Justice for Deborah Braillard: Change the Victim's Bill of Rights.

These jail and health care "professionals" from Correctional Health Services should have been criminally prosecuted for their treatment of Deborah Braillard. This is one more reason we need to change the Victims' Bill of Rights in the AZ Constitution to stop exluding prisoners as victims. "Persons in custody for an offense" (and their survivors, if they are killed in the care of cops or corrections officers) are the only class of humans denied those basic rights and protections. 

State entities and predatory corporations like Wexford Health Sources can claim "victim" status if anyone so much as trespasses against them, but prisoners - including people in custody who are not yet convicted or charged - don't have legal status as victims of their criminal misdeeds. We need to change that, people...

--------from the AZ Republic-----

Maricopa County agrees to settle suit tied to inmate death

by JJ Hensley, and Michelle Ye Hee Lee - Oct. 4, 2012 08:16 PM

Maricopa County administrators have agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to settle a 6-year-old lawsuit over a woman's death that occurred after she was booked into a county jail.

The county has already spent about $1.8 million to hire attorneys to defend itself in the lawsuit, said Cari Gerchick, a county spokeswoman.

Any other details on the terms of the settlement will remain under seal until the county Board of Supervisors meets on Oct. 17 to authorize the agreement, she said.

The Sheriff's Office is also not authorized to comment on the agreement until it is approved, a spokesman said.

In addition to Maricopa County and the Sheriff's Office, the lawsuit targeted Correctional Health Services, the taxpayer-funded agency that provides constitutionally mandated health care in the county jails.

The lawsuit was filed in 2006 by the surviving family members of Deborah Braillard, a 46-year-old woman who had been booked in jail several times before her entry into the Fourth Avenue Jail on Jan. 1, 2005, on suspicion of drug possession.

During her prior jail bookings, Braillard's diabetes had been noted during the health-care screening that every county inmate undergoes when admitted into jail.

But employees of Correctional Health Services failed to note Braillard's medical condition in early 2005.
Instead, because Braillard was barely coherent and slurring her words, jail health-care workers thought they were dealing with a woman in the throes of a drug addiction.

Braillard was coming off drugs and showing signs of a blood-sugar crash, according to court documents, her family and testimony from jail employees. She was disoriented, vomiting, soiling herself, sweating profusely and complaining of pain, according to court documents. Employees attributed her symptoms to drug withdrawal.

Four days after she was booked into jail, Braillard was taken to Maricopa Medical Center, where she would remain unconscious until she died 18 days later of complications from diabetes.

The form used to assess the medical condition of an incoming inmate lists 27 questions. A health-care worker completed Braillard's assessment in less than a minute, according to court documents.

No one noticed that Braillard was diabetic. An electronic medical-records system, had it been in place, could have immediately alerted employees about Braillard's condition. She had been administered insulin at the jails many times before, and an electronic system would have included her medical history.

County administrators signed a $4.5 million contract for an electronic medical-record system in March, though the network is still in the design phase, Gerchick said.

Arpaio's Deaths in Custody: Stealing gifts from God.

The wrongful death of Deborah Braillard (Braillard v. Maricopa County, et al)is going to a jury trial tomorrow, September 12, 2012 at the Sandra Day O'Connor Federal Courthouse in Phoenix.

Here's what ABC News most recently has had to say:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/arizona-womans-jail-death-leads-to-lawsuit-17209730

Here's my original post, with the lead to the article from the Phoenix New Times below.

 4th Avenue Jail, Phoenix

--------from Arizona Prison Watch (December 11, 2010)-----------

Those citizens with their civil rights intact who flocked to Arizona to exploit cheap labor and avoid paying for public schools - not the families who migrated here from our south - are the people who endanger us the most. Increasingly, elections in this state are not exercises in democracy but acts of violence perpetrated on those of us whose voices don't count. If anyone plans to tamper with the constitution next year, it should be only to disenfranchise all the sadistic, delusional voters who support the likes of Joe Arpaio, applauding his stubborn refusal to provide health care to prisoners, his misogynistic policies and underwear, and his abusive staff.

