MCSO Deaths in Custody: the homicides of John Klatt and Douglas Walker.

As some folks out there are well aware, cops and prison guards often collaborate with gang leaders to set up people they want to see shut up or executed  - often by celling them with a likely assailant/killer, then looking the other way long enough for the deed to be done. 

Last week a prisoner was killed in a case I think is very much related to the murder of an accused child predator, John Klatt, in MCSO's jail in January by similar means - except this time, I think the intended victim is the one who survived the confrontation.  

In the January killing, it looks like the MCSO placed Klatt in minimum security with a ton of child molestation charges against him - an obvious attempt to have him executed by other prisoners before trial. 20 yo. Nike Black likely did the deed under order of one of the gangs, leaving him no choice but to kill the guy and be the hero, or or die as a coward himself. All the gangs police and punish the members of their own race in prison, whether or not those prisoners are gang members. That kid had a fresh charge that would have forced him to either seek protective custody in prison or do the gang's dirty work. The gang and yard leaders usually tell guys with domestic violence charges (or any offense against a woman) that they can only clear their own name by taking out some prisoner whose crime is worse than their own. What would most guys in similar shoes choose - and how much of a real choice is that, anyway? The MCSO helped force Black into that position, too, by celling him with Klatt.

The community has a lot to do with these extra-judicial execution of prisoners, as well - just look at the comments after this news article about the first of these two killings. Friends and family of both suspect and victim are there, and lots of people are giving the killer props for a job well done. For those of you who think accused pedophiles deserve to be executed, do you also think their killers deserve to have their lives destroyed as well? Because that's part of the collateral damage of extra-judicial executions and vigilantism - someone else then has to be punished for doing that job. Your champion, Nike Black's life will now be spent in prison and most likely shortened by violence and trauma, heroin addiction, or Hepatitis C (which most prisoners in this state contract during their incarceration...). In the meantime, you will all forget his noble sacrifice and he will become like all the other faceless, dehumanized prisoners you like to know are suffering.
 

Arpaio insisted in January that nothing could have been done to prevent Klatt's killing (How about segregating your sex offenders and child molesters from the rest of the population, as the AZ DOC does?) I think they have the right to be safe in custody, be they pre-trial or post-conviction. For those to whom guilt and innocence matters in prisoner rights cases, you're wrong. Let one be abused, and all are at risk - justifying punishments above and beyond those already sanctioned by the court, like rape of child predators, puts everyone in prison at greater risk, even the "good guys". But you should also be aware that up to 15% of convicted sex offenders may actually be innocent. What might the innocence rate be among those who have simply been accused? Sadly, all are condemned as soon as the news of their charges hits the media. Look at Courtney Bisbee.

So now we come to the current killing - a convicted prisoner awaiting sentencing on a violent crime who fears for his own safety is celled with an accused (and confessed) seriously mentally ill child killer awaiting trial, also fearing for his safety. If I was Walker's family's attorney, I'd look closely at Arpaio's refusal to take responsibility for re-visiting policies around celling people with crimes the rest of the prisoner population would find repugnant as the very reason that Walker ended up dead, even if Ward claims self-defense. As I observed earlier, the public was so pleased that the victim of the January attack was an accused pedophile that the MCSO wouldn't have felt much pressure to keep any other child predator in their custody safe from similar treatment. They were outright encouraged to set it up, in fact. It was ordained by that decision to cell those two together that one of the two parties would leave in a body bag - that was a reasonably forseeable event after the January homicide of John Klatt. That spells major liability.


In this more recent homicide,  I wouldn't be surprised if Walker was celled with Ward by folks at the MCSO wagering on whether or not he would kill him. Walker did time before and was on his way back to the joint - I guarantee the gangs would have put a green light on Ward to "discipline" him for the way he killed his 12 year old younger brother; his celly would be the most likely person they'd order to do it, regardless of whether or not the guy was in a gang. If Walker didn't follow those orders he'd be hitting the prison gates as a target himself in a short two weeks - he was expressing fear for his safety as it was, according to this report. I think everyone just underestimated Ward's determination to stay alive, and his capacity for fighting back.

