Torture comes to Ky. The FBI have raided the Fayette County

[alfredo]

(Kentucky) Dentention center. Here's the first press release:

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/15612828.htm

Search warrants issued for Fayette County jail
By Beth Musgrave
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER
The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Kentucky issued search warrants for the Fayette County Detention Center today, a spokeswoman for the office confirmed.

FBI agents are restricting access to the detention center, at Old Frankfort Pike and New Circle Road.

The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment about what the search warrants are for.

Bruce Edwards, a spokesman for Mayor Teresa Isaac, declined to comment and referred all questions to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Watch Kentucky.com for updates on this story.

----

Latest word is that it is in connection with reports of torture. Several inmates have died in custody there.

People tend to take cues from their leaders, so this should not come as a surprise. If bush says torture is acceptable, it should be for our prison guards and local police too.

[lonestarnot]

1. Told you the fuckers were doing it here!

:grr:

[ThomCat]

3. I think we've always known

that torture was being used somewhere in our criminal justice system. It was just a matter of how rarely, and how isolated the cases were. Now I think it's becoming more accepted, expected and common.
x(

[alfredo]

18. What's going on in those for profit prisons? We know there

has been some brutality in some down south.

[Horse with no Name]

33. That's why they were privatized

so the states wouldn't be at fault.
Just a shell company that will be out of business and bankrupt at the first sign of trouble.

[lonestarnot]

41. xactree!

[alfredo]

42. That's why bush is using some many mercenaries in Iraq.

[ThomCat]

2. I am so sick to my stomach at the idea that OUR COUNTRY

condones torture and inflicts it. I wish we could somehow insist that our country never, ever uses torture.

[hughee99]

4. If our country condones torture...

why did the place get raided?

[acmavm]

5. Condone and illegal are two different things.

[Canuckistanian]

44. No, illegal and ENFORCEMENT are different things

Last time I looked, torture of ANYONE in America (or abroad) was illegal.

In this instance, it can be enforced.

Unlike in other areas of the world.

[ThomCat]

6. Why do reports keep surfacing periodically of

people getting tortured inside our criminal justice system? Obviously there are some people in authority who condone this.

[alfredo]

8. The torturer in chief gave it his stamp of approval.

monkey see, monkey do.

[DoYouEverWonder]

15. Unfortunately, this is nothing new

Power, control and limited intelligence are a bad combintation.

It's just getting worse because now even the top leaders of this country seem to think it's a good idea.

[sarcasmo]

26. This is no longer the America you once new. It is now a

Dictatorship/Theocracy not ruled by one person but ruled by a bunch of Right wing Thugs.

[ThomCat]

30. I think the America I thought I knew was a myth

and this even though I've always been a bit of a cynic.

It's just that the US is worse and more corrupt than I imagined, and getting worse.

[alfredo]

45. It always has been a myth. Until 2001 we at least tried to

live up to that ideal portrayed in our national myths.

[meganmonkey]

7. Michigan, too (link):

JEFF GERRITT: Inmates in custody
Inmates die when state corrections officials don't learn from mistakes

September 22, 2006

---snip---

Souders is the mentally ill inmate who, at 21, died last month after spending most of his last four days strapped down in a hot isolation cell, naked and soaked in his own urine. He was sent to the cell for unruly behavior and was serving a sentence of 1 to 4 years for petty theft, resisting arrest and brandishing a stolen knife at a police officer.

His death might not have occurred had the state made changes after a strikingly similar death four years ago of a mentally ill inmate at Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia.

On July 4, 2002, inmate Jeffrey David Clark, serving 9 to 30 years for armed robbery, was found dead, after spending four days alone in a hot observation cell. According to a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling, Clark, 39, "lay naked on the floor, in full rigor mortis, with eyes open and vomit encrusted on his mouth. The water to Clark's cell was turned off, and the toilet was dry."

When officers placed Clark in an observation cell on June 29, the ruling states, the prison was on a heat alert, and remained so until Clark died. Once in the cell, an officer observed Clark, who was mentally ill, screaming and barking like a dog. The water to the cell was turned off at least part of the time, and Clark was seen drinking from the toilet. A police detective investigating the cell after Clark died noted a pool of urine under Clark's mattress, uneaten food on the floor, and filth smeared over the cell window so that little could be seen through it. Still, Clark spent four days there alone, without care.

more...

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060922/OPINION02/609220353/1070/OPINION

[alfredo]

9. That is sickening. What has happened to our country?

[meganmonkey]

19. Well, abuse of prisoners has been going on a long time

it's not like it's new under this administration..