It's sad how many of Arpaio's posse members seem to think of themselves as "Christians", you know - good ones, at that. They must have missed the part in the Bible about how Christ was a prisoner himself (as were Daniel, the Apostle Paul, and my own ancestor, Brigham Young - who would no doubt be treated as a sex offender today - even if never convicted). Would they entrust the care of their prophet, their Savior, or Mother Mary to the Maricopa County Sheriff - or even to the rest of the good Christians who voted for Sheriff Joe?

How about the care of their own mothers?

Investigative journalist Michael Lacey has written a lot of good pieces for the Phoenix New Times - this one should really bring home an award. I'm just giving you the beginning - follow the link for the rest, and take the extra time to view the depositions after you read. One prisoner testifies that she witnessed guards drag a "mentally challenged" women by her ankle, and begins to cry. Another one details the pains that the other criminals went to in order to try to keep Deborah Braillard alive and restore her to health themselves. Sadly, it's so often the case for people who are incarcerated that the most compassion they encounter as they are dying comes from their fellow prisoners. The last video in the series of depositions is this brief clip of Deborah's daughter describing the last days of her mother's life - on a ventilator and chained to a bed....
 

Good job, Sheriff Joe: that's really being "tough on crime." You can't clear your violent crimes so you vilify and brutalize whatever people you can take prisoner.
It's truly disturbing that your officers don't walk out on you en masse.

We have to figure out how to take back the keys to our jails from Arpaio and his crew before they kill some other little girl's mom or grandma, or someone's else's child. This is not an isolated incident - it's evidence of the criminal practices and patterns of the MCSO and Sheriff Joe that both shame and harm us all. We can't afford two more years.

Finally, remember, dear lawmakers and lawmen: when you deprive the people of meaningful mechanisms to participate in our government peacefully - all the while bludgeoning us and our communities with your rights to profit and your penchant for prisons - you not only risk your re-election, you tempt your fates. You Tea Party tyrants are the ones who will spark a real revolution that can't be contained by your lies and legislation, or by your badges and guns.

That's not a threat, by the way - just a warning. It's all I can see coming of your egocentricity, bigotry, self-righteousness, and hate.

 

--------------------from the Phoenix New Times----------------------

What's Mom Worth? When a Woman Became Deathly Ill in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Jail, Guards and Nurses Ignored Her Agony...

by Michael Lacey

PHX NEW TIMES

December 9, 2010

Deborah Braillard, mother
(1991)

Mom taught me to sew.

And I' m going to teach my own baby, Jennylee. Eventually.

Jennylee is a quick study for a 6-year-old.

She watches as I sew her Minnie Mouse costume. She is double-twice excited, though honestly, I think I like Halloween as much as she does, even if it is a gloomy time of year.

Come, sit here, Pumpkin, and watch now how I pin the paper pattern here on the cloth. You see that, sweetie? You cut this out while I trim the red polka dots for your bow.

Done.

You take a good look at these pieces and try to guess where they'll go. Mommy will be right back.

As mother and daughter work inside their little trailer, outside, slate-stained cumulonimbus clouds menace, gray anvil domes await the strike.

Deborah ducks, briefly, into the tiny, plywood-framed bathroom for a little pick-me-up. When she emerges, the sweetness of this moment with Jennylee does not escape her notice.

But lightning in the darkness overcomes it.

Deborah shivers in spite of herself.

Hey there, Pumpkin, here's the last part.

I'll just straight-stitch the seams, roll the fabric to make a hem, and secure the bow with a whip-stitch.

Let me iron up the white apron and spray it with starch to give it a little oomph.

You look perfect.

Wait! Wait! . . . Here, a little mascara, we'll make a black dot for your nose and whiskers. Hold still now, a little lipstick.

Okay, let's walk over to the community center.