Really, all of these men's families need to sue, with Arpaio's name at the top of the list. MCSO complicity will likely not be proven in criminal court, of course - the investigators handling these cases will never even try to hold officers or Arpaio accountable in their reports. Only the prisoners will appear to be the violent ones in all this - that's consistent with the way the good Sheriff Joe implements justice in the community, too: he subverts it and ducks responsibility every chance he can.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about this case down the road, as more is learned about what community-based psychiatric help, if any, Ward and his family got before he killed his brother. For now, though, I think the real story is about the proclivity of law enforcement officers to act as judges, juries and executioners (or their accomplices); moreover, the willingness of their adoring public to accept it. 

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

Phoenix man accused of killing brother now accused of killing cellmate

Vianka Villa, The Republic |

azcentral.com  

 April 4, 2014

A Maricopa County inmate charged in the fatal stabbing of his 12-year-old brother in Phoenix now stands accused of killing his cellmate in a frenzied attack on Wednesday night.

Andrew Ward, 27, was arrested early Thursday on suspicion of killing Douglas William Walker, who was awaiting sentencing on an armed robbery conviction, according to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.
Sheriff's officials said Walker was found "beaten, stabbed with a golf pencil and smeared with peanut butter over his head." He was discovered at about 7:30 p.m. when inmates notified detention officers on a security walk of a fight inside the cell.

Phoenix fire paramedics pronounced Walker dead on scene. Paramedics also determined that a plastic bag had been placed in Walker's nose and throat and obstructed his breathing.

Ward reportedly admitted to a play-by-play of the attack in an interview with detectives and told investigators that he had "no regrets," according to a sheriff's statement.

Ward relayed that he had cut Walker's throat with a plastic playing card, stabbed him in the eyes and throat with a golf pencil and finished the assault by stuffing a plastic bag down Walker's throat, according to a sheriff's statement.

Sheriff's Office spokesman Chris Hegstrom said Ward has been re-classifiedd and housed by himself in the Fourth Avenue Jail.

Both Ward and Walker were placed in segregated custody in the county jail system after each told jail administrators they feared for their safety, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Ward was arrested March 12 on suspicion of stabbing and killing his 12-year-old brother in a north Phoenix home last month, and pleaded not guilty to the allegations in a brief court hearing.

Walker pleaded guilty to armed robbery charges last month and was due to be sentenced, and likely transferred to the Department of Corrections, on April 11.

In September 2013 Walker and an accomplice robbed a man in a McDonald's parking lot on Indian School, threatening him with a knife and an Airsoft gun, a type of replica toy gun that fires plastic BB's, according to court documents.

Walker and his accomplice demanded money from the man and took his iPhone, which they later tried to sell after they fled the scene, court documents show. He was charged with armed robbery.


It is the second murder Ward has been accused of in the past three weeks.

Police said Ward called 911 on March 12 from a convenience store and reported he had stabbed someone at a house off 35th Avenue south of Deer Valley Road.

Officers found Austin Tapia with multiple and fatal stab wounds when they arrived at the home at about 5:30 p.m.

Ward had blood on his clothing and was believed to be carrying a knife in his pants pocket when he was taken into custody at the convenience store, said Sgt. Steve Martos, a Phoenix police spokesman.

Police said Ward was alone with his brother, whose mother and two sisters were out to dinner.

Austin had decided to stay home.

Detectives said that when they asked Ward why he killed his brother he told them, "Honestly, I just felt like killing."

Court records suggest Ward struggled with drugs and alcohol.

In filing the probable-cause statement, police suggested Ward may be an addict and mentally ill and had asked to "go to (a) mental hospital" instead of jail when he called police.

The report said Ward's family reported that he suffered from depression and had a history of domestic violence in the home.

The family also said Ward had threatened them in the past and that his siblings had called the police on him before.

