mansa Musa: And Brian, in regard to the abolition movement, because this is the conversation that we’re starting to see take shape nationwide. People are starting to look at the prison-industrial complex as being a new form of slavery, and mass incarceration, and prisoners being the chattel. In terms of the abolition aspect, where does CURB stand at in terms of their relationship with the abolition movement, if any?
Brian Kaneda: I mean, I think what’s so important for CURB is that we utilize an abolitionist strategy for organizing. So you don’t have to be an abolitionist to be a member of CURB. But when we do advocacy, when we run legislation, we use the lens of abolition to make sure that we don’t disrupt any of the work that’s happening on the front lines at the grassroots. And that includes things like making sure that we don’t create anything that we have to tear down later. A good example of that is there is this movement to create a kinder, nicer prison. And we know that there’s no such thing. So while a lot of reformers and a lot of centrists, a lot of Democrats are interested in things like the Norway model of incarceration and trying to find a nice way to put people in cages, that’s something that CURB stands against, because we know that there’s no such thing as a kinder prison.
Another thing that’s a big guiding principle for us is not leaving people behind. So we want everyone to get free. And we know that there can be a tendency for folks to go for the low-hanging fruit. We don’t think anybody should be in prison for doing drugs or having some kind of drug-related conviction. But the reality is unless we create a pathway for people who are convicted of more serious kinds of harm to get out too, and that includes people who have been convicted of murder. That includes people who have been convicted of serious offenses. We need to deal with the reality that the vast majority of those people are going to come home someday. And we have to create policies that include them in freedom opportunities and make sure that they’re not left behind. So abolition is our guiding principle for how we do all of our prison closure organizing.
Mansa Musa: Shakeer, you got a final word, and I’m going to come back to you, Brian, for your final word. What’s your final word on this, Shakeer? Like I said earlier, in September in Attica they did the Attica documentary where it showed where Attica was the number one economy for that state, for the city of Attica. What’s your final words on what happened, and what we look forward to in the future when it comes to the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration?
Shakeer Rahman: I mean this whole case, this saga, just goes to show kind of what we’re up against. And that is a society that’s invested in imprisonment, and that, because of the legacy of enslavement and the history of this country, can comfortably in court entertain arguments that prisoners need to be treated as revenue, that prisoners can be treated as property, that the value of a prisoner is what kind of money it’s making for the city. Just the fact that that is accepted with a straight face in a courtroom goes to show what we’re up against. At the same time, seeing this fight led by people inside, exposing what’s going on, similar to the lineage of stretching back through Attica, of prisoners organizing for their liberation within the most surveilled, oppressive conditions, that goes to show that all of us, those of who are out on the outside and aren’t facing that kind of surveillance and domination, we need to do everything in our power to support this fight and to contribute.
Mansa Musa: And Brian, give your final word on this, and also give us your information on how Rattling the Bars viewers can get in touch or network with y’all. And Shakeer, you can do the same if you have some information you want to convey. But Brian, in turn, and before I close, I want to just acknowledge that this is some woodwork on y’all part. I’m familiar with the California prisons. Since I have never been there, I told you I did 48 years, but the entire time in the 48 years, we were doing a lot of networking with the California prison system and California. The founder of this program, former Black Panther Eddie Conway, has a lot of friends and family members that were in the California prison system. So talk about where we go from here, Brian, and what you look forward to.
Brian Kaneda: Yeah, well I think what Shakeer said is beautiful, and ultimately this is a campaign that’s co-led by people inside California prisons that we’re co-organizing with. And this case specifically reached a wide audience and got national media attention. And really, I think its resolution proves that the town never really had a great case, and the state has taken steps to make it easier to close more prisons in the future. So it’s time to close this chapter, because additional prison closures seem to be on the horizon. And we know that CCC’s slow closure is actually hurting people inside of the prison. It’s hurting the most vulnerable Californians and wasting millions of dollars that could be spent on formerly incarcerated people, and even for Susanville, for new opportunities. And it’s well past time to move on from this and start talking about which prisons are going to close next, because we believe we could close at least eight more over the next three years.
And in order to do that, these discussions have to be underway. You can visit our website, curbprisonspending.org, to learn more about our campaigns, and follow us on social media. Instagram and Twitter is @curbprisons. We have actions all the time where you can send letters to the budget committees and the legislature, send letters to governor Newsome and tell people in your community that prison closure is actually an important issue that affects tens of thousands of people. And it has billions of dollars in play that could be better spent on our community. So care about it. Care about closing California prisons.
Mansa Musa: And Shakeer, you got any contact information you wanted to part with?
Shakeer Rahman: No, I’ll just say the same. And I think this is what General Dogon would’ve said if he didn’t have to run off to another organizing meeting, which is to join the fight. Follow CURB, join the coalition. I work here in LA with the Los Angeles Community Action Network, LA CAN, and the [inaudible] coalition, both of which are organizing on some of the drivers, the policies, and the systems that are feeding people into prisons and that are also then criminalizing people and surveilling them when they come out. So yeah, work closely with your incarcerated neighbors and with people who are coming out of prisons and organizing to end their brutality.
Mansa Musa: Thank you both, brothers, for joining us. And there you have it, the real news about CCC closing. And in Brian’s words, what prison will we close next? We like to end on that note because that’s, for us, this is a great day for us, in that we’re ending slavery as we know it, modern day slavery as we know it.
On behalf of Eddie Conway and myself, we ask that you continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News. And you can go to our website to know how you can support both The Real News and Rattling the Bars. Thanks both of y’all for coming, taking your time out, and continue to do the great work that y’all are doing.
Brian Kaneda: Thank you. Thank you for all that you do.
Shakeer Rahman: Thank you. Yeah, it was great talking to you.
A small West Virginia police department, already under scrutiny for ratcheting up the number of traffic tickets issued, is now facing a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing it of not properly training officers to follow the law. The lawsuit also alleges Milton police officer Keith Higginbotham falsely arrested Caleb Dial and violated his rights by imprisoning him without probable cause in August of 2021.
The lawsuit was filed after Police Accountability Report published a story depicting Dial’s arrest. The story featured Ring doorbell camera footage that contradicted Higginbotham’s sworn statement that Dial had been “yelling” and “pushing” and was uncooperative during the arrest, which occurred outside Dial’s family’s home. Higginbotham had responded to the residence after Dial called police following a dispute with his father.
The doorbell camera depicts Dial calmly complying with Higginbotham as the officer places him in handcuffs. However, Higginbotham wrote in his statement of probable cause that Dial “became very agitated and kept on raising his voice at me. I asked him several times to calm down and then decided to detain him for officer safety.”
Furthermore, Higginbotham wrote, “Dial became very irate and pushed me with his shoulder and tried to pull away from me. I asked him to calm down, quit yelling, and get into the cruiser. He got very aggressive once again and was trying to pull away. I asked one more time and then assisted him into my cruiser.”
Again, doorbell camera footage appears to contradict the officer’s sworn statement. At the beginning of the interaction, the camera audio reveals that Dial calls Higginbotham “sir,” and when asked to turn around to be cuffed, Dial does so without conflict. The footage then shows Dial calmly walking towards the cruiser and Higginbotham putting him in the back seat without incident.
Prosecutors dropped charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after Dial’s lawyer submitted the Ring camera footage as evidence. The disparity between the officer’s statements and the video evidence is at the heart of the lawsuit.
But the lawsuit also goes beyond the individual actions of Higginbotham, and alleges the town’s lack of proper training, and poor supervision, of officers precipitated Dial’s arrest.
Lawyers for Dial say Higginbotham violated Dial’s right to due process and protection from false imprisonment. The lawsuit cites roughly 10 actionable counts and seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages.
But the lawsuit also goes beyond the individual actions of Higginbotham, and alleges the town’s lack of proper training, and poor supervision, of officers precipitated Dial’s arrest.
The lawsuit accuses the city of training officers “on searches and seizures that, on their face, violate the Fourth Amendment.” The suit also claims the city should have known its lack of adequate training would result in false arrests.
“The aforementioned defendants [the city of MIlton] implemented otherwise facially valid customs and policies in a manner such that constitutional violations were likely to be and were visited upon those inhabiting, visiting, or otherwise within the jurisdictional limits of Milton, West Virginia, including Mr. Dial.”
The latter claim is consistent with the complaints shared with PAR by residents of Milton and the surrounding area. Motorists say they have been pulled over multiple times by police who stand watch on a nearby highway and at stop signs throughout the city. They also claim that Milton officers aggressively enforce traffic laws with the intent to increase the city’s ability to assess fines—an allegation backed up in part by the city’s own financial records, which show roughly a tripling of fines and court fees since 2012.
In 2012, Milton collected roughly $234,000 in court fees and fines; its police department budget at the time was $484,000. Over the next decade, the fees and fines nearly tripled, reaching $600,000 in 2020, according to the official city budget report. Meanwhile, police spending nearly doubled to $1.1 million in 2019.
Lawyers representing Milton did not respond to the lawsuit by addressing the discrepancy between the video and Higginbotham’s charges directly, but by instead arguing that the veteran officer was not working in his official capacity for the city when the arrest occurred. They also stipulated that Higginbotham was entitled to qualified immunity from the suit, a legal precedent that holds public officials harmless for violating constitutional rights that are not “established” at the time of the incident. The legal precedent allows officers to avoid liability if they were unaware of the right in question at the time of the alleged violation.
An email requesting comment from the law firm representing the city was not returned.
Milton residents say they are all too familiar with the town’s emphasis on aggressive policing.
Lynda Jenkins says she has been pulled over three times within the past year for a variety of reasons, including an incident in the nearby town of Barboursville where Higginbotham detained her over an outstanding warrant for passing a bad check. Jenkins told the officer she had already paid the debts and the warrant had been rescinded by the court. She suspects that aggressive tactics are the result of the city trying to bolster revenue through fines.
Jenkins told PAR: “I couldn’t understand why a Milton police officer would follow me all the way to Barboursville. I pulled over and it was officer Higginbotham. This is the third time he has pulled me over this year, and it has cost me hundreds in court costs and fines. I lost my car to the impound lot because I can’t afford to get it out of the impound.”
But her encounter also led to an arrest and to police posting her picture on the department’s Facebook page, which has embarrassed her family, she told PAR.
The department has been criticized for posting pictures of arrestees on Facebook, subjecting them to ridicule and scorn prior to adjudication of their case. Jenkins said a post of her arrest has been shared dozens of times and received multiple negative comments.
The use of Facebook to publicize arrests was the subject of extensive reporting by Kyle Vass. Vass’ article focused on the suicide of Milton resident Jacob Napier shortly after he was arrested and his picture was posted on Facebook by the department.
Dial’s lawyers told PAR they hoped the suit would prompt the department to improve both training and supervision of police officers.
“We look forward to helping Mr. Dial have his day in court,” Bradley Dunkle, one of two attorneys representing Dial, said. “Obviously, Mr. Dial’s life has been greatly impacted by these events. Thankfully Mr. Dial’s doorbell camera, unlike Officer Higginbotham’s report, accurately shows the August 27, 2021, events.”
“If the public has any additional evidence and information relating to this case, we’ll gladly speak with them,” he added.
In September 2020, Lacino Hamilton was exonerated for the murder of his foster mother, Willa B. Bias, and released after 26 years in prison. Convicted at the age of 19, the only evidence linking Hamilton to the Bias’s death were a confession police forced from Hamilton, and the statement of a jailhouse informant. Through his decades in prison, Hamilton educated himself on the nature of the prison system and how to fight back, thanks to the help of existing Black nationalist prisoners’ organizations. Hamilton wrote thousands of letters to journalists and lawyers seeking support with his case, and also became a contributor to Truthout, where he shared his firsthand experience and analysis of the prison system.
Lacino Hamilton is a writer, thinker, and activist who was incarcerated for 26 years thanks to a wrongful conviction. For more information about his case, see “Ring of Snitches: How Detroit Police Slapped False Murder Convictions on Young Black Men.” After being sent to prison, he spent four of his first six years in solitary confinement. It was there that he began to read, think critically and distinguish between expressing a desire to change and demonstrating the ability to achieve it. He can be reached for a larger discussion on this and related topics via email.
Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The transcript of this interview will be made available as soon as possible.
An estimated two thirds of the more than one million prisoners in the United States today are incarcerated workers. With many prisoners earning less than a dollar an hour, and those who refuse to work often facing vicious retaliation in the form of punitive solitary confinement, labor exploitation is an important part of what makes life in American prisons so brutal. It’s little surprise that prisoners’ resistance often centers around the question of labor, as was seen during the nationwide 2017 prisoners’ strike. In spite of these realities, ‘labor issues’ and ‘prison issues’ are all too often presented as separate concerns. US labor journalist and Real News contributor Michael Sainato joins Rattling the Bars to discuss why the union movement today should see the prison struggle as an essential part of the fight for justice for all workers.
Michael Sainato is a journalist based in Gainesville, Florida, and a regular contributor to The Guardian and The Real News Network.
Black August is a month-long commemoration of Black resistance against oppression, with an emphasis on Black freedom fighters and political prisoners. To this day, dozens of Black freedom fighters remain incarcerated in US prisons after decades. As Black August gains more mainstream currency, many activists want to make sure its original purpose in uplifting Black resistance and the ongoing struggle to free political prisoners is not erased. The Jericho Movement is an organization fighting for amnesty and freedom for all political prisoners, from Leonard Peltier to Mutulu Shakur. On this episode of Rattling the Bars, Jihad Abdulmumit and Paulette Dauteuil of the Jericho Movement speak with co-host Mansa Musa about the work of their organization and the significance of Black August.
Jihad Abdulmumit is the chairperson of the National Jericho Movement.
Paulette Dauteuil is the former co-chair and national secretary of the National Jericho Movement.
Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The transcript of this interview will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa is a radical freedom fighter who was imprisoned in the US for nearly 50 years. Now, at 70 years old, he is the co-host of Rattling the Bars at The Real News Network, a staunch advocate for the rights of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, and a soldier in the struggle to dismantle the prison-industrial complex. We talk to Mansa about his life and about how the labor movement and the fight for prison abolition are necessarily interconnected.
The economic fortunes of rural communities across the United States are often deeply intertwined with the prison industrial complex. This poses a real challenge to the project of ending mass incarceration. How can organizers build political opposition to prisons in areas where prisons are the lifeblood of a community? And what should be done with former prisons once they are closed? The question of repurposing prisons in particular is too often neglected by state governments. A new report from the Sentencing Project finds that while 21 states have closed prisons since 2000, many of these sites have simply become other types of correctional facilities in the absence of clear transition plans. Nicole Porter from the Sentencing Project joins Rattling the Bars to discuss this new report.
Production / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The transcript of this story is in progress and will be made available as soon as possible.
Prisoners are on the front lines of climate crises of every type. Heat waves can be especially dangerous for incarcerated people, particularly in prisons that lack proper air conditioning. In Texas, this summer’s heat wave has seen temperatures inside some prisons reach as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. A recent survey by Texas A&M University’s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, as well as the Texas Prisons Community Advocates group, paints a picture of immense human suffering caused by environmental catastrophe and inaction by authorities. More than 6,000 heat-related grievances were filed in Texas prisons between September 2019 and August 2020. With just 2/3 of the state’s prisoners in possession of their own cup to drink water with, thousands of incarcerated people are being left to languish in deadly temperatures without air conditioning or easy access to water. On this episode of Rattling the Bars, Monique Welch of the Houston Chronicle appears to discuss A&M’s research on the conditions of Texas’ sweltering prisons.
Monique Welch is an engagement reporter for the Houston Chronicle. Monique holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications Media Studies from Goucher College.
Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m Mansa Musa, co-hosting with Eddie Conway. Next month will be August. And before we get started with our interview, we just want to acknowledge that next month we’ll be highlighting a lot of the situations and conditions and developments in political prisons and prison of war cases throughout the United States of America. Today, we’ll be talking about one of the most inhumane things that exists within the prison-industrial complex: heat, and how institutions deal with heat and heat-type environments, specifically when it’s 110 degrees outside, or when it’s 90 degrees outside, in most cases in prison, it’s 110 or 115. And in most reported cases, 140.
So today we have a situation where in the Texas prison system, the temperature reached 110 degrees. Now, this is not a new phenomenon for Texas, heat and the fact that it exists. And what also isn’t new is the response. But this time with the outlandish heat and with the heat wave, Texas prisoners have been subjected to the most cruel and unusual punishment. Here to talk about this is Monique Welch, who wrote an article on this very thing for the Houston Chronicle.
Welcome, Monique.
Monique Welch: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Mansa Musa: Tell our audience a little bit about yourself.
Monique Welch: I started with the Houston Chronicle not too long ago, just marked a year. Again, I moved to Houston in September of last year, right around Labor Day. So I’m really still getting my feet wet with Texas and Houston and this very topic, the heat that we’re here to discuss today. So a lot of it is really fresh on my mind as a new Houstonian. But I started, I’m originally from Baltimore, Maryland, went to Goucher College there, studied communications and journalism, and just kind of worked my way up with a number of different internships. And then I moved to Tampa, Florida, where I really got started in journalism. I worked at the Tampa Bay Times in a number of different positions. And recently, now I’m here at the Houston Chronicle.
Mansa Musa: Okay.
Monique Welch: That’s a little bit about me.
Mansa Musa: And you wrote an article entitled that temperatures inside Texas prison reach 110 degrees. And just going back on what you just said, you just came down in this environment, and you just started getting into reporting. Why would you take up this particular news report? Why would you focus your attention on this and go in this area in particular? When we talk about prison and we talk about conditions in prison, people have a tendency to do a comparative analysis, like well, we don’t have this in society, so why would we give them that? Why did you choose this particular area to focus your attention on?
Monique Welch: Absolutely. One, just being a new Houstonian, heat is a constant conversation starter. It’s what everyone’s talking about. It’s summertime. Houston is beautiful, but a lot of times you don’t want to be outside just because it’s so hot. But someone like me, I have the luxury of deciding whether I want to be in the heat or not. I can stay in my house all day long and enjoy my 75 degree thermostat. But not all inmates, as we see in this report, have that same luxury. When I got word of the study, it was alarming. It was a new thing for me, not having that much knowledge and understanding that this was going on, so I was really intrigued and wanted to learn more about this issue and some of the failures that were being alleged in this report. So it really was intriguing.
I’m a true believer that, no matter what you do in this life, we’re all human, so you’re deserving of certain conditions. I was really shocked. I think it was the overall shock factor for me. That was just like, wait a minute, this is seriously going on? So it made me want to dig into it a little more.
Mansa Musa: And the report you’re speaking of, was it University of Texas?
Monique Welch: It’s Texas A&M University.
Mansa Musa: Texas A&M University went and did a study or did a report for legislation on the conditions of prisons and the heat, the fact that heat has on the living condition in prisons, is that the study you’re talking about?
Monique Welch: Yes, exactly.
So just to break down the study, they recently released the study. They’ve been researching this for two years. Started in 2018, and then in 2020 they concluded their research. And by “they” I’m talking about scholars within their hazard reduction and recovery center. So a specific department dedicated to studying these issues and how certain things impact vulnerable communities. So that’s what their mission and focus is. So they spent two years analyzing this issue, serving well over 300 inmates. And in the actual report, it’s a lengthy report. It details a number of quotes and direct quotes from prisoners that ultimately are really in fear of dying from heat. That was the theme. And when we’re talking about dying from heat, we’re talking specifically about heat stroke, heat exhaustion, like heat-related illnesses that could lead to death. That is the overall fear that they reported.
Mansa Musa: And this report was given to the state legislators, am I correct?
Monique Welch: Yes. A couple weeks ago they did actually report their findings to the House. I didn’t get clarification. I did go back and ask to see, okay, what came of that? What was the reaction? That part is still unclear, so I’m probably going to follow up again, just to keep tabs on this issue and see, okay, what did it ruffle any feathers, to gauge that overall reaction. So that part I’m not sure of. But I do know that their intent with this research was to bring light and really speak for a vulnerable community that can’t speak for themselves. And take this to lawmakers, the people who have the power to do something about it.
Mansa Musa: As I was researching this and looking at it, and I was… A couple of days ago, I was reminiscing on being released from prison. I had served 48 years in prison prior to being released. When I was coming out and it was so hot, and I reflected on how it was and the environments that I was in. It’d be so hot that the walls would be sweating, but at no time during the entire time I’ve been incarcerated did the temperatures in the units reach 110 degrees. The prisons where the most inhumane suffering took place is in the more modernized or less modernized, if you know?
Monique Welch: Yeah. That’s a good point. So just getting to the 23 – I just want to clarify. the 23 heat-related deaths, that was since 1998. So I don’t want to get it confused, that it was just in one year. That was decades. And while some might say, oh, that doesn’t sound like an overwhelming number, many will argue that one is too many.
And so you’re absolutely correct. There were a lot of heat mitigating policies put in place, mainly because of advocacy and court orders that brought it to light. So with that being said, the department, in Texas… Also let me just run down. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, they operate 100 prisons. And so of those 100 facilities, 31 are completely air conditioned. They’re just 31%.
55 they reported are partly air conditioned, and 14 have no AC. Just want to run those facts out there. And so when a lot of these things were taking place, a lot of the advocacy and the court order wasn’t just calling out the agency for some of their policies, they did work to improve a lot of those things. They didn’t rush to bring in air conditioning, however. A lot of their mitigating policies were bringing in more fans and circulating them throughout the prisons, introducing cooled beds, and just allowing for access to water, ice, etc. And a number of different things that a spokesperson outlined to me, and something that research is criticized in the report as, basically, not enough. And saying that by doing so, they are simply mitigating the impacts of heat, but not actually mitigating the heat.
So that was one thing that stood out to me. And I thought it was really interesting. They have made significant improvements over the years. You cannot deny that. But how effective long-term, not just short-term, how effective long-term are those policies and procedures to inmates’ overall health? Their studies showed that another thing we’re relating to the deaths, the 23 deaths, a lot of those deaths, they pointed out, were hard to tie directly to heat.
So they gave an example. One example was someone who died from a heart attack. And while they died from a heart attack, they couldn’t pinpoint that… They basically said that heat exhaustion. It could have [crosstalk]
Mansa Musa: [crosstalk] With his heart.
Monique Welch: The report argues that the heat exacerbates a lot of these, sometimes preexisting, sometimes they don’t have these medical conditions at all, but it exacerbates them. Conditions that they perhaps would not have had, had they been in less hazardous conditions.
Mansa Musa: Let’s dial down on what you said earlier, that the amount of people that died over a period of time. By your own recognition and the state’s, this has been going on forever. Texas has seasons that are hot. My question in your research, have they ever considered, because you just spoke on how they said that the study said they’re not trying to eradicate the problem. They’re just trying to mitigate it to an extent where it’s more acceptable.
Monique Welch: Less of an impact. Yes.
Mansa Musa: And less of an impact. But in terms of long-term, in your study, has the state even considered any type of long-term solution to this problem? Because heat is going to come today, heat is going to come next year, and the heat is going to come. If the prison is not providing the necessary equipment and environment, then people are going to suffer, people are going to die, people are going to be traumatized. In your study, have you seen them taking any direction in terms of long-term eradication of this problem within the prison system there?
Monique Welch: That’s a great question. It’s a question that I asked the state directly, saying, are there long-term plans? Short-term or long-term, to mitigate the heat in the way that means directly installing air conditioning in all prisons? We’re talking 100 here, so 31 are already fully air conditioned. So my question directly was are there plans, short-term or long-term, to install air conditioning in the remaining prisons? And basically they point to a lack of funding as the main issue that those prisons are not fully air conditioned. And in this study cites this fact as well, this was I believe dating back to 2017, around the time of litigation against the agency. But they basically said that it would cost $1 billion to do so across all units. And then also said that it would be like an additional $140 million annually that they would have to pay to basically upkeep these facilities.
And the utility maintenance, that type of thing. We all know that AC costs money. It costs thousands of dollars to repair. So when you think of the size and the population of a prison, one, just how large they are, to their point, it would be an expensive feat for them. We don’t know exactly how much that would cost. So that part is up in the air. But we know this will easily cost the state millions and millions of dollars, but they point to it as being difficult to obtain such funding.
Mansa Musa: We recognize that, in terms of the prison-industrial complex and these hundred prisons that we’re speaking of, most of these prisons are in rural Texas. They’re in rural Texas. They are the infrastructure for that community. So the fact that you people are saying that it would cost so much money. If you close the prisons, then you would have a ghost town where these people are living off the inhumane treatment of these prisoners. So that argument that they make as far as how much money it costs, that’s the argument they make in every situation when it comes to providing treatment and humanity to people that are constantly…
But answer this here. From your research, what was the guards’ position in some of these environments where they’re not air conditioned and they have to, no matter where they can go and get some air relief, they have to go back into hot units where they have to oversee the security. In your research or in this study, did they mention anything about the prison guards’ attitude towards some of these more decadent environments that exist, or outdated prison environments that exist?
Monique Welch: That’s a good question. It didn’t largely focus on the guards and staff and security. It did basically talk about how they have inadequate staffing and even reduced staffing, making it thus harder to maintain some of their policies and procedures. Researchers argue that perhaps installing air conditioning would help ease that burden of being inadequately staffed. So they did communicate it in a way that puts a lot of pressure on guards to do all the things you mention, and then make sure that people are receiving access to water and ice and taking that relief, but then also protecting yourself. So it definitely communicated that it added unnecessary stress on top of that.
Mansa Musa: My own experience being incarcerated and some of the prisons when I went in the ’70s, and all the prisons that I was in during that period didn’t have any air conditioning, had a fan system, three fans might have been for a cell block that housed over 500 people. And in the summertime when it got real hot, the officers could go into an area where it might have been air, or it might have been more ventilation. But they had to come out and come on them [inaudible], and you could see them walk around with their… They were supposed to have their ties on, they got their shirts buttoned down. Pretty much they were going through the same thing we were going through in terms of the heat and heat exhaustion.
And it took all the way until their union got involved and got more relief for them, but then getting relief for them it ultimately trickled down to us. But talk about, in the study and in your own research, the attitude of a lot of the prisoners. Because you spoke about their fear of dying. Speak on this. Speak on the overall impact it has on the prison population, which is relatively large. I think Texas has either the third largest prison population in the country behind New York and California, or is number one. It’s in the top three.
Monique Welch: It’s definitely up there. I don’t know the exact numbers, but there is a huge prison population in Texas. But just reading through a number of their stories, experiences, they were really graphic and really [inaudible]. Many express experiencing dizziness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, difficulty breathing. One woman said she couldn’t eat. She couldn’t gain weight, muscle cramps, leg cramps, just a laundry list of symptoms. Many, many, many. I think almost the majority of the responses that I read and the feedback I read reported having passed out multiple times, or even reporting at least one heat-related illness. And a lot of times many also said that – They’re called grievances. Reporting such grievances did nothing and was essentially a waste of time. So some even said that when they passed out, they didn’t receive medical attention.
One I’ll never forget. One inmate actually said that they were on their 20th time from passing out and suffering from heat exhaustion. 20 times. They didn’t specify how long they had been incarcerated or how long they’ve been there. So those types of details, I didn’t see anything like that. But again, we’re talking, Texas has been hot for decades. And it has been on an upward trend historically since the ’80s, and this summer alone we’ve been recording record breaking heat numbers.
The previous record set was back in 2009 for having dozens of days consistently over 100 degrees or higher. So we’re not talking normal summer heat, 80s, 90s. And in fact, when a federal judge did basically accuse the TDCJ and the lawsuit, which was in 2017 and 2019 timeframe, they basically ruled, I think it was a prison in Beaumont, but they basically were transferring inmates to a different unit because temperatures exceeded 90 degrees. And so we’re talking 110 here. And one even was like 149. That was the highest that was reported in this study. That one prison got up to 149 degrees. So if they were regulating and issuing sanctions for 90 degrees and above, and they are regularly, consistently, hitting 110. I mean, you think about it. They’re doing it at 90, and there are units and inmates suffering at 100 and above.
Mansa Musa: Yeah, I know this. That’s the height of inhumanity. Talk about the relief. Did the courts order them to start releasing prisoners who, as a result of being in these most inhumane living conditions, or was that taken into account, or was anything being done to minimize the amount of time a person stayed in prison? Was anything being done to expedite their release, to your knowledge?
Monique Welch: To my knowledge, no, I didn’t see anything in this report specifically about that. In the 29 cases, it mainly just resulted in further pressure on the government agency on TDCJ. They just paid millions to rectify. They started improving. I didn’t see any direct benefits to the inmates as far as their prison sentence. It was largely more accountability on the agency to do things, to improve. Again, temporarily moving inmates to other units, but then you’re dealing with issues of overcrowding and other things. So it still is kind of one problem just makes another. So that’s another factor as well.
Mansa Musa: Monique, talk about through prisoners… I know when I was incarcerated, we had jobs, and a lot of times some of our jobs worked outside. Are the prisons still allowing prisoners to work in the face of COVID, and if so, are prisoners working outside in this heat?
Monique Welch: Yes. Numerous inmates reported that was the main job. Working in the fields, working outside. So when you’re working in temperatures of 100 degrees plus and then you come inside, normally, myself, you come indoors, you would get relief. You’d have a cool air system. But when you’re an inmate and you come back to the unit and it’s the same temperature, if not hotter, when do you get the relief? And so a lot of inmates are reporting that and saying that it only made it worse. And then we talked about the conditions about the access to cups and ice and water, and even going deeper into that site.
Some of the inmates even said the conditions of the communal areas, where they had to go to get the water, typically like ice coolers and things of that nature. A lot said they were dirty, a lot said they were unsanitized with food, trash, hair, you name it, all types of stuff, just because they weren’t regularly being maintained and cleaned. Yes, there’s access to it. But just how clean and treated is that water? So that was another thing that inmates reported about, yes, there’s water, but is it really clean? It isn’t necessarily clean and healthy for you.
Mansa Musa: And when this report came in effect and the [inaudible] that it’s taken and the study, but then we have COVID, we interject COVID into this equation of the heat. What did the report and what did your study come up with in terms of the relation between the heat, the conditions, and COVID?
Monique Welch: Oh my goodness. I mean, I think, honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is something they’re still studying, just as we are still in a pandemic. But for the duration of this study, it was from 2018 to 2020. And the report focuses heavily on COVID. I think that might have taken up at least a couple of pages. And the effect that when you add COVID symptoms and heat, how it was much harder for inmates to ward off the disease and to fight it without air conditioning. Air conditioning typically helps reduce a lot of diseases, illnesses, et cetera. COVID is a disease that was not exempt from that. And so then you have that, and then you take into account the number of lockdowns that state prisons across the board were seen to implement COVID protocols.
There was a tremendous amount of inmates – And I’m sure you’ve heard the reports – Of inmates dying from COVID. So much so that a lot of the prisons went on lockdowns and they started to restrict the access to the communal areas where the coolers to ice and water are. And of course they did that to social distance. They didn’t want inmates to be on top of each other and crowded, especially those who were suffering from symptoms, because it was so easily widespread in that type of environment. So when you’re stripping that access to one of your heat-mitigating policies, it further lessens the options that inmates have to remain cool or attempt to remain cool.
Mansa Musa: On this last question, let’s talk about, as far as the prisoners’ families and the advocacy groups in your research, what are they doing in terms of keeping the Texas Department of Corrections’ feet to the fire, for lack of a better word? [inaudible]
Monique Welch: Well, doing this study alone and keeping the pressure on for two years. Sometimes when you do research and as soon as you find one nugget, you want to release it. But I think the beauty of this is that they stayed the course for two years to get a pretty decent sample size to represent the overall living conditions. Again, we’re still talking with a small sample though, 300 inmates. But still, when you spend a lot of time and you survey these inmates, it puts pressure on lawmakers, of course, but it also catches the attention of media professionals like myself. The study is available publicly, so I can share it if you want. You can share it with your audience to read the full report, to see firsthand accounts, to see the different heat mitigating policies and procedures that the department outlines, and to basically see the responses to how they are working to approve those conditions.