Grandma will meet us there.

Jennylee, if you aren't the best mouse ever . . .

Jennylee Braillard, daughter
(2010 interviews)

"Just about my first memory of my mom was the Minnie Mouse costume she made me at Gold Bar, which is where you can hook up your trailer just outside Monroe, Washington.

"I won first place that Halloween. My prize was a six-pack of root beer."

As Jennylee speaks, her own infant daughter, Kaylynn, coos and looks around, a bow tied to her little, full-moon head.

"My mom was always happy. She was nurturing, caring. She was my mom."

Her mother's ashes sit in a container in Jennylee's home in west Phoenix. The dust is such a small amount inside a little vessel; you'd hardly believe that someone's remains could amount to so little.

It is a fact that Deborah Braillard did not always make good choices.

She died an agonizing death in a diabetic coma that would wring the life out of her over three weeks that seemed without end.

The bigger truth is that she was hurried on her way.

Deborah Braillard's passing is never far from Jennylee's thoughts; after all, she watched the worst of it.

"I was terrified to open the plastic bag with her ashes. I put mom in a big jewelry box. I think about taking her back to Gold Bar. That's where my grandmother and great grandmother are buried. It's been in the family forever. There are nature trails there . . .

"But I worry if something happens to my uncle who lives there [what would happen to Mom]."

Consider: In May 2010, researchers at the University of Wisconsin find that, in stressful situations, cortisol levels in girls soar. But for many of the young women, simply hearing their mother's voice is enough to wash away the anxiety, replacing the stress hormone with feelings of love.

Men have no such relief.

What happens between a mother and daughter comes from God.

Tamela Harper, inmate

(2007 deposition)


Tamela Harper is detained in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail when they put Deborah Braillard into her cell in January 2005.

"She was unconscious [on the evening of the 2nd]. She wasn't hardly there. She walked back to her bunk, and that was the last time I saw that lady walking. People were helping her. She was throwing up constantly.

[Next day] that's when she started moaning and groaning and throwing up. She was basically unconscious at the time. She couldn't speak. She couldn't eat. The officers kept saying she was kicking heroin.

"She defecated on herself several times. There was no help for her. We kept telling the officers, you need to help her."

Brenda Tomanini, inmate

(2007 deposition)


Deborah Braillard threw up on other inmates, from her bunk to theirs. No guards, no nurses. The inmates, and Deborah, were alone on the 3rd.

On the morning of the 4th, medical asked to have Braillard brought into the clinic. But trusties could not wake the unconscious Deborah. She was left vegetating.

"I couldn't get Ms. Braillard up. Couldn't do it. She wouldn't respond to me at all. I could tell that she was breathing, but I couldn't get a response out of her.

"It just freaked me out because I don't think in my experience . . . I don't think she had been on drugs."

But the guards in the jail say different.

"Don't worry about Deborah Braillard. She's getting what she deserves. She's coming off drugs," is how Tomiani remembers it.

The inmates understand the drill, says Tomanini.

Tomanini described a retarded inmate brutalized for her sass.

"It broke my heart. I had to put my head under my blankets, and I cried. It broke my heart to see something like that."

Tomanini's experience with the medical clinic underscores the sense of neglect.

"I got sick and I was running a fever, and I had put a tank order in — that's what they call it for medical. And two months went along, and I didn't get any better. I was waiting for medical to call me . . . You had to fight to get medical attention.

Consider: It was standard procedure to collapse on the floor in order to get medical attention. Otherwise you might well be ignored by an overwhelmed medical clinic. Inmates report that guards would actually instruct them to drop, to collapse. Only then would a call — man down! — go out to the nurses.

Deborah Braillard, mother


Do I think? I think not.

I am aware.

I am aware of the I-will-nots:

I will not see my granddaughter, Kaylynn, walk. I will not give her my finger to steady her early toddles. I will not go down a slide with her. I will not put a Band-Aid on her owie.

I will not get a chance to be a better grandmother than I was a mom. Ever.