Ward's previous convictions included DUI, assault, marijuana possession and resisting arrest, according to court records.

Cruel and Unusual: Arpaio's new jail visitation limits hurt families, children.

(EDITED 1/31/2014 12:15pm)

I discovered that visits have been reduced to one 30 minute visit/prisoner today when I went to visit someone at the jail, and my heart sank. This reduction in visits to only one 30-minute visit each week (and a max of 2 visitors) must have been devastating for prisoners and their loved ones when it went into effect - still is, I would bet. I hope people are grieving this policy and sue over it, especially since the mail policy still only allows for postcards - no letters are allowed in unless they qualify as legal mail. That means no paperwork about one's medications, or one's rights while incarcerated, or issues related to one's case unless a lawyer sends it. They don't even allow letters from children, or cute pencil drawings on the postcards. It's bad enough to do that to someone who has been convicted of a crime - but, as Kelly Flood from the AZ ACLU said: 

"It seems particularly unjust and unfortunate when we’re talking about pre-sentence detainees,” Flood said. “For those folks to be completely deprived of their families’ visitation, it’s unjust and unfortunate and dehumanizing."

Many are trapped in pre-trial custody just because they can't afford bail, not because they are necessarily more dangerous or guilty or evil than those who are free pending trial. Do you know how hard it is to defned yourself when all the information you can get from the outside world is what Sheriff Joe allows on the TV screen and what you can get from a postcard?

So many folks in the general public say criminals shouldn't have the right to visits, that it's a privilege for the law-abiding that they don't deserve, but maintaining family connections is critical to mitigate the harm that incarceration does to the imprisoned as well as their loved ones, like their kids, who are undoubtedly being hurt by losing contact with their parents. 

This visitation restriction is probably also pretty hard on the mentally ill being held in solitary confinement, getting only more disturbed the more they're isolated, abused, and separated from support. Evidence-based practice suggests that visitation and close family/community ties are critical for helping prisoners succeed once back in the community...unfortunately, the MCSO doesn't abide by contemporary professional corrections practices, as we can all see.


So not only is cutting everyone to a single 30-minute visit cruel to people who haven't even been convicted yet,  it's really dumb on crime as far as those who have been. It certainly isn't "fair" to hurt everyone equally, which is the justification for cutting back visitation where there shouldn't be any disruption of the visitation areas for these kiosks to be installed. It's simply justifying being abusive to more prisoners than he really has to be hurting, that's all.
 
For those of you looking for current jail policies and info for families, here they are (effective December 1, 2013). If the link is broken, its probably outdated, so head to the MCSO main website.


THE POSTCARD-ONLY POLICY WAS FOUND UNCONSTITUTIONAL IN OREGON, AS IT VIOLATES THE 1ST AMENDMENT RIGHTS OF PRISONERS AS WELL AS THOSE WHO WRITE TO THEM FROM THE FREE WORLD (that means people like me have standing to sue if MCSO rejects my letters...).

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

MCSO to allow video jail visits – for a price

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Dec 10, 2013 10:58 PM

 

Maricopa County jails are installing a new video system that will allow inmates to have virtual visits with family, while earning the county Sheriff’s Office hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but make it harder for some relatives to see loved ones.

The high-tech system, which will be the largest of its kind in the country, according to the manufacturer, will let family and friends anywhere in the world talk with inmates via video, so long as they have access to a computer with a camera and a credit card to pay $12.95 for a 20-minute conversation.

The system, which is expected to be in place early next summer, is meant to make visits easier and improve security at the county jails, which book 100,000 people every year. But as work begins on installing the Internet-based system, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office cut regular visiting time from three hours per week to 30 minutes.

Although sheriff’s officials say the system will make visiting inmates easier, it’s not being welcomed by prisoner-rights advocates. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona criticized MCSO for planning to eliminate face-to-face visits at its Towers, Estrella and Durango jails because it could mean fewer people have access to inmates.