We talked about the access to ice and water and a cup. And one of the most shocking things to me that I found is that the department, they’re supposed to… So in order to get a cup, basically, you have to have money, and you have to have commissary money to do so. So if you think about it, what happens to those who don’t have commissary money, or maybe they don’t have the help of a friend or a family member to have commissary money to afford a cup? Then what happens to them? So per policy, TDCJ, they are required to provide those who cannot afford a cup. They are required per their policy to provide a cup. But in this report, I think it was like a quarter or most, many inmates reported not having one or not being provided a cup.
Mansa Musa: And that’s the part of the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration that people don’t really recognize is there. People that are incarcerated don’t have a lot of money, and they don’t have the ability to obtain the basic necessities such as a cup, toothbrush, toothpaste. So a lot of that time, they rely on the system, which, [inaudible] system had what they called the inmate welfare fund. But, well, you got the last word on it. What do you want the Rattling the Bars viewers and listeners to take you away from this report and this article and this study that you enlightened us with most eloquently.
Monique Welch: Thank you. I think it’s just being aware of the state of our world, the state of our prisons. We’re all humans, right? And knowing what is happening and the experiences that many inmates are reporting, in our backyard a lot of times. Or you even described the prison in Baltimore, Maryland, right downtown in the city. In Texas they’re not really that close, as you mentioned, but just taking notice of some of the conditions, because it’s… Anybody at any time, this could be your family member. This could be your friend. This could be anyone you know suffering from these conditions.
And I think that’s why it strikes a nerve, because you can put yourself in anyone’s shoes, whether you’re an inmate. No matter what the crime. With this story, I really wanted to inform the public of the issues going on that researchers say are systemic. I wanted to inform readers of that and put it in their hands, let them choose, okay, what am I going to do with this information? Would this encourage me to go to my local council member or city Congressman? What will this spark? Will it spark you to do something about it, or continue having conversations in your networks, community organizations, to keep talking about it. And that’s really what we’re trying to achieve here.
Mansa Musa: There you have it. The real news from Monique, the Houston Chronicle reporter who told us about and reported on the unbearable inhumane conditions in the prison-industrial complex in Texas. We are all human, as she said, and we should be treated as such. We have basic human rights that say we have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s supposed to be our inalienable right. But we see in Texas, we don’t have a right to a cup.
Thank you, Monique. Thank you very much for this most enlightening conversation and reporting. We look forward to getting a copy of that report and sharing it with our viewers and listeners. Thank you very much.
Monique Welch: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
The growing and eclectic brand of activism known as cop watching continues to invent creative ways to confront overpolicing across the country. In this episode, Police Accountability Report hosts Taya Graham and Stephen Janis examine the arrest of two Youtube activists and how they responded in light of recent pushback from police departments across the country. The story illustrates how the grassroots movement of holding cops accountable continues to evolve in ways both unexpected and productive.
Pre-Production/Studio: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Adam Coley, Stephen Janis
Transcript
The transcript of this video will be made available as soon as possible.
After 36 years behind bars as a political prisoner, Mutulu Shakur is on his deathbed. The movement elder, radical healer, and former member of the Black Liberation Army was diagnosed with stage 3 bone marrow cancer in June of this year. Despite qualifying for compassionate release and having been eligible for parole since 2016, prison and federal authorities have refused to grant Shakur his freedom. With time running out, activists gathered at the Department of Justice on the weekend of July 23 to demand Shakur’s release. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa reports from the rally to free Mutulu Shakur.
Born in Baltimore and raised in Queens, Mutulu Shakur first became politically active in the 1960s as a member of the Revolutionary Action Movement and Republic of New Afrika. In 1970, Shakur helped found the People’s Drug Program at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx alongside the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords. As the husband of Afemi Shakur, Mutulu Shakur was the stepfather of Tupac Shakur. He was convicted in 1988 for his role in the prison escape of Assata Shakur, as well as for his part in the 1981 Black Liberation Army robbery of a Brink’s armored car in Nanuet, New York, which resulted in the deaths of two police officers and a security guard.
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m Mansa Musa, co-host with Eddie Conway. We’re here today in Washington, DC, in front of the Department of Justice, doing a demonstration in support of Mutulu Shakur. Mutulu Shakur is a political prisoner, been locked up over three decades for nothing other than being a good human being and a good man. Mutulu Shakur was found guilty, and then found guilty. He was sentenced under what they call the old law. And in the old law, everything that prison had during that time: parole, [inaudible] credits, was allowed to be given to him.
Topeka K. Sam: You have a brother who has served 36 years in prison. Per the law, he was eligible for parole years ago, six years ago, right?
Mansa Musa: Yeah.
Topeka K. Sam: So if the law states that he is eligible for compassion after serving 30 years in prison, then why wouldn’t they give it to him? Yet, they denied him nine times. That’s unheard of in the federal system. This is an old law prisoner who deserves to come home who is deathly ill.
It is a great honor and privilege to be standing here before all of you to ask for the immediate compassionate release of Dr. Mutulu Shakur. Having my mentor Susan Rosenberg to tell me about who he was and who he is over the years since my release from federal prison allowed me to understand why it was important for us to advocate and make sure that I was standing here. For young people like me to make sure that we’re forcing everything and all the might that we have to make sure that Dr. Mutulu Shakur is released from federal prison today.
Mansa Musa: Today, the actions that were taken on behalf of the Free Mutulu Shakur support committee, was they delivered a petition that was signed by over 200 faith leaders to be delivered to the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Prisons, and the Parole Commission on behalf of Mutulu Shakur. The purpose of which is to get Mutulu Shakur compassionate release.
We recognize that this government has selective amnesia when it comes to compassion. For example, John Hinckley got compassion. Mutulu Shakur’s co-defendant has gotten compassion. Why do you think they’re so reluctant to give him compassion? Of all the great works he’s done.
Rev. Graylan Hagler: Well, you probably hit it on the head. The great works lead to stature, and stature means that people see you. People admire you. You have an influence. You have an impact just by your presence. And that’s what he has, an impact just by his presence. And that makes the system fearful, particularly a system that wants to basically control the narrative, control the message, control the image. It makes that system very harsh. And evil, in terms of the way it treats somebody.
Taliba Obuya: He has acknowledged his crimes, and he has shown compassion and asked for forgiveness for that. And so at this moment, due to his medical state, like we said, his weight was around 125. He is confined to a wheelchair, and he’s been moved to the medical ward of the federal prison institution.
Nkechi Taifa: Which one? Which prison?
Taliba Obuya: Oh, he’s currently located in Lexington, Kentucky. He’s important because when I did have the opportunity to meet him while he was incarcerated decades later, he was still committed to the betterment of Black people. And not just Black people, but those communities who are marginalized and forgotten about. And he did it so selflessly. Like, he didn’t just stop once incarcerated. He organized. He traded peaceful places where our people were. And I thought that that was just necessary. So why could I not be active on his behalf?
See, my background is I’m the daughter of veterans. Both parents. Family of veterans. I believe, every war fought in this country, I have had family in that war. And so to see that there were conditions in the country that we needed to address like drug abuse, housing issues, literacy, access to food. And this man who did not let his situation and circumstances stop that commitment made me say, hey, we must be active and do something about that.
Currently, on small factors, Baba Mutulu is 71 years old. In two weeks, he will be 72. His birthday is August 8. So age alone, he is eligible, as an aging elder, he’s eligible for a compassionate release. And then on top of that, you add his health conditions. He’s dealing with stage 3 bone marrow cancer. He did not go into remission. He received treatments, and it’s not there. He has gotten COVID three times. So during this pandemic there were even early releases of COVID releases, and he did not meet the [inaudible] of that.
Then on top of that, he is basically now given a six months timeline. And this was months ago. So although we’re stuck with that number of six months, we’re talking three months, maybe even six weeks. It’s very day to day. We have to do this now. And so I just believe in dignity. I believe in sitting in Washington, DC, the capital of this nation, that we are supposed to stand on these principles. He has served his time. He should be allowed to die with dignity. And that’s even sad to say, because he’s been incarcerated since I was three years old. Never knew which pathway I was on. He has family, he has grandkids.
And so I think, with his time served, with his eligibility for parole 10 times. In this moment he meets the declaration of compassionate release, and thus we should do it. It’s the human thing to do. It’s the dignified thing to do. Yeah, the DOJ has the power to do that.
Mansa Musa: In light of everything we already established, that he meets the criteria for compassion, I would like for y’all to dial down on why they are so reluctant to acknowledge these accomplishments? Because parole has been denied, and he fits the criteria for parole, so he should have been released. What is the institution’s offering in opposition to why they don’t want to?
Nkechi Taifa: They claim, they state that he is a danger to public safety, a danger to society, and that he has the capacity to influence many people. That is what their rationale is. They don’t speak to the fact that he’s a 71-year-old elder. They don’t speak to the fact that he has been incarcerated for 36 years. They don’t speak to the fact that, yes, he has influenced, very positively influenced, so, so, so many young Black men in prison to turn their lives around and to be about being productive. They don’t speak about those things.
So it is vindictiveness. I submit there’s racial disparity involved in it, as I spoke earlier. Because it’s not the nature, necessarily, of the crime. Because other people committed offenses that the United States considers as [inaudible] home, and have been let home under compassionate release to die peacefully with family and friends. So we That’s what the call to action must be. We need to really base our collective voices so that we are heard. So that we are heard in the halls of the Department of Justice. So that we are heard in the halls of Congress. So we are heard in the corridors of the White House. That is what is going to free Dr. Mutulu Shakur.
Mansa Musa: He has letters from former wardens, he has letters from former judges, he has letters from the community, he has letters from, as I mentioned, 200 faith leaders, all saying that Mutulu Shakur is not only not a threat, but that he would be an asset upon return. Also, another thing that needs to be recognized about Mutulu Shakur’s case is that under the Bureau of Prisons guidelines, he scored real low, and we scored real low in terms of the points. That means you automatically be reduced to a lesser security and be positioned to be returned to society. So the only reason why Mutulu Shakur is being kept in prison is for no other reason than revenge, vindictiveness, and nothing more.
Here we are, having the Nkechi Taifa, the moderator of the Free Mutulu Shakur demonstration that we’re having today, that in a short time, we’ll be giving a letter to the Justice Department to try to free Mutulu Shakur. Taifa, you spoke about racial disparity and why Mutulu Shakur is not being given the benefit that the law says he should be given. Speaking on that.
Nkechi Taifa: Oh, yes, well, actually, Dr. Mutulu Shakur’s co-defendant Marilyn Bach, a white woman, revolutionary, received the ability to be able to be released several months before she passed. She applied for this release. She was charged with many of the same charges that Mutulu Shakur was charged with. She was released to be able to go home to die. Why should Mutulu Shakur not be granted that same type of relief?
Mansa Musa: His thinking has been so monumental in terms of changing individuals. Yet, you reflected on how they always talk about the crime. Talk about why his thinking is so dangerous to the point where they believe that he will be a threat to society.
Nkechi Taifa: Well, what the government basically says is that Mutulu Shakur will be an influence to people on the outside. What they neglect to say is that he is an influence, a very positive influence. He has been a very positive influence to young people in prison, young Black men, to turn their lives around from a life of crime and criminal activity to productive people in society. To get them to open up a book and to read. The thing they are trying to take out of the schools, Dr. Mutulu Shakur wants that history, the true history of who we are and how we came to this country to be. He’s a healer. He’s been teaching and training people in the act of acupuncture. Acupuncture detoxification, which has been a tremendous help to the community.
Mansa Musa: George Jackson talking about the running of our feet. You’re talking about the running of our feet. Speak on what you think we should be doing? What do you think we need to do when we leave here? Now give the Rattling the Bars viewers our marching orders.
Nkechi Taifa: Well, we need to [inaudible] of our voices as well as our feet. We need to [inaudible] our voices so that they can be heard within the Department of Justice. So they can be heard within the halls of Congress. So they can be heard in the corridors of the White House. Each of those entities have the capacity to do what is necessary to free Mutulu Shakur through either parole, the granting of parole. Through either the granting of compassionate release. Through the granting of executive clemency, so he would be able to walk out as a free person.
None of those things have been allocated to Mutulu Shakur despite all of the great benefits that he’s given to society. Most folk don’t know. He’s a stepfather, a brother, Tupac Shakur. Many people don’t know that because of him, Asada Shakur is living free in Cuba. Many people don’t know that because of Mutulu Shakur and others like him, resources were able to be garnered to the liberation moments in Southern Africa. Many people don’t know these facts about Mutulu Shakur. That because of him, many people who could have died from addiction received a second chance at life through the therapies that Mutulu Shakur was able to provide and was able to teach others.
Dr. Winston Kokayi Patterson: We organized an organization called BAD, Blacks Against Drugs, where we got all of the progressive Black drug programs around the country to come together and to continue to promote a revolutionary, progressive form of treatment. I received my first treatment from Mutulu Shakur in 1972, and then began to study acupuncture. Dr. Shakur started the Lincoln Detox program in 1970, which deems him the father of acupuncture in our Black community. And here today, we have thousands and thousands of individuals using acupuncture and a specific protocol to deal with substance abuse.
So Dr. Shakur is such a threat because of his ability to be able to communicate this. Because of his ability to be able to teach. Because of his ability to bring all people together from all walks of life, to understand the importance of being human and to begin to deal with the problem that we’re faced today, especially with fentanyl. So acupuncture is proven to deal with substance abuse. We go to China, the whole country was addicted to opium, and they use acupuncture. And here we run back here to the ’70s, and through the ’70s up until today, they’ve been using acupuncture in the hospitals.
The Veterans Administration has a protocol based on that same protocol that Mutulu started. They call it battleground acupuncture, where they deal with the post-traumatic stress syndrome that Black folk are dealing with. Post-traumatic slave syndrome that we’re dealing with, and all the stress and repressive kind of emotions that we have that this acupuncture can address.
Mansa Musa: I think we need to demystify what the government is saying about this brother.
Dr. Winston Kokayi Patterson: Yes, for sure.
Mansa Musa: And we need to really humanize him, and make him the human being that we know him to be, but more important, you have actually experienced [inaudible].
Dr. Winston Kokayi Patterson: Yes, and when he smiled, he would light up a room. When he came into a room, he would light that room up. And his energy, and his ability to be able to just mingle and talk and hang out with people. We danced all night long. So he can dance. But the major thing I remember is his being a dad, his being a husband.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
Dr. Winston Kokayi Patterson: His being a brother to all of the people within his family. Him being a son, his mother who was blind, and me watching him do acupuncture on her and taking care of her. Me watching him taking care of children that wasn’t even his children, because that’s how we do in our community. Him giving his shirt to a guy right off the street. Here, brother, take this shirt. This is the kind of person that Mutulu was. He was so into making sure that Black people got as much as they could to do the best, to come out of the conditions that we were in.
So it didn’t matter whether it was a dollar bill, acupuncture, a sandwich, some clothes, or just a hug. And Mutulu had the best hugs.
Topeka K. Sam: So often we hear, it’s always about the nature of the crime. The nature of the crime never changes. Being incarcerated is supposed to be about rehabilitation, right? Corrections. And if the system is saying that he couldn’t have been corrected in 30 years, then what are we also saying about the system?
Mansa Musa: What do you think the church in particular should be doing in this space? Where do we go from here in terms of trying to get the churches to become more involved and doing the work that Jesus would be doing right about now?
Topeka K. Sam: Well, I mean, we know the history of the church, or has been in the past, to be leaders in these moments of civil rights and human rights. And so nothing has changed. As a matter of fact, we need the church now more than ever before. So we need the churches to be social justice hubs. To bring people together. To be leaders in this moment to free our people. Because the word says we need to set the prisoners free. And so that’s just the bottom line.
Dr. Karanja Keita Carroll: Good afternoon, everyone. I’m sharing these words on behalf of my father, Reverend Anthony Carroll, the First Pilgrim Baptist Church in Camden, Delaware. These are his words. He states, “I first came to know of Dr. Mutulu through my son. Though I was aware of the Black Panther Party and their actions in California while I was in service in the military, I was not so knowledgeable of what they did on the East Coast of the United States. Born and raised in Hackensack, New Jersey, the Black Panther Party was something that I only heard about on the news, but not something I had real interaction with.
“However, after learning more and more about the actions of the panthers outside of California, and those such as Mutulu Shakur, who was in New York, I learned of the many accomplishments and advances he and other Panthers were making in New York City, so close to my home.
“As I learned that Mutulu Shakur was an organizer, alternative health professional, and advocate for so many people, oppressed people, marginalized people. I wondered why this man has been incarcerated for over 30 years and is continuously denied parole. Furthermore, during his incarceration, Dr. Shakur has been a role model to those moving through various penal intuitions that he has been housed in.
“Again, I wondered why this man is locked up and not free. And still, as he suffers from type two diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, glaucoma, I still ask why this man is incarcerated. From all that I have learned from Dr. Mutulu Shakur, I see a man who is about justice, freedom, equality, and someone who is continuously fighting oppression whenever it is faced. And I’m reminded of Isaiah [1:17], which reads in part, ‘Learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression.’ Dr. Shakur has consistently tried to do this, but the real question is why hasn’t been allowed to continue this work as a free man?”
Mansa Musa: There you have it. The real news about Mutulu Shakur. We’ll continue to follow up on this, releasing Mutulu Shakur. Mutulu Shakur has had a positive impact on society at large and people in general. The only reason why Mutulu Shakur is not being released and not being granted the benefits of compassionate release is because of his thinking, and his thinking being that of a progressive individual. With Eddie Conway, I’m Mansa Musa. Thank you very much.
In this live conversation and Q&A, Police Accountability Report hosts Taya Graham and Stephen Janis discuss a recent win to protect the right to record police in the second highest court in the land. Guest Abade Irizarry (aka Liberty Freak) joins the stream to discuss the cop watching incident that started his quest and how the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment must be fought for.
If you have evidence of police misconduct or brutality, or if you have a question for Taya or and Stephen, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com, message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram, or @eyesonpolice on Twitter.
Transcript
The transcript of this video will be made available as soon as possible.
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on July 20, 2022. It is shared here with permission.
In May of this year, I testified at a hearing in San Francisco where city leaders questioned the police department’s funding and use of public relations professionals. That funding was heavier than you might expect.
According to police department documents provided to the County Board of Supervisors, budget items included a nine-person full-time team managed by a director of strategic communications who alone costs the city $289,423; an undisclosed number of cops paid part-time to do PR work on social media; a Community Engagement Unit tracking public opinion; officers who intervene with the families of victims of police violence and who are dispatched to the scenes of police violence to control initial media reaction; and a full-time videographer making PR videos about cops.
Police get us to focus on crimes committed by the poorest, most vulnerable people in our society and not on bigger threats to our safety caused by people with wealth and power.
Why do police invest so much in manipulating our perceptions of what they do? I call this phenomenon “copaganda”: creating a gap between what police actually do and what people think they do.
Copaganda does three main things. First, it narrows our understanding of safety. Police get us to focus on crimes committed by the poorest, most vulnerable people in our society and not on bigger threats to our safety caused by people with wealth and power.
For example, wage theft by employers dwarfs all other property crime combined — from burglaries, to retail theft, to robberies — costing some $50 billion every year. Tax evasion steals about $1 trillion each year. There are hundreds of thousands of Clean Water Act violations each year, causing cancer, kidney failure, rotting teeth, and damage to the nervous system. Over 100,000 people in the United States die every year from air pollution, five times the number of all homicides.
But through the stories cops feed reporters, the public is encouraged to measure a city’s safety by whether it saw an annual increase or decrease of three homicides or fourteen robberies — rather than by how many people died from lack of access to health care, how many children suffered lead poisoning, how many families were rendered homeless by illegal eviction or foreclosure, or how many thousands of illegal assaults police committed.
The second function of copaganda is to manufacture crises or “crime surges.” For example, if you watch the news, you’ve probably been bombarded with stories about the rise of retail theft. Yet the actual data shows there has been no significant increase. Instead, corporate retailers, police, and PR firms fabricated talking points and fed them to the media. The same is true of what the FBI categorizes as “violent crime.” All told, major “index crimes” tracked by the FBI are at nearly 40-year lows.
The insistence that increased policing is the key to public safety is like climate science denial. Just like the oil companies, the police are running an expensive operation of mass communication to convince people of things that aren’t true.
The third and most pernicious function of copaganda is to manipulate our understanding of what solutions actually work to make us safer. A primary goal of copaganda is to convince the public to spend even more money on police and prisons. If safety is defined by street crime, and street crime is dangerously high, then funding the carceral state leaps out to many people as a natural solution.
The budgets of modern police departments are staggeringly high and ever increasing, with no parallel in history, producing incarceration rates unseen around the world. Police and their right-wing unions (which have their own PR budgets) want bigger budgets, more military-grade gear, more surveillance technology, and more overtime cash. Multibillion-dollar businesses have privatized nearly every element of these bureaucracies for profit, from the tasers and AI software sold to cops to the snacks sold at huge markups to supplement inadequate jail food. To obtain this level of spending, they need us to think that police and prisons make us safer.
The evidence shows otherwise. If police and prisons made us safe, we would have the safest society in world history — but the opposite is true. There is no link between more cops and decreased crime, even of the type that the police report. Instead, addressing the root causes of interpersonal harm like safe housing, health care, treatment, nutrition, pollution, and early-childhood education is the most effective way to enhance public safety. And addressing root causes of violence also prevents the other harms that flow from inequality, including millions of avoidable deaths.
The insistence that increased policing is the key to public safety is like climate science denial. Just like the oil companies, the police are running an expensive operation of mass communication to convince people of things that aren’t true. Thus, we are left with a great irony: even if what you most care about are the types of crimes reported by police, those crimes would be better reduced by making our society more equal than by spending on police and prisons.
Powerful actors in policing and media both manufacture crime waves and respond to them in ways that increase inequality and consolidate social control, even as they do little to actually stop crime. Copaganda not only diverts people from existential threats like imminent ecological collapse and rising fascism, but also boosts surveillance and repression that is used against social movements trying to solve those problems by creating more sustainable and equal social arrangements.
Hearings like the one I testified at in San Francisco are needed across the country. Local councilmembers should scrutinize the secretive world of police PR budgets, because the public deserves to know how police are spreading misinformation. It is possible to achieve real safety in our communities, but only if we end the copaganda standing in its way.
The death of Christopher Robert Hensley in the custody of Fletcher, North Carolina, police is raising new questions about the use of deadly restraint by law enforcement. In this episode of Police Accountability Report, Taya Graham and Stephen Janis talk to independent pathologist Cyril Wecht, who reviewed footage of the arrest, to shed light on the circumstances surrounding Hensley’s death. We ask questions of North Carolina law enforcement officials to learn why cops are still using a tactic that has been widely recognized as both dangerous and deadly.
Pre-Production/Studio: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Adam Coley
Transcript
Taya Graham: Hello. My name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose: holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible. And today we will do so by bringing you breaking news on a shocking in-custody death at the hands of police in North Carolina that has received little attention, but warrants further investigation.
As you can see in the video we are showing now, Fletcher, North Carolina, police officers knelt on the back of a man for at least four minutes, until he was unresponsive. And I have to warn you, this video is disturbing. The man later died, but the police have said little. But despite their silence, we obtained this video of his death in custody, which suggests that a dangerous and often deadly police tactic known as prone restraint may have caused his death. The reason we are bringing this case to your attention is because of its similarities to the case of George Floyd and Tom Black and others, where police have sat on top of or otherwise laid across a person, causing downward pressure on their lungs, causing what’s known as positional asphyxiation.
It is a well-known, dangerous police tactic that has been all but banned in some areas, but remains common practice elsewhere, which is why we sent the evidence to a noted independent pathologist who watched the video and who will share his thoughts on how this man died, why police may be culpable, and what should be done to prevent this from happening in the future. But more importantly, we wanted to bring this case to your attention, our viewers, as it has otherwise been ignored, and it needs exposure to ensure local officials or an independent body investigate it properly, especially given the evidence seen here in this video.
But first I want you to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com, and please like, share, and comment on our videos. You know I do read your comments and appreciate them. And of course you can always reach out to me directly @tayasbaltimore on Facebook or Twitter. And of course, if you can, there is a Patreon donate link pinned below, so we do have some extras there for our PAR family.
Now, as you know, we usually publish the Police Accountability Report on our regularly scheduled time slot of 9:00 PM Eastern time. But when a viewer sent us this video of a man who died in police custody, we felt we had to produce a breaking news piece because the case has received little attention, and many questions about what happened remain unanswered.
What we do know is this: In the evening of June 15, Fletcher, North Carolina, police received a 911 call from a woman who said her husband was preventing her from leaving their apartment. The caller said she thought the man was on drugs. According to reporting from the local media, the man in question was Christopher Robert Hensley, a 35-year-old youth pastor with two young children. According to law enforcement, Hensley grew combative with police when they arrived. Officials say they fought with Hensley and tasered him. However, there are few details about what that means or why it leads to what you are seeing in this video.
I want to warn you before I show it that what you are about to see is very disturbing. The images you are watching were taken by a resident of the apartment complex where the arrest occurred and was subsequently posted on Facebook. They show roughly eight or nine Fletcher police officers and Henderson County Sheriff’s officers restraining Hensley, who is prone on the ground, handcuffed. As several officers lean on his back, Fletcher can be heard pleading for help. As you can see, he’s moving underneath the officers who continue to put downward pressure on his body. Take a look.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Audio/Video: [shouting in pain][inaudible].
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Now after roughly four minutes and 30 seconds of putting downward pressure on Hensley, police suddenly turn him over and begin administering CPR. Just watch.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Speaker: [clearing throat] Oh my God. [inaudible].
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: It’s important to know that this video was recorded 10 to 15 minutes into the interaction with police. So it is possible these officers had him in prone restraint for even longer than the four and a half minutes that were caught on camera. However, in our conversation with the noted forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, he confirmed that it can take as little as four minutes to deprive someone of oxygen and cause death.
Now, it’s also worth noting that it’s well known that placing downward pressure on someone’s back when prone is dangerous. When someone is prone on the ground, weight applied to the back prevents the lungs from inflating. This results in a condition known as positional asphyxiation or riot-crush. The downward pressure makes it impossible for the diaphragm to expand and the lungs to absorb oxygen, which can result in death by suffocation. It’s also the same tactic that led to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota and Anton Black in Greensboro, Maryland, right here.
Which raises an important question: Why did multiple officers sit on his back? And why, given the general awareness of the dangers of positional asphyxia, did the officers continue to apply their body weight and pressure? I mean, as horrible as this is to watch, you can see Mr. Fletcher’s legs flailing. He is literally fighting to breathe as the officers casually, and apparently indifferently, continue to apply downward pressure. Someone is even captured in the video watching this while enjoying a smoke.
But even though this case raises these troubling questions about police use of force, there has been little mention of this notoriously dangerous police tactic, or exactly why the officers felt compelled to apply it in such a reckless manner. In fact, like many police-involved deaths, officially local law enforcement has said little about the case, and the local media has made little effort to push back on their silence. Which is why we decided to do this breaking news story.
Police did put out a press release that said, “Hensley became unresponsive after he was placed in handcuffs.” But they did not address or mention what we have seen in this video. And local news reports offered little more than the official police response in a conveniently leaked 911 call. So myself and my reporting partner Stephen Janis have been working the phones and talking to experts about the evidence that is publicly available. And to discuss our findings I’m joined by Stephen, who is standing by now. Stephen, thank you for joining us.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: So Stephen, as I already mentioned, we immediately suspect that this might be positional asphyxiation. So you reached out to noted pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, who has conducted many high profile autopsies. Tell us what you sent him, and what did he say?
Stephen Janis: Right. I sent Dr. Wecht the video that you’ve already seen showing the cops sitting on top of Mr. Hensley and had him analyze it, look at it from his perspective as a medical pathologist, and what he said was pretty, pretty damning. Let’s listen.
[AUDIO CLIP BEGINS]
Dr. Cyril Wecht: My initial impression is that this case is almost a twin of the George Floyd, Derek Chauvin situation. It is as brutal, as barbaric as that was, in a way more so because of the multiplicity of officers involved. You have this man on the ground. I do not know what the circumstances were. Whatever they were, even if he were a fleeing felon, you’ve got six, eight officers there. He’s not going anywhere. You see him struggling and moving and kicking, and it’s obvious that he can’t breathe. He’s face down.
Have they not lived in America? Have they not seen and read about the George Floyd case? Are they not aware of positional asphyxiation? Go and find out from that police department, locally Fletcher, North Carolina, and the State of North Carolina, what they are teaching cops now in terms of positioning people and so on.
So you have him, whatever he’s done, whatever you’re thinking, let him sit up. Let him sit up. Where the hell is he going? You’ve got eight officers there, and they’re all solid looking guys. So let him sit up and breathe.
[AUDIO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: So clearly, Dr. Wecht believes that this is positional asphyxiation. He is a noted pathologist. He has a long history of making judgements on these types of cases. So I think it’s pretty strong science what he’s saying, and we should definitely pay attention to what he thinks.
Taya Graham: See, that’s interesting. I noticed he mentioned training standards. You’ve been trying to get in touch with various agencies in North Carolina about the use of prone restraint. What have you heard, and what are they saying?
Stephen Janis: I reached out to the agency that trains police and certifies them in North Carolina, and they were very emphatic. They finally got back to me in an email and said they do not train officers to do prone restraint beyond handcuffs. In other words, once a suspect is handcuffed, they’re supposed to not have him or she prone anymore. They’re very emphatic about that. I’m showing the email on the screen. Their answer was very firm: “We do not train people to use prone restraint.” But of course, as you can see, that’s exactly what happened.
Taya Graham: Now I know the North Carolina State Police are investigating Mr. Hensley’s death. We’ve actually reported on cases before where it appeared to be positional asphyxiation, but authorities have concluded otherwise. What should we expect from the official investigation?
Stephen Janis: One thing that’s interesting is that we don’t see the five to 10 minutes prior to the camera running from the person who was filming it on Facebook. So they could just conjure some sort of combative person, or some [inaudible] terror or something that we don’t see and that we can’t really prove, and it’d be based upon their word, probably. I don’t know if there are other witnesses.
The second thing they’re going to talk about is what was in his system. I think they’ll wait for the toxicology, and come back and try to make some innuendo that there were drugs in this system. We don’t know. We only know from the 911 call, but we don’t know for sure. I think they’re definitely going to try to use that.
And then finally they might come up with something like excited delirium that they use in cases where, even though they know they’re responsible, they have to conjure a reason that they’re not.
These are the things to look out for. I promise you we will continue to report on it to make sure there’s some counter narrative to the police narrative.
Taya Graham: Now I want to let everyone know we reached out to Mr. Hensley’s family. They told us they hold police accountable for their loved one’s death and that they will be releasing evidence soon to prove their case. And they have also consulted a pathologist to do an independent autopsy. They also say they would be able to speak to us after the funeral.
His mother, as well as a friend of the family, said to me that Mr. Hensley was a great man, loved by his family and friends. His mother also said this, “The level of corruption is beyond human comprehension. I cannot bring my son back, but all of his rights were violated. This cannot continue to happen. He was not given proper CPR or care. Even after he went unconscious from the lack of oxygen and blood supply to his heart, they beat him up when his legs were moving, trying to get air into his diaphragm, and they punched his legs. My son was murdered for no reason. It is not up to the police to do this.”