Maybe now people are starting to notice. That's the only difference I see :shrug:

[alfredo]

20. This is the first time a US president has endorsed the use

of torture.

[meganmonkey]

21. And...

Does that negate the reality that abuse and torture of prisoners (especially women) in the US has been going on as long as we have had a prison system?

I am not saying that having a president endorse torture has no effect on the situation, but it is wrong to assert that this is something that has 'happened to the country' recently. And it certainly does nothing to solve the problem to blame this on directly on Bush. This is an ongoing problem that has been virtually ignored for decades. I hope that, due to the bigger picture these days, more attention is drawn to it.

[alfredo]

23. We should not give torturers any kind of cover. We should have

zero tolerance for any act of torture. I am not saying that torture didn't exist before bush, what I am saying he is giving torture credibility as a law enforcement tool.

[The Stranger]

12. That is murder.

[sarcasmo]

38. This should show everyone the sickness of our Country.

"Mental Note to Self" never, ever get arrested for anything. Torture is upon us.

[Divernan]

40. More about Michigan prisoners - one was starved to death/down to 75 lbs.!

You know, everyone is well aware that the majority of military returning to the US after serving 1, 2, 3 or more tours in that seventh circle of hell known as Iraq, are going to have serious mental health issues. I think they'll be far worse off than the Vietnam vets, who typically only served one tour of less than a year, and who had a specific date to work toward- knowing exactly when they would get to leave Nam. I think the Iraq II vets will have trouble finding employment, but these prison administrators will be lined up to hire them. The despicable irony will be that some of the Iraqi War vets will be sadistic guards, and other Iraqi war vets will be doing time for violently acting out various emotional problems.

Here's more of the report cited above. It tells of a severely mentally ill man, who should have been in a state home for the mentally ill, but was put in prison for indecent exposure, entering WITHOUT breaking, and driving a car without permission. Well, the US Justice System taught HIM a lesson! (sarcasm off)

"I'd bet big that serious mistakes were also made in the death of Anthony Mark McManus, a severely mentally ill inmate at Baraga Maximum Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula. McManus, 38, had practically starved to death in September of last year. He was serving a minimum 18-month sentence for indecent exposure, entering without breaking, and unlawfully driving an automobile.

According to an autopsy report, McManus had been sprayed with pepper spray two or three days before he died; he weighed 75 pounds at death.

Most of these cases receive little or no publicity -- so the department has felt little heat to reform.

Jeffrey David Clark, Anthony Mark McManus, Timothy Joe Souders -- all dead, and no one knows how many others there are like them. There will be more, too,"

[lonestarnot]

10. This thread needs some recommends.

[The Stranger]

13. It never ceases to amaze me how few posters know how to recommend.

[Daphne08]

11. I was telling my husband just the other night... Acceptance of

torture will seem to be a green light (for torture) on every level of this country.

[alfredo]

17. Atitude flows downhill in any society or organization.

[Elwood P Dowd]

14. More republican "trickle down"

First it was trickle down economics, and now it's trickle down torture.

[Straight Shooter]

16. Wasn't that infamous Abu Ghraib torturer a prison guard?

Lindsey's boyfriend, Garner, I think was his name, the guy who punched on the inmates and other assorted cruel treatment. He had a history of domestic abuse, too.

A lot of prison guards are okay, and it isn't a pleasant job, but there are also some of them who are sick individuals who enjoy their authority waaaaaay too much.

[Jcrowley]

35. Yes

In recent years the United States has been charged by the UN and also by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International with tolerating torture in US prisons, by methods ranging from solitary, twenty-three-hour-a-day confinement in concrete boxes for years on end, to activating 50,000-volt shocks through a mandatory belt worn by prisoners? Many of the Military Police guards now under investigation for abuse of Iraqis earned their stripes working as guards in federal and state prisons, where official abuse is a daily occurence. Indeed, Charles Granier, one of the abusers at Abu Ghraib and the lover of Linndie England the Trailer Park Torturer, worked as a guard at Pennsylvania's notorious Greene Correctional Unit and has since gone back to work there.

[Straight Shooter]

39. Thanks for the update and the name corrections.

Granier is a real piece of work, isn't he?

(Can't believe I forgot England's name; she never should have been in the service ...)

[Jacobin]

22. Must invade U.S. to stop Torture Rooms

Time to invade ourselves

[Seabiscuit]

24. "The latest word" stuff is all your speculation. The article is

completely silent as to the reason for the search warrants.

[alfredo]

27. It was a local TV station that spoke of torture.

I am watching them now to see if there is any more info.