Visitors to the county’s other three jails communicate with inmates through closed-circuit video accessible at terminals inside jail lobbies.

ACLU senior staff attorney Kelly Flood said the need for people to have access to a video-enabled computer to visit with an inmate would make it harder for some families and prevent people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who eschews technology and relies on a typewriter, from having a virtual visit with an inmate in his jails.

The vast majority of jail inmates have not been sentenced for their crimes, she said, and many remain in custody because their friends and family members cannot afford to bail them out.

“They’re making it harder and harder. It seems particularly unjust and unfortunate when we’re talking about pre-sentence detainees,” Flood said. “For those folks to be completely deprived of their families’ visitation, it’s unjust and unfortunate and dehumanizing.”

The $2.6 million system, which the manufacturer is installing at no cost to Maricopa County, will also turn into a money maker for the Sheriff’s Office once it gets paid off and the agency starts to receive a 10 percent cut of the fee paid for every conversation.

The sheriff’s share, which would average more than $300,000 each year if the agency maintained its current visitation rate, is designated to go into the Inmate Services Fund, a pool earmarked for drug-rehabilitation programs and other services for inmates.

The Sheriff’s Office has come under scrutiny in the past for using the inmate funds, which topped $12 million in fiscal 2012, to pay for deputies who didn’t work in the jails, a violation of county policy.

State leaders have also swept those funds in the past to help balance the budget.

Both the Sheriff’s Office and the system’s manufacturer expect jail visits to increase once the system is in place, because friends and family will have virtually unlimited access to inmates from anywhere with a reliable Internet connection.

“You can use this system in China, Russia, on the moon, wherever they have an Internet system, including airplanes,” Arpaio said.

Other agencies in Arizona that have converted to video-visitation systems have seen an increase in visitors after inmates’ friends and family members became familiar with navigating the software and comfortable with paying a fee for each visit.

Pinal County opened its video-visitation system in April, and inmates have received more than 15,000 video visits in the first eight months. The agency still allows on-site visits and averages slightly more than 1,500 each month.

Apache County used the same company installing Maricopa County’s system and launched video visitation about six weeks ago. The jails have seen an increase in visitation, in addition to providing an opportunity for out-of-state inmates who were arrested for motor-vehicle violations on Interstate 40 to see family members from their home states and countries, Apache County sheriff’s Cmdr. Michael Cirivello said.

The system has allowed the jail to expand visiting hours from one day per week, with a maximum of 30 minutes, to five days a week with inmates receiving as many visits as their friends and relatives are willing to pay for, he said.

Apache County, which stretches 200 miles, also has inmates whose relatives find it cheaper to pay the $20 fee for a 20-minute video conversation than to drive to the facility in St. Johns, Cirivello said.

“I had one guy in here who got a visit from Okinawa (Japan),” he said. “And the people that get visited a lot, they’re getting visits every day now, sometimes a couple times a day.”

Three of the six Maricopa County jail facilities have used video systems for several years that allow visitors to meet with inmates through kiosks set up in the jail lobby and mobile units that detention officers move around to inmates’ cells. The other three jails still offer face-to-face visits, but the visiting hours were reduced systemwide in an attempt to be fair, sheriff’s Deputy Chief Mike Olson said.

Once the new system is installed, visitors will have to register through Securus Technologies’ website and wait for sheriff’s investigators to conduct a background check to ensure the visitors are not felons.

After the visitor is approved, he or she can schedule a visit with an inmate 24 hours in advance and engage in the virtual visitation from any computer with a camera.

The virtual visitation system will present some hurdles for detention officers intent on keeping felons from visiting inmates, which is possible if a non-felon registers for a visit and a felon sits down in his place, but sheriff’s officials said visitors would be barred if they were discovered attempting to game the system.

A Securus representative said he hoped the prospects of easy virtual visitation would dissuade criminals from engaging in any illicit activity.