Unfortunately, I have to agree. I want to offer my sincere condolences to the Hensley family and to all his friends.
But in the meantime, we will keep investigating and providing updates with our live stream, our social media accounts, or through a more expansive show at a later date. I urge all of you to share this video or contact any relevant law enforcement officials and ask that as much information as possible be released to the public and to the family.
Thank you so much for joining us for this breaking news edition of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
Lawmakers in Virginia have approved a draconian budget measure from Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin that takes aim at inmates’ eligibility for early release. The new law prevents so-called “violent offenders” from applying credits earned for good behavior towards their early release. Even inmates who have already earned early release are being affected, with some families learning at the eleventh hour that their loved ones will no longer be allowed to come home. Prison reform activist Chari Baker, whose spouse is also incarcerated, recently confronted Governor Youngkin over his cruel decision to prolong the separation of families on the verge of being reunited. Baker joins Rattling the Bars co-host Mansa Musa to discuss the new Virginia law and what advocates, families, and incarcerated people are doing to fight back.
The small town of Loveland, Colorado, has found itself in the national spotlight due to the wanton brutality and corruption of its police department. In June 2020, Loveland police violently arrested Karen Garner, a 73-year-old woman with dementia. Garner suffered a broken arm and dislocated shoulder. Later, footage revealed Loveland officers laughing as they reviewed the video of Garner’s arrest. This spring, another victim of the Loveland Police Department, Harris Elias, filed a lawsuit alleging he had been unlawfully arrested on DUI charges despite being “completely sober.” These and other cases demonstrate a pattern of disturbing practices within the department that incentivize brutality and lawbreaking, including a monthly quota of DUI arrests that officers try to meet by any means necessary.
In this special podcast edition of the Police Accountability Report, civil rights attorney Sarah Schielke joins Taya Graham to explore just how deep the corruption goes in Loveland and to discuss the ongoing fight to hold Loveland police accountable.
Transcript
Taya Graham:Hello, this is Taya Graham, and I am the host of the Police Accountability Report. And I am so happy to have you join me here today for a special podcast edition of our show. I’m going to start today by talking about a beautiful place called Loveland, Colorado. Loveland, Colorado, is home to roughly 80,000 people, and it is a lovely area with trails, and hiking, and skiing, just about 46 miles north of Denver. But it is also home to the Loveland Colorado Police Department, which became the focus of the national spotlight after the brutal arrest of 73-year-old Karen Garner, a woman with dementia who had her arm broken by Loveland police officers who arrested her for mistakenly walking out of a store without paying for $14 worth of merchandise. But it wasn’t merely the arrest or the broken bones that made these officers stand out.
It was the video of their callous review of their own body camera footage, where they replayed the breaking of her bones and laughed, that highlighted their unique cruelty and their disconnect from the community that they are supposed to serve. But this department with just 19 full-time police officers has again grabbed our attention. This time, for fabricating DUI arrest. The particular case I want to share with you is of Mr. Harris Elias, whose car was stopped for driving too slow, and he was arrested on the pretext of the smell of alcohol and intoxication.
He was taken to police headquarters, where his breathalyzer analysis showed triple zeros after two tests, and was still taken in cuffs to a phlebotomist for blood analysis. Now, fortunately, once the blood test showed absolutely no impairing substances in his system, the district attorney dropped the charges. But he has to explain to every potential employer why he was charged with a DUI, which, since he is a pilot, carries serious ramifications for his livelihood. Civil rights attorney Sarah Schielke, who also represented the Garner family and others abused by the Loveland Police Department, has taken his case and uncovered a DUI arrest for profit and promotion scheme that has led to the discovery of dozens of allegations of false DUI arrests and a substantial lawsuit.
To learn more about how police departments have found a way to monetize DUI arrests and why an officer might be motivated to manufacture a DUI arrest, I’m joined by Sarah Schielke of Life & Liberty Law, who will elaborate on the problem she’s exposed in the Loveland PD, its impact on people’s lives, and the consequences, if any, for an officer who makes false arrests.
Sarah, thank you so much for joining me. The first question I wanted to ask you was about what seems to be an unusually large number of false arrests for DUIs by Loveland police. Just from what I saw, there seems to be at least a dozen people who were arrested and later shown to have a 0% blood alcohol level. I guess the first question I wanted to ask you was, what kind of impact do these false arrests have on people’s lives? I’m sure there’s stress, but there must also be an economic and social impact as well.
Sarah Schielke:For sure, there is. DUIs really are a horrific affliction on our society when actually DUI is being committed. And for that reason, there’s a lot of stigma associated with DUIs. There’s some very heavy consequences that come from being charged with DUI. And what a lot of people don’t realize is how quickly those consequences come into play after an arrest. It’s not like anybody waits for the case to be adjudicated. Nobody waits until there’s a conviction. The consequences are quick and severe. The DMV starts actions to take your license away. Most employers have reporting requirements if you get charged with a DUI. People lose their jobs. There’s all kinds of fines and associated requirements that just go with being on pretrial. Monitoring, prior to anybody even deciding whether it was rightfully charged. And then there’s just also just the humiliation and the embarrassment that goes with it.
The lawsuit I’m doing on behalf of Harris Elias here in this case really illustrates that to a large degree, because he has three teenage kids and a zero tolerance drinking and driving policy. And his night here ended with him having to call them from the police station to pick him up and get him for having been arrested for DUI. So as a law abiding citizen, it’s hard to think of worse or more harsh consequences that could come so quickly just from being charged as that are associated with DUI. And that’s why this is just when it’s becoming such a big practice, and it being this incentivized cash cow for police departments to charge people, that it’s so devastating and damaging for, not just the individuals, but for society as a whole.
Taya Graham:Wow. I’m so glad you outlined how there are consequences just for being charged, not only for being convicted. And you brought up something I’d like you to talk a little bit more about, which is what the motive is for police to make these unlawful arrests.
Sarah Schielke:So, it’s crazy. If I have one tagline to say about this lawsuit and so much else of what I do with anything involving the police, it’s that there should never be incentives to arrest people for specific crimes. That the whole idea of it is completely perverse. Because it’s not like a police agency can say, you know what we need? You know what would be great? Is if you guys could get a whole bunch of robberies tonight. That doesn’t work. But it’s the nature of a DUI offense that makes it possible to do these incentive structures because it becomes so subjective, and it becomes so much the officer’s own discretion and the officer’s own account of what they’re saying they smelled, which we can’t ever disprove later. Or these little micro things that they’re going to tell us we can’t see on video.
And when it’s really the unique nature of a DUI offense, and then combined with the fact that there’s funding available, it’s almost like as a result of all the stigma we have as a society for DUI crimes and how much we’d really like this offense to stop occurring, which is a totally appropriate and admirable purpose for any civilized society to have. The issue is how we’ve gone about it. Because now there’s all these grant programs that are set up that are basically saying, the more DUI arrests you have going on, or the more you can show us that you have a DUI problem in your local area, the more money we’ll give you.
And as you can imagine, the cycle that starts to perpetuate is that police chiefs and people in charge at various departments go, well, what I would like is more funding so that I can get more officers and more equipment. Here’s a way to get more funding. And all we need to do to get that funding is convince them that we have a DUI arrest problem. So go make more DUI arrests, and we’ll get the funding. They do that. And then at the end it’s like, how’s it going? Not very well. Look how many DUI arrests we have. And they’re going to buy more officers, they’re going to buy more equipment, they’re going to set up competitions.
I mean, there’s timed competitions going on to get the most DUI arrests. And it’s grotesque once you stand back and look at the whole interconnected web of what we’ve woven here and what police are doing. But it’s also very foreseeable as a result of making those kinds of incentives. Because ultimately, a police chief’s job is to ensure that the department has more funding and that all the officers have a sense of purpose. And when you get to basically manufacture the crime, that gives you continued justification for funding and feeling self important. Things get very messy. And Loveland’s case, I think, is just a very obvious example of how bad that can go.
Taya Graham:Again, I am just really blown away by this. It’s really interesting to find out about the money that’s available. If you can show that you’re making more DUI arrests, you get more money to make more DUI arrests. And then that money can be used to buy equipment for the department, upgrade headquarters, perhaps go to the budget and promotions, et cetera, et cetera. So I guess I have to ask, are there any real or meaningful consequences for police officers who have a pattern of making unlawful arrests?
Sarah Schielke:Not in this case. And that is a big underlying driving factor, just for me as a civil rights attorney in this case, is that in the thousands and thousands of dollars and many, many, many hours of work in terms of open records requests that I’ve done trying to uncover the problem, trying to locate where the funding is coming from, trying to find how it’s meted out, trying to get numbers on who is the most arrests, comparing those to other officers who maybe aren’t as competitive, basically. In doing all that, what I’m seeing is just that not once has there been a consequence for a bad arrest, and that is wrong. I mean, to put it bluntly, when you have somebody with their numbers, their DUI arrest numbers are so much higher than everybody else, that it should be a red flag.
They’re cutting some kind of corner or they’re maybe arresting some people they shouldn’t. Something where you should inspect. And in this case, Officer Gates who we’ve sued, his numbers are crazy. I mean, they’re shocking to look at. There’s so much I could say about the numbers that we got on this guy. But in any event, they’re so starkly different from other officers working similar shifts that anybody in charge should be looking and going, my God. Are you arresting some innocent people? Let’s at least take a look.
If somebody had done that here, they would’ve seen that, in fact, he was doing a lot of that. And you would think there should be some kind of consequences. That, hey, you’re wrecking people’s lives. A lot of people don’t realize that there’s officers, I think in particular that there is a third option, where if you think maybe this person had a drink, but you’re so preoccupied with not risking anybody being on the road even with one drink in them, you can just say, call someone to pick you up.
And instead, because of the incentive structure and the value and the awards, the reputational currency that you get by getting the DUI arrests, nobody ever considers that. They just swoop everybody up in the net and with really such utter callousness for what it does to their lives and everything. There’s no reason to treat people fairly. The only reasons that they have are to increase their numbers. And in this case, Chief Ticer, who has now resigned and gone to another police department. But while he was here, he was very interconnected with the Mothers Against Drunk Driving, with multiple councils on drunk driving.
And what I thought was very unsurprising but of course still interesting and shocking, was that when the lawsuit came out and everybody was coming to them saying, what is going on here? His main response was to still defend the wrongful arrests. I mean, he’s even made a statement saying that, my client’s arrest, Mr. Elias who blew zeroes at the station and then was forced to do blood, and then his blood came back all zeros and everything and negative for all drugs. The Chief still said, we think this was a solid arrest. I mean, if that’s what your chief is saying, even this far after the fact and you know what it did to devastate his life, that means what’s going on behind closed doors in that police department is exactly the picture that I suspected from the incentive structure that they’ve set up.
Taya Graham:And I think you made a very good point, and that is noble and good to work with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and to make sure people are not driving around inebriated on the streets. Absolutely. That is for everyone’s benefit. But it does not benefit us to wrongfully arrest people. And I think police officers often lose sight of how devastating a tool an arrest actually is, how it really does upend your life. It seemed you had mentioned there was a specific officer in this case, Officer Gates, who’s making these arrests. And let’s say and hope that he is an outlier in making these unlawful DUI arrests. Do you think there is any chance of criminal action against him? Not just disciplinary, but actually criminal action?
Sarah Schielke:No, there’s not a lot to say back on that. So, he’s not an outlier. And what’s going on in Loveland, as I’ve detailed in this lawsuit, is not limited to Loveland. It is anywhere across the country, really. It is a widespread, ongoing issue. As criminal defense attorneys, we all know about it. And here and there we’re able to uncover some of the shrouding that’s around it and get a little peek of like, there’s a timed competition over here. Here’s somebody who’s getting some kind of award, literal trophies for having the most arrests. Rather than it should be, convictions are one thing, maybe. I still don’t think there should be incentives for anything, but it’s just for arrests. It’s not based on the quality of arrests. And it’s a nationwide problem, and it’s really kept out of the public eye.
And there’s no way there’s going to be any kind of criminal enforcement on it because it is so hard. I’m in the middle of it. It is so hard to lay out what’s going on long enough to keep people’s attention, to explain it to them, and to get through the stigma that goes with, drunk driving, drunk driving. But we’re so worried about drunk driving. And what I wish people could understand… And I would say, actually, there was a lot of reaction that I didn’t expect the amount of response to this lawsuit. I thought it might have been just too much, too many things to try and follow. But I think a lot of people can see themselves in my kind of situation, where most people are like, hey, I’m not driving drunk. So this is never going to happen to me.
And it’s like, oh, no. This very well could be you. All you need is it just to be a night when an officer is bored and maybe somebody spilled a beer on you where you were at. And in Colorado, you’re going to get a DUI arrest, especially if you encounter one of these officers. So, I don’t see much changing about it until there’s broader edification of the population about how it’s occurring, and the breadth and how expansive it is as it’s occurring. But, I will say that it should be a bigger and more important issue, because not only could it happen to any one of us, we all use the roads and are just trying to get from point A to point B, and our lives could be destroyed by getting wrongfully charged. But it also really just undermines drunk driving enforcement that needs to be done on people who are actually drunk driving.
It’s going to make it harder for the criminal justice system, for people to feel it’s credible on the topic of DUI arrests if there’s officers out there making DUI arrests for sport. So it’s really a big issue, not just as it affects us as individuals and destroys our lives and those consequences, but there’s broader consequences for us as a society and the ultimate goal that presumably we all agree on, which is to try and reduce drunk driving.
Taya Graham:Wow, there’s a lot to unpack here too. But I just have to ask, it’s stuck in my head. Can you describe a little bit of the details of the competitions for these arrests, how they work, or how you earn a trophy? And also whether or not Officer Gates has actually received one of these trophies or commendations?
Sarah Schielke:Yep. It’s Officer Gates, and he has received a trophy, a literal trophy. I featured the photograph throughout my [inaudible] complaint, because it’s gratuitous. It’s a big old literal, big gold trophy. And what happens is, just one example is that Mothers Against Drunk Driving here at the MADD Colorado, they have this competition they do a few times a year. They call it Tie One On For Safety. And if a department wants to participate, they get 48 hours. And whoever gets the most DUI arrests will receive a trophy and a portable breath test machine, which is expensive. And they get that in a ceremony, they have their pictures taken, and they get all this adulation on their Facebook page. And then the officers who are involved also can get individual awards from MADD for having the most arrests, and then they add that to their CVS. And onward the cycle goes.
Taya Graham:Wow. That is just astonishing. I understand that MADD as an organization is coming from the right place, but this has truly become a perverse incentive. And I can also imagine receiving a trophy like this, both the public adulation, and I would imagine this probably helps when it comes for promotion time as well. I have to ask, how do you think this relates to the broader problems that you have found with the Loveland Police Department? Because this is not the first stone you’ve turned over and found problems in this police department. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
Sarah Schielke:Yeah, I mean, I think there have been some serious entrenched systemic leadership issues in Loveland where, however they got there, and I do think it had a good degree to do with former Chief Ticer when he came in 2016, but I’ve also heard enough stuff to know that the seeds at least were there beforehand. But when chief Ticer came in, he came in very much aggressively on the platform of the DUI enforcement. I mean, that’s the first thing he’ll talk about anywhere he goes. But more of a broader theme that came with him and appears to have gone with his immediate subordinates is just this focus on numbers.
Following the lawsuit that I did with Karen Garner, the elderly woman with dementia who Officer Hopp attacked and broke her arm when she forgot to pay for $13 of stuff, there was an outside agency that came in to investigate what was going on at the department. It wasn’t a very hard-hitting investigation. I think that company wants to stay in business and have other police departments hire them. So the findings weren’t exactly cutthroat, they kept it pretty vague and made things just best practice recommendations. But even despite not really hitting them too hard, they still found and mentioned that officers were complaining about how Loveland had not a formal quota for arrests that need to be made per day, but the rest of the sentence was, but there is an expectation that you need to have 10 citations given per day.
And so it’s a non-quota quota. And when you have management telling you that numbers matter, tying promotions and positive reinforcement to numbers, when that’s the way you’re setting up something like a police department, then these types of crazy things are going to happen. I mean, because at the end of the day, what’s happening is that they’re running the police department like it’s a business. And it’s not a business, but it is a job. And say what you will about how poorly these police officers have behaved and how horrible it is what they’ve done to people. At least it can definitely still be said, like most of us, they just want to do good at their job.
And if these are the metrics that a police department is evaluating you at your job on, then people are going to try and do good at their job and really not think much further than that. So I think the issue in terms of just tying it to the broader themes goes to numbers and goes to treating what is being done to human lives, treating the power that we give police over us, the ability to really impact our lives. And all of that three dimensional, four dimensional intensity, to just flatten that down into just a number on a piece of paper and say, go get more of those, then you’re just going to have completely absurd results. Like DUI arrest competitions, multiple repeated, innocent people being charged with DUI, little women with dementia being tackled over something that should have been a warning at most about a failed shoplifting at best.
All these events really do, in a way… I mean, certainly there’s some other broader, bigger, issues in policing that play into it as well, of course. But if you want to look at it just through the lens of the wrongful DUI arrests, one in particular, it’s incentivizing a number. It’s tying job performance to numbers. And that’s not what it should be. I mean, what it should be is quality policing. I mean, the incentives should be related to the quality of the interactions you’re having with the public, the value you’re bringing back to people, the degree to which you’re reducing chaos, reducing violence, and reducing arrest numbers. How many incidents can we all think of that never needed someone to be arrested, or for hands to go on with somebody, and where it could have been transformed into a more positive or rehabilitative opportunity? But instead, when the job description is just getting numbers, then this is the type of policing we’re going to get.
Taya Graham:Very, very well said. And for the benefit of the people who watch or may be listening to the show, many of whom I know are very interested in protecting the Constitution and understanding our civil liberties, maybe you could just talk a little bit about which Constitutional Amendments or specific civil liberties the police are violating?
Sarah Schielke:Sure. Typically, when we’re in the context of anything happening outside of jail or prison, the civil rights, and if we’re not talking about freedom of speech either, which obviously implicates the First Amendment, almost all of it falls under the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, a wrongful arrest is, by definition, an unreasonable seizure. Excessive force is also a form of unreasonable seizure. The Fourth Amendment basically is the… The touchstone of it is reasonableness. And if you’re touching citizens or going through their stuff, you better do it in a reasonable way, is the basic gist of it. And when we bring the lawsuits, that’s the Amendment that really tends to cover basically everything we’re doing.
Taya Graham:Thank you so much. And I really do appreciate you letting me know what is the linchpin to these lawsuits. Another question I have is, do you think lawsuits like yours will lead to departmental change? And what do you hope the outcome from a lawsuit like yours will be?
Sarah Schielke:Oh man, in Loveland, I’m not holding my breath for much. I mean, certainly I’m getting a lot of people who lose their jobs or have to leave, but it’s always this one at a time piecemeal approach. I haven’t been particularly inspired by any of it in a way that I’m like, oh my gosh, it’s actually going to change, because they keep trying to do the, it was one bad apple, or, it’s just this isolated incident thing. And I’ve lost a lot of faith in the idea of there being any receptiveness, at least in Loveland where I’ve been focusing a lot of my efforts for the past year. I’ve lost most hope for the idea that they’re going to be receptive to broader implementation, or just being open to it.
I mean, just to boil it down to how easy it could be. I mean, I have, I don’t even know, like three or four lawsuits against the city of Loveland all involving pretty salacious videos. I’ve got – Spoiler alert – At least one or two more as soon as I get time to do them. And if I was Loveland, what I would expect or think would just be… It’s not a crazy idea in my mind, is that I would call me up and I would be like, you know what? Will you come on down to City Council and just tell us what the problem is, how to fix it? And I would happily do that. I love money, and I love that they want to pay for my kids’ college, and boats, and God knows what else.
But what’s more important to me for my legacy and for what my kids remember me for is making a difference. And I could tell them many things they could do that would make a big difference. But unfortunately, when police departments and the city leadership that is with them, when they just think it’s an us versus them mentality, and there’s no interest in collaboration or any even admission of wrongdoing, then it’s going to be cyclical, whack-a-mole, banging your head against the wall type of approach. And it’s too bad, but here we are.
Taya Graham:Well, I really, really hope you don’t give up, because I know there are so many citizens who not only need your assistance, but need to know that they can get representation like yours. And I think the more people in the media can actually shine a light that, hey, there is someone out there that’s trying to protect your civil liberties, it will let people know that they have these rights, they deserve to be protected and that they can get help. I have to agree that you may be playing whack-a-mole in Loveland specifically, but if we have one civil rights attorney like you in every city trying to do what they can, it really can make a difference.
And I would just like to say what I saw in our own city with State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby in her tenure as our city’s state’s attorney, she indicted more police officers – I think it was about 56, which is more indictments of officers than all the previous city’s state’s attorneys combined. So it wasn’t just because police officers only committed misconduct during that time period. I mean, as you know, we in Baltimore, are under consent decree. We’ve had a Department of Justice investigation. And of course, we have the infamous Gun Trace Task Force, which was a group of nine officers who dealt drugs, robbed residents, and stole overtime.
Sarah Schielke:I’ve seen those videos.
Taya Graham:Right. So you know our police department has been a busy one. So I would just say, yes, one person really can make a difference. So please don’t give up and try to hold onto that. Okay?
Sarah Schielke:I am going to hold on. I just adapt and innovate to figure out how to do it. And at this point if the police department and city leadership aren’t interested in being more proactive, then my plan and what I’ve been doing is exposing them. I post videos on my YouTube channel as frequently as I can, exposing bad police conduct, showing what I’m working on for lawsuits. And I’m not that into social media, but I’m recognizing the power of being able to just have people who I can show them what’s happening very quickly. And educating the public is going to get the same results eventually, too. And so that’s what I’m focusing my efforts on, for sure with Loveland and everywhere I go next, that’s going to be the threat hanging over police departments. If they don’t want to be proactive about it, I’m going to drag them kicking and screaming to the other side. We all got to get better.
Taya Graham: Is there anything that we can do just as an average person to protect ourselves from unlawful arrest?
Sarah Schielke:Are you talking about wrongful DUI?
Taya Graham:Well, a wrongful DUI, or really any form of unlawful arrest that you might have advice for.
Sarah Schielke:Well, do you want me to give you practical but deeply depressing advice, or more ethereal, ineffective advice? Because, there’s always these people who, when we have these insane events with police, who always respond to defend police by going, well, the person should have complied. They just should have answered questions. And so if your listeners want to know how to minimize their chances of having any dust ups with police or any wrongful arrest, they can be a, as it’s colloquially known, a bootlicker. They can sacrifice their right to remain silent. They can be falling and tripping over themselves to thank the officers for their service. And while not answering questions, still kind of answering just the perfect amount of questions and definitely making sure to never do anything that can be possibly perceived by the officer to embarrass them in even the slightest degree.
And also, in the DUI context, yes, most of our laws appear to have enshrined in them that you are allowed to have a drink at dinner and then drive home. It’s only the impaired driving that’s illegal. But that’s a catch. And so you should just give up ever driving again even if you’ve had one drink. Sacrifice everything that you think is your rights and you should be pretty good. So that’s the practical, depressing advice.
From a more ethereal, broader, long term perspective, how to avoid that is we need to be more educated, and we need to invest a lot more time and money into thinking of how we can do policing differently. The existing structures, the existing mentalities, the existing framework, all of it is really broken. It’s so deeply broken that, until we… I think you and I talked about last time a while ago, think about adding a lot more actual serious education, social work type of stuff with police officers. Paying more to attract better people.
So long as it’s still people who got all Cs in high school and now just want some power, so long as we’re making the bar for admission like right there and having most of the non-police citizens not paying very close attention and just wanting to feel safe and hoping that the offshoots of that and side effects of that ambivalence don’t affect them personally, then it’s never going to get better. But if people can educate themselves and demand more and possibly consider a new framework, then maybe things will change. But until then, they’re just going to keep buying me boats.
Taya Graham:Okay. That’s great. I will end on that note. Until then, they’re going to keep buying me boats. I love that. And you said, well, they can. And this here, this stuck with me too. One of the safest things you can do – And the people in my comments and copwatcher community often use this terminology – The safest thing you can do is use the bootlicker approach. Because in all honesty, you may be able to beat the rap, but you will not beat the ride.
Sarah Schielke:You will not. So it’s up to you.
Taya Graham:Sarah Schielke, thank you so much for your time and the work you’re doing to protect people’s civil liberties. Thank you so much. And of course, I want to mention that if anyone wants to keep track of Sarah’s work in Colorado, be sure to check out her YouTube channel Sarah Schielke at Life & Liberty Law, where she posts the body camera footage, police headquarters video footage, as well as the vital and revealing information she has uncovered during her investigations. And I want to thank everyone who took the time to listen and actually made it to the end of the podcast. Thank you. I appreciate you. And I hope that having access to the full version of our PAR interviews was of some interest and hopefully some benefit as well. My name is Taya Graham, and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
Since 2013, Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and host of The Chris Hedges Report, has taught college courses in drama, literature, philosophy, and history at East Jersey State Prison (aka “Rahway”) and other New Jersey prisons. In one such course, after reading plays by Amiri Baraka and August Wilson, among others, Hedges’ students wrote a play of their own. The play, Caged, would eventually be published and performed at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey, for a month-long run in 2018 to sold-out audiences. In his latest book, Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison, Hedges chronicles the journey he and his class embarked on together. Joining Mansa Musa on Rattling the Bars, Hedges speaks about his book and the transformations he witnessed among the men he taught behind prison walls.
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m Mansa Musa, co-hosting with Eddie Conway. Today, we have an extraordinary guest. We have Chris Hedges, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, was a foreign correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East and the Balkans for 15 years. His body of work is endless in a lot of regards. A Master of Divinity of Harvard University, and I’m just scratching the surface. He wrote a book entitled Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison. We’ll be discussing this book among other things today. Welcome, Chris.
Chris Hedges: Thank you.
Mansa Musa: Let’s start by looking at some of the things that you said in your book. You ventured into Rahway prison, maximum security prison, September the 5th of 2013, and you said in your book that this was a calling. Explain that.
Chris Hedges: Well, I had gone to Harvard Divinity School, but I’d lived in Roxbury, which is a depressed urban area in Boston, and ran a small church because I wanted to be an inner city minister. And I eventually left divinity school to become a journalist. But I did spend two and a half years in the inner city, which, as somebody who grew up white, middle-class, was perhaps the most formative experience in my life because it taught me how the interlocking systems of institutional racism and how they work. The probation officers, the courts, the police, the schools, the banks, they all work in concert to keep the poor poor. But you don’t really see it until you live inside what Malcolm X called, one of these internal colonies.
I was overseas for 20 years. I came back. My neighbor, who was the head of the history department at the College of New Jersey – This was before Rutgers had a college program – Was teaching semester-long courses because after people got their GEDs, there wasn’t anything for them to continue their education. So she would teach like a history course, the same kind of course she taught at the College of New Jersey. It didn’t have any academic validity, but if the students finished the course, she would print up on her home computer a certificate. It would go in their file. When they went before the parole board, it would show positive activity that they had done while they were incarcerated.
So I began there. And then in 2013, Rutgers began a degree program, which has been quite successful, originally an associate’s degree, now a full BA degree, and I started teaching there. But it was returning to my original calling in a sense that I went back to that community that I had worked with and thought I was going to spend most of my life working with as a minister, and so it was a kind of return. You know, they say, life’s not a line, it’s a circle.
Mansa Musa: Okay. And let’s look at the book in and of itself, Our Class. This book, Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison, has a unique way of unpacking the trauma that most of us go through from mass incarceration. But more importantly, in terms of using drama to get the men to unpack traumatic experiences. Talk about that. How did you come up with this concept? Because, as I said, in and of itself, I was locked up 48 years in the Maryland prison system, so I’m real familiar with prison activity, and we sponsor a lot of activities, but this particular concept and the way you utilize it to get men to go into areas that were a lot of times hard to address or unpack. How were you able to come up with this particular approach?
Chris Hedges: It was completely accidental. Well, that’s probably why it worked. It wasn’t premeditated. So I was teaching a course on drama. Well, not surprisingly, most people in the class, had 28 students, had no firsthand experience with drama because they don’t have $150 to go buy a ticket to see something in New York. And so I decided, because drama, everything is conveyed primarily through dialogue – Although of course great actors bring a lot to that – But primarily through dialogue. And so just on a whim, I said, well, why don’t you write scenes from your own life, but in dialogue, in dramatic dialogue, so that they could become familiar with the form of drama.
But what I didn’t know is that it had gotten around inside the prison that I was a writer. One of my students actually was quite familiar with my work, and he had recruited the best writers in the prison. And as you know, there are always within a prison a group of people who take writing very seriously. My students, they turned their cells into libraries. But I had about a half dozen extremely gifted writers. So when they wrote those scenes, I brought them home. My wife is an actor, and I showed her those scenes. And after two, three weeks, the quality was still so exemplary that I decided that I would help them write a play.
Well, again, I didn’t understand what I was doing. Because as you know, in a prison, you don’t ask what people are in for, people don’t even use their legal names in prison. You have to build those emotional walls because any sign of weakness, any sign of fear, any sign of vulnerability, even sensitivity, makes you prey, can make you prey for predators in prison. So you keep those walls up. And by getting them to write out of their own life, of course what they were doing is dredging up these traumatic, emotional experiences, both inside and outside prison that many had never spoken about ever. Even though they may have been in a cell with somebody for years, they’d never mentioned it.
I mean, just one example, one of my students, I said, we were trying to work on a scene with a mother. My job was to kind of paste everything together. And I said, well, write just a dialogue with your mother. And at the end of the class, one of the students came up and said, well, what if we’re a product of rape? And I said, well, that’s what you have to write. So what he writes is the phone call that he makes from the county when, after he is picked up. He’s from Patterson. He’s picked up in a car with his half-brother. There’s a gun in the car. If somebody doesn’t claim it, then everybody’s going to get a weapons charge. He says it’s his gun. It wasn’t his gun. It was his half-brother’s gun. But the conversation with his mother is, it doesn’t matter, Ma, I was never supposed to be here anyway. And you have the son you love. He went to prison to essentially give his mother the son she loved.
And, of course, it was deeply emotional. But that’s what happened that inadvertently these walls crumbled in that process. And there were things that people wrote that they couldn’t… It was so emotional, they couldn’t even read it. And it created a kind of bonding in that classroom, which, to this day, I mean, that was 2013. I’m at the gate when these guys get out. I have continued relationships with them. They have relationships in the prison that are different from other relationships because essentially, within that classroom setting through the process of writing that play – Which was eventually published and eventually performed by the professional theater in Trenton, was sold out every night, was called Caged – They told the truth about their lives, their experiences, that just doesn’t get heard within a prison setting. Well, very rarely.
Mansa Musa: And that brings me to my next question, because, as you eloquently expressed how through this writing they were given this opportunity. I know from experience that a lot of us that come into prison, a lot of us are illiterate. A lot of us don’t have the ability to articulate ourselves in a literary capacity. But in this case, one, you got the best writers. But more importantly, in exposing them to writing, did you sense that they had something in them to talk about and that this writing would give them the outlet to convey what they verbally, normally convey amongst themselves in private? We talk a lot amongst ourselves. But did you sense that, at some point, did you sense that this writing, that this mechanism right here was going to allow you to be able to get them to be more comfortable with what they were saying, and more importantly, to change their thinking about themselves and the world around them?