Consider: Deputies find methamphetamine in Braillard's purse about midnight on January 1, 2005. She is with a small group of users whose car breaks down in a parking lot on the west side when officers happen upon them.

She is admitted into the jail about 2 a.m. on January 2. Though the entire prison is videotaped around the clock, the sheriff is unable to produce any film of Deborah's early custody.

Historically, when inmates are killed or injured, Sheriff Arpaio loses evidence and incriminating video surveillance or produces video so degraded it is unwatchable.

Almost a full day after her initial booking, Braillard is transferred from the intake jail downtown to the all-female Estrella jail in west Phoenix. For the next 60 hours, guards at Estrella assume, mistakenly, that her wretched condition is the result of her kicking drugs.

This lethal mistake is aided and abetted by a poultice of organizational neglect combined with personal insensitivity that overwhelms thin outbreaks of humanity...

(Go to the source to read the rest... then PLEASE contact the Maricopa County Attorney's Office and tell them you want these people criminally prosecuted to the fullest extent every time they neglect or abuse a prisoner. Only then will some of this stop.)

MCSO Brutality: Catching up to the killers of Marty Atencio

I read this and wept. Thank you to Stephen Lemons for staying on it...

Marty Atencio, beaten, tased, stripped and left to die 

by cops and guards in a "safe cell" at the 4th Avenue Jail

Phoenix, December 15 2011

----------from the Phoenix New Times-----------

Jailhouse Goons Make Fun Of and Kill a Mentally Ill Inmate
By Stephen Lemons
Thursday, Jun 14 2012

It takes a twisted individual to delight in the sufferings of the mentally ill. A special type of sick, sadistic bully. The kind employed in spades by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

The December 16 killing of Army veteran Marty Atencio is the latest example of the above, one of the most recent in a string of corpses that punctuates the timeline of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's nearly 20-year career as this county's top lawman.

As reported last week in my Feathered Bastard blog, the Atencio family's attorney, Mike Manning, has filed notices of claim, totaling $20 million, with both the city of Phoenix and Maricopa County in Atencio's brutal demise at the hands of Phoenix cops and MCSO detention officers working in the Fourth Avenue Jail.

Since the 44-year-old's death occurred just hours after the U.S. Department of Justice issued its scathing report on the MCSO's pattern of discriminatory policing, racial profiling, and abuse of Latinos in Joe's gulags, much has been revealed about the circumstances surrounding the Atencio homicide.

The county medical examiner's autopsy noted Atencio's history of mental illness and hospitalization for psychosis.

Toxicology results from specimens, including those taken at St. Joseph's Hospital hours after Atencio's arrest earlier that day, showed no illicit drugs in Atencio's system.

Phoenix Police Department reports reveal that Atencio generally was passive and compliant during the two encounters with Phoenix cops that culminated in his arrest on December 15.

Indeed, Atencio "showed no signs of being a danger to himself or others," according to Phoenix Officer Sarah Roberts.

Rather, Atencio "simply appeared to be not medicated and engaged in very random conversation," Roberts said.

Atencio was arrested in West Phoenix for scaring a resident, Cathy Boyd, after kicking the apartment door of her neighbor.

Manning quotes from Boyd's affidavit recounting details of the incident:

"Marty did not physically threaten me at any time . . . I knew there was something wrong with him, and I just wanted him to . . . get some help."

Apparently, Atencio was treated well until he was taken to Arpaio's infamous jail, where cruelty is king and an idiotic environment pervades.

The most damning evidence of Atencio's mistreatment comes from interviews with detention officers and Phoenix cops carried out within days, sometimes within hours, of Atencio's beat-down and Tasing, referred to euphemistically by the Medical Examiner's Office as a "law enforcement subdual."

The interviews were done by MCSO detectives. Manning's law office obtained them through a public-records request.