“We believe $12.95 and their visitation rights to visit in the future are on the line, and they’re not going to game the system,” said Darrin Hays, a Securus account manager. “We believe they’re going to say, ‘There’s value in this, and we just want to get our visits.’ ”

But the advent of virtual visitation also means the Sheriff’s Office will likely have to abandon its long-standing and highly promoted policy that prohibits undocumented immigrants from visiting inmates in Maricopa County jails.

As the system is accessible from anywhere in the world, Hays said, the visitor’s residency status in the United States or any other country should become irrelevant.

“What this really does is promote the relationship with the community,” Hays said. “If I’m here illegally, I don’t think I want to step into the jail, and famously, Arpaio’s jail. So, what can I do? I can actually get online, and I can at least apply. If I’m denied, I’m denied. They can’t find me, I’m on an Internet connection.

“You don’t know where they’re visiting from, so you really can’t say they’re here illegally.”

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 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 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

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.)

Durango jail: gangs, not Joe, run the house...

sign left at Wells Fargo Building, Phoenix

Remembering Arpaio's dead

(June 7, 2011)

More excellent work by Paul Rubin - this piece below came out last week.

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

Joe Arpaio Turns a Blind Eye to Jailhouse Justice

By Paul Rubin

published: June 14, 2012

A  few months ago, Alan DeLong sat down to watch a new reality show on the Discovery Channel.

First Week In goes inside jails around the nation and does mini-profiles of newly incarcerated inmates as they experience degradations at their hardcore digs.

The episode was titled "Intimidation" (not to be confused with the subsequent installment, "Fresh Meat").

The subject matter hit DeLong hard.

He is a crusty Phoenix man who has had his share of dark times in his 57 years, and he doesn't scare easily.
But DeLong says his emotions overwhelmed him as he watched the part of First Week In filmed inside the Durango Jail, which is part of Maricopa County's array of penal facilities.

Almost eight years ago, as an inmate at Durango, DeLong endured what he calls simply "my worst moment."

---

The moment, which actually lasted about a minute, changed DeLong's life forever.

Four or five thugs attacked him without warning one night in September 2004 after he stepped into a bathroom to fill up a water jug.

It was the sole bathroom in D-pod of housing unit 6 at Durango, a "general population" facility in South Phoenix that opened in 1976.

The lead "torpedo," or enforcer, inside the bathroom was a member of the "Chicanos," American-born Latinos locked up at the time. He was Abel Hinojosa, a sturdy Gila Bend man in his mid-20s who was about to be sentenced on a criminal damage rap.

Hinojosa sucker-punched DeLong in the right eye after the older man turned around after feeling a tap on his shoulder. He and his pals then beat DeLong savagely until he was able to escape from the room.

The detention officer who escorted DeLong to the county hospital fainted when he saw the horrific damage to the inmate's eye.

Alan DeLong turned out to be the wrong target, a tragic case of mistaken identity. Another older white man who apparently owed a "Chicano" about $60 was the true target.

All this happened just hours after a Maricopa County judge had sentenced DeLong to 2 1/2 years in prison on an aggravated-drunken-driving conviction.

But a scheduling snafu led to his temporary return to Durango instead of getting shipped to a state prison in Kingman.

The bathroom where the torpedo and his cohorts pummeled DeLong was the longtime epicenter of Durango's continued prisoner (or prisoners)-on-prisoner assaults.

Most beatings were sanctioned by leaders of various incarcerated ethnic groups — mostly Latinos and Anglos — ostensibly to keep the general peace between races.

The bathroom was the pod's ground zero with good reason:

Citing "privacy concerns," sheriff's officials declined to install security cameras or audio equipment inside Durango's bathrooms, and detention officers usually had no idea what was going on there.

In a 2009 civil deposition, MCSO Sergeant Rocky Medina was asked: "From your experience as a detention officer, are the restrooms a problem area?"

"Yes," Medina replied. "Because there is no detection. There is no visual. There is no camera. It's a blind spot to everybody. And the way the pods are set up at Durango, even if you're looking on the monitor or you're looking directly into the pod, you cannot see into the restroom or the cells themselves, to be honest."