Chris Hedges: I don’t know how much I changed their thinking. It was more that I allowed those interior thoughts through that process to be expressed. You have to remember, these are highly educated people. Several students in that class went on to graduate summa cum laude from Rutgers University. And so they had done a lot of thinking themselves and a lot of self-reflection. But here it came out and it was expressed, and pain, the pain that they carried. It was interesting how many of the students in the class, because they’re big guys, a lot of them, they all lift weights. They call it The 400 Club because they all bench over 400. But they all often talked about bullying, which was a very common experience within the classroom as children. They had been bullied. So just all sorts of pain that they had endured, loss, grief, that struggle to hold together a family.
The whole plot line of the play was based on a true story about a guy who’d been picked up for a crime he didn’t commit. He was the sole worker in the family, so he took care of the mother who had cancer and [his] 16-year old brother. Well, of course he goes into prison and the world collapses. His mother dies, his brother gets evicted, ends up on the streets, and he starts to hustle to get money to get a lawyer for his brother. And this is a very… His lawyer calls it a Halley’s Comet experience. He actually got his conviction overturned eventually after a few years, but the world had disintegrated because of that, and that was the plot line of the play.
So these people, they’re removed from their communities. They’re removed from their children. They’re removed from their families. They’re powerless in many ways to try and help. I mean, they try to be fathers over the phone, but there’s a lot of anger that is expressed by the children, and then they stop coming. As you know, they always say after about five years, then the visits get scarcer and scarcer. And there are many cases I had with students who simply told them, because it’s a humiliating process to go through a visit, the guards will treat the families, even the children, not much better than the prisoners. And a lot of people just say, don’t visit, especially to their mothers. The relationships disintegrate, the marriages. I had students who were paralegals who wrote essentially the divorces for their wives, and we forget about all of that and what that does to people on the inside. But also what that does, because prison affects not only those who were inside, but those who are outside in innumerable ways, not least of which is financial, because prisons are completely predatory.
So it’s Global Tel Link and Aramark and Jpay and the commissary, everything is privatized. Plus you got fines. I mean, you’re extracting money from the poorest of the poor. It’s just modern-day slavery. [crosstalk] Prisons are basically plantations. They’re run like plantations. Even the way I was once at an event and I watched the warden, who had been a guard in this prison, come up. And I just watched all my students flatter him. I mean, he was even blushing. And I said to them afterwards, I said, because I know what they think of him and what they… And it reminded me exactly of what W.E.B. Du Bois would write about that kind of double consciousness, that if you’re Black in a situation like that, you’ve got to understand the white world and understand your own world. But of course, that white hierarchy doesn’t understand the Black world at all, even though they’re in physical close proximity to it.
But there was a perfect example. They hate the warden, obviously, but they realized within that power structure, because he had total power in the same way the plantation owner has total power, they had to flatter him in such a way, and which became a kind of form of manipulation, obviously.
All of those things were captured in the play. Including the prison code. So you have a kind of formal code. If somebody dishonors you or disrespects you, you’re supposed to respond. But as my students said, that code is in fact more often violated than followed. The way they put it is, you may have somebody come in who did something to a member of your family, and the code may say that you have to seek revenge, but in their words, you’re a phantom and he’s a phantom, and walk by. I mean, as a prison is a complex subculture, which you know obviously better than I do. But all of that got wrapped into this amazing play.
Mansa Musa: And let’s dial down on, let’s talk about how you were able to like… And first of all, how long was this process?
Chris Hedges: Four months.
Mansa Musa: Okay. So let’s talk about how you were able to get them to maintain the mission on this emotional rollercoaster. Because, as you spoke, the one person said, well, your father was in this cell, or another person that is prepared to follow the code and do something. And by the same token, is talked out of it or the different things that go on in the conversation that you… How were you able to get them to stay focused on the mission in the midst of this emotional rollercoaster? Because remember, I know for a fact, I’ve been in this environment that, oh, I’ll go on a diatribe. You know, something comes up in my head and you say, okay, read what you wrote. And then at some point I go into a diatribe. How were you able to get around those types of situations and get everybody to stay focused on the mission?
Chris Hedges: Right. Well, that was my job. I was the editor, so I would take the 28 scenes – And I added another class, so we’re meeting twice a week. You can sign students up for remedial help according to the prison so I just signed all 28 students up for remedial help and got them for another day. But I would cobble it together, sometimes taking parts of one scene with another scene. Obviously I went back to the class and read it to them. They had to approve it. They were reticent at first, people coming in from the outside, especially if you’re white, there is that they don’t like do-gooders, they don’t really want to, they’re not… It’s that kind of exoticism people feel towards prisoners like visiting animals in a zoo. I mean they are aware of all that stuff, so they’re careful.
I mean, they have good antennas. There’s a chapter called “Antennas”. And I know as a war correspondent, you need a good antenna just to survive, and if you don’t have it, you don’t survive. That was true in war, it’s also true in prison, also true for their experiences on the street which were violent and dangerous. So they have highly developed antennas to sense people out. And so they watched me at first and they kept their distance, but I don’t pretend to be anything that I’m not. I don’t pretend to understand where they come from. I’m always completely honest. And I don’t go in there in any way and pretend I’m hip, which would be a catastrophic disaster. I actually wear a suit. I wear a suit, just as I’ve taught at Princeton or Columbia, just as I would at Princeton or Columbia. And I expect the same decorum and the same level, academic level, which I get, as I would for students at Princeton, Columbia, NYU, or any other school I’ve taught at.
And I think that there was that sense that I was honest and I was real and I do care. And then it was watching other students make that first emotional step that gave them the space to make it. I mean, we were reading plays. We were reading August Wilson and Amiri Baraka and James Baldwin, so I had to teach the play. But people would get really restless if I didn’t keep room at the end for them, because they all wanted to get up. They would get up in front of the class and read it. It was very moving, and then everyone would applaud. And they all wanted, with some exceptions when it was just too emotional, they all wanted to read what they’d done. And so it had a… The force was built-in, it wasn’t built by me necessarily, it was built within the class, that they decided to take those emotional steps, that they had the courage to be vulnerable. And a few people stepped out first and then the rest followed.
Mansa Musa: And I want to venture in that area a little bit more because the safe space, you hear this term a lot. And in a reentry community and even in prison, like I was in supermax, and one of the tiers I was on, they had a lot of guys who had a lot of open charges. So you couldn’t come on that tier unless somebody sanctioned you to come on that tier, creating a safe space that was making sure that the person that came on that tier would not go back and write the state’s attorney and say, oh, I heard… So when did you realize, or when did you recognize that you had actually, that through this process, you had created a safe space? Because if you don’t have no safe space, then you going to get a lot of storytelling, and it’s going to be a lot of fabrication, and you’re not going to get what you really want, and that’s the men to open up and talk about traumatic events in their lives and be able to process that information?
Chris Hedges: Yeah. So some of the students tried to write not out of their own experience, but like out of a television script, like The Wire or something, or I don’t know what you thought of The Wire. I couldn’t watch it. I just thought it was romanticized crap. But yeah, it was very popular, maybe –
Mansa Musa: Amen. Amen.
Chris Hedges: Okay. I didn’t… Just wasn’t real for me. Anyway, but they would try to write like that or they’d write out of some gangster film or something, but I could smell it. Even though I don’t know the street, I could just smell that it wasn’t real. And obviously any well-run prison has figures. I’m talking about prisoners who are leaders and respected, not only by the other prisoners, by the administration and the guards as well. And they’re kind of interlocutors, they’re the people the guards will go to. They’re honest. They may be the tier rep. I don’t know, but they have a status within.
I had three guys like that in the prison. I mean, really one of them was the head of the Muslim community, and they were really serious guys. And they were the ones who sat in the back row and they watched me the closest. But when they stepped forward, then I think it opened the door for everyone else. And they would call out that kind of writing because it wasn’t real, it was like… I like Tupac a lot. I think he’s amazing. But again, it was that romanticizing gangster life. And that’s why the play is real, because they made sure it was real.
I was teaching at the supermax prison in Trenton, and one of my students gave me this story he’d written about driving a Lexus and drinking Cristal champagne, all this kind of stuff. And he made his money robbing other drug dealers. There’s this whole group of people who will rob. Like, well, I’ve had students who are big drug dealers. They say, I don’t even empty my garbage unless I got a gun, which isn’t for the cops. It’s because they know there’s a group of people who know he’s got drugs and know he’s got money and they’ll take it from him. And so I gave it to one of my students, Boris, who was out by then. He said, you go back and tell him that he never made a dime. And I went back, gave it to him and I said, well, I don’t know anything about it, and the guy looked, he goes, yeah, it’s true.
So we had to shatter… Because mass media is so powerful, it creates these images that are unreal. And that was shattered. Not so much by me, because I don’t have the expertise to do it, but by other people in the classroom who just called it out for what it was. I mean, I remember once, because there was a question of whether a guy was going to get shanked or stabbed in the play, because in the play they’d killed his brother, and I was asking the class. I said, well, if you shank somebody, don’t you know you could get another life bid? I mean, you’re not going to escape. They’re going to… And everybody goes, oh yeah, they know, they know. And at the end of the class, one of the guys comes up and he goes, everything you heard is crap, because I shanked somebody in another prison, and let me tell you, I wasn’t thinking about anything that. The only thing I was thinking about was taking the guy out.
Mansa Musa: Right. Yeah.
Chris Hedges: Even within the prison classroom, there had to be checks like that.
Mansa Musa: Right. And, oh, let’s move into, I had asked you earlier and you referenced that you don’t know whether you changed their thinking. And in researching this interview, I was revisiting an essay that Huey Newton wrote called “Prison, Where Is Thy Victory?” And in this essay, he identifies that how, at some point in time, the contradiction between in the prison population becomes to the point where you have the illegitimate capitalist, those of us that are still striving to get a lot of money, although illegitimately, not saying that capitalism is legitimate, and then when he talks about prisoners becoming politicized and becoming political prisoners. In this process, did you see that type of transition? Because I know you said you deal with them when they’re coming out and you maintain… Have you seen them take a step forward in terms of becoming more political and advocating for the abolition of prison or advocating for prisoner’s rights or advocating for more programs or more activities where prisoners can be able to write our story?
Chris Hedges: Yeah. Well, first of all, the people that I deal with are pretty exceptional intellectuals who’ve turned their cells into libraries, who have read voraciously, came out of failed school systems. But if they hadn’t come out of failed school systems, they would’ve excelled academically. And they’re older. I mean, most of the guys I teach are probably, average age, in their 40s, because they’re in a medium security prison, but a lot of them started out at Trenton at the supermax and then after a decade they get transferred. So I would say their political consciousness is pretty high, especially, I found, among the Muslims. I don’t know what your experience is, but in the prisons that I’ve taught in New Jersey, and I think largely because of Malcolm X and others, they were probably the most politicized. I mean, I’ve taught Five Percenters and others. Of course, if you come in and you have a political consciousness, that’s usually a ticket to ad seg.
Mansa Musa: Pretty much, yeah.
Chris Hedges: Pretty quick. Pretty right there, you don’t have to commit any prison infraction –
Mansa Musa: Your thinking is valid enough.
Chris Hedges: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, that’s why ad seg was created. It was for the [crosstalk]
Mansa Musa: So true.
Chris Hedges: So like I taught a class where they had a sit-down strike. Well of course they found out who the leaders were. That’s all they cared [about]. Everybody’s cell was strip searched, and those guys were sent to another prison and put in indefinite solitary confinement. Like the Free Alabama Movement. They used to call me – I haven’t talked to them for a while – On clandestine cell phones, but they’re in indefinite solitary. So the goal is to isolate people with any kind of consciousness because prison authorities find that dangerous. If you look at a manual, there are manuals held by slaveholders. Kenneth Stampp wrote a book on it called The Peculiar Institution. But there were, because if you think about a plantation, 98% of people on there are enslaved. So how do you divide them?
Well, you’ve got people working the house, you’ve got drivers, but there’s a whole method. And there are manuals that tell slaveholders how to keep an enslaved population divided against itself. And that’s exactly how prisons work. It is the same. So, all my classes have informants. They call them snitches. We all know who they are. And if you got a prison uprising, they’re always the first to get it, by the way, like the Lucasville prison uprising. [crosstalk].
I had one guy, he was in the Black Liberation Army. I didn’t teach him, but I know him, Ojore Lutalo, and he wouldn’t wear the prison uniform. He wouldn’t even put it on. But on his tier, wherever the snitches were, their cells somehow got lit on fire until there weren’t any more snitches. So they got all sorts of tricks to figure this out. Like if they got three people they think are snitches, they’ll tell one of them there’s a shank in the yard. In the yard, they’ll tell another one there’s a shank under a table somewhere. They’ll tell another one – And then they’ll wait and see where the guards go, and then they know which one was the snitch. So yeah, if there’s any unity within the prison, which we saw in Attica back in, what was Attica, ’73?
Mansa Musa: ’70.
Chris Hedges: ’70, was it? Any kind of unity like that is dangerous. They have to keep them divided and they have lots of dirty ways to do it.
Mansa Musa: Okay, let’s talk about Our Class and how was Our Class, because you say Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison. How was the prison transformed by Our Class?
Chris Hedges: Well, I would say, in this way, it gave them a voice outside of those walls. So we had it was a hundred seat theater where the play ran for a month. But we had one night where it was just for the families, and about five minutes into the play I heard people beginning to sniffle, and then suddenly everybody just cried through the whole play. And it was making their voices heard and giving them dignity and respect and honoring their suffering. That was the… And it broke outside of those walls.
It was interesting, because we had to raise some money to help mount the play, so a friend of mine did a like… I don’t know what it’s called, GoFundMe or something. Anyway, he kept saying all these donations, like $2, $4, well, it turns out it was the families of my students who don’t have any money who were sending whatever they could to put this plan – I think that is the transformation. I think that there is transformation. There can be transformation. I don’t want to be romantic about suffering, because a lot of suffering you don’t get transformed, you just get destroyed. I mean, let’s be real about that. But transformation didn’t come from me. It came from them. And I think that what I did by helping them write that play is not so much change what was inside of them, but allow others to see it and allow them to express it.
Mansa Musa: Right. And more importantly, this whole process humanizes these individuals. And I think Conrey George said that in the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration, which we already know, we recognize it’s the new plantation. He said that the goal is to destroy your individuality, to make you a collective entity, moving you in a herd manner, whereas I don’t have any identity so therefore I don’t have any voice. If I don’t have a voice, I don’t have any individuality, and I’m just a number. But with this, I think my takeaway from this whole process was that you were able to give people that individuality, to let people see them for who they are and humanizing them. Because everybody goes through something in society. But I think you referenced Michelle Alexander in the introduction where it was talking about how I say, well, we’re the most expendable class of people. Prisoners, you get the right to use us as a doormat. Chris, you got the last word on this. What do you want our listeners and our viewers to take away from Our Class?
Chris Hedges: I want them to see how remarkable these people are and what integrity they have and what brilliance they have and how, not just they and their families are hurt by this system but we as a community are hurt, and we have to destroy the system. We have deindustrialized cities like Baltimore and Newark and everywhere else and ruptured what sociologists would call social bonds. And so the forms of social control are militarized police who act as internal armies of occupation, and the prison system. That’s why we have the largest prison system in the world. And it’s a moral responsibility for us to destroy it. And I think the mechanism by which we will destroy it is not by writing to our congresspeople who don’t give a damn, they earn money from the prison-industrial complex, they’re tools of the prison-industrial complex.
I think the hope is through strikes internally within the prison, there have been several, and those strikes have a core demand which is that people have to be paid a fair wage, a minimum wage for the work. Remember, people are working 40 hours a week in a prison in New Jersey and making $22 and they don’t have social security. But if we force the prison system to pay a living wage for the work that’s done – And of course under the 13th Amendment, prisoners are excluded from a living wage – Then we can begin to cripple the system. But making appeals to conscience or the people in power I think is useless. I mean, that’s what I get from people on the inside, that we have to support them. I mean, one of the Free Alabama people said, don’t go to the State House to protest, go in front of the prison, especially when we’re trying to carry out a strike.
So, it is, I think, one of the most monstrous… We’ve done a lot of monstrous things in this empire from Guantanamo to Iraq to everywhere else, but it’s just monstrous what we do to our own. I mean, my students tell me after six days in solitary they begin to go crazy, which is what solitary is designed to do. We drive by these institutions, but we don’t stop and investigate what’s being done to our fellow citizens on the inside. And we all, those of us who are on the outside I think have a moral responsibility to stop what’s being done because it’s inhuman, it’s cruel, and it’s unjust.
Mansa Musa: There you have it. The real news about the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration, a new form of slavery. The prisoners are the chattel. But in the midst of all this, in the midst of all this degradation and inhumanity and dehumanization, the phoenix rose in the form of Our Class, where prisoners were able to unpack the traumatic events that took place in their lives and give context to these things and be able to give healing at the same time. Thank you, Chris. Thank you for this remarkable work that you have done on behalf of those of us that’s disenfranchised and marginalized. Thank you very much.
Chris Hedges: No, thanks for doing it. I appreciate it.
The story of an El Paso family’s terrifying encounter with police shows just how treacherous it can be when we point our cameras at law enforcement. PAR speaks to members of the family, who were doing just that when cops decided to arrest them during a violent raid on their home. We dig deep into police records and examine video evidence that reveals how law enforcement can still retaliate when cameras are pointed at them.
Pre-Production/Studio: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Dwayne Gladden
TRANSCRIPT
The transcript of this episode will be made available as soon as possible.
The prison-industrial complex has many ways of turning the incarceration of human beings into a profitable business model. In New York state, new regulations targeting care packages for prisoners show this logic at work. Friends and families of incarcerated people can no longer send packages containing food to those inside, and are now limited to sending two “non-food packages” a year, purchased from pre-approved, third-party vendors. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa interviews writer Molly Hagan about this draconian new policy and her recent report for The Appeal, “New York’s Prison Package Ban Places New Burdens on the Incarcerated.”
Molly Hagan is a writer based in New York City, who has taught creative writing at the Women’s Prison Association.
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m Mansa Musa, co-host with Eddie Conway. First, let’s report on Eddie Conway. Eddie Conway is doing great. We expect to have Eddie Conway home either in July or early August, and hopefully he’ll be back in this space or making a contribution in some shape, form, or fashion.
When we think about the prison-industrial complex and all the problems that are associated with it, we’ve explored multiple things that go on with it. But here today to talk about one of the most draconian policies to come out in the past year is Molly Hagan. And she’s going to talk about the restrictions or the change in the prison policy that allows prisoners’ families to provide fresh vegetables and foods for prisoners in the New York State Prison. And we want to acknowledge right out the gate that we recognize, and we did a series on this about food and the type of foods that’s being served to prisoners, and the fact that there’s no nutritional value whatsoever to them. Any effort to provide nutrition outside of the commissary, which very rarely provides any type of nutritional value, should be supported. But here to talk about this is Molly. Molly works as a creative writer. She’s in New York City. Molly, introduce yourself to the Rattling the Bars viewers.
Molly Hagan: Hi, I’m Molly Hagan. Thanks Mansa, thanks so much for having me. I’m Molly Hagan, and I wrote a piece about New York State’s new prison package policy for The Appeal.
Mansa Musa: All right, now let’s just jump right into it. This is the background: New York recently came up with a repeal of a policy which allowed prisoners’ families to provide fresh vegetables and other fresh nutritional value foods to prisoners at no cost to the Department of Correction, at no cost to the State of New York, but money’s coming out of their pocket. And they had a system that they were going through to check and make sure that they met the requirements. And the requirements, being like all things within the prison-industrial complex, are rigid. So they were able to overcome the rigidity of the policy. But they came up with this policy. Now, prior to them coming up with this policy, to your knowledge, how long had this package program been in existence, to your knowledge?
Molly Hagan: Well, the new policy was announced in late April. So previous to May of this year, people in prison were allowed to receive two packages of food totalling 35 pounds every month. And under these new rules that went into effect at some facilities in New York State in May, they can’t receive any fresh food packages from family and friends. All packages have to come through third party vendors. And on top of that, they’re only allowed two non-food packages every year.
Mansa Musa: And in terms of the allowance, how was this received by the prison population throughout New York State?
Molly Hagan: I think there was a lot of alarm. I was getting emails from women at Bedford Hills. I think the alarm also came from the fact that New York State tried to put through a similar policy in 2018, and there’s some interesting relationship between these two policies. In 2018, New York State tried to say families and support systems, people who communicate with people on the inside, couldn’t send any packages at all, and further, had to go through a list of six approved vendors. And so there was an outcry when that policy was instated. I think a lot of groups found a way to organize against it because it was very directly benefiting six specific companies and keeping Union Supply, major corporations in the prison industry. And there were a lot of actual writers groups, like PEN of America, who organized because the listed groups and vendors had a pretty lousy selection of books. So this policy caused a major uproar in New York State, and then Governor Cuomo rescinded it after 10 days. So I think that when I was receiving emails about this policy, people in prison were afraid that it was just a redo of that policy.
Mansa Musa: And we recognize that they’re famous for that. We recognize that based on what you’re saying that this food package program has been in existence at least four or five years prior to them trying to get rid of it, and then ultimately getting rid of it. So in terms of that, how cost effective was this as far as for the system? Because family members are providing food for prisoners. That means that it would stand to reason that if I’m getting fresh vegetables and fresh food, I would no longer need to go into the [inaudible] or kitchen. And that means, ultimately, the kitchen budget is going to shrink. Because they’re going to make the connection, any way they can save a penny. To your knowledge, has this program been successful in terms of one, providing healthier food for prisoners, and two helping prisoners’ families maintain a relationship between them and their loved ones?
Molly Hagan: You were talking about the two food packages every month?
Mansa Musa: Yes.
Molly Hagan: Right. I think it was an excellent policy. Everyone seemed to be very happy with it. There are groups, like there’s a group called Sweet Freedom Farm Collective upstate, and they have a farmer’s market outside of Sing Sing Facility where families can come pick up free fresh vegetables and bring them inside. I think people were just very, very happy with the way this policy was working. And it was the only reliable way that people in prison had any access to fresh food.
Mansa Musa: Okay. First, let’s explore this. In the article, you said that the allegations that’s being made as to why the policy is being changed is because the system, the prison-industrial complex, the fascists, are alleging that these packages, these two food packages, are being used to smuggle contraband into the institution. And that not only the contraband is creating a problem for security, but it’s also causing an uptick in violence. All right. To your knowledge, is it a correlation between these packages and what they’re alleging? Or is this just some arbitrary, bogus position they’re taking in order to justify taking something that’s helping family members and prisoners?
Molly Hagan: Right. I have yet to see a relationship between the food packages people bring when they visit their loved one in prison and the violence and contraband issue. The families that I talked to felt very much that this policy felt like a punishment. It felt like retaliation. Some of them use the word retaliation for the new HALT Solitary Confinement Act. Corrections officers have been talking for years about their frustrations with this act that will limit the use of solitary confinement as punishment. It’s not directly stated in the memo, but representatives from corrections officers’ unions have said something to this effect, which is that they need new ways to punish people. And that when you can’t put people in solitary confinement, you can deprive them of other things. So I think families definitely interpret the policy that way.
And then what I thought was really interesting was that no family member I spoke to said that, oh, contraband drugs or weapons or whatever, never comes through packages. They said it happens extremely rarely. But they’re like, the idea that this policy banning those packages would have any serious effect on what’s going on inside prisons is ludicrous. They’re incredulous about it.
Mansa Musa: Yeah. And also, we recognize from the article, and you can speak on this, is that we had the institution locked down all of 2020 because of COVID. A lot of restrictions were on it from March of 2020 to December of 2020. And we had serious limitations and restrictions on movement of prisoners and families’ access to them. Much less a family member coming all the way, traveling nearly eight hours to get to see someone and then being turned away. That the overdoses and violence had increased during this period. Can you speak on this? And is this an indication that maybe the source or the source of the contraband is primarily the guards or staff?
Molly Hagan: Yeah. First I’ll say that, anecdotally, every family member that I talked to said the primary source of the contraband is the guards themselves. It of course is very difficult to find documentation that definitively proves this. But we did find that in 2020, as you’re saying, when for most of the year New York State prisons were closed to visitors, and then – Also I will say, families I talked to during that time shifted to using third party vendors. There were drugs still in the prisons, which we know because of officer use of Narcan rose during that time.
Mansa Musa: All right. And we also recognize that. And I’ve served 48 years in prison prior to being released. I’ve been out all of two years. I was in the Maryland prison system. And I can definitively say that guards were bringing contraband in. This is public information. In the detention center in Baltimore city, they had an organized crime ring where the officers from the major on down were running interference for someone that was providing and issuing drugs to people. We had incidents where they closed the whole institution down and found out that the guards were the major source. So this is not something that’s not known.
But let’s examine the cause behind the whole thing. And I think that we need to flush this point out. It’s a known fact that the way prisons are controlled is through fear and punishment. And if they can’t have fear and punishment, then they feel like they don’t have any control. Programs are not something that they offer. This new task force, in terms of their recognition of wanting to have the solitary confinement unit, have you, in your knowledge, or do you know of any relationship between the unions and this security group or goon squad, as we call it, this goon squad. Is there any relationship between the union, this goon squad, and some of the vendors that they’re offering? Because then the alternative is that you have to use an external vendor. And in most cases, the vendors monetize and they privatize the services that are being offered to prisoners, causing the prisoner’s family to have to spend more money, and prisoners get poor services. To your knowledge, is there correlation between the union and this particular bill and the private industries that they’re marketing for family members to use?
Molly Hagan: In this particular instance, I haven’t found a correlation, but it is an open question that a lot of policies that are supported by correction officers’ unions that are about safety, ostensibly, also benefit private companies that will come in and say, if there are drug-soaked papers, like letters that are soaked in drugs coming into the prison, we’ll digitize those for you so that the drugs won’t come in on the paper. You can view the digital letter instead. I mean, there is that correlation that begs that question. And that is something I’m very interested in. But there is nothing that I can definitively say that –
Mansa Musa: Well, it’s not far-fetched to believe that when you have a situation… I remember a situation like this. I remember when I was incarcerated, the former commissioner of correction, once he was no longer the commissioner of correction, he had created a mechanism where he could provide prisoners with sports apparel. He had contracted with a sports apparel company on the street, and he had used his network of being a former commissioner to provide sports apparel for prisoners. And when I was talking to him, he said that when he was a commissioner, he noticed that the number one thing that most of us were trying to get was tennis shoes, sweatshirts, and sports apparel. So he seen it was a market and he opened that door and created it. So it’s not far-fetched to believe that the unions and these private corporations have some type of merger in terms of understanding, well, if you get this policy to pass, we’ll support your union, make financial contributions.
That’s not a theory. That’s an actual fact that I know for a fact, based on my own personal experience and based on the fact that we found out that the telephone companies that were being used for providing phone service for prisoners, the institution was getting 40% of the kickback from the services. So it’s not unrealistic to believe that this policy, it’s premeditated on the part of the union to get this reversed so they can maintain a healthy relationship with corporate America that’s benefiting from the prison-industrial complex. Let’s talk about what can be done, or what’s some of the things that you think that can be done to try to educate and try to change or reverse this policy. Because this policy as it exists now is only further repressing people. And we already recognize that prisoners are not getting no nutritional value foods while they’re incarcerated. We recognize that. So what are some of the things that you think should be done and can be done, from your own personal experience or what people are telling you, that you’re networking with that’s incarcerated?
Molly Hagan: Well, what I can say is that there is some investigation into this, some political investigation into the new policy, questions about who exactly the prison violence task force is. I tried to get the physical document of recommendations that recommended this policy, and there isn’t one. So I think to dig into those things, because what really frustrates me about this policy is that what I’m hearing from people inside is that not only will this policy limit and in some cases wipe out their connection to fresh food, it will also make the problems that are in the prisons worse. I’m hearing there is drug abuse, there is violence, but what that speaks to is deprivation and punishment. And is the answer more deprivation and punishment? So I think that’s a question that needs to be asked.
And then also I think people need to understand that when an individual is incarcerated, you’re also incarcerating a family and a support network. And whole communities are drained of wealth. I talked to a guy who just got out of prison. I think he served about 12 years. He’s studying to become a nutritionist. And he is saying, we’re looking at generational health problems that come from the poor nutrition of the food in prison. So it’s about food, but it’s about so much more. And the policy affects people outside the prison walls.
Mansa Musa: And that’s a good point that you raised earlier, and I noticed from my own personal experience, when they restricted and took certain things that we were allowed to get, it created a more hostile prison environment. But in terms of the things that they’re alleging that’s problematic that’s coming allegedly from these packages coming in, drugs and violence, what are some of the things that this system is doing to prevent – Okay, now you still got violence and you still got drugs, you don’t have a package – To your knowledge, what are some of the things that they’re doing to deal with the real issue, as opposed to band-aiding the problem? To your knowledge, are they providing programs that deal with helping people understand their disease of addiction and giving them alternatives? Do they have alternatives to violence groups? Are they providing the mechanisms to take away the pressures that people are feeling from not having no money or not having the ability to provide for themselves? Are they creating things of these natures?
Molly Hagan: Not that I’ve heard of. When I asked that question to some people that I talked to, I was told that the programs in prison are punitive themselves, which isn’t helpful if you understand addiction or any mental health need, punishment is an ineffective way to address it. So I feel like the programs that do exist are limited in who can access them and not very effective. And so it really just feels that the solution to the problem of violence, which is really, like I said, the problem of violence is really you’re addressing deprivation and despair. The idea that more punishment would be the answer is –
Mansa Musa: Yeah. Yeah. More deprivation and despair would create a better environment for everybody. And the other part, like you say, we recognize, as you stated so astutely, that this is not only… It’s collateral damage. You have family members that’s affected. But then that’s the other part about it. The prison environment doesn’t become safe, so the staff is subjected to it. And not every officer that works in the prison system is brutal, hostile, and opposed to helping the prisoners, doing productive things on their behalf. But when you have these gestapo type units that come into existence primarily to profit from the prison-industrial complex, then they set the tempo, and the repression, the deprivation that comes out of these acts, only thing it does is make the prison environment much more hostile than it would be.
And I remember that when I was locked up, a guy was telling one of the wardens, they would say, man, when you’re dealing with violence, we might start out hurting each other, internal violence, but ultimately we turn the violence onto the oppressor. Because we recognize, at some point in time, we recognize, say, oh, the reason why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling is because I’m being deprived of my basic human rights. And because I’m being deprived of my basic [rights], I’m going to demand them. And when you do anything other than meet my demand, then I’m going to respond with violence, because that’s going to get the attention I need to get the changes. And it’s not by design, it’s not about my interest in being pathological. It’s about me recognizing that unless I do something about this, I’m going to die, and I’m going to die a horrible death because the deprivation is going to ultimately consume me.
Let me get off this soap box. And let me ask you this here, Molly, what do you think will ultimately result? How do we ultimately resolve this matter in terms of getting the society and the public at large to really hone in on? Because we recognize that these taxpayers’ dollars are, the family members, they’re paying for it, they’re paying the officers’ wages, they’re paying for the existence of Sing Sing and Clinton and these others by their tax dollars. So what do you think that can be done from the family members in terms of trying to get this policy changed? And we’ve seen it done before. What do you think can be done at this juncture? If you have any views on that.