Apparently, Atencio's mind at the time was like that of a child's. Disoriented, spouting nonsensical comments, he often referred to himself in the third person as "Tony" and seemed to be mimicking Robin Williams' character in Good Morning, Vietnam.

Some detention officers and cops thought Atencio was on drugs, claiming that he told someone during his stay in Fourth Avenue that he had smoked meth earlier in the day.

But toxicology reports don't lie. Cops and detention officers are another story. Soon after Atencio was taken, brain dead, to St. Joe's, they were making assumptions to rationalize their behavior.

Thing is, the breakdown in law enforcement discipline — including a Phoenix cop's pushing Atencio with his cuffed hands bent awkwardly and painfully — cannot be rationalized.

It also included MCSO detention officers mocking and humiliating Atencio as they took his mug shot.

"They encouraged him to make funny faces and . . . kept saying, 'Let's make this one the Mug Shot of the Week,'" one witness said.

Another witness noted that when they took Atencio's picture, "It was a big joke" and "they all stood around and laughed about it."

This hilarity turned deadly once Atencio was surrounded by officers demanding that he remove his shoes. When in Phoenix custody, cops had gotten Atencio to take off his shoes by just being patient and repeating their request. Here, Phoenix police and MCSO guards were far from patient.

Two Phoenix police officers who were there to help process detainees initiated what Manning calls a "jailers' riot," even though Atencio was standing before them, arms crossed, presenting no threat.

The notice of claim identifies the Phoenix cops as Patrick Hanlon and Nicholas French.

Several MCSO gendarmes joined the fray, in what one onlooker called "a big ol' dog pile." Though Atencio was smothered by officers, MCSO Sergeant Jason Weiers Tased Atencio several times.

Anthony Hatton, a detention officer who since has left the MCSO, punched Atencio in the face three times. Hatton claimed the strikes were necessary, but a couple of his fellow guards did not agree.

"He shouldn't have been punching him," detention Officer Sergio Salinas told investigators. "It was excessive."

Later, after Atencio was hauled to a "safe cell," where he would be stripped of clothing and left to die, Hatton continued the abuse, kneeing Atencio as guards held him down.

Detention officer Blas Gabrial told detectives that he yelled Hatton's name upon seeing the force used on Atencio. When asked why, he said, "Because I didn't think it was necessary."

While Atencio was lying motionless and naked in the safe cell, where he would breathe his last breath without life support, what were many of these men and women of law enforcement doing?

Laughing, joking, and cutting up like teenagers. Video shows two women — one in uniform — dancing and bumping butts. Hatton laughs and demonstrates what looks like a fighting move to other officers. A Phoenix cop eats an orange and grins.

Minutes later, they're all gathering around the door, precious seconds slipping away as they take their time getting it open.

"[Prisoners] play that game a lot," Weiers told an investigator, referring to Atencio's stillness. "You know, playing like they're dead."

Atencio wasn't playing. He already was gone. But CPR was performed, and he was rushed to St. Joe's. On December 20, his family removed him from life support.

If you saw grown men and women abusing a mentally ill or disabled person, would you do something about it?

Likely so. Which is why, ultimately, I blame the voters of Maricopa County for what happened to Atencio.

They've been told about a lot of such brutality in Arpaio's jails over the years and, so far, have looked the other way.

Previous Posts: 

• Joe Arpaio's Victim Marty Atencio Killed by "Law Enforcement Subdual," Among Other Factors, Says Medical Examiner
  May 31, 2012
• Joe Arpaio's Victim Marty Atencio: Family Files Notices of Claim Totaling $20 Million in Wrongful Death Case
  June 8, 2012

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

"Corrupt Joe"

Wells Fargo/Arpaio HQ

June 7, 2011

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

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

By TIM HULL
March 7, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Link to Court Opinion

MCSO and Marty Atencio: Video released

Here's the MCSO Booking area, where Marty Atencio was attacked; this footage comes via Dennis Gilman, who edited hours of tapes. I, frankly, see no provocation for that Phoenix cop to take down Marty the way he did, much less for ten more officers to jump in...

part I

part II

Here they are putting Marty in a "safe room" now. I have a problem with this policy of stripping mentally ill or unstable prisoners naked to assure their "safety"  - it just compounds trauma with humiliation.