Another detention officer, Trevor King, was asked: "If someone has to assault someone, is [the bathroom] where they would do it?"

"You can say that. Yes," King said.

"And that was because there weren't any cameras there?"

"Well, because they don't want to get caught."

A twist: From 2000 to 2003, the Maricopa County sheriff's website championed Joe Arpaio's "Jail Cam," a 24-hour webcast that showed live video of arrestees moving about at the Madison Street Jail. Plaintiffs in a civil case that Arpaio eventually lost alleged that, for months, one camera had captured images of the toilet and nearby area in the women's holding cell. They argued that MCSO officials repositioned the camera only in response to the lawsuit. Arpaio countered that his officers had moved the camera hours after learning that images of the toilet area were on the Internet.

Beyond having no cameras in the Durango bathrooms, detention officers later admitted that they rarely stepped inside to see for themselves what was going on.

One officer said in a deposition that he would seek assistance if a colleague did go in the bathroom and didn't reappear by the count of five.

"He has a problem or he's in a world of hurt," the officer said of the hypothetical situation.

The Durango Jail in 2004 was a "gladiator school," as one inmate later dubbed it.

Back to that Discovery Channel show that aired in Phoenix earlier this year.

What infuriated Alan DeLong most about First Week In was how little had changed since he fled D-pod holding a blood-soaked towel over his shattered eye.

The show's unfettered access to Sheriff Arpaio's jail spoke for itself.

The bathroom situation at Durango was precisely the same late last year (when the TV cameras were inside) as in 2004 — only the names and faces of the inmates were different:

The latest generation of "torpedoes," also known as "chin checkers," continued to use their fists with impunity in the privacy of the john with little fear of reprisals from MCSO officials.

DeLong says the show made him physically ill.

"I nearly got killed in that damned bathroom after those jerks jumped me," he tells New Times. "Just because Joe Arpaio didn't put security cameras in so they don't have to do anything when whippings happen. You might think that they would have learned a lesson in jail security and inmate safety from what happened to me. But Arpaio doesn't give a damn about a nobody like me losing an eye."

---

In April, Joe Arpaio announced that jail officials were "locking down" the third floor of downtown Phoenix's Fourth Avenue Jail.

The sheriff told reporters that Mexican Mafia inmates were causing an excessive number of brawls and other mayhem, placing detention officers at increased risk.

The inmates' endgame, according to Arpaio, was to take over "his" jail.

"What do they have to lose?" the sheriff said. "Nothing other than to make a name for themselves and be a hero when they go to prison and say, 'We took care of that jail, the sheriff, and his officers.'"

Arpaio said his lockdown was designed to "send a message not only to this group of mafia, but to everybody in the jail. You will not run our jail system."

The irony of Arpaio's comments did not escape Alan DeLong, who learned firsthand that the sheriff does not have a problem allowing inmate "leaders" to dispense so-called jailhouse justice.

No doubt, many jails and prisons — and not just Joe Arpaio's highly controversial facilities — are violent places where inmates routinely fight like mad dogs and sometimes maim and kill each other.

Hundreds of detention officers suffer various levels of assault around the nation every year. Some are seriously hurt, and occasionally an officer is killed in the line of duty.

Jails aren't kindly places, aren't supposed to be.

But Joe Arpaio's jails have cost inmates their lives and county taxpayers multi-millions of dollars in litigation costs, adverse jury verdicts, and out-of-court settlements. (New Times published a story in late 2007, "Inhumanity Has a Price," stating that county taxpayers at that point had been on the hook for $41.4 million in lawsuit payouts during Arpaio's reign. That figure has climbed to more than $50 million, according to county sources.)

The U.S. Department of Justice investigated the Maricopa County jail system in an ill-fated investigation that began in 1995 and ended tepidly after then-Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano made political book with Arpaio ("Napolitano's Sorry Service in Arizona," November 27, 2008).

Still, the feds did find a "pattern of excessive force" by