Molly Hagan: I think in terms of this particular policy… It’s tough, because as I was saying about the 2018 policy, there were very clear issues to organize around. And this policy, even though it will ultimately have the same effect, is written in a more ambiguous way. So the previous policy said you can only send packages, you can only buy from these six vendors. So this policy clearly is funneling money to these vendors. This policy says you can go through any vendor, you can go through any vendor you want. Which, families argue, they will ultimately end up going through places like Union Supply, because those are the companies that specialize in the package restrictions for prison. So you have that. But it’s harder to bring groups on board to say specifically, definitively, this further puts money in the pockets of corporations.
And then also, the book thing. It was great for PEN of America, for large publications like The New York Times and The New Yorker to be able to headline books and education, people organized around that. This, I don’t think it’s impossible, I just think it will be a lot more difficult. I think there’s a lot of organization around the food aspect of the policy. But I do think in general, people need to understand how it touches on all the issues that the 2018 policy did. It touches on that prison is an industry in itself. And that in many ways, the person in prison is the subject of that, they’re being extracted from. And when you extract wealth from a person in prison, you’re also extracting from their family. So I think compelling things to people who may not be super familiar with how prison works is this idea of prison as a larger industry, beyond a private prison that makes money in itself, state prisons in New York, every aspect of communication with someone in prison, every aspect of your life is monetized in this way. I think that’s really compelling and disturbing to people. And then also, like I said, when you put someone in prison, you’re not punishing an individual person, you’re punishing families and communities, that you’re really talking about webs of extraction, I guess.
Mansa Musa: And you know what, we recognize that we have a quasi-privatization of prisons. Because as you outline, all the support mechanisms that exist are privatized: communication, visitation, ability to send money in. And now these packages, it’s not unusual. I was thinking that, have you heard the conversation around… Because we had done this in the state of Maryland when they said we had to get certain vendors. Guys that got out and people that got out, they created a business, and they utilized that, and they, in some cases, got approval from the Department of Correction to allow them to be one of the vendors. Have you heard the conversation around that? Because I recognized in your article, there were a lot of support groups. So has that conversation been had about, okay, let’s take the farmers market, let’s do a coalition and put it together and pitch it as this is an alternative or this is a vendor that family members want to use? And we can go right back to square one, saying people give them free food, family members not being charged an exorbitant amount, money’s going back into keeping the cooperative alive. Have you heard a conversation about that? Or is this something that you think a conversation should be held up around?
Molly Hagan: I have not. And I know of at least one small company in New York that was founded by formerly incarcerated people. I’m not sure that would be a worthwhile direction. I’m not in charge of the activism around this. But because I do feel that it’s still extracting and it’s still separating, even in good faith, is severing a connection between the person in prison and their support system. A lot of families talk to me about going to the grocery store or the farmer’s market and hand picking vegetables for their loved one. Caroline in the article, her husband loves avocados. She loves to bring him avocados. It’s like, you just want to have, especially when you’re separated physically, you want to be able to have some connection, some sense of normalcy of like, I brought you these groceries. And I think that’s a really important aspect that people need to understand too. It’s not just about the money. It’s another thing that isolates people in prison from the outside.
Mansa Musa: For the humanizing. All right Molly, you have the last word on this subject matter. What would you like to close with?
Molly Hagan: I think I would say that I am concerned that this policy not only doesn’t address the problems it says it’s supposed to address, but might actually make these problems worse, and make life inside more difficult for everybody. And that I think is the takeaway.
Mansa Musa: There you have it, the real news from Molly about the repressive, inhumane treatment of prisoners in New York. Remember, Attica came out of New York. And it was because of the repressive dehumanization of the prisoners of Attica that they rebelled against those conditions. And here we are in 2022, revisiting the same inhumane and repressive conditions to the extent that they will not allow our family members to provide us with fresh foods, foods that they don’t provide. There wouldn’t be a need to provide fresh foods and vegetables and these things if the system was providing them. And mind you, the system is getting money for providing these things. Here we have it again, the real news about how unions, gestapo type units in prisons, are regulating and delegating policies and procedures.
Continue to support the efforts that’s being made by the family members of the New York prison system. You can review the article that Molly wrote. There’s a lot of support groups in there that you might want to look at. Molly, what’s your contact information, if anybody wants to contact you about it?
Molly Hagan: Oh, I’m on Twitter. It’s @mollyhagan_. Yeah. Contact me there.
Mansa Musa: Okay. Yeah. And thank you, Molly. We really enjoyed this conversation.
Molly Hagan: Yeah, thank you so much.
Mansa Musa: And hopefully, The Real News listeners and Rattling the Bars viewers will support this effort that’s being made on behalf of the family members and the prisoners of New York city. We ask you to continue to support The Real News and continue to support Rattling the Bars. If you have any information or if you have anything that you would like us to explore or examine, just feel free to contact us at The Real News. I’m Mansa Musa, signing off, co-host with Eddie Conway. And continue to give us the support that you have been giving us. And thank you very much, Molly.
The Loveland, Colorado, Police Department has made national headlines for brutality and overreach. But a new case involving the disturbing arrest of an entire family is raising more questions about what local officials are doing—if anything—to rein in the agency. PAR takes a deep dive into the details of a lawsuit filed against Loveland police, and speaks to a local civil rights attorney who is fighting for change in a town that seems incapable of embracing it.
Pre-Production/Studio: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Dwayne Gladden
TRANSCRIPT
Taya Graham: Hello. My name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose: holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. To do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible. Today, we will do so by showing you body camera footage that depicts the questionable actions of officers in a town already well-known for bad policing. The video shows cops wrestling and hitting a young girl, and tasering her father, and attacking the family dog, all over a slap. But we will be examining why the Colorado town where this happened has allowed bad policing to flourish and what, if anything, is being done to rein it in.
But before we get started, I want you watching to note that if you have evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com. Please like, share, and comment on our videos. You know I read your comments and that I appreciate them. Of course you can always reach out to me directly @tayasbaltimore on Facebook or Twitter. And of course if you can, please hit the Patreon donate link pinned in the comments below, because we do have some extras there for our PAR family. Okay. We’ve gotten all that out of the way.
Now, if there is an aspect of American policing that sometimes stumps me, it’s that even when authorities are well aware of problems within a specific department, the bad behavior often persists. Just based on my reporting around the country, I’ve often noticed that egregious examples of over-policing are met with deafening silence. Sometimes we encounter a case that gives us a sense of why policing can be so difficult to reform. In other words, occasionally a case is so appalling it exposes the real problem driving bad policing in so many of our communities.
What the case I’m about to show you reveals is just that: a truism about American policing that gets lost in all the rhetoric about law enforcement that Americans are subjected to on a daily basis. But before I get into the details of the story, I’m going to make a statement that goes against all the rhetoric about law enforcement you hear every day from breathless politicians. It’s an assertion that I will back up with specifics. Here it is: The reason law enforcement is so hard to reform is because we have so much of it. The reason you can’t change policing is because it’s grown too big, and some officers have nothing better to do than wreak havoc in the name of preserving their own power.
Case in point is the story I’m about to share with you now. It involves a father, his 14-year-old daughter, and a dog. It also includes four cops who handcuffed, tasered, and charged the family for a slap. That’s right. Four cops, all caught on video you are seeing now, exercising the powers of law enforcement for the betterment of the community because a child slapped a young man. I’m not even kidding.
Now, the community where this occurred might be familiar to our viewers. In fact, the relatively small department in a city that touts itself as a Western paradise filled with hiking trails and parks has become somewhat of a national example of what’s wrong with policing in general. And I’m talking about Loveland, Colorado.
One of their former officers was recently sentenced to five years in prison for violently arresting 73-year-old Karen Garner. The Loveland grandmother had been accused of stealing roughly $14 worth of goods from a nearby Walmart. But that didn’t stop Officer Austin Hopp from taking her to the ground violently, dislocating her shoulder and fracturing her arm, all of this for a woman suffering from dementia and completely unaware of why she was being arrested in the first place.
Of course just recently, we covered the illegal arrest of a man for a DUI who actually blew a 0.00 during a sobriety test, but Loveland cops decided to arrest him anyway. Loveland Police eventually forced the man to take a blood test which also came back negative for all impairing substances, and is now the subject of a civil rights lawsuit.
All of this, including the public attention focused on the department, thanks in great part to civil rights lawyer Sarah Schielke, who we will be speaking with a little later, would perhaps prompt a department to get its act together. I mean, the series of videos made national news. So logically, one would think that leadership there would right the ship, so to speak. Well that’s not what happened, not hardly.
As you can see in this video we are showing you now, the Loveland Police Department has yet again brought us another questionable arrest. Their target this time – Wait for it – A 14-year-old girl. Her crime: domestic violence. Now, just a quick word on domestic violence before I proceed. It is a very serious crime committed by both men and women alike, and it should be investigated and dealt with by police posthaste. But I think you’ll see as I unpack the facts here, this is not a case that needed four officers, a taser, and animal cruelty to mitigate.
The story starts in a grocery store parking lot in Loveland. There, a 14-year-old girl had a fight with her boyfriend, allegedly over cheating. The disagreement culminates in a slap, with the young girl slapping her 18-year-old boyfriend and then leaving the scene. But this relatively minor altercation was witnessed by a Loveland City Police Officer, and instead of just writing it off as a harmless dispute among children, or perhaps considering that he needed to get the parents of both teenagers involved in resolving this, he decided to investigate to secure an arrest. Not only that, since he was training a fellow officer, he enlisted him as well to join in.
The police approached the young man, but he told them the slap did not harm him, so he declined to press charges. But, undeterred, vigilant detectives began questioning other witnesses. Soon, they built an airtight case and decided to charge the young girl with domestic violence. This despite the fact that the victim had said the slap caused him no injuries or pain. So not one, not two, not three, but four Loveland police officers decided to hunt down the 14-year-old girl and arrest her. So they showed up at her home where she lived with her father and then started banging on the door, searching for the criminal. Let’s watch.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Speaker: [knocking on glass] I’ll try a couple more times. [knocking]
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Eventually, her father, who works as a butcher in a nearby grocery store, arrived home. There, his daughter asked him to fix her bike, which was broken. And as he was preparing to do so, he noticed multiple missed calls on his phone from the Loveland Police. He called them, they showed up, and then this happened.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Speaker: We have a DV, a juvenile DV.
Officer Sikla: Are you going to tell me what happened between you guys today?
Ms. Sears: I was asking for my shit back because we got in a breakup because he likes to cheat on me [inaudible]. So I wanted my unicorn back, my lanyard back, my elephant back, and my bike –
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Now, one important note as we continue to review the video. Loveland Police internal regulations state that unless a child poses an immediate violent threat, restraints should not be used. But that didn’t stop these officers from putting her in cuffs. Take a look.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Officer Sikla: [high pitched beeping] Stop. Stop.
Mr. Sears: No, that’s my daughter!
Officer Sikla: Put that down.
Mr. Sears: This is my daughter. She’s 14.
Officer Sikla: I understand.
Mr. Sears: You can’t arrest a 14-year-old. [dog barking] No, you cannot!
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Now, like any father watching his daughter being manhandled by four grown men, it was simply too much to take. So he tried to intervene. And how did the Loveland cops respond? Watch.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Officer Sikla: Stop. Stop.
Mr. Sears: No, that’s my daughter!
Officer Sikla: Put that down.
Mr. Sears: This is my daughter. She’s 14.
Officer Sikla: I understand.
Mr. Sears: You can’t arrest a 14-year-old. [dog barking] No, you cannot!
Officer Sikla: Yes, we can.
Mr. Sears: No, you can’t. Bullshit! Let me get my dog.
Officer Sikla: You are not going to walk over this –
Mr. Sears: Let me get my fucking dog!
Officer Sikla: You are not going to walk over –
Mr. Sears: He’s going to start biting everybody. Let me get my dog!
Officer Sikla: Get on the ground! Get on the ground!
Mr. Sears: Let me get my fucking dog!
Officer Sikla: Get on the ground.
Mr. Sears: I’m not resisting shit.
Officer Sikla: [dog growling] Get on the ground! Get on the ground! Get on the ground! Stay down! Don’t move! You stay down, don’t move! If you get up, you are going to get tased again. Do you understand me?
Mr. Sears: I’m getting my dog, dude.
Officer Sikla: You stay down!
Mr. Sears: I was getting my dog!
Officer Sikla: Roll over onto your stomach. [screaming in background]
Mr. Sears: I was getting my dog.
Officer Sikla: Put your hands behind your back. Put your hands behind your back! Do not move!
Mr. Sears: I won’t, sir. I won’t. I won’t move. Stop! Stop, baby!
Ms. Sears: You seen him put his [hands on him] –
Mr. Sears: Can you put my dog away please?
Officer Sikla: We will take care of your dog. Put your –
Mr. Sears: Please I don’t want you guys to shoot him or anything.
Officer Sikla: We’re not going to shoot your dog. Knock it off.
Mr. Sears: God dammit.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: And not to be outdone or to let the beleaguered family off easy, police also attacked the family dog, Skippy.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Ms. Sears: Get off of me, dude.
Mr. Sears: I was trying to get my dog! You guys!
Ms. Sears: [screaming][inaudible]
Officer Sikla: You okay?
Mr. Sears: She’s 14 fucking years old. This is a joke. [dog yipping]
Officer Sikla: Yeah. Drop her down. Drop her down and get on top of her. We cannot do this.
Mr. Sears: God dammit.
Ms. Sears: You’re fucking hurting me!
Officer Sikla: Stop.
Mr. Sears: Don’t choke my dog.
Officer Sikla: I’m not choking. I’m a canine officer, dude.
Mr. Sears: God dammit.
Officer Sikla: Geez Louise.
Mr. Sears: God dammit.
Ms. Sears: You’re choking my dog!
Officer Sikla: Can you get your feet out of the way?
Mr. Sears: Shut the fucking door.
Officer Sikla: Can you get your feet out of the way? [inaudible]. Get back.
Mr. Sears: My god. He’s a fucking joke. No wonder why you guys get a bad rap. You fucking pushed me for no reason –
Officer Sikla: Shut your mouth.
Mr. Sears: – I had no fucking weapons.
Officer Sikla: You are under arrest.
Mr. Sears: For what?
Officer Sikla: Obstructing and resisting arrest.
Mr. Sears: I didn’t obstruct nothing. I was trying to help you.
Officer Sikla: Stop.
Mr. Sears: Jesus fucking Christ.
Officer Sikla: Stop.
Mr. Sears: Get your captain.
Officer Sikla: Roll on your side.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Like I said, domestic violence is a terrible crime, but kids make mistakes, and this kid was taken to the ground brutally, bruised, abraded, and given a concussion. She had to witness her father being manhandled and tasered, and even her dog being choked and attacked. No kid deserves that.
Now, like most police overreach, this might have remained pretty much secret if not for the tireless work of civil rights attorney Sarah Schielke, as I mentioned before, who I will be interviewing later. But first, I’m joined by my reporting partner Stephen Janis, who’s been reviewing the documents and reaching out to the department. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: So you’ve been reviewing the lawsuit and related documents. What stands out to you?
Stephen Janis: Well what stands out to me that I think is really interesting is the fact that the lawsuit cites and alleges that there were quotas, and quotas might have been behind this arrest. That every officer in the Loveland Police Department knew that they had to make 10 arrests a day, if not more. The more you made, the more beneficial assignments you got, the more overtime you got, and the better shifts. So it’s clear that this was incentivized policing, and the problems we’ve talked about continually on the show, that you can’t incentivize law enforcement.
Taya Graham: See, that’s interesting. We found very similar evidence from the illegal DUI arrest, right?
Stephen Janis: Yeah, absolutely. I mean they were giving trophies and awards for making arrests, DUI arrests, one of the reasons we covered a DUI arrest where a man actually blew a 0.0 and still got arrested, and you can see this throughout policing in this country. There are lots of grants that are totally tied to stats that prompt officers to make arrests that aren’t necessary. I think this is a classic case. And we’ve seen it within the same department, so it’s really a problem.
Taya Graham: So what do these arrests tell you about what’s actually going on with American policing? What’s your takeaway?
Stephen Janis: Well I think it’s a cautionary tale about this idea that we need more police, and more police means more safety. The thing is if there’s not a lot going on, which may be true in a city like Loveland, police are going to use their powers anyway. You can’t give all these people power and badges and guns and handcuffs and expect them not to use them even if there’s nothing that needs to be addressed. I think this case is a classic example of what happens when we over-empower police, when we create too much police capacity, and the law enforcement-industrial complex becomes too big to do anything useful. They just make stuff up, and that’s what this is about.
Taya Graham: Now, I’m joined by a lawyer who’s been at the forefront of holding the Loveland Police Department accountable, Sarah Schielke. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me.
Sarah Schielke: Thanks for having me.
Taya Graham: So we have a young man, 18 years old, who ended his relationship or affiliation with this 14-year-old, and she slapped him, but he chose not to press charges. Do you have any idea why the police spent hours tracking this girl to arrest her?
Sarah Schielke: Yeah, I can’t speak for them. I have no idea. Some people, certainly, with the police department I know would contend that Colorado is a mandatory arrest domestic violence state. So for this reason, they felt that they had to arrest her. I would dispute some components of whether domestic violence even applied here given the ages and given the lack of interest from the other individual involved. However, the bigger issue going on here is the method of the arrest.
Let’s even just assume that they had no choice, they couldn’t talk to a supervisor to get an override, they couldn’t get a judge. The method is the real problem. A lot of people assume that an arrest requires handcuffing, and it most certainly does not. In the context of juveniles, of children, there is an abundance of law and policy both that state, starting at the police department, going through state law into federal, very special rules for how arrest of juveniles are done, and very much directing that handcuffs should really only be used in the case of a violent felony.
So the issue and the theme, really, with Loveland time and time again just seems to be that whenever they, if you want to call it get an inch, they go 10 miles. So here’s an occasion where, sure, you technically can make a domestic violence arrest. So to them, that’s let’s get all the officers, let’s arrest this kid, let’s show this field training officer we have with us how we do it, and that’s very scary. That’s extremely scary to watch. Because if you want to begin from a place that they had to make this arrest, which I don’t agree that they did, but even if you want to begin there, then I think none of us even have law enforcement training and I think that all of us would think, all right. I’m going to go, I’m going to say, listen. Listen, dad. This is pretty awkward. We feel like we don’t have a choice but to make this arrest for a slap, but obviously she’s a kid. Obviously this is the most minor offense humanly imaginable. We’re just going to need to drive her to the station and back. Can you bring her out for that?
I think that literally every parent would be like, fine. Great, especially if the alternative is handcuffing and violence. But Loveland never affords its citizens the opportunity or chance to make it through an encounter with them without being disrespected and hurt. That’s what’s really troubling.
Taya Graham: When the officers finally found the family, they did not inform her father that they were interviewing her because they wanted to arrest her. As a minor, shouldn’t her father have been able to either guide his daughter while she was being interviewed, or asked for a lawyer, or maybe told his daughter not to answer questions? Was this a purposeful tactic to get the girl to incriminate herself?
Sarah Schielke: Absolutely was, and it was intimidating to the father too, as well. I mean you can imagine that he’s getting all these phone calls from them saying, we need to talk to her about this incident. We need to talk about this incident. Then there’s like multiple squad cars and police showing up, all of them insisting, we’re just here to talk to her about this incident at Safeway. I mean, I know if I were a parent and I didn’t have the knowledge I have of police now, if I were a more typical parent, I would think that maybe my child was a witness to something really important or urgent, and so I really wouldn’t think twice about having to come out, and I wouldn’t really have my guard up about maybe they have something nefarious intended for my child. So I think that was very duplicitous on the part of these police officers. And again, we permit some degree of manipulative lying behavior by police in the context of interviewing adults, especially in the context of when there’s been very serious crimes.
Those sorts of ends, at least for us as a society, can start to justify the means. But when you have a child and you have literally the most marginal, if that, non-crime type of event, the idea that multiple officers would go and trick the parent to get the child into incriminating is even more damning and disgusting, really, on the part of this police department. Because they’re not cracking a case or doing some hard-hitting investigation. If they’re being forced to have to make this arrest, if that’s the argument they want to make, then they should do it with respect to the family and concern, and not these kinds of tactics. Not these kinds of aggressive, manipulative, duplicitous types of tactics.
Taya Graham: So the father was tasered by the officer, but I really can’t understand why. I mean, he was unarmed and trying to control his dog, and it seemed that he was being compliant. What is really happening here?
Sarah Schielke: What you explained is what I see and what anybody who isn’t interested in inflicting violence on our community is seeing, which is that this dad has a singular purpose, which is to keep his dog from being shot. He’s in the presence of a police department that he knows, he has personal knowledge, has shot other dogs in his neighborhood recently. His daughter is starting to be manhandled and arrested. The dog is sensing the intensity of this and beginning to bark and possibly do what we know dogs do, which could include nipping or biting. So both to keep his dog safe and the thought I have too, and I know from talking with him this was a big thing as well, the real tangible fear and wanting to avoid his daughter seeing his dog be shot. I mean if you want to imagine possibly the worst kind of trauma you can inflict on a child would be something like that. So all he wants to do is remove his dog.
The Colorado Dog Protection Act actually requires officers to give owners the opportunity to remove their dogs before they do stuff like this. Instead of doing that, it’s this whole ambush event. And when he’s so singularly focused on the dog, and then the officer’s body cam who does the tasing, that’s Officer Sikla, Sikla perceives it as Loveland officers do, which is that the second Mr. Sears doesn’t capitulate and subjugate himself to the command, I think he said, I need to get my dog, and Sikla said, no, you’re not getting your dog, and the second that happened, that is in Loveland policing world, what they consider to be permission to use all the force that they have on them.
Taya Graham: The family seem terrified by the brutal arrest. How are they doing, and how has this impacted them?
Sarah Schielke: Yeah, they’re never going to be the same again. The immediate aftermath was obviously a lot of physical pain for both of them. The daughter, she has difficulty even remembering what happened after being arrested and believes that she probably sustained some form of concussion from her head being thrashed around on the cement staircase area. For her, she never had problems with panic attacks prior to this, and it became pretty regular. They don’t get to feel safe in their own home in Loveland anymore, and no ability to trust police.
With respect to the dog, I think there’s a particularly sad outcome in that… His name is Skippy. Skippy was very friendly, and you can see at the beginning of this video that he’s just friendly and sniffing the officers, but after this incident, he became so aggressive towards any stranger coming to the house that they actually had to rehome him with family out of state. They couldn’t even keep their dog because Skippy was just never right again. I think it’s funny. It’s not funny, but it’s sad. I rewatched the videos, just keeping an eye on what Skippy was doing. I was trying to just see who he bit and when. And Skippy did a pretty heroic job here making sure to really not bite the daughter during this and just going for the hands of these big strangers that were on her and causing her all this distress. It’s sad, but you can certainly understand and relate for a Jack Russell terrier type of dog, how this event would kind of be pretty permanently traumatic. Unfortunately for the Sears family, they weren’t able to ever get their old Skippy back, and so had to send him away.
It’s scars and holes left everywhere for this family, and really foreseeable ones, to be honest. They’re the type of long-lasting injuries, both physical and emotional, that you would think with being a civilized society that there would be stopgaps to prevent that from happening so easily over something so stupid. But we’re not living in that kind of a civilized society here in Loveland, unfortunately.
Taya Graham: What were the exact charges that were given, and is the prosecutor moving forward with these charges?
Sarah Schielke: So all of the criminal charges were eventually dropped, but the Loveland Police Department filed charges on the daughter. They filed a domestic violence harassment charge and they filed obstruction of a police officer charge, resisting arrest charge. And then against dad they filed obstruction and resisting charges. All of the typical coverup excessive force by police charges were filed on everybody.
Taya Graham: Now, I think this entire ordeal reveals an important truism about American law enforcement, that 17,000 agencies staffed by cops with guns and badges across the country suffer from a common malady. They have too much power. That power creates two distinct problems which create the overreach which we witnessed in this case. One is the ability of police and police unions to meddle in politics to ensure cops are practically speaking above the law. And two, the amount of money that is breathlessly given to police without that normal and healthy process of accountability insulates them from the unfair economic system they enforce. It’s this confluence of money and politics and self-interest that has delivered us into the problematic policing we’ve witnessed over and over again across the country.
Case in point is the fallout from the firing of an assistant police chief in Kent, Washington. Kent Assistant Police Chief Derek Kammerzell got into trouble after he put Nazi insignias on the door of his office. An independent investigation found that Kammerzell was well aware that the gold laurels and stars posted on his door were Nazi symbols. They also found that he mentioned Nazism to his colleagues on more than one occasion. Now, it’s bad enough that an assistant police chief would surround himself with the symbology of a brutal fascist regime. I mean, you must feel pretty empowered to associate yourself with Nazis openly and embrace their iconography in the workplace without any fear of repercussions. But it’s when Kent City leadership decided it was time for Kammerzell to go that this story becomes even more revealing about the power of police.
That’s because in order to force him to resign, the city agreed to pay the former cop $1.5 million. I’m not kidding. To get this obviously obnoxious and clueless assistant chief to take a hike, the city had to hand over $1.5 million in taxpayer dollars. That’s million with an M. I want you to think about that for a second. Think about this in relation to your life or mine. What would happen to us if we went around our workplace doing something similar? How long would we last? How much would we get paid to leave? I mean what kind of buyout would we get? I can answer that. Bye. You’re out.
But not cops. No, they have entirely different standards. For a cop to quit, you better open the checkbook. To get a cop to resign, you have to pay him a hefty sum courtesy of the working taxpayers. Meanwhile, all of us could be left with nothing. In fact, regular workers who are fired for cause are generally not even entitled to unemployment benefits. We would, put simply, be out on the street, not pocketing over $1 million for being an ass.
The point is that this payout to the disgraced chief reveals the true extortionist nature of police power. That is, police have insulated themselves from economic accountability because they are part of the system that enforces its inequity. In other words, policing is just as much immersed in suppressing political efficacy and economic inequality as they are in fighting crime. So what do I mean? Well consider this recent reporting from The New York Times. The piece examined roughly 433 mass shooter attacks in the US since 2001. Reporters found that roughly 60% of the time, the attacker either ended it themselves or was subdued by a bystander before police arrived. In only 40% of the cases did police actually arrive before the shooting stopped, and in those cases, almost 25% were ended, again, by the shooter committing suicide.
The reason I cite this story is simple. The underlying argument that we need more police, unlimited funding, and undying loyalty to the institution of law enforcement in general is made in the name of safety. That is, we have to provide policing with unlimited public resources if we want to save our civilization. Put simply, police are the thin blue line between us and chaos. It’s a pretty disturbing argument. Exchange your safety and your rights to a group of armed government officials who also have the power to imprison you or take your life. Along with those powers, provide them with lifetime pensions, pricey benefits, and in the case of a former assistant police chief, huge payouts if they have to leave their job for bad behavior.
Curiously though, there is one group of people in the history of this country that might not have bought that argument, a specific set of uniquely American thinkers who would probably find the whole idea troublesome if not downright crazy. That’s because nowhere in the document that founded this country is the mention of policing, nothing in the framework that provides for our civil liberties do the people who create it say, we better constitute a police force if we want to preserve the republic. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the Constitution itself was premised upon one essential idea: skepticism of concentrated power. I can only imagine what the people who created it would have thought of the political and social capital afforded police.
Let me say this. I’m not necessarily any sort of originalist when it comes to the document itself. I perhaps would be what one would call a Ninth Amendment adherent. In other words, I think the open-ended clause left in by the founders that said any rights not mentioned in this draft can be added later was meant to remind us that this is an organic document. Thus, I think and believe we should be expanding our rights as much as possible as long as we adhere to the basic principle of being wary and mindful of concentrating power anywhere for anyone. Which is why the constant drumbeat that supporting police is an all or nothing proposition astounds me, why the ongoing arguments over defund verus fund or blue lives versus our lives and all the attendant nonsense just strikes me as missing the point altogether.
I mean, even if we could give every last penny to the cops, how much difference would it make? Why is the argument for or against police so focused on money and not examining the ideas that drive it? I think we can find part of the answer in the $1.5 million payout to the Nazi groupie assistant chief. Paying that amount of money to get rid of a bad cop only proves the idea that police are in fact public servants is absolutely ludicrous. The idea that acting like a jerk on the job nets you a fortune is just, to me, a reiteration of the fact that policing is solely about power, not safety. Power, I would add, that has been misused, abused, and otherwise misapplied. The whole idea of this country is that the power actually belongs to the people. But how can we argue that when a bad cop makes more money for getting fired than an honest, hard working person earns in their lifetime? Answer that question, and I think you’ll understand my point.
I want to thank civil rights attorney Sarah Schielke for speaking with us and for sharing her work to help reform the Loveland Police Department. Thank you, Sarah. and she also has a YouTube channel at Sarah Life & Liberty Law, which we will link below in the comments for you. If you want to learn more about police brutality in Colorado, please click here on this link for more of our reporting. And of course I want to thank Intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research, and editing on this piece. Thank you so much, Stephen.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: And I want to thank mods of the show Noli Dee and Lacey R for their support. Thank you. And a very special thanks to our Patreon patrons. We appreciate you, and I look forward to thanking each and every single one of you personally in our next livestream.
I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram or @eyesonpolice on Twitter. Of course you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter and Facebook. Please like and comment. I really do read your comments and I appreciate them. We also have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below, so if you feel inspired to donate, please do so. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is greatly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham, and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please, be safe out there.
The conservative AKP government of Turkey has repeatedly banned all Pride marches since 2014. AKP politicians—including president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—and pro-government media continue to target and marginalize the LGBTQ community, calling them “perverts” and a threat to Turkish and Islamic values. Nevertheless, LGBTQ activists attempted to organize a Pride parade in the central Taksim neighborhood in the capital city of Istanbul on Sunday, June 26, and police met them with tear gas and rubber bullets, arresting hundreds in the process. Journalists, videographers, and TRNN contributors Daniel Thorpe and Murat Bay report from Istanbul.
Pre-Production/Studio: Daniel Thorpe, Murat Bay Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
TRANSCRIPT
Demonstrators (crowd): We won’t shut up! We aren’t afraid! We won’t obey! We won’t shut up! We aren’t afraid! We won’t obey!
Gözde: I came here today to say we are together, we exist, and we are everywhere.
Murat: Yes.
Gözde: But we couldn’t come together. We couldn’t reach each other… If only we could have. This is a really sad thing.
Demonstrator (solo): Could we talk with the police officer in charge here?
Murat: Everywhere we went there were police, barricades and questioning.
Off-camera speaker: What are they afraid of?
Gözde: The truth is I don’t know. But we exist. We are here. We’ll be here tomorrow as well and the day after, on the streets.
Demonstrator (solo): We’re here, we’re queer, we won’t disappear!
Murat: Maybe they are afraid because we show them the reality. Maybe it’s because of their beliefs.
Anti-LGBTQ demonstrator (solo): God is great!
Demonstrator (solo): Piss off!
Anti-LGBTQ demonstrator (solo): You don’t have a place in this land!
Murat: Certain walls have to be demolished, and certain realities have to be accepted in this day and age. The world is a beautiful place, everyone can live here together.
Demonstrator (solo): You will never be able to stop desire!
Gözde: We’ll join next year as well.
Murat: Yes.
Gözde: I hope that time we’ll be able to gather all together.
The Real News Network and Just Media are partnering to launch a new fellowship program that empowers Baltimore writers that are passionate about reporting on criminal justice issues from their communities’ lived experiences.
Baltimore, Maryland — June 28, 2022. The Baltimore Pipeline of Working and Emerging Reporters (P.O.W.E.R.) Fellowship, catalyzed by The Real News Network and Just Media, is a pilot program aimed at supporting emerging talent from communities most affected by mass incarceration and over-policing in Baltimore. The six-month fellowship provides up-and-coming journalists with media training and sustained mentorship to build critical investigative reporting skills that amplify stories grounded in their communities, expose broken systems, and challenge existing narratives about race and mass incarceration.