Good coverage and observations below, from the Phoenix New Times: Check out links to Stephen Lemons' continuing coverage of the death of Marty Atencio here.

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

Last week, Marty Atencio's brother Mike told me that he and his family believe Sheriff Joe Arpaio's detention officers "murdered" his brother, leaving the 44 year-old Army vet dead in a cell, only to ship him out to St. Joseph's Hospital later, so the MCSO could deny that Atencio was an "in-custody" death.

On Tuesday, Atencio's family made the decision to remove him from life support, but the family's attorney Mike Manning later noted, "[Atencio] died in the jail."

Friday, the MCSO released eight hours of video, some of it documenting Atencio's stay in the sheriff's custody. The chilling words of Atencio's brother and of Manning have not been rebutted by that footage.

Watch the video above, taken from hours of jail tape the MCSO unceremoniously dumped on a ravenous media Friday afternoon. What do you see?

I see a pack of uniformed officers jumping on one unarmed man, who seems to be making no aggressive moves toward them.

While beneath this pile-on, Atencio was Tased. That the Tasing was unnecessary is self-evident.

There's also creepy footage (not seen above) of Atencio being thrown naked into an isolation cell. In it, Atencio is not moving, and looks to be unconscious. 

The scene in the cell is eerily reminiscent of MCSO video of Juan Farias Mendoza, an inmate allegedly beaten to death by detention officers in Arpaio's jails back in 2007.

Mendoza was 40. Atencio was 44. Both men were Tased several times in custody. And each man was a father. Mendoza had three kids. Atencio's family told me he has four, ranging in ages from 15 to 24.

The world might never have known about Mendoza, had not an anonymous tipster informed New Times of his brutal demise. Recently, Maricopa County settled with Mendoza's family to the tune of $1 million.

Which makes you wonder: How many incidents like these have occurred in Arpaio's gulags that we don't know about.

The media has been in a feeding frenzy over the Atencio death, coming as it does on the heels of the U.S. Department of Justice's watershed report on the MCSO's discriminatory practices toward Latinos in and out of Arpaio's jails. 

So the Atencio family's response to the video's release, in a statement given to the press by Manning, seems wise and measured, an example of dignity in the face of the media's hunger for information and Arpaio's spin machine:

"The Atencio family has instructed that I make no comment today concerning the jail video just released by Sheriff Arpaio," Manning said. "They are deeply grieving the death of their Marty and do not want their burden and hurt to interfere with the joys, blessings, and good cheer that other Valley families are looking forward to on this eve of the Christmas weekend. We will have a comment on Monday or Tuesday."

Atencio was acting erratic before and after his arrest by Phoenix cops on charges of assault. The Atencio family has indicated their loved one was bipolar and not on his medication at the time of his arrest.

Manning's stated that blood tests of Atencio done at St. Joe's showed no illicit drugs or alcohol in the man's system. 

Such factors aside, there's no excuse for such a death. Despite this, the MCSO boasts a gruesome track record of citizens dying needlessly in its custody. 

These individuals often become victims because they are already part of some at-risk group. 

Over the years, New Times has stood sentinel for them all: the diabetic mom denied her medication, the mentally retarded man asphyxiated till brain dead; the legally blind man beaten till comatose; the drug addict son offed in a restraint chair of the kind now banned from Arpaio's jails; and so on.

Now New Times stands sentinel for another in a long line of those neglected and abused by the MCSO -- the beaten, the Tased, the tortured and the slain. A line destined only to end when Arpaio is removed from power.

UPDATE 12/27/11: For more video of Atencio in custody and attorney Mike Manning's comments on same, click, here.

UPDATE 12/28/11: For Atencio's obituary and funeral service schedule, please click, here.