I gave a link to our paper as a place holder in case they update the story.

We've had a couple suspicious deaths at that facility in the past year or so.



Just learned that medical reports, incident reports, paperwork, and hard drives were seized. The intake section of the jail was sealed off.
That is where I have heard reports of prisoners being beaten. (on the WTVQ 6PM news cast)

[Judi Lynn]

25. Thanks for posting the information.

I'm sure you've heard enough already to form an opinion on what kind of operation they're running there.

We've seen some very strange reports coming from various places of attacks by guards on unarmed prisoners resulting in death in the last few years.

They surely don't need any encouragement, do they?

[AnneD]

28. During Bush's time as Gov of Texas...

there were several cases of torture. In fact, some states that contracted to hace there prisoners held in Texas withdrew their prisoners. There was a big nasty court case about this I believe. This is just SSDD for Bush.

[KansDem]

29. 2 things now you'll never find millionaires on: death row & waterboards

I wonder how long (if it isn't already happening) that arrestees will be subjected to torture. And, of course, you'll never see the rich and well-connected on a waterboard...

[Rex]

31. Yay! Nice to see the FBI doing something good for a change.

Now if only they would look into 911. Or maybe Katrina. Or how bout the UN building in Iraq? Or the Anthrax attackers. Or the bombing in Spain. Yup would nice.

[me b zola]

32. Dems used to fight for human rights for prisoners

When the rw began selling the stupid talking point of "soft on crime"--sound familar?--Dems backed off. Now no one with any power cares about the abuses in our criminal (in)justice system.

[alfredo]

43. There's still people on the grass roots level fighting

the good fight.

[chat_noir]

34. Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons - graphic video

George Bush's prisons in TX featured

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8451.htm

[Jcrowley]

36. All too common

And as a practical matter torture is far from unknown in the interrogation rooms of U.S. law enforcement, with Abner Louima, sodomized by a cop using a stick one notorious recent example. The most infamous disclosure of consistent torture by a police department in recent years concerned cops in Chicago in the mid-70s through early 80s who used electroshock, oxygen deprivation, hanging on hooks, the bastinado and beatings of the testicles. The torturers were white and their victims black or brown. A prisoner in California's Pelican Bay State Prison was thrown into boiling water. Others get 50,000-volt shocks from stun guns.

Many states have so-called "secure housing units" where prisoners are kept in solitary in tiny concrete cells for years on end, many of them going mad in the process. Amnesty International has denounced U.S. police forces for "a pattern of unchecked excessive force amounting to torture."

So far as rape is concerned, because of the rape factories more conventionally known as the U.S. prison system, there are estimates that twice as many men as women are raped in the U.S. each year. A Human Rights Watch report in April of 2001 cited a December 2000 Prison Journal study based on a survey of inmates in seven men's prison facilities in four states. The results showed that 21 percent of the inmates had experienced at least one episode of pressured or forced sexual contact since being incarcerated, and at least 7 percent had been raped in their facilities.

[chat_noir]

37. Bush has history with prisons

Addressing the Army War College on May 24, President Bush announced that the notorious Abu Ghraib prison will soon be demolished and "a humane, well-supervised prison system" will take its place as a symbol of Iraqi democracy and American beneficence. Like many of the administration's grand pronouncements, this is a noble promise but one Mr. Bush is exceptionally unqualified to keep.

There is no doubt the president has prison management experience. In 1995, during his first year as Texas governor, he opened new prisons at the rate of one per week. Over the course of his tenure, Texas' prison population grew by 48,000. No mere custodian, Gov. Bush left his mark on Texas justice by extending sentences for non-violent offenders, converting drug treatment centers to regular prisons, sending children to adult facilities, vetoing a bill to create a public defender system (Texas is one of the few states without one), and most famously by expediting executions, which rose to 152 under his watch, a modern American record.

The result was a punishment colossus that virtually no one regarded as "humane" or "well-supervised." Indeed, after Gov. Bush had been on the job for five years, a federal judge, William Justice, ruled that Texas' entire penal system was pervaded by a "culture of sadistic and malicious violence." Presiding over a lengthy prisoner rights case, Justice concluded that Texas prison guards routinely rely on excessive force, officials turn a blind eye to sexual enslavement, and the state's supermaximum-security units function as "virtual incubators of psychoses."

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Jun/01/op/op05a.html

[alfredo]

46. Here they are now saying it is "human rights violations"

and "excessive force." Excessive force could mean a lot of things. We will have a clearer picture what "excessive force" means as the story unfolds.