Baltimore spends more per capita on policing than every large city in the country. Despite ballooning police budgets, public safety has not improved. Worse still, the journalists reporting on these issues are often community outsiders that don’t reflect the diversity, values, or perspectives of Baltimoreans. Despite community advocates sounding the alarm about issues related to police violence and mass incarceration, and demanding decarceration, just reentry, harm reduction, and abolition, persistent structural barriers in media have prevented young writers, especially writers of color, from accessing the platforms and opportunities that allow them to tell stories from the frontlines of these fights and offer alternative solutions to unjust systems.
Together, The Real News and Just Media Project will train and mentor the cohort. The Real News has deep experience providing critical reporting on policing and mass incarceration in Baltimore, as well as a digital broadcast studio that amplifies this reporting. Just Media has supported more than 40 writing fellows, over 90 percent Black and brown folks ages 18-24, from 27 cities across the country.
Through this partnership, The Real News and Just Media will also give these aspiring journalists a chance to rethink journalistic objectivity without the assumption that their identities need to be buried to adequately cover the policing and prison landscape in this country.
With planning currently underway, The Real News and Just Media are reaching out to both community and funding partners for their guidance and support in shaping this pilot program. Targeted recruitment of emerging journalists (18-24 years old) will begin later this summer and fellows will begin their work in Fall 2022.
According to The Real News Executive Director John Duda, “The kind of journalists covering policing and mass incarceration that Baltimore needs are exactly the kind of journalists the status quo is designed to exclude, because they come from the communities this carceral system harms the most. With P.O.W.E.R., we are flipping this script.”
Just Media’s past fellowship programs have had a meaningful impact on a growing network of young movement journalists. “I enjoyed being able to talk about something that is barely addressed,” a former Just Media fellow said. “I also loved interviewing people who are actually making a change within my community.”
“Young journalists of color need a space that encourages them to grow, learn, and expose the truth — and that’s exactly what we’re trying to build here,” said Clarissa Brooks, program director at Just Media.
The program is actively seeking funds and supporters. A $250 donation hosts a fellow for one week of the program. A $1,000 donation hosts a fellow for one month. And a $5,000 donation secures a fellow’s complete six-month participation in the program.
Just Media is a national hub telling a new story about justice—and supporting the next generation of storytellers. Our work revolves around two core strategies: Community-centered, impact-driven media: With our core fellowship program, we support young, emerging journalists to cover grassroots and electoral politics on these issues at local and national outlets. Grassroots communications: Just Media communications support and training to youth and community-based justice groups following a national needs assessment. We convene community-based dialogues to engage local organizers and decision-makers in our work.
About The Real News Network
The Real News Network (TRNN) is a non-profit media organization that makes media connecting you to the movements, people, and perspectives that are advancing the cause of a more just, equal, and livable planet. TRNN highlights the voices and ideas not just of academics and pundits, but of the people on the frontlines of fights against injustice.
Something is amiss in the small rural town of Milton, West Virginia. As we recently reported for The Real News, taxpayers in Milton, and in the surrounding county of Cabell, have been on the hook for the generous public assistance failed coal baron Jeff Hoops has received to realize his plans to build the luxury Grand Patrician hotel in the small town on the Kentucky border.
New documents obtained by the Police Accountability Report (PAR) reveal that said plans have been facing setbacks, including: delays in completing the construction of key facilities until late 2022, difficulty collecting fees and taxes from contractors working on the site, and changes to the sprinkler system ordered by the state fire inspectors, which required connecting to an alternative water main to increase water pressure.
Both Milton and Cabell County approved a $15-million tax incentive known as a TIF (Tax Increment Financing) to aid construction of the lavish 300-room resort proposed by a firm controlled by Hoops. In 2018, Milton sold Hoops 170 acres of city-owned land—including the former site of the Morris Memorial Hospital—for just twenty bucks. And, according to sources, the city of MIlton has been forced to write off thousands of dollars in uncollected taxes and license fees due from contractors working on the site who failed to pay as required by law.
This is all taking place in a community with a median household income of $32,000, roughly $40,000 below the national median.
Moreover, key details regarding the taxpayer largesse fueling Hoops’ dream of a luxury hotel remain elusive: amid the delays mentioned above, city and state officials managing the project have not been transparent about its future prospects. They said they are unable to answer questions about when the hotel will be completed. They have also been circumspect when it comes to discussing details about a state fire inspection that concluded the hotel sprinkler system was not up to code, causing additional delays.
In 2018, Milton sold Hoops 170 acres of city-owned land—including the former site of the Morris Memorial Hospital—for just twenty bucks. And, according to sources, the city of MIlton has been forced to write off thousands of dollars in uncollected taxes and license fees due from contractors working on the site who failed to pay as required by law.
Meanwhile, new documents obtained by PAR reveal that the project is already millions of dollars behind projections, both in terms of tax revenues and economic impact on the surrounding area, highlighting residents’ cause for concern about the secrecy surrounding the hotel and its construction. These revelations point to a troubling pattern that some say is the inevitable result of using public funds (in the form of tax incentives) to fuel private profits, especially when there is little if any sustained scrutiny of how the project is actually performing.
Greg LeRoy, Executive Director of Good Jobs First, an organization that tracks tax incentives like TIFs across the county, says that substantive public disclosure is often lacking after such deals are approved. “TIF districts are the most problematic incentive we encounter across the country, and they are poorly disclosed,” said Leroy. As eyebrow-raising as these latest revelations about the Grand Patrician hotel are, it’s important to remember at the outset that such cases are not anomalies—this kind of public underwriting of private enterprise, and the corresponding lack of transparency, is a feature of our political economy, not a bug.
PROBLEMATIC POLICING LEADS TO A DEEPER INVESTIGATION
But our investigations into the troubling track record of Milton’s police prompted viewers to ask us to also look into the deal to build an upscale hotel on a piece of city-owned property previously occupied by the Morris Memorial Hospital, a facility that was itself built with federal funds during the Great Depression to treat children suffering from polio.
“No one in the town will even be able to afford to step foot in that hotel. Don’t see it providing much business for our local businesses either.”
resident of MIlton, who wished to remain anonymous
The luxury resort was billed as a lifeline for the city that would attract tourists and create much-needed jobs. Plans for the Grand Patrician hotel include a nine-hole golf course, a wedding chapel, a banquet hall, an olympic-sized swimming pool, and a gated community.
Our initial reporting revealed a business controlled by Hoops secured roughly 170 acres of city-owned land on the former site of the hospital for just $20 dollars. We also documented that the cost of the deal was steeper than officials had announced publicly: accounting for the interest on the municipal bonds issued to fund the project means factoring in an additional $5 million, increasing the original $10 million price tag of the TIF by 33 percent.
The luxury resort was billed as a lifeline for the city that would attract tourists and create much-needed jobs. Plans for the Grand Patrician hotel include a nine-hole golf course, a wedding chapel, a banquet hall, an olympic-sized swimming pool, and a gated community.
In the time since our previous article was published, however, we have received a flood of tips and revealing emails from residents about the project, including concerns about safe drinking water, critical infrastructure, and affordable housing.
“That place definitely won’t benefit any of us,” a resident of MIlton, who wished to remain anonymous, wrote in an email. “No one in the town will even be able to afford to step foot in that hotel. Don’t see it providing much business for our local businesses either,” he added.
A LUXURY LIFELINE THAT HAS FAILED TO DELIVER
In 2017, when Milton and the surrounding county of Cabell approved the $15 million TIF, Jeff Hoops was the owner and operator of Blackjewel, LLC, then the sixth largest coal company in the country.
In an application for the tax break obtained by PAR, Hoops promised a sprawling development. Along with 300 rooms, the destination resort would have a 9-hole golf course, a clubhouse and spa, a 300-seat wedding chapel, a conference center, a ballroom, an amphitheater, replica baseball stadiums, and a residential community featuring townhomes and condos. The final value of the entire development was estimated at $187 million.
But the deal hinged on the city of MIlton foregoing almost all the new property tax revenue that would be generated by the resort. The mechanism to make this happen is a TIF
TIFs were originally designed to stimulate construction in blighted areas. The argument for TIFs is that they incentivize private investment in and (re)development of areas in need of economic revitalization.
Buried in a survey of TIF projects across West Virginia, however, is a report that reveals the hotel has, to date, woefully underperformed.
Developers commit to building on a site with little tax value, with the promise that any new taxes assessed against the newly developed property—known as the “increment”—would be refunded. The process works by estimating the value of the “increment,” or new development, and then issuing bonds for the entire amount of projected taxes paid on the newly assessed value. The idea is that this allows the developer to use future property taxes for construction and other costs.
This is the type of deal that Jeff Hoops secured with Milton and Cabell County in 2017.
But just two years later, in 2019, Hoops’ Blackjewel coal company imploded into a messy and contentious bankruptcy. As Katie Meyers wrote in The Ohio Valley Resource, “The Blackjewel bankruptcy case has been ongoing since the summer of 2019 when Blackjewel, LLC abruptly collapsed, leaving over 2,000 miners in Wyoming, Kentucky and West Virginia without their jobs, their benefits, or their final paychecks.” Coal miners enrolled in direct deposit found that their paychecks had been clawed back from their accounts, leaving families hurting and rent and essential bills unpaid. In response, one group of Blackjewel miners in Eastern Kentucky set up a blockade for two months to prevent a coal-filled train from leaving the Cloverlick No. 3 mine until they received the back pay they were owed.
A series of lawsuits in federal bankruptcy court accused Hoops of using the firm to secure lucrative deals for family and friends, and of violating his fiduciary duty by withdrawing millions from the company just before it went belly up.
At the time, Brent Walls, the CFO of Clearwater Investment Holdings, LLC, a Hoops-controlled firm that is part of the Grand Patrician development team, pledged publicly in the local media that Hoops’ financial woes would not affect the timeline of the hotel. But new documents obtained by PAR tell a different story.
The aforementioned report states that, to date, only $392,000 in bonds have actually been issued. This figure falls far short of the $10,000,000 in bonds authorized to purportedly fund infrastructure, raising questions about why the funding that was deemed vital to the project has not yet been tapped.
Initial projections filed with the state outline a fully operational hotel by 2020 generating 77,000 room days (ie, the number of rooms occupied in a year multiplied by the number of days said rooms are occupied) and roughly $3 million in annual revenue for the hotel itself for 2020 and 2021. The estimates also include $6 million in annual economic activity directly related to tourism stimulated by the project for both 2020 and 2021. Those same projections estimate the hotel generating nearly $1 million in property taxes, which would be used to service the bonds issued by Milton and Cabell County to fund construction.
By way of justifying plans for the lavish hotel, Milton officials ambitiously compared the Grand Patrician to the world-renowned Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs. Located in Southeastern West Virginia, the destination resort has hosted heavyweight boxing matches and PGA golf tournaments. The Greenbrier aspired to achieve a 68% occupancy rate after opening an $80 million underground casino in 2010; notably, that targeted occupancy rate is lower than the one Hoops predicted the fully functional Grand Patrician will achieve after just two years of being fully operational.
Buried in a survey of TIF projects across West Virginia, however, is a report that reveals the hotel has, to date, woefully underperformed.
In 2021, the hotel generated just $36,000 in property taxes. The assessed value of the property, which was projected to be roughly $10,000,000 over the same time period, is listed at $1.5 million. The report also reveals that many of the hotel’s facilities will not be operational until the fall of 2022. PAR called a number listed for the hotel to confirm the opening date, but a woman who answered the phone said she is “not confident” about when it will actually be in operation.
Even more troubling is the status of the TIF bonds sold to finance infrastructure. The aforementioned report states that, to date, only $392,000 in bonds have actually been issued. This figure falls far short of the $10,000,000 in bonds authorized to purportedly fund infrastructure, raising questions about why the funding that was deemed vital to the project has not yet been tapped.
In our previous report, we detailed how the initial application for the TIF disclosed that the bonds had been slated for purchase by an entity controlled by the developer—namely, Hoops—instead of being sold to outside investors. But finding answers that can explain what has actually happened with the project and why has been difficult.
The Cabell County Commissioner’s office referred PAR to the West Virginia law firm Steptoe and Johnson, which represents them. In an email to PAR, Steptoe attorney John Stump wrote that updates on the opening date for the hotel would not be publicly available until October because the county has not been communicating with the developer.
Finding answers that can explain what has actually happened with the project and why has been difficult.
“The County Commission has not had any communication with the Developer regarding the status of the Project since the completion of the 2021 Report. The Project is not subject to County permitting nor has the Developer requested additional proceeds of the Bonds, accordingly no reporting has been required,” Stump wrote.
“The County Commission will obtain a status report on the Project for the Report due on October 1, 2022,” he added.
Even more intriguing is the status of the bonds. According to Stump, the entirety of the $10 million in TIF bonds has been issued, but the developer has only accessed roughly $392,000 of the proceeds.
“The Bonds remain outstanding,” Stump wrote. “The Bonds are issued on a ‘draw down’ basis. While the Bonds were issued in the amount of $10,000,000, only the original amount advanced at closing is currently outstanding.”
FEES AND TAXES UNPAID, A SPRINKLER SYSTEM UNDER SCRUTINY
Delays in construction are not the only problems plaguing the Grand Patrician.
Sources have told PAR that a significant number of contractors working on the site initially failed to properly register with the city or pay taxes and fees. The lack of compliance reportedly led to a heated closed-door meeting between Hoops and Milton Mayor Tom Canterbury. Even though the pair eventually reconciled, the city was forced to write off thousands of dollars in tax losses that were deemed impossible to collect.
Neither Canterbury nor Hoops returned emails and phone calls seeking comment.
Even with laws requiring status reports on such publicly subsidized developments, the fact of the matter is much of the critical information about these tax deals (including how the public’s tax dollars are being spent) remains, for the most part, secret.
Developers are also facing challenges meeting safety codes. Sources told PAR the West Virginia Fire Marshal’s office has concerns about the hotel’s sprinkler system and has asked for alterations. The problems are related to issues with water pressure at the site, which developers are scrambling to address.
The West Virginia Fire Marshal’s Office told PAR they could not directly comment on the sprinkler system’s deficiencies. They did issue a statement acknowledging the agency was working with the developer to fix it.
“We have been involved in discussions with the builders of the Grand Patrician Hotel in regards to making sure that they are following the best fire safety according to practices,” the agency said in an email.
Meanwhile, Milton’s building inspector Mike Ramsey told PAR that the issues with the sprinkler system were resolved when the city connected the property to a new water main. “It was an 8-inch main off of route 60,” Ramsey told us.
THE PEOPLE GIVETH, THE PRIVATE SECTOR TAKETH AWAY
Still, the most troubling example of the lack of transparency regarding the Grand Patrician is the fact that no one involved with the project will say when it will be completed. All the projections, tax breaks, taxpayer-issued bonds, and promised benefits of the ostensibly region-saving destination resort hinge on a clear completion date. As of right now, there is none.
As has been the consistent theme of investigating this story, getting an answer to the simple question “When will the Grand Patrician have its grand opening?” has proven to be difficult. Emails and phone calls to a variety of city officials, including lawyers tasked with reporting on the status of the bonds, did not result in securing a clear answer or timeline. Similarly, Ramsey also said he did not know when the luxury resort would be open to the public.
“I have no idea, you would have to ask Mr. Hoops about that.”
Multiple emails sent to Hoops asking for comment—using an address listed on the TIF application—have not been returned.
But as Leroy, Executive Director of Good Jobs First, notes, even with laws requiring status reports on such publicly subsidized developments, the fact of the matter is much of the critical information about these tax deals (including how the public’s tax dollars are being spent) remains, for the most part, secret.
The most troubling example of the lack of transparency regarding the Grand Patrician is the fact that no one involved with the project will say when it will be completed.
“Indeed, many big cities that use them fail to disclose even basic records about them, and only a handful of states have centralized online records of TIFs,” Leroy told PAR.
Thus, the Grand Patrician—what exists of it, that is—stands as a cautionary tale about the limits of neoliberal policy making and the costs of taking an approach to governance (ie, improving the lives of residents and helping society function well) that extols the private market as the cure for poverty, unemployment, and all manner of social degradations, and that, consequently, channels public resources into profit-seeking enterprises.
In fact, nothing could be more emblematic of the privatization of our collective civic imagination that this governing philosophy has produced than the flailing hotel sitting unfinished on a West Virginia hill. A grand experiment in social engineering via private checkbook that has so far failed to deliver.
At the very least, the political leaders and the failed coal baron should consider answering the concerns of the community regarding when and how their envisioned luxury development will materially improve the lives of the people who are financing it. If they don’t, the deafening silence tells the people all they need to know about whose interest the hotel serves.
Breathless media coverage of a purported “crime wave” is galvanizing the right and prompting reactionary calls for expanding policing and the prison-industrial complex. Already, just two years after the historic nationwide protests in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, the pendulum has swung violently in the opposite direction, as exemplified in the right’s lionization of Kyle Rittenhouse, the recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and “centrist” Democrats’ calls to “refund the police.” At the same time, the failures of police in Uvalde, Texas, to protect the lives of innocent children poses serious questions about how effectively police actually prevent violence. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, New York City public defender Olayemi Olurin unpacks the relationship between white supremacy, the police, and the systematized cruelty of American society.
Olayemi Olurin is a public defender and staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society and an analyst at the Law & Crime Network and The Hill’s Rising.
Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Monday on TRNN, and subscribe to the TRNN YouTube channel for video versions of The Marc Steiner Show podcast.
Pre-Production/Studio: Dwayne Gladden Post-Production: Stephen Frank
TRANSCRIPT
Marc Steiner: Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. It’s wonderful to have you all with us again. Today, we have a conversation with Olayemi Olurin, who has joined us before as a guest on my brother Eddie Conway’s Rattling The Bars program. She’s a public defender in New York City, staff attorney with Legal Aid. Those are her day jobs. She’s a movement lawyer. She’s an activist writer who tackles the injustice and the entangled interlocking worlds of racism and our penal and judicial systems, the call for prison abolition, and addressing the violence and guns that are part of the American DNA.
She had a lot to say about this in her latest writing for Teen Vogue and other places about the mass murders in Uvalde, Kyle Rittenhouse, his AR-15 and his acquittal. So how do we navigate, respond, and address our world in the aftermath of Uvalde’s mass murders, the firing of Chesa Boudin, the attack on progressive prosecutors – Which I know for some is a contradiction in terms – Of continuing death of Black citizens at the hands of police, and the rising fear of the right in America.
Well, Olayemi Olurin, welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. Good to have you with us.
Olayemi Olurin: Hey, it’s good to be here.
Marc Steiner: Think we can solve all that in like a half an hour together?
Olayemi Olurin: Listen, I certainly can talk for that long. I assure you.
Marc Steiner: So, we are facing a real dilemma in this country. When you look at what happened in Uvalde and the continuing fallout about what the police did not do to protect those children, to the firing of Chesa Boudin. And just to be clear, I don’t know Chesa well, but I know the people who raised him, and I’ve known him since he was a baby. And in fact, when he won that election, I was like, yeah! All right.
I’m watching him being pushed out, and the attack on people who are trying to do something different, and the continuing violence in our dystopian communities created by poverty and racism in this country. I mean, it’s this perfect storm of disaster, but we can’t live our lives negatively and go, oh, woe is me, it’s all over. We have to do something different and figure out how to get there. Which is what I think in part you’ve been doing with your writing and your talking.
Olayemi Olurin: Listen, it’s very easy to feel discouraged. This is very uphill battle work where you know this is something you’re going to be doing for the rest of your life. I always recognize people who come before me, the Angela Davises of the world. They’re still writing about and talking about the same issues now that they were talking about 30, 40 years ago. And there’s a reason for that, because it’s important to try to educate people and shift social consciousness.
At the end of the day, our legislators, our government, the powers that be do what we demand that they do. That’s essentially what it is. So it’s about getting everybody, how do you get people to support dismantling systems, the only systems they know, or to believe that things that they’ve been taught to champion, or they’ve been taught that it’s this way, how to push back on that, how to make that intuitive. And I think a lot of that comes from us making it normal, having these conversations. It becoming a popular topic. You have to expect that the status quo is going to be violently defended. It’s popular. It’s the reason it’s the status quo. People are going to try to maintain the institutions and the world that they know because that’s their foundation, that’s their entire understanding.
So for me, I don’t find it so discouraging when you get the pushback, because what I’m really hoping for you to do is hear the things. Hear the ideas and recognize that. Because it’s about effectiveness. I always tell people it’s not a matter of, when pushing for abolition or being anti-criminal system or wanting to decarcerating, these things, it’s not just a moral issue or because I want you to care about something. I want you to do something that’s not in your best interest out of goodness, because that’s what’s better for communities. It’s because it’s not in any of our interests. It’s about effectiveness. We have this system in place. We’ve constantly put billions and billions of dollars into criminalizing certain populations, incarcerating people, profiling people, arresting people. And yet we have the same issues that we’re constantly saying, you’re just elevating, elevating every year.
And I think an important note to recognize is it’s not as though crime, the issue with crime is in all the communities. In the sense of the exact people that you’re criminalizing, that you’re sending to jail, are the people from the communities that… You know what I mean? Who is it you’re protecting? You’re criminalizing the exact same people, exact same populations. You’re helping to keep them in the same circumstances that are allowing for these issues.
And that’s something interesting about how the criminal system comes in and condemns something that’s happening as though the system itself has nothing to do with how they got there. So for me, it’s like, well, we have to ask why. Too much in this country, and I think with anything else, we know it intuitively. If I’m depressed, if I’m sad, if I’m anything, I know that part of the journey for me getting away from that place is to ask myself why. I have to figure out why I’m sad. I have to figure out why is it this? If people are mad or people lash out about you, you ask him what happened. In a normal world, that would be the following question like, why are you mad? What are the problems? That’s the only way to correct something. So you can’t continuously just condemn them bad, bad, evil, violence, blah, blah, blah, gunshots, and never, never want to engage in the why.
You can’t fix a problem if you never actually address the problem. That’s the thing, we don’t. We don’t. We get the same under-resourced communities, and we take all the resources that we don’t give them to help them on all the socials they need, and we give it to another community to police them and to vilify them. And how’s that getting anybody anywhere?
Marc Steiner: So I was thinking about this, and let me try, if I can be clear about this. When you look, as you’ve written about Kyle Rittenhouse and his trial that took place, and he was released. He wasn’t really found necessarily innocent. They just couldn’t convict him, they said. It was weird legal things, and racist things to boot.
So, you have a Kyle Rittenhouse or the killer at Uvalde and they, at young ages, can go in and get an AR-15 and do what they want to do. At the same time, we are addressing the dystopian existence that so many poor people face and the violence that it engenders in societies that, I think, I said to you before we went on the air together today, that here in Baltimore where I’m recording from, we could be on line for 300 to 350 more murders this year, mostly of young Black men.
And to me, how do we address the question of transforming the police or abolishing the police, transforming “criminal justice” and prisons or abolishing them, giving these two different things in some ways? One, it’s kind of pushed by the kind of unarmed world of white people who do mean to do harm to the rest of this country. And you’ve got the other madness that we’ve created in America, racism and poverty. So, how do we work that through?
Olayemi Olurin: Okay. So, I love the nature of having a beautiful, honest conversation. Let me tell you what I really think. We have to stop pretending as though the people calling for police have the interests of or are trying to heal or save the people. The people, like you said, the majority of the people who are being killed where this violence is happening, or these crimes that we’re talking about even, let’s take Baltimore, are young Black men.
That’s the problem within our community. But the people that are calling for the police, that are saying, oh, we need the police to address this crime, as though it’s impacting them, which it’s not. It does not. It’s not their issue at all. Their communities are not the one, you’re not the one dealing with this crime or these issues or whatever. But they are the ones calling for this community to have police, we need the police. We’re having these issues, having all these crimes. But what are the police doing in that scenario? The police are not stopping. They’re not stopping or preventing these murders or any of those things from happening. But what they are doing is fostering and exacerbating an area of violence and oppression and criminalization and all those things and how that is a vicious circle in those communities.
So the first thing we need to do is stop pretending, I think, that there’s a super good faith effort to have the police. The safest communities are not the communities with the most police. They’re the communities with the most resources. These white neighborhoods and white communities and white people calling for all these police do not live in the communities with the police. The police are not there to protect them. The police are not there to protect them. What the police do is help create a caste system, keep these people that they’re policing away from them. That’s what that is. So that’s the first thing I want to do. I want to move away from this idea that these things are so connected and, whoa, you see all this crime. How do you want to get rid of the police? The police don’t have anything to do with addressing those issues.
So now I want to move to what is the why of it all. I always tell people, environment and life circumstances and all these different things have everything to do with where you end up. The reason I went to college is because my parents went to college. I never asked whether or not… I never thought, I never deliberated, am I going to go to college? I knew I was going to go to college because my parents went to college.
I’ve never thought about in life, before I moved to America and I recognized the criminalization of all these different things for Black people. In my country, I never thought about jail or prison I would ever go to or anybody in my family. I’ve never conceived it. Because what is normal for you is what you’re exposed to, is what is real for you, what is the environment for you.
If you live in a community that is filled with police, police in your schools, police on your corner, police in your subways, police on your buses. Or every man, the average Black man in America between 18 to 29 years old has been arrested or incarcerated at some point in time in their life. If that is what is the norm for you, first of all, we never even discuss how those things psychologically impact the people and what it makes them think about themselves. And that’s how it makes them act out.
I was always told as a little girl, my Grammy told me I was smart. Everybody thought I was smart. I was stubborn. I was going to be a lawyer and all these different things. And I believed that. And that was what the plan was. That’s something I believed about myself. It’s like, I could see it. I can make that real. If you are constantly told you are a criminal, you are vilified. You’re nothing. You are in these communities where you’re not given anything. You have no resources. You have no resources to survive. You’re housing. You’re this, you’re all these different things.
What kind of person do you think it makes you? What do you think is the impact on that? I know for a fact, just yesterday I had a bill due that I couldn’t pay and listen, pissed, in here, angry, a whole different kind of temperament than the positive way I’d be moving. We have to start asking why.
Police have nothing to do with addressing how violence… We talk about violence and stuff too much in the abstract. These are real scenarios. People are getting into confrontations, conflicts, issues with one another. And why is that? Why do you think that they’re more likely to resort to violence? Because violence begets violence. And poverty begets violence and frustration and lack of mental health resources, all these different things compile.
If you have problems, you have issues, and the government that you have around you, the government there, by the way, with all the resources, you pay all the taxes, you are the people least helped in resources in society, whatever. Your whole family is burdened by… Let’s not forget a cycle of criminalization only deepens the cycle of poverty. A lesser known fact I know as a criminal attorney, when people go to prison, they get saddled with huge fines and fees. For every hour they’re sitting in prison, they’re racking up a bill.
So they take already poor people. The average person in the criminal system is literally dirt poor beneath the poverty line. So they are taking the poorest of the poorest of Black and people of color incarcerating them. So now not only the violence, by the way, what do you think they’re learning? What are they experiencing in prison? All these different things. They experience all that, the violence, the psychological wear down, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And should they get out of prison, not only can they not get a job now, they were already poor, but they can’t get a job now because they have a criminal record. On top of that, they are saddled with huge, massive fees. All these things, child support, all these things continue to accrue while you’re in prison. So you come out, what kind of person do you think that makes? How do you think you’re going to respond to life circumstances? What kind of parent do you think you’re able to be? What kind of interpersonal dynamics do you think you’re going to be?
And if you do that to every generation and generation and generation and generation of people just… What do we think happens? To me, it’s not this phenomenon. In order to keep a system in place that has been getting us nowhere, there is this commitment to throwing our hands up as though we don’t know what’s going on. Like, whoa, we keep giving so much money to the police, what are we going to do? The crime keeps rising.
Is it shocking? And so I cannot believe that all over this country, it has been blowing my mind for the last two years to watch every major city talk about a spike in crime. And with all the media, so much confusion. Everyone is like, well, what? Well, surely we must give more? I’m like, so we weren’t in a global pandemic, where we know literally tons, hundreds of thousands of people perished. Let’s not forget the medical fees and all those different things or whatever is left for families and stuff dealing with that. Perished, fully perished.
People lost their jobs. Businesses closed down. People could not pay for housing, the homeless part. Do you not know why crime would go up? If people like – What is the connection? I cannot understand this feigned ignorance and pretending. This is the confusion at the crime spike and why the police. It’s very obvious. If you have a bunch of citizens, you do not pay them a livable wage, they cannot afford to live comfortably in the places that they have to be. They are in circumstances where they’re losing their homes. They are losing their jobs. They don’t have healthcare. They are facing a pandemic where they don’t have healthcare. How do you think they are going to survive?
If people can’t eat, I would say this to people. People can’t give you money they can’t have, they don’t have. They can’t pay bills with money they don’t have. They can’t eat with food that they can’t afford to get. And they have to find a way. People are going to find a way to survive. People are going to respond to things. And at the end of the day, people are as good as their circumstances. People are as good as their circumstances.
I always say I don’t have to steal because I don’t have to steal. That’s the only reason I don’t steal. You do what you’re able to do. Nobody wants to live a life of crime. Nobody wants to be in the criminal system. Nobody wants to be in the positions where they have to fight to defend themselves, or they feel like they have so little respect in the society around them that they feel… They act out and they respond, because that’s a lot of what it is.
I have conversations with my clients. People are mad, they are frustrated. They are resentful towards their circumstances and the world around them. And they have no way to take that out. And so you’re more likely to pop somebody. In those circumstances, it’s just not that perplexing to me. It’s a direct result of the society that we are maintaining and doing and steadfastly fighting to maintain at the expense of real people.
Marc Steiner: So I’m going to come back in a little bit before we leave each other about Uvalde and Kyle Rittenhouse and more, but I want to really pick from what you just said. So the question for me is your ideas and thoughts on what that means about where we go from here and how you build something that’s an alternative. I sat here and watched the last 50 years after those of us my age have gone in the Civil Rights Movement and organized the way we did and fought inside unions and all the things that we did. And then you saw the mostly white right wing take hold in the early ’70s and build this power back, which they really have, at the moment.
Olayemi Olurin: Yeah. They always do that.
Marc Steiner: And they controlled 26 state legislatures and more, and the judiciary, and more. So the question is, how do you begin to respond to all that, especially given the world that you’re coming from with your work?
Olayemi Olurin: I think we all have a different role to play in a movement. We all have different arenas where we are best served. And I think to me, like I said, I think that the thing that’s going to change, that’s going to impact everything the quickest, the most, the fastest – Or not fast, but the thing that is going to get us where we need to be, is in terms of shifting like social consciousness. And that’s why I think education, to me, is actually the most important of all the arenas.
I know people like to think, as a lawyer, they think that’s why you go in. I don’t think that. As a public defender, as a lawyer, I’m a cog in the system. I’m a harm reductionist at most. I see my role there as trying to diminish the negative impacts of the criminal system and trying to make sure my clients are humanized and doing what I can. But you’re still in a system and in a world it’s already been… The deck is stacked. The deck is stacked.
The law is already like this. The police are placed where they’re placed. They prosecute the way they do. The judges believe what they believe. And fundamentally, the jury thinks all of these people, because these people have been able to control the narratives around our society. There’s only so much you could do if the legislator, the police, the prosecutors, and the judges are not only all aligned, but your entire society has built your jury to believe in them. To believe in them and to believe that your clients are bad and you’re deserving of the circumstances, to turn a blind eye.