UPDATE 1/4/12: Marty Atencio laid to rest, please click here.

UPDATE 1/5/12: Psalm for Marty Atencio, please click here.

UPDATE 1/10/12: Phoenix Police arrest report released, please click here.

ARPAIO and the DOJ: We want a perp walk.

The DOJ just released a 22-page letter of findings, concluding that the practices of Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office violate the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and Section 14141 of the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act. The feds threaten a civil suit to convince him to change his ways. It's just a letter, though, not an indictment - never mind the blood dripping from Joe Arpaio's hands. 

People have been harassed, detained, arrested, abused, and neglected to death in Arpaio's custody, and yet his treatment of them doesn't appear to be a criminal case - not yet, anyway. I "loitered" in a public park after the posted hours at a protest, though, and immediately did 18 hours in Arpaio's jail. I may face more time yet for my graffiti and activism on behalf of human rights, and he's taking campaign donations as if he's running for office again. Texas Governor Rick Perry even courted good old Sheriff Joe's endorsement for the 2012 Republican presidential ticket...that sure says a lot about Perry's character, doesn't it?

I assume that the letter of the DOJ's findings is addressed to Bill Montgomery, Maricopa County Attorney, because his office will represent the county against any suit the DOJ actually brings (Arpaio's office has a private attorney) - all parties will fight at our expense, of course. Then there are the individual civil suits against the county and Arpaio that will all be bolstered by this finding; And there's the $99 million that he "misappropriated"; this man is costing American taxpayers a fortune. 

What Arpaio's term in office has cost us, though, far exceeds the expense involved in both prosecuting and defending him - he also cost the public our safety through his harassment and by clearing real crimes by "exceptional" means. He pursued his racist agenda and employed discriminatory tactics chasing down "aliens" at the expense of solving child sexual abuse cases, rapes and homicides - is it any wonder that so many of the victims his office ignored were children of undocumented latinos?

For the harm he's perpetrated all of our communities - flagrantly violating human and constitutional rights in the process - I want to see that man prosecuted. He owes hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution to his victims and has done violence to people's lives, as far as I'm concerned, but right now the DOJ is just talking about "reform" and "remediation". Someday I hope we have no prisons, but until we come up with a better way to protect the public from racist, abusive and dangerous people, I want to see Joe Arpaio locked away by the feds, not put into outpatient rehab. We have far too many people locked up on drug charges to be squandering resources rehabilitating him. It's time to indict this Criminal Joe - and let our people go.

4th Avenue Jail, Phoenix
Chalk the Police Day 2011

-----from the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division------

Investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office

In June 2008, the Civil Rights Division opened an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) pursuant to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Following a comprehensive investigation, on December 15, 2011, the Justice Department announced its findings that MCSO has engaged in a pattern or practice of misconduct that violates the Constitution and federal law. The documents on this page provide more information about the investigation, the Justice Department's findings, and next steps.

Findings Letter:

English   |   Spanish

MI in CJ System follow-up; Alan Keesee charged with assault.

Thank you Mr. Montgomery.

I asked Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery about this tonight - looks like I fell behind on that one. He's already charged former detention officer Alan Keesee with assaulting William Franklin Hughes, III last fall, in the psychiatric wing of the Lower Buckeye Jail, in a tag team attack on the bound prisoner with officer Kevin Gerster.

In fact, as you can see from the calendar below, he did so over a month ago. Can't believe it's almost time for the May Day Rally already, and this is the first time I've checked up on that in so long.

Keesee just had a preliminary hearing today - check here for updated minutes. Be at his future dates if you can, and write about it for the rest of us. I'm just starting to discover I can't be everywhere at once anymore...

Thanking a prosecutor may seem like a funny thing for an abolitionist to do, I know. Remember that I'm just another traveler on this journey - not the guru. I don't know yet what restorative or transformative justice looks like for people in uniform who abuse the vulnerable like that - at this point, I'm reserving a few cells for them.