So for me, it’s about educating people. And I don’t mean educating like you debating with people and this dah, dah, dah. But we have to be pushing back. We have to be openly having these discussions. We have to be trying to educate people on what it really is, because people just don’t know. A lot of people just really don’t realize, and it’s fair. In a world where you’re raised to believe in something called the criminal justice system, you’re going to believe that it’s in the business of pursuing justice. That’s going to be your default presumption.
So when you hear things and all these horror stories from people, you think that they’re outliers, or the system is making a mistake of some kind. So for me, I’m in the business of trying to… Personally, I want us to divest from the criminal system. I recognize abolition. They’re not going to abolish it. Abolition today is not what’s going to happen. They’re not going to go and open up all the doors. That’s not what it means.
What it means is we need to start investing in the root causes of crime. If I believe that crime is exacerbated by poverty, by lack of mental health resources, by lack of education, infrastructure, all these different things, what I’m trying to do is create a world and do the work to get people to take money out of these systems and start putting money into that, whatever. So that the cause, the reason that we rely on prisons, isn’t there, so that we get to a world eventually where we’re not seeing these social ills and things like that because we’ve addressed those issues and those needs. Because it’s not a coincidence, again.
Yet again, all these things are happening where people don’t have the resources to survive. That’s what it is. We all need therapy. We all need help. We all need to be able to pay for schooling and all these things. So for me, I think the greatest push is education. And I don’t just mean in the formal sense. Obviously we need to put money into education infrastructure. But I mean in terms of just changing how we see the world, we see each other, how we see marginalized people in communities that are in these societies. That’s what I think is the largest thing.
And also to recognize that this is a step-by-step process, brick-by-brick process. It’s very easy to come into your time in the present and look at history where things have already been happening. People like to be, slavery is abolished, dah, dah, dah, all these different things. If we could abolish slavery, trust me, if we could abolish slavery, the prison system is not untouchable. It’s insane.
Marc Steiner: That’s a great line. That should be a line somewhere. I like that.
Olayemi Olurin: Yeah, if we can abolish slavery, the prison system is not untouchable. All this is is a modern day remake. And so slavery involved, I mean, millions and millions of people, slave trade, all kinds of countries, just a far huger, longer history of a thing. The prison system is a man-made institution that’s fairly recent. You come into it now and people think, oh, a few people just got up or something and said –
How do you think they received the slave abolitionists? The people who said, oh, this is bad. This is this. Dah, dah, dah. There’s going to be pushback. There’s going to be a fight. But it’s a brick-by-brick process. The same way now, it’s universally unacceptable. Nobody is allowed. No reasonable man is allowed to come and outright say in America at this point. And these politicians, even if they want it in their heart, they have to pretend like we’re all in alignment that slavery was bad.
That’s because it became… Some people, a bunch of people gave their lives, worked very hard, tirelessly, for unknown amounts of time, to make us come to a world where slavery sounds alarming and egregious to everybody, universally. But let the record reflect, a bunch of people were born into that world where they thought that was absurd and radical and crazy and, importantly, impossible. There are a lot of people that would be a lot more receptive to abolition if they didn’t incorrectly perceive it as impossible. Because in their mind, because they’ve only ever known a world with prisons, they think of prisons as natural to the world, like water and air.
But that’s not the case. That’s not the case at all. So I want to remind people a lot more difficult things have been done. You had to free a whole lot of people that were… It’s not just a population of people that have been criminalized, and almost two million people imprisoned in America. But it was the entire… They literally had a system in place where anybody of that race was quite literally enslaved. You’re born into slavery.
And if we can abolish that, if we manage to get to a world where we could convince people we actually do not need this. People thought the same way they seem to think prisons are as necessary to crime and safety is how people believed slavery was as necessary to capitalism and the means of production. That’s what they believed. Even in a negotiation, how do we do this in a way gradually enough that the South’s entire economic system doesn’t crumble out from under them?
There are people who are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Morally, I hear you. I’m morally opposed. I see why slavery is bad. But, you know, the economics. And eventually they got over all those people and managed to dismantle the system as a process, it was a fight. They fought tooth and nail. There was a civil war. So I don’t know why people think a little bit of backlash on Fox means that we can’t do this. I don’t know. It’s unclear to me. I’m like, y’all got to dream a little bigger, read a lot more. Really, it’s not undoable. It’s not undoable. So, I’m just in the business of that work.
Marc Steiner: I’d hate to have a go up against you in court. So, I can hear people listening to this and who really hear this argument about abolition and how do we change the future in this country. Let’s talk about, for just a minute, the kid who cried at his trial because he was so terrified.
Olayemi Olurin: Oh, Rittenhouse?
Marc Steiner: Yeah. So, I mean…
Olayemi Olurin: Them fake tears?
Marc Steiner: Pardon?
Olayemi Olurin: Them fake crocodile tears?
Marc Steiner: Yes. And his fake crocodile tears. Yes. What should happen to him in this world where we are trying to build a different system of justice?
Olayemi Olurin: Oh, I love this question. I’m glad, and I love this. I know where this is –
Marc Steiner: No, no, it’s probably, I really want to hear what you have to say.
Olayemi Olurin: In a world where I’m an abolitionist, what do I think we should do with this [white supremacist kid].
Marc Steiner: What do we do with it, with the Kyle Rittenhouses?
Olayemi Olurin: Yes. Trust me, I got you. So the first beneficiaries of the work of dismantling the system maintained and based around protecting white supremacy should not be white supremacists. People love to think it’s a contradiction when you say I believe that the prison system, the prison-industrial complex, mass incarceration is a means of maintaining social and racial inequality and perpetuating racism. And that’s why I believe that the system should be dismantled, because I don’t actually think it has anything to do with stopping or preventing or reducing the impacts of crime or helping communities.
And they think somehow it’s a contradiction there to want the white supremacist to go to jail. No, right? People say you’re legitimizing the system. The system doesn’t need my legitimization, that’s first and foremost. Second, the system, it’s already in the business of protecting white supremacy. So what it does is not punish white supremacists. So in no way can saying, oh, white supremacist should be punished by the system, is the system legitimizing itself or me legitimizing the system. It’s, in fact, you are using the system not for its means, for once. So, that’s my major underline to that.
And the two of it all is a white supremacist system is going to protect the white supremacist no matter what I say or do. I’m inconsequential to that dynamic. It’s going to do that. It was going to protect Kyle Rittenhouse no matter what I do. So me believing his ass should be under the jail isn’t a reflection of that.
And three, for me personally, I don’t care anything about Kyle Rittenhouse. I don’t, actually, at all. I don’t care, convicted, not convicted, because I know America, and I know America’s criminal system. I knew from the jump that that little boy was not going to be convicted. I already knew. So, I already know what it is. And the racism doesn’t shock me, white supremacy doesn’t shock me, watching the criminal system bend over backwards to do that does not shock me. I see it in court every day.
I remember the first time I realized that the criminal system was insidious. I used to think when people tell you that the criminal system is racist and it’s this and it’s all these different things, you think that it’s something you need a magnifying glass to parse out. You need to go read some books. You need to go do some studies. You need to be lurking behind a curtain, because clearly it’s something you wouldn’t expect, that something could be this racist and open in plain sight and continue to operate like that.
That’s what I thought when I was studying this stuff in college. And then I became a public defender and I represented, same judge, same prosecutor back to back, represented a Black guy that was accused of having a blunt, and they asked for thousands of dollars of bail on him. Immediately next, I represented a white guy who was found with an entire bag of drugs, selling, a dealer, and they consented to release. Asked for a no bail, no nothing. And I was like, oh! We’re not even playing. Oh, okay, I see what world we’re in. I see it now. So I expected all of that stuff to happen to Rittenhouse. That’s what it is.
So for me, it’s not about what should happen to him, it’s about what will happen to him because of the America that we live in. When I identify, when I even take the time out to even talk about a Rittenhouse or what’s happening with Rittenhouse, it’s not because I want him to go to jail. It’s because I want to show you that the criminal system you keep calling a justice system does not care about justice.
It doesn’t care about right or wrong. It doesn’t care about what you know and see, it doesn’t care. It cares about punishing and condemning and keeping its foot on the necks of certain populations. And there are other people that, no matter what they do, you watch the system transform itself right before your eyes to excuse them, because a white supremacist system will protect the white supremacist. That’s how I feel.
Marc Steiner: Amen. So just to conclude, I’m just thinking about what your analysis tells you about where we are going next and where this struggle goes. Because when I think about the rise of the power of this racist right wing in America, they really are seizing power everywhere.
Olayemi Olurin: They sure are.
Marc Steiner: And control a good part of the federal judiciary system as we speak. And want to take away everything that people fought for, from voting rights, and going back to states’ rights, and all the rest that we see this lineup, this battle taking place. We understand the depth of racism, as well, in America. And so where do you see the movement going? Where do you see the battle for change taking place, and how do you see it kind of…?
Olayemi Olurin: So I focus myself on the people. I know I’m a political commentator, but I don’t care about politics in the sports way that people fought [crosstalk]… I don’t care about these two entities, and I think they’re far more aligned than people realize when they’re not looking at how branding and messaging and how people go about delivering your message, but in terms of what they choose to do in application.
The way I see it, in terms of what we need to do and how it’s going to go as people is, first of all, we have to make demands. We have to. We have to make demands. But in order for us to be in consensus with what those demands are and what we are requiring of these people that we’re putting in power, whatever, we have to first come to some level of understanding and alignment. And this is the next thing.
Olayemi OlurinAnd I don’t care how much the media and everybody else works to make you think that we’re not doing it, it’s not happening, and the progressive stuff is all make believe. That’s not the case. If it were make believe, if we weren’t actually having impact, if we weren’t actually shifting social consciousness, if they weren’t actually seeing the results of our hard work, they wouldn’t be working on bended knee every day to try to stop us, to switch narrative to do this.
So for me, the first thing is about my role in it is trying to get people to start seeing these things differently and questioning it differently. That’s the one. But the two in terms of our politicians, I think the problem with… And I say the Democrats not because I want to be on the Democrats, just because we happen to live in this two-party system where I recognize that’s currently the team we got to be behind.
Republicans rally around bigotry, period. It’s so funny how they love to talk about identity politics when they talk about people of color and Black people, because in their mind, it’s so funny how whiteness makes itself the default. That like, oh, because whiteness is some neutral position, it can’t be identity or anything, whatever you’re invested in, but only the rest of us are like some kind of made up identity or whatever. But nobody is more invested in identity politics than Republicans in rallying around whiteness.
And we need to stop leaning into their talking points and their rebranding of it, how they call it the culture wars now. They’re not culture wars. No one’s having a, you don’t have a right or a cause. Your cause is only opposing what other people want, or responding to what their demands are, or what they want for their life just being mad at them, trying to take that down. That’s not a cause, that is not a culture, that is not a war. That is just oppressors trying to oppress. So that’s what I think.
I think what we need to do in terms of Democrats and liberals, we need to stop trying to appease these people, this centrist world where we don’t call all things out. We lean into all their talking points and we just allow them to get us torn down in the weeds. We need to start being honest, and we need to be honest and be strong about things. There’s too much capitulating to the right and Republicans. It’s very interesting to me that they could be quite literally – I mean, bigotry is not a suitable word to describe it. The only reason I’m using bigotry is as a catch-all. It’s a catch-all for racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, any transphobia, any level of oppressing. I mean, I have never seen people more riled up. But ooh, they love them [getting to] oppress some people. They love to be on an oppression tour.
And I think it’s important to call them out. If they could be as shameless about this, and then why are we doing this song and dance where we let them pretend it’s about something else all the time? Why are we doing that? Let’s be honest about what these things are. We’re pretending like there’s some kind of culture war happening with how DeSantis and all these people are challenging LGBT rights and all. They’re homophobic. That’s all that is. They’re homophobic. That’s all, baby. That’s all it is. They don’t have any cause until they’re mad at somebody else. They don’t have one. All of a sudden it’s June and now they’re mad at all the Pride stuff. Oh, let’s not let the kids go to dance. I said, all they do is complain about what other people do.
And we need to start, honestly, the best thing you could do there… I will say this. I’m sure, I am confident that there is in fact a population of white Republicans and white right-wing people who just don’t know any better in the sense that they haven’t been educated. Like I said, in the same way that I said we could believe the results of our environment where we’re taught blah, blah, blah, and that perpetuates this stuff. In the same way, I’m sure there’s a wealth of them that are drowning in misinformation and just lies built on maintaining this idea.
And if you are living in a world where you’re being told as your white self that somehow all the things you don’t have in this life, or dah, dah, dah, you’re deserving of or some is being stolen from you by the Black people, by the gay people, by everybody or whatever. And you’re being taught to breed and rally around that hate. I’m sure there are some people that simply revealing to them that, they see information. It’s not immediately. I think people make the mistake of thinking that there’s some piece of information you could give to a person and they will immediately just walk away from their entire worldview. That’s just not the case. No one’s going to do that. No one abandons their entire worldview the first time it’s challenged. It’s a process.
And I think there are a lot of people that, if you just reveal to them information over time, they don’t even notice it. It’s gradual. They will just start shifting. I have so many personal friends who thought they were moderates, who are saying the most left-wing stuff now and they don’t even know it, it’s because they talk to me every day. They don’t even realize it’s just been slowly just changing the seeds. Even my own mom, my mommy is an establishment Dem, who like, trust me, in her spirit, right in the heart just… She’d be mad every time I say something about her party, as she says, you know what I mean? And the next thing, she goes, ooh, that Eric Adams. I’m like, you see what I’m talking about, mama.
So, it’s that kind of process. I think overall, what we need to be doing in the business of, we need to be educating each other. We need to be calling things out. We need to stop leaning in. And I think all that really boils down to is not being scary in the sense of not being scared, not being soft. And I think a lot of that is what it is. Republicans do not have a problem. In fact, they enjoy pissing us off. They love saying the thing, the left. They want to say the most offensive, egregious thing, saying what they really think, what they want to say about us, blah, blah, blah. They don’t care, we receive it. They care about mobilizing their base and getting their base to understand and know what their message is and being a part of that.
We know good and well that they’re bigots. We know they’re racist. We know they’re all this… Stop getting caught up and all this, dude, stop. It’s a trick. Republicans are very engaged in the politics of distraction. It’s a trick. You’re trying to talk about something serious, something’s happened and we’re trying to talk about the gun thing, so all of a sudden they start talking about drag, kids listening to drag stories.
They come up with stuff so that you’re distracted. And what do we do every time? Engage in nonsense. And we need to stop leaning into all those bullshit euphemisms like wokeism and culture wars and blah, blah, and all these different things they call to reframe and re-characterize their bigotry as something other than bigotry. It’s bigotry, that’s all it is. That’s all it is. And we got to stop wasting our time.
So that is my overall, that’s what we need to be in the business doing. We got to be strong. We got to be honest. We have to call things out, and we have to start normalizing a world that should really be the world we want to live in.
Marc Steiner: There’s a whole lot there.
Olayemi Olurin: I told you I could talk for the whole time.
Marc Steiner: It’s good though. No, I like it. And I was going to end now, but you said one thing I have to maybe… We shouldn’t prolong this too long, I suppose, but just one quick thing. Because you mentioned a man’s name in your last response –
Olayemi Olurin: Eric Adams?
Marc Steiner: …That you have written about.
Olayemi Olurin: Oh you might [inaudible] on his head.
Marc Steiner: Mr. Eric Adams and the disillusionment that many people in New York are having now with Eric Adams. And it has to do with our criminal injustice system and more. Just to riff on that just for a quick second, I like to hear what your thoughts are on that, and then we will conclude.
Olayemi Olurin: Oh yeah. I always got a mouthful about Eric Adams. But people, whenever you complain about Eric Adams right now, recently there are people whose response is, well, y’all voted for him. What did you expect? That’s what New York asked for, that’s what they deserve. People who will not follow politics, pretend like politics is just a black and white thing like just, everybody clicked yes. You know what I mean? On Eric Adams, no circumstances were involved.
New York City was coming out of a pandemic. Let’s acknowledge it. New York City was one of the only places taking it very seriously for long. We were still not back up in the full swing of things. You know what I mean? New York City was very much so kind of closed. We’re kind of closed. We’re dealing with all kinds of issues. We had quadruple the COVID spikes. We had a lot of stuff going on.
It also introduced ranked choice voting for the first time or whatever, Dianne Morales’s campaign imploded at the ninth hour. There were a lot of different circumstances that came into play. We had a lot of different people running. Also Andrew Yang and everybody. Every Democrat with a dream was running for mayor. We had a lot of it.
So we had a very, very, very low voter turnout. In the first place, it was the pandemic. It was this, we had low voter turnout. We had ranked choice voting, and we had like seven choices. So, he didn’t win because New York City was like, whoa, we love him. It wasn’t like some historic voter turnout and everybody chose Eric Adams. It was a mess. It was a mess. It was a few people who voted. We had a ranked choice. [inaudible] And we got stuck with him. It was a mistake. It was a mistake.
I don’t want to say that it was ever like the entire New York City, like we were so behind him, and now people are like, oh, what have we done? It’s just people seeing Eric Adams managed to win. He managed to win. And once he managed to win, all the people that are invested in quashing progressive movements started trying to pretend like him being elected is a reflection of New York City’s real desire to have a tough on crime. And that’s what the Dems should be doing, and moderate and centrist this, or whatever.
So I really like to highlight Eric Adams just to show that. While they’re trying to quash, they love to somehow attribute the Democrat’s failure to progressive things that the Democrats never do while celebrating centrist Democrats that continue to perform poorly with poor polling. It’s illogical. And so that’s the main reason I like to highlight that.
But in the case of Adams, Adams comes in. He’s a cop. And people just didn’t know much about him. If you saw Eric Adams’s commercials or whatever, they don’t know. They see a Black guy, he’s a Democrat. He’s a cop that gives them that moderate establishment feel where they think, oh, he is going to be a little bit progressive, but dah, dah, dah, because they’re not paying attention.
But if they were paying attention, if they knew he was a cop the way I knew he was a cop and everything I knew, it wouldn’t have been shocking. But Eric Adams comes in and he immediately begins waging war on the homeless. I can’t describe it as anything else. That’s what it is. It’s been a war on the homeless. Immediately, he puts a million, he puts 1000, specifically, puts 1000 more cops in the subways to drive out the homeless people off the subways. Once they’re back in the streets, he starts tearing down the encampments. He proposes massive budget cuts for them. He’s cut housing. He’s cut all these different things. All the while, NYPD is still shooting at people. People are still dying in Rikers. And he’s still asking, in fact, asked for 200 million more for NYPD, gave them 90 million more, but cut from housing, cut from schooling, cut from parks, cut from everything else, but NYPD got their money.
And then they go, he’s like, we have this major problem with the homeless. I want to say this. The war is not on homelessness, it’s on homeless people. Because he’s not doing anything.
Marc Steiner: It’s a big difference.
Olayemi Olurin: Big difference. And people, I cannot stand the way people love to have this homeless conversation, this homelessness conversation in New York City, and link it to crime rather than linking it to housing and the actual work. The way copaganda doesn’t make any sense, but because it’s so pervasive, no one questions it. It is very wild. They’re never talking about – This is why I think it is so beautiful. They always talk about crime when they talk about the homeless. And it’s interesting because they’re never even there. How often do you actually hear them actually tell you any story about the homeless committing crimes? You know what I mean?
They talk about crime and they talk about homeless people because they just want the criminal system to be used to disappear these people. Because the reality is the homeless person is in way more danger than you and I. If you knew right now you didn’t have anywhere to sleep, you couldn’t come back to your house, you didn’t know where to sleep. You would be worried, you would be scared for you on the streets. You would be worried about yourself. You are the person that is in danger.
But instead, they make this conversation about the criminal system and yada-yada, rather than the fact that New York City is like one of the most expensive cities to live in on this earth. On this earth, we are in a pandemic where rent prices and everything have already risen 22%. We’re having inflation. There are no livable wages. That’s why. Eviction moratoriums were lifted. That’s why this is an astronomically expensive place to live.
And I’m an attorney. I’m an attorney. I’m on TV. I live in a basement apartment. Look at this. That is why. I live in a basement apartment. So why do you think people are on the street? That’s the answer. That is the answer. That’s the clear answer. But he, like many others, they just don’t care about these people. That’s just not what they’re in. That’s not what they’re in the business of doing. They’re in the business of securing, maintaining power, and lining pockets, so that’s what they do. That’s my conclusion.
Marc Steiner: And that’s a good conclusion. It’s a good way to end. This is good. This has been great. Olayemi Olurin, it’s been a real pleasure to talk with you today. I really enjoyed this conversation.
Olayemi Olurin: Great. I did too. This was really wonderful. I actually loved it.
Marc Steiner: And I look forward to more. And I want to thank you all out there for joining us. You can find links and more about Olayemi Olurin’s work here at The Steiner Show site at The Real News. And let me know what you think about today’s program, and I will write right back to you. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and we can have a dialogue about that. And again, links to all of our articles and her latest in Teen Vogue will be right here. So, check that out.
I want to thank Dwayne Gladden for running this show today with his new daughter in tow, Stephen Frank for his genius at audio editing coming up, Kayla Rivera for all she does as she prepares for her wedding, and all of our hard working crew at the creative group here at The Real News. Thank you again for joining us, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
Education is one of the few rehabilitative options available to incarcerated people, yet all across America prisoners are prevented from pursuing their education. “Atiba” Demetrius Brown, for instance, has been dedicated to improving himself and his post-incarceration prospects by taking correspondence courses while incarcerated in Maryland, but thanks to a draconian new decree by the Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services (DPSCS), Atiba can’t take his exams. In this installment of Rattling the Bars, Victor Wallis joins Mansa Musa to discuss the case of “Atiba” Demetrius Brown and the calculated cruelty of the prison-industrial complex.
Victor Wallis is a professor in the Liberal Arts Department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has been involved in prisoner support activities since the 1970s in Indiana, and he is the author of numerous books, including Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on US Politics, which has been used in prison education projects.
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition Rattling The Bars. I’m Mansa Musa, co-host with Eddie Conway. And before we get started, let me update you all on Eddie Conway. Eddie Conway is doing great. He’s recovering at a remarkable speed, and we hope to have him back in the space in the near future.
When we think of education and the education of people, or the lack thereof, very rarely do we look at the impact that education would have on changing a person that’s in the criminal justice system. Or, more importantly, the impact that education will have on changing people that are incarcerated. This is not the case within the Maryland Department of Corrections.
We have a situation where a prisoner, Demitrius Brown, also known as Atiba, has taken initiative to acquire an AA degree. He has taken initiative to have the discipline to study. He’s taken initiative to put himself in a position financially to make sure that he can get the corresponding course. He’s done everything along these lines to better himself. But the Department of Corrections, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Service has thrown a roadblock in his way, and is preventing him from not only obtaining an education that might lead to a better opportunity for punished release, but also in this policy that they’re putting into effect, will have collateral consequences. Here to talk with me today about this is Victor Wallis.
Victor has a political science degree from Berkeley College in Boston. He’s been active in working with prisoners’ issues since 1970. His book, Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on US Politics, has been used to teach classes within prison. Welcome, Victor, to Rattling the Bars.
Victor Wallis: Thank you, man. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Mansa Musa: Victor, let’s start out by giving our viewers and our listeners an overview of Demetrius Brown, also known as Atiba. Who is Atiba?
Victor Wallis: Atiba is a… It’s hard to describe him. I would say he’s a model of someone who is forming himself. He’s not only educating himself, but he has built a tremendous prestige, I think, a tremendous degree of respect. I would say one of the things that most impresses me about him is the accounts he’s given of situations where conflict has arisen and where he’s served as a kind of mediator or peacemaker.
But the other thing he does also, to a tremendous extent, is educate other prisoners while he’s educating himself. And he’s led study groups. It’s getting a little more difficult now. He finds the prisoners there now less motivated than when he started. But he’s very eager to, let’s say, help them educate themselves. Obviously with a political thrust, because it’s a recognition of the kind of injustices of the system as a whole, which are felt with particular strength in the prisons. But that’s a motivational factor, and he builds on that, and makes it possible for prisoners to begin to discuss among themselves what to do about this situation that they’re in. I don’t know what else… He’s from Baltimore.
Mansa Musa: Okay.
Victor Wallis: He’s been in prison for the last 10 years or so, since he was in his early 20s, I believe.
He’s highly motivated, when he comes out, to continue doing constructive work of some kind. I mean, in the sense of whether it’s counseling or political work, certainly. But he’s very dedicated, I would say, to improving himself.
Mansa Musa: And so let’s pick up on that. So all things considered, he’s one person that has taken initiative to better himself at the exclusion of anything that’s going on within the system. Let’s talk about his education. You spoke on the fact that he’s done a lot in terms of educating himself on different levels. Let’s talk about his formal education. Prior to coming to prison, what was his formal education?
Victor Wallis: He graduated from high school several years before he was arrested. That was the extent of his formal education, but in prison he’s done an enormous amount of reading. Like many prisoners, George Jackson was a tremendous inspiration. But he’s branched out from there in every direction, especially the history of socialist movements, of popular struggles of various kinds, the history of Black people’s liberation movements, and various topics. But stretching very widely, and I would say going into the philosophical aspects of things in depth, I would say.
Mansa Musa: And now based on this, he wanted to take a correspondence course. He went about taking this correspondence course. Walk us through what the course is and what type of degree he was trying to get, or was planning on getting.
Victor Wallis: Well, the correspondence course was possible through Adam’s State University, which is located in Colorado. He’s going towards an associate degree. He’s just starting it. And the two courses that he’s enrolled in right now, one is history of civilizations, and the other is called the sociological imagination.
Mansa Musa: And this correspondence course, is it funded by the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Service? Do we have a Pell Grant for it?
Victor Wallis: No. The Correctional Services has nothing to do with funding. It’s private support.
Mansa Musa: So he’s got private support to get an AA degree, which is two years. How much time does he have left before he’s released to society?
Victor Wallis: I would say three or four years, approximately.
Mansa Musa: So his plan is to get a degree, or AA degree. Is the credits transferable, to your knowledge?
Victor Wallis: I presume so.
Mansa Musa: All right. So he is going to get a degree, a AA degree. Two to three years left on his sentence, get a AA degree, that has transferable credits that would allow him upon his release to be able to get a BA degree. Is that correct?
Victor Wallis: Well, it could count towards a BA degree.
Mansa Musa: It could count towards a BA degree. What is the problem with him obtaining this degree, or continuing this correspondence? What exactly is the problem?
Victor Wallis: The exact problem is that all of a sudden, in the middle of his first semester of study, the prison refused to provide proctors for him to take exams for his courses. And this is a service which they previously had done routinely, but without any advanced warning, they suddenly stopped the process. And they said that it was because of a decree in effect from the Department of Public Safety that prohibited the prisons from cooperating in any way with external correspondence courses.
It set him back tremendously. It was tremendously demoralizing, because here he was doing very well in his courses, and suddenly they’ve put this roadblock in his way. So fortunately at the present moment, Adams State may be able to accommodate him and allow him to complete the courses without having proctored exams. But the only reason that they’re doing that is that they are still operating under a regimen having to do with the COVID pandemic, which allowed for certain flexibility. But they said when that is ended, they’ll go back to insisting that the students take proctored exams. And the proctoring has to be provided by someone in the prison.
Mansa Musa: In that regard, the proctor examiner – And full disclosure, I was incarcerated for 48 years. I’m familiar with the institution, [was housed] at Maryland Correctional Training Center in Hagerstown. So I’m familiar with that system, and I’m familiar with the educational system. But in terms of offering the proctor, exactly what would that entail? What would that look like? Educate our listeners and viewers on what that actually would entail.
Victor Wallis: Proctoring just means that you have some person in an official capacity who’s sitting there while you’re taking the exam, making sure that you’re not looking at notes, and setting a time limit for you to answer the questions. That’s all it is.
Mansa Musa: And I’m familiar with that. And the reason why I was asking that is because I’ve been in the space, and this is really all the proctor does. The system that they had set up when I was incarcerated was you go to the school, they put you in the classroom, and the proctor sits there while you take the exam. When you finish taking the exam, you hand the exam in, and you leave. The time it takes for the proctor to do its job is the time it takes for the person that’s taking the exam to finish.
So if the person can finish in 40 minutes, the proctor takes the exam, and the person will leave. And in most cases I’ve known from experiences that, because correspondence courses are rare in the prison system because of the ability for a prison to finance it, you have very few people in that environment that would be a classroom size, where you might have 15-20 people, where you have to have a proctor in that regard.
But let’s dial down on why you think they’re doing this to Atiba? Because you outlined a lot of things that’s going on with his character in terms of him being an impactful individual within the prison environment, and being a person that’s there to educate and raise the prisoners’ consciousness about their environment, and try to get them to change their thinking. Why do you think they’re doing this to him in particular?
Victor Wallis: Well, they’re not doing it just to him. It’s a general ruling that applies to anyone. And there I see it as part of a general phenomenon that’s taking place all over the country of making things more and more difficult for prisoners to rehabilitate themselves in every way, especially in the form of disrupting their contacts with people in the outside world.
I’m in communication currently with a prisoner in Pennsylvania and one in Virginia. In both those states, in order to write to them, you have to write to an address in Florida, where they photocopy it and send it back. Now, I just heard from a prisoner in Missouri. I just got this letter today. He says the state of Missouri has started a new system where mail has to be sent to a digital scanning system after August 1. You’ll no longer get mail into the prison. It says all you can send in is books and literature.
It’s incredible what they’re doing. I’ve heard of other states… Well, in Indiana, they’ve [privated] greeting cards and other places like that. They’re doing everything they can to make it more punitive, more isolating for the prisoner to be in the system. They don’t recognize, or at least they don’t care that separating someone from society is itself punishment. But they have a kind of philosophy, it’s not in their official idea. Correction means you’re improving someone, supposedly. But their working philosophy is punishment, punishment, punishment, and more punishment. And this is one aspect of it.
Mansa Musa: And we recognize that the prison-industrial complex overall is the new plantation, and the prisoners are the chattel. This is a recognition that we see throughout the United States of America. 2.5 million people are incarcerated. Beyond that point, it’s over 10 million people that’s locked into the criminal justice system in the form of parole, probation, the county jail, detention center. So your observation is correct in regard to… And this being a concerted effort on the part of the establishment and the prison-industrial complex and these bloodsuckers in terms of minimizing or dehumanizing or relegating prisoners into a sense of hopelessness.
But in terms of Atiba, how has he responded to… I heard you say earlier that it brought on a sense of depression. But how is he doing thus far in regard to him maintaining his focus and continuing to educate himself and others around him?
Victor Wallis: Well, his immediate response in terms of the courses is that he’s writing to his instructors, requesting them to accommodate him and to allow him to complete the course without having to take proctored exams. And for the moment, that’s possible in terms of Adam State ruling, but it may not be possible after they lift the special rulings they had during COVID. So he’s doing that. But it was a terrible disruption and very demoralizing at first. And so he’s apprehensive. The moment the COVID rules get lifted, Adam State will once again insist on having their exams proctored. Which means, in addition to what I said about their being present in timing, that all the correspondence about the exams is through the proctor. In other words, the institution sends the exam to the proctor, and the proctor sends the exam back to the institution.
So there’s going to have to be that kind of collaboration. And again, this is not just for Atiba, but for everyone, for anyone who would be taking correspondence courses. As far as Atiba is concerned, he’s highly motivated, and he’s continuing to read and study on his own. But this was a big setback for him. He told me for the couple of weeks after it started, he wasn’t sleeping. He was so angry that they were doing this totally arbitrary interference with what he was trying to do to improve himself.
Mansa Musa: And it’s a recognition that the prison-industrial complex is primarily used for warehousing people, and that very few institutions in the United States of America… And rural, I know for a fact in particular has a lot of programs, often a lot of program services. So when someone takes the initiative to better themselves and have this impediment, it will be demoralizing. But I want to look at the collateral consequences of this decision. Because like you said, it affects everybody. Have you looked at it in terms of the overall impact it would have on the Department of Corrections in general or the Division of Correction in general?
Victor Wallis: Yeah. Well, of course the immediate thing in Maryland, what’s important is to put pressure on the Department of Public Safety to lift this ban. This is something that really is a responsibility for anyone who is concerned about the prisoners in Maryland. And in a wider sense, what this kind of practice reflects is a general increase in the repressive responses of those in power to anything in the nature of a threat that they perceive just in people preserving their humanity.
They would love to have the people in prison fighting each other in gangs, spaced out on drugs, and so on. What they don’t want is purposeful prisoners who are developing a consciousness and who can become effective organizers both in the prison and later when they get out. And the repressive measures that they’re taking are just horrendous. Of both this interference with the correspondence by having to send letters to another state, and then only sending the prisoner the photocopy, and then digitizing the incoming mail, and so on. And another thing… You mentioned some of the things with… Well, for example, in some jails, they don’t even allow direct visits anymore. You have to do it through video. It’s all also a money making opportunity for these outfits that provide these services.
But I was also saying that the repressive aspect is consistent with the wider phenomenon of repression that’s manifested in the voter suppression methods, preventing people from voting because you’re afraid that what they would vote for would be programs and people that would push the society in a more… Let’s say just direction, a more redistributive direction. And that would take power away from those with privilege. So the prison system is a part of this larger apparatus which controls and limits the capacity of citizens, of ordinary people, working people, to speak for themselves effectively in an organized way, and not just in the form of random protests or frustrated acts of despair.
Mansa Musa: Right. And [inaudible] educated prisoners or educated persons is dangerous. We know that slaves weren’t allowed to read, and the prison-industrial complex being the new plantation and prisoners being the new chattel, it seems consistent with the thinking of the establishment, the fascist government, that anyone educated, any person is more likely to resist the oppression and the dehumanization that capitalists are inflicting on people throughout the world. But Victor, you have the last word on this. What’s your last word on this?
Victor Wallis: Well, just picking up on that point of education, where education is dangerous to the ruling elite, to this ruling class, is when it takes the form of consciousness raising among the people who have suffered injustice, especially in the prison context, who can communicate with each other about it. In a way, the prison is an ideal learning environment because people are surrounded by demonstration or proof of the injustice of the society. And they’re thrown together with others who are experiencing the same thing at the same time, and they may even have time to engage in study. While it’s a terrible situation to be put into, there’s a way in which it can backfire on those who are doing it. And as people have said, prison can become a school of liberation.
And I always remember George Jackson’s statement that, it’s not an exact quote, but it’s roughly to the effect that prison will either break you or make you indestructible. Something along those lines. And that’s educating oneself within the prison context, in the light of all these conditions, is exactly what’s necessary and what’s important. But I think, more generally, education is a basic right, and people shouldn’t be prevented from pursuing it. And it’s not necessarily the case that every prisoner will educate himself or herself in a political direction, but it’s important that this be allowed. And this is part of the process of rehabilitation, of reentering society.
Mansa Musa: Talk about what can be done to support not only Atiba, but anyone that’s confronted with this situation.
Victor Wallis: I mean, I would say of course, on the one thing that they should contact the… I guess the Department of Public Safety, but whoever oversees the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, that this is an outrage. That should be made a public issue in itself.
But in the wider sense, it involves all the general things we talked about, that the changes that are needed in the society to… Since this is part of a national repressive trend, it can only be fought politically at the widest level. People have to get involved in revolutionary struggle of some kind or other, in whatever situation they find themselves in.
Mansa Musa: And there you have it, the real news about the prison-industrial complex’s continued oppression and repression of people. The new plantation, they are constantly inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on people throughout the United States.
Here we have another example of something as basic as education. They want to control that. Atiba might be an individual, but he’s the face of how repressive the prison-industrial complex is when it doesn’t allow a person to educate himself and spend his own money or solicited support to educate himself by taking a correspondence course. To block him from doing that, they block him from being able to take the exam and putting a hardship on not only him, but the institution that wants to support him.
There you have it, the real news about the repressive educational system policy in the Division of Corrections and Department of Public Safety and Correctional Service in Maryland. Thank you very much, Victor. We enjoyed this conversation. Can you send the information where people can contact Atiba if they want to correspond with him and interact with him?
Victor Wallis: Yes. I will send it to you and you can post it.
Mansa Musa: Yeah. Please, I’d appreciate that.
Victor Wallis: Thank you so much, Mansa. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.
A federal civil lawsuit recently filed against Baltimore Police Sergeant Welton Simpson Jr. for violating the civil rights of a Baltimore man in January 2020 also revealed that the veteran cop had been accused of sexually assaulting his then-wife.
The protective order has been something of an open secret in legal circles for years and was first reported on by the Baltimore Sun earlier this week. “In 2010, a judge issued a domestic violence related protective order against Simpson in favor of his wife based on allegations that Simpson held his service weapon to her head while he sexually assaulted her,” the lawsuit reads.
Battleground Baltimore has obtained the protective order, which provides a detailed and harrowing account of alleged abuse by Simpson. “On October 6, 2009… Welton Simpson Jr. raped and held me against my will with 2 guns. One being his service weapon for the Baltimore City Police Department,” his wife wrote in 2010.
October 2009
According to the protective order, around 3AM on Oct. 6, 2009, Simpson demanded he see his wife’s phone. He looked through the history of the phone, and told her they “needed to talk when he returned home.” When he returned around 10:30AM, he began looking through his wife’s computer, at her internet browser history. When she confronted him, he asked, “Now, can we talk?”
Simpson made his wife go into the bedroom, where he wielded two guns and asked her about an affair. He looked at his wife’s phone history again, and then, his wife wrote, Simpson “told me that I had two options: either he shoots me then kill[s] himself or I shoot him and tell the police it was self defense.”
Simpson began touching and kissing her while telling her, “stop resisting,” she wrote. Then he tried to perform oral sex on her. “I kept telling him ‘no’ and with his arm on my chest holding his gun, he took off his pants and raped me,” she alleged.
Simpson’s wife was crying. Simpson ordered her to stop crying. On another floor of the house at the time was a young child.
“He told me to stand up and took my nightgown down again and pushed me on the bed and raped me again, for the second time,” she alleged.
Simpson’s wife eventually left the house with the child. She wrote that Simpson warned her not to call the police.
In the document from March 2010, Simpson’s wife wrote: “even though this incident happened in October 2009 it is my biggest fear that Mr. Welton Simpson Jr. [will] cause bodily harm to me…He has threatened me several times and told me that instead of raping me he should have killed me. I am living in fear because of the unknown of what he can do to me.”
The order also alleges that weeks before he allegedly raped his wife, Simpson closed their bedroom door, stood in front of it, preventing her from leaving, and put a gun to his head.
Simpson’s wife also alleged that, months after the Oct. 9, 2009 assault, she found a syringe and “a bottle of Succinylcholine chloride injection 200 mg”—a very strong muscle relaxer often used to enable tracheal intubation.
“I feared that he was going to use this on me,” she wrote. “The warning label on top said it is a paralyzing agent.”
The Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office’s “do not call” list includes Simpson and notes that allegations of domestic violence and rape against Simpson were “sustained.” That means an allegation police who investigated believe happened, and violated police policy.
Simpson was not criminally charged and he was not fired by the Baltimore Police Department. He was instead put on desk duty, the lawsuit says: “As a part of the order of protection, Simpson was ordered not to possess a firearm. Instead of terminating Simpson for being unable to fulfill a fundamental requirement of policing, BPD placed him in administrative duty during the duration of the order, then allowed him to return to street duty without scrutiny.”
“On the one hand, police departments hold up their members as heroic, a cut above the rest, extraordinary individuals. On the other hand they demonstrate that officers are held to a lower standard than anybody else, allowing general character and job performance to go unchecked until a high-profile crime is committed.”
Baltimore City Councilperson Ryan Dorsey
Baltimore City Councilperson Ryan Dorsey has been calling attention to Simpson’s domestic violence allegations since the cop went viral in January 2020 for attacking a man in a West Baltimore corner store. Shortly after Simpson was identified as the cop in the video attacking someone, Dorsey said “an acquaintance” encouraged him to locate and read the protective order from a decade earlier. The police were aware of that protective order back then, Dorsey stressed.
“On the one hand, police departments hold up their members as heroic, a cut above the rest, extraordinary individuals. On the other hand they demonstrate that officers are held to a lower standard than anybody else, allowing general character and job performance to go unchecked until a high-profile crime is committed,” Dorsey told Battleground Baltimore. “In hindsight, it seems like any reasonable person equipped with the available information about Simpson should have expected what eventually transpired [in January 2020].”
January 2020
The federal civil rights lawsuit against Simpson filed earlier this month demands damages of at least $75,000 related to the January 2020 incident where Simpson entered a corner store in West Baltimore and, after some arguing and shoving, took 23 year-old Zayne Abdullah to the ground using a mixed martial arts move (Simpson was briefly, a local MMA fighter).
Cell phone video of Simpson attacking Abdullah went viral and quickly became a reason for cops and elected officials to bemoan the city’s out-of-control citizenry. In their eyes, it exemplified how difficult it is to be a cop in Baltimore—because all they saw was Abdullah and others fighting with Simpson.
Simpson suggested he was attacked first. He also claimed Abdullah spit on him. Body camera footage showed what really happened. Simpson shoved Abdullah, cursed at him (“Get the fuck out my face”), and eventually tackled him and put him in a chokehold Baltimore Police said was “prohibited.” At some point, Abdullah, on the ground, said, “I can’t breathe.” There was no apparent de-escalation by Simpson, who instigated and escalated the situation. Footage also showed that Abdullah never spat on Simpson.
“Defendant Simpson assaulted and battered [Abdullah] when he tackled him, forced him to the ground, and forcefully detained him. Defendant Simpson intended to unlawfully invade his physical well-being through harmful or offensive contact,” the lawsuit says.
“Defendant Simpson assaulted and battered [Abdullah] when he tackled him, forced him to the ground, and forcefully detained him. Defendant Simpson intended to unlawfully invade his physical well-being through harmful or offensive contact,” the lawsuit says.
That body camera footage was released by Abdullah’s defense attorneys in July 2020, seven months after the attack. As the lawsuit notes, BPD ignored this body camera footage for months. “Despite being in possession of the body camera footage of Defendant Simpson’s unlawful arrest of [Abdullah],” the lawsuit says, “[Baltimore Police], with deliberate indifference for [Abdullah’s] Constitutional rights, did not review the footage or failed to scrutinize the footage.”
Abdullah and another man, who is also suing, Donnell Burgess, were both arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer.
Once the body camera footage was released in July 2020, Abdullah’s charges were dropped and he was released from jail. Abdullah had been in jail since the arrest in January 2020, which means Abdullah spent the early days of the pandemic in jail. The lawsuit notes that Abdullah also lost his job while he was in jail. “During his term of wrongful incarceration, [Abdullah] lost his job at H&S Bakery where he made more than $17 per hour. Further, H&S placed [Abdullah’s] name on their ‘Do Not Hire’ list for two years because he had just started the job and was still completing his probationary period of employment with the company,” the lawsuit reads.
In jail, Abdullah also had an epileptic seizure and fell out of his bunk, hurting his back and head.
Simpson was charged by the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office with making a false statement and misconduct. He was convicted on both counts in September 2021.
“BPD did not abide by the terms of the Consent Decree”
The lawsuit is a damning critique of the Baltimore Police Department’s lack of oversight, and it asks a question many defense attorneys, Councilperson Dorsey, and even some frustrated cops have been asking for years: Given Simpson’s past, including the alleged rape of his wife in 2009, why was he even on the force in 2020?
“In order for the judge to issue the protective order, he had to believe that Simpson not only presented a threat, but that he was likely to do so again. And BPD didn’t consider this a reason Simpson should not be put in a position of power and trust,” Dorsey explained to Battleground Baltimore.
“BPD knew or should have known that… Defendant Simpson proved unfit for [his] assigned duties,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also names a number of Baltimore higher-ups, and notes that the 2020 attack on Abdullah is evidence that “BPD did not abide by the terms of the Consent Decree.” The lawsuit continues: “The rampant violations and cover-ups continued, with officers persistently and repeatedly violating the Constitutional rights of City citizens as late as 2018, 2019, and 2020, with violations that were consistent with or identical to the violations that DOJ previously found that occurred over the course of several years.”
Battleground Baltimore has recently called attention to leaked documents which highlight a serious lack of police oversight despite claims that the department is changing “post-Freddie Gray.” Baltimore Police Officer Melvin Hill resigned in 2021 after nearly a decade of allegations that included child abuse, sexual misconduct, giving a false statement, and more. Officer Luke Shelley continues to work for BPD despite questionable searches, mishandled evidence, and allegations of “racial profiling.”
In 2020, Simpson made a salary of $101,941 with overtime at $51,522.54, adding up to a total of $153,463.54 for the year.
Simpson has appealed his conviction for making a false statement and misconduct during the January 2020 incident. He is still a cop, currently assigned to administrative duties. His police powers are suspended.
The Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office maintained two lists of problem cops. Simpson is on both of them. He is on the “do not call” list released last year and he is also on the recently-released list of 300-plus officers Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby once said had “credibility issues.”
“At least 40% of people incarcerated in American women’s prisons identify somewhere under the broad lesbian-bisexual-trans-queer umbrella—a shocking statistic that holds true when looking at detention centers for youths as well,” historian Hugh Ryan recently wrote in The Washington Post. “As women’s incarceration skyrockets in America—increasing 700% in just the past 40 years—naming and dealing with the homophobia and transphobia at its root is crucial to understanding this phenomenon and unraveling it.” In this edition of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa speaks with Ryan about why so many LGBTQ people are incarcerated today and how sexism, homophobia, and transphobia became baked-in features of our modern prison-industrial complex.
In the conclusion of The Long Road Home, Chris Hedges looks at the numerous hurdles faced by prisoners released into society, the toll of reentry on their families, the importance of educational programs in restoring self-esteem and setting goals, and the difficult process of parole. Hedges begins by speaking with Russ Owen, who spent 32 years in prison, on the day of his release from East Jersey State Prison. Owen, who graduated summa cum laude from Rutgers University and earned a doctorate in Pastoral Care in prison, began work recently as a community organizer with New Jersey Together. He says that although he is free, he struggles to cope with the deep loneliness that defined his life in prison.
Hedges speaks with Russ Owen’s mother, Mae Owen, along with four other former prisoners: Boris Franklin, who spent 11 years in prison; Ron Pierce, who spent 30 years in prison; Robert Luma, whose nickname is Kabir and who spent 16 years in prison; and Thomas Dollard, who spent 30 years in prison. All were Chris’s students in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University to prisoners in the New Jersey State prison system. Collectively, they spent 119 years in prison.
Chris Hedges interviews writers, intellectuals, and dissidents, many banished from the mainstream, in his half-hour show, The Chris Hedges Report. He gives voice to those, from Cornel West and Noam Chomsky to the leaders of groups such as Extinction Rebellion, who are on the front lines of the struggle against militarism, corporate capitalism, white supremacy, the looming ecocide, as well as the battle to wrest back our democracy from the clutches of the ruling global oligarchy.
Watch The Chris Hedges Report live YouTube premiere on The Real News Network every Friday at 12PM ET.
Directors of Photography: Chris Arnone and Michael Johnson Produced by: Rebecca Myles and Chris Arnone Editing by: Chris Arnone, Michael Johnson, and Shawn McMillan Graphic design by: Shawn McMillan
Transcript
Chris Hedges:Welcome to the Chris Hedges Report. Today in part two of A Long Road Home we look at the numerous hurdles faced by prisoners released into society, the toll on their families, the importance of educational programs in restoring self-esteem and setting goals, and the difficult process of even being granted parole. We begin by speaking with Russ Owen, who spent 32 years in prison, the day he was released from East Jersey State Prison, as well as his mother, Mae Owen, along with four other former prisoners: Boris Franklin, who spent 11 years in prison, Ron Pierce, who spent 30 years in prison, Robert Luma, whose nickname is Kabir and who spent 16 years in prison, and Thomas Dollard, who spent 30 years in prison. All were my students in the college degree program offered to prisoners in the New Jersey State prison system by Rutgers University. Collectively, they spent 119 years in prison.
Russ Owen:Hello, young lady.
Mae Owen:Hey.
Russ Owen:I’m sorry. My pants don’t fit. I got to keep pulling them up.
Chris Hedges:What were you thinking when you walked out?
Russ Owen:Little bit of anxiety, because you’re just not used to the love. You’re not used to just seeing so many people, they’re there waiting for you. And this is overwhelming. It’s very humbling to think that from where I came from, from all I’ve done, that there’s something redeemable about me. So I’m cherishing this moment, and I just can’t wait to make the people proud.
Chris Hedges:Well, but you made us all proud inside, Russ.
Russ Owen:Yeah, I appreciate that.
Chris Hedges:That’s true.
Russ Owen:But I’m ready to do better, if I can.
Chris Hedges:How was it seeing your parents for the first time outside a visiting room, or not on a phone?
Russ Owen:It was amazing. I’m grateful because I know a lot of people’s families didn’t make it. And that has been my one prayer throughout these 32 years: Give me an opportunity to get back to my parents. And the reason why is because for me growing up, I got it wrong. The way I processed things as a child and as a teenager, I wasn’t fair to my parents. Their intentions were good towards me, but I was rebellious. So for me, this moment has meant everything.
Speaker:Okay, Brother. Love you, man.
Chris Hedges: The trauma of mass incarceration affects not only those who are incarcerated, but their families. I sat down with Russ’s mother.
So for 32 years, you’ve stood by your son while he’s been incarcerated. Explain what’s that like for a mother and for a family to have someone incarcerated.
Mae Owen:Okay. Well, first of all, we have prayed about it. And I just felt like God was saying to me, I’m taking care of him. And so, I had to hold onto that. And so, we did the appeals and everything like that. And so, our prayer was that at Christmas time he’ll be home. And each year we just believed, by Christmas time, he’ll be home, even this past Christmas. And we were able to hold onto that, believing that one day he would be home for the next Christmas. And so, we just walked by faith each year, one year at a time, no matter what came up. By the grace of God, he’s going to be home.
Chris Hedges:Let’s talk about what it’s like, the phone calls, the visits, sending money through the commissary. For people that don’t know what a family goes through, tell us.
Mae Owen:Russell called us pretty much every day. And they’re not long conversations, but it’s to let us know that he’s doing alright. But also, he gets to hear our voice and know that we’re okay. And sending him money, because he does have a little job there. But for a lot of them, there’s no job, no type of income for them, so they end up with nothing. So we try to send him a little bit of money, but it’s not that he asked us to do it. What he asked for is books, his school books, that’s where we usually provide money for him. But for us, it’s the phone calls to keep that connection going.
Russ Owen: Well, one of the things that I was determined to do once this happened was to build a relationship. Because I didn’t know my parents growing up, I made every effort to get to know them. So I learned things about them. So it wasn’t just that they were my parents, they became my friends. And then, I shared my vision with them of who I wanted to be. Even though I was in prison, I had a vision of who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. And I shared it with them, and they became my partners.
Chris Hedges:And what was that vision?
Russ Owen:Well, the first thing was for me to never commit an act of violence again. And I didn’t know how that was going to play out in prison. But by the grace of God, it did, and I was committed to it. Definitely, I was committed to rededicating my life to the Lord, and I wanted to be the person that I was meant to be. And again, I didn’t know how all that was going to play out inside the prison walls, but I worked hard, [effortlessly]. And my parents were my partners the whole time, supporting me. In that environment, there’s not too much support, but it was my parents that was the one supporting me. When I felt like I couldn’t do it, they said I could do it.
Chris Hedges:And a lot of that was through education?
Russ Owen:Education. As I was doing my education, I was giving them updates. They were involved. So every time I called home, that was the topic of discussion. How’s your school work going? Where you at right now? This and that. Made sure that all the report cards got sent to them. You know what I mean? So I wanted to do what I could to let them know that I was working hard, and to uplift their spirits, too.
Chris Hedges:How did prison change Russ?
Mae Owen:He grew up. He became a very organized person. He became a person that set goals for himself. So it’s like the six months, a year, five years, and things like that. So there are certain things that he wants to accomplish, and he wants to be able to make sure that his grandkids do not experience a lot of the things that he’s experienced. Because a lot of times, in families, if one member, if the father goes to jail, then it’s the son and the grandson and like that. And that’s something he wants to do his best to avoid. But the main thing is that he became a person that is well organized with goals set for his life.
Chris Hedges:And for those people who have not, I mean, you all got college degrees. You finished yours, Russ, in prison. You both finished yours at Rutgers when you got out. But if you don’t have that level of education, if you don’t understand how the system works, if you’re not able to articulate even your own emotions, anecdotally, it’s almost impossible to get through parole, isn’t it?
Russ Owen:Well, I said it, through learning the process, once you panic, if a person panics, it’s over. Once you panic, they got you. And another thing, a lot of guys don’t have the language, and that goes along with what we talked about with the trauma, the repressing everything, not thinking about it. And then when they read out what you’ve done, it’s a shock to you. It’s like, I did that? Or, I was a part of that? And so, because the moment is so huge, that parole moment is so huge, and it’s so intimidating, a lot of people can’t talk, they can’t find the language to express. A guy could really be sorry, and a guy could really be remorseful. I met a lot of guys like that. But they want you to be able to express it and to explain it.
Boris Franklin:It’s like public speaking. You can completely go blank. And everything is riding on that moment. Like, if you go to a job interview, there’s a lot at stake for the job. But now you’re talking about individuals whose lives are at stake. And there’s so much riding on that moment, it’s easy to lose the words. And when you come out of there, it may all come flooding back. But your 15 minutes is up, and that’s what they’re judging you on.
Chris Hedges:So Russ, who’s most challenged when they go before the parole board?
Russ Owen:Guys with the least education. There are guys that are illiterate. There are guys that have been going to school for 10, 15, 20 years that are still trying to get their GED, and just guys that are mentally challenged. So when these guys go before the parole board, it’s obvious that they can’t prepare adequately. It’s obvious that in the moment they can’t express themselves, whether you want to call it low emotional intelligence or whatever, but they don’t have the tools necessary to articulate remorse or to articulate… I know a guy that they went up and gave him a hit because he couldn’t articulate his plan for the future. Not many people can articulate a plan for the future. And then to be able to articulate it and then for them to approve it.
A lot of stuff is spontaneous. They want to know where you’re going to work. After being in jail 20, 30 years, you don’t know anybody. Most of the time your family’s gone and all you have to socialize you is just the prison. So nothing prepares you. And so guys with the least education and guys that are mentally challenged or deficient, however you want to call it, those guys, it doesn’t really bode well for them.
Chris Hedges:So talk a little bit about your vision of what you thought life would be like when you got out, and then how that vision confronted reality.
Thomas Dollard:Well, when I first got out, I thought that jobs would be lined up for me, school would be lined up for me. And I thought that I would be able to at least help take care of my family. And the reality was that work was not set up for me, school was not set up for me. And I have a job that I work three days a week, but that barely helps to take care of… I just contribute to helping to take care of my family, instead of being able to take care of my family on my own.
Chris Hedges:When you apply for a job, on the form, have they removed the box or do you have to write that you were incarcerated?
Robert “Kabir” Luma:Yeah. They ask you about your incarceration, your crime and all that. And the only jobs that basically will accept you are labor intensive jobs, because they don’t care who they bring in there. You’re just a body with some hands and some feet.
Chris Hedges:I know you pretty well. And I know you wanted to come out, you wanted to contribute. All that was so important to you. What has been the hardest thing for you to deal with given what you wanted to do and what you can do?
Robert “Kabir” Luma:I mean, this is the bread and butter. What oils the wheel of America is your finances. And to see how pigeonholed we are. And we’re at like a certain level, we are like the $12 hour people. And $12 an hour nowadays is nothing. You might have been making seven back in the day somewhere. And that’s one of the biggest things. Because I’m not able to breach a certain level to get on board, as I call it, to get an apartment, a car and all that, without trying to cut corners and maybe risking my freedom to get things that are simple like a car and an apartment.
Chris Hedges:And when you talk to other people who have gotten out, would you say that your experience is typical?
Robert “Kabir” Luma:Absolutely. In one form or another, everybody’s dealing with some form of hardship. They just push you out and expect you to succeed with no real help. Even when your parole officer, it’s no real help. There are no resources there to put you on a roll. You would have to actually be a woman or a parent with kids or something like that in order to get these benefits. It’s difficult, very, very, very difficult. And really, there’s no organization to support ex-offenders. And that’s kind of like where we get put in the hole. If you don’t have your own social connections and things of that nature, then you’re going to be done for. And a lot of guys who do a lot of time, like myself and more, they don’t have those connections because they’ve been gone for so long.
Thomas Dollard:I know I’m on parole. That’s not free. I’m still what I look at as being a slave because I can’t go anywhere I want. I have to ask permission. I’m 51 years old, but I feel like I’m somebody’s child. My parole officer is at least 20 years younger than me. And when I’m going to him, I have to ask him, I have to text him and tell him, I want to go here. I can’t even spend the night anywhere.
Robert “Kabir” Luma:I don’t know. I think I just had that eternal will, like sometimes I don’t have to coach him. I’m not the type of person I got to get up and coach myself, because I was dealing with it in there. I had to push myself through 16 years, even sometimes not verbally. So I’m used to being downtrodden, which is a bad thing to say. I’m just used to that position. I’m just tired of that position. So I’m not the type of person that needs a pep talk. I don’t need to go to no pep rally. Even if I’m having my worst day, I’m going to get up and try to go do something. Or sometimes I’m depressed, I don’t want to do nothing at all. But at the end of the day, I know if I go to sleep and wake up, it’s another day, I could feel different when I get up.
Chris Hedges:The yearning by most who are released to re-enter society, to find a place and be productive, is often cruelly thwarted by the hard reality they face, unhoused, unemployed, and finally desperate and depressed. The temptation of drugs and alcohol to blunt the pain, and the allure of making money in the illegal economy, which is what sent many to prison in the first place, becomes, for some, irresistible, as Kabir explained.
Robert “Kabir” Luma:We always got to think, damn, should I go sell drugs? Should I go rob somebody? Even though we know at the end of the day that’s a bad choice. But sometimes you only live right now when your situation is dire, when you have people that depend on you, or even when you’re depending on yourself. Do I even belong out here? Like, did prison ruin me enough to not even be a productive citizen? And you know, where your mind goes, sometimes your body goes.
Thomas Dollard:Poverty, no jobs, or the children. I see the children dirty and hungry. No one is going to watch their child starve to death. So then you say, go out and get a job. When you’re coming from where I come from, it’s easy for you to say that, but hard for us to do. If you have a record, it’s 10 times harder for you to do. When they say the system is broken, it’s absolutely not broken. It’s doing what it was designed to do.
Chris Hedges:Is there anything about prison, I know it may sound like a stupid question, but is there anything about prison you miss?
Robert “Kabir” Luma:I mean, absolutely. It was kind of more stable. So I can read more, I can work out, my meals were there. You know your meals are coming, even though a lot of them in the joint are nasty as hell. But I worked in the ODR which was the officer’s dining room. I was making my own meals, sprucing them up. For me, my situation was more stable at a certain point. And I had more peace of mind. Out here, it’s just [snaps repeatedly].
Thomas Dollard:It’s designed to keep us in a position where we have to go back. Because then, as those numbers, now we are just a number, which we all know. And then, especially when the men are gone, it weakens the community. Why? Because now you only have the women and the children. So now it’s easy to attack the community when there are no men. And I don’t think people understand and see that. It’s not just a father being taken from his home, it’s him being taken from the whole community. When I was growing up, you had fathers and mothers there, which made the community flourish. I don’t see that. And I haven’t seen that even before I came and went to prison 30 years ago, that started to be done. And I see it now, it’s at its worst. You say, why are kids in gangs and all these things? Where’s their father?
Boris Franklin:Biggest thing that people don’t understand about people in prison is that we hurt. We carry the pain of abandoning our posts as fathers, brothers. We carry the pain of not being there when our mothers pass or something, or not being able to be a shoulder. We carry the pain of the individuals who are not getting out. We carry more pain than probably the average person because of having this different state of awareness, coming face to face with reality in a different way. I think we shoulder more pain than the average citizen.
Ron Pierce:I would just add to that. We are not, and those people that are currently incarcerated, are not our crime. We are people that have made mistakes and are paying for that mistake, not with money, but with the essence of our life. You have taken away our life from our families, from our communities. And that goes to redevelop our community inside. And those that have come home from inside are helping those from our community to help them re-acclimate and not have to go through the struggles and through the problems that coming home exists. The more you make it punitive rather than restorative, the less likely that you’re going to get somebody who’s a full person coming out. The less likely that you’re going to be able to see this person as human if all you see is the crime.
Russ Owen:For me, I was already committed. The way I am now is, I commit. When I made the commitment to no violence and things like that, I understood that with that, I had to change my heart. So I knew to be vulnerable and transparent. My years in prison, I was very fortunate that I’ve never really been on the dap, dap, dap. I was always, I’m hugging you, I don’t care. And that’s just how I came through the prison, because I made a commitment. It was a choice to do no violence, not that I couldn’t. But because of what I’ve done, I made the decision that I wasn’t going to live that type of life. Because I discovered [Boris and Ron], that the same anger that I used to wake up with when I was growing up as a teenager was the same anger that was required to wake up in prison. And I couldn’t continue to live my life like that.
Because on the street I had to wake up. And it was so exhausting that I had to say, okay, I had to be ready for what the day brought me. And I mean, okay, who’s going to disrespect me? Who’s going to be racist towards me? Who’s going to try to bully me or whatever? So I had to go throughout my day, and whoever did anything, I had to react first. And then when I got to prison, I said, oh, this requires the same thing. I said, I can’t do that. So I had to change me. So I grew up in prison with love in my heart, and forgiveness, and the things that I had to learn.
So now, coming home, that’s easy for me. That’s not awkward for me because I’m doing the same thing that I was doing in prison. I see somebody that’s down and out, I’ll talk to them. Or I see somebody that needs a hug, I’ll hug you. It doesn’t matter to me. So I’m not socially awkward like that, but that’s just because I made the commitments, and my values surround my commitment.
Thomas Dollard:One thing I learned from my religion is that if you take a life, it’s as if you killed the whole of humanity. If you save a life, it’s as if you saved the whole of humanity. So every day, to me, it is that my scale is unbalanced. I took a life. So every day has to be about saving a life. So that on the day of judgment, when I go before the person who I wronged and go before my Lord, I’ll have the other part to say that, okay. Yes, he did that. But that’s not who he is. He did this to save me. So every day I’m working to make not just myself, but those around me better
Chris Hedges:Russ in his first few hours of freedom is hopeful, surrounded by family and friends, armed with a college degree. But he is aware, like all who are released, that mass incarceration, in many ways, does not end when you walk out the doors of the prison. Most end up back inside. For now, however, he is rejoicing in simply being able to breathe outside the prison walls.
Russ Owen:Beautiful. Free air. There’s no anxiety in the air. There’s no chaos in the air. In the air, I smell a new beginning. I’m excited and I’m happy just to see what I can contribute.