Those men betrayed all of us when they assaulted William - anyone's child or brother or mother could have been him, dragged off to jail instead of the hospital in a disorganized, confused mental state, be it due to a psychiatric or developmental disability, Alzheimer's, or a brain tumor. Such abuse of power is among the worst kinds of crimes, I believe; unfortunately, our state constitution assures that victims like William - and like Marcia Powell - are the least protected. We need to change that, folks...

Mr. Montgomery had some interesting remarks at last night's meeting, which I'll report more on soon. I was mainly grateful that he recognizes that too many folks with serious mental illness are ending up in the criminal justice system who could have been successfully treated in the community, if we put more of our resources at the front end - in mental health, rather than the back end - in the prisons. The police officers discussing the specially-trained crisis-intervention units that divert people with mental illness from the CJ system at their level (where it needs most to be happening) argued that the program demonstrated an increase in participant involvement in outpatient mental health services among high-risk homeless adults, and a decrease in criminal activity.

Unfortunately, while the police arm of the effort is still fully operational, the agencies providing the community support staff it depends on have been hit by cuts, so nighttime outreach isn't what it needs to be. The trick is how to redistribute all these resources when the AZ Department of Corrections maintains an investment in maintaining their own status, power, and funding. The whole CJ system as currently designed reinforces the perpetuation of the status quo, when "public safety" is positioned first and foremost in the dialogue as the state's primary responsibility to the people - and is put out there as a police matter.

In fact, the public welfare depends on education, health care, inpatient psychiatric treatment options, affordable housing, and a range of supports being available at the community level to meaningfully decrease the incidence of crime and victimization. Those are always the first to go in economic downturns, though - not because we don't have the resources, but because we're driven by fear and defer to the "experts" in power in our collective decision-making, instead of allowing our public policy to be crafted by both our values and non-partisan research, based on principles of evidence-based practice...

Anyway, thank you, Mr. Montgomery, for so graciously letting me know that you're already on top of prosecuting some of these abuses of power in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. If you drop his office a line this week, please let them know the community appreciates seeing things head in that direction. Their contact info is:

Maricopa County Attorney's Office
301 W. Jefferson St.
Phoenix, AZ 85003

The number for victims' services (the public seems to be a legitimate victim in this case) is (602) 506-8522.

Let your voices be heard on this, since William doesn't have the right to have his heard by the court, under the AZ Constitution...then give your legislators a piece of your mind about what changes need to be made in the Arizona Revised Statutes to keep us all safe from the likes of Gerster, Keesee, and Arpaio. Send hard copies to legislators - if you have a personal connection to this issue, hand write it - those kinds of letters have the most impact. Their address is:

AZ State Legislature
1700 W. Washington St.
Phoenix, AZ 85007

602) 926-3559 (Leg INFO LINE)

Make sure to cc your letters to Cecil Ash, Chair of the AZ House Health and Human Services Committee. Ask for him to convene legislative hearings on the AZ Department of Correction's deaths due to prison violence, suicide, and medical neglect, while you're at it.

Mr. Montgomery said he'd explain after the meeting why these officers aren't being charged with higher level felonies under the vulnerable adult statute for the assault on William while he was in the psychiatric wing in handcuffs and shackles (how much more vulnerable can a person be?).

I had to leave early, though, with the mother of prison homicide victim, Dana Seawright, so will follow-up on that issue in a separate post. Dana's mom, Kini Seawright, had the chance to confront ADC Director Chuck Ryan with her grief during the Roundtable - he was in the audience when she stood and told her story.


We thought he was going to flee the scene at first, because he saw us chalking the walk out front and headed back to the parking lot, but he returned and toughed it out: he's either more brave or more heartless than I thought. More on that in a later post, too.


Kini will be speaking about her experience as both an ex-felon and the mother of a prison homicide victim at the May Day Rally this weekend at Margaret T. Hance Park, PHX (by the Central St. Library) somewhere around 1:30pm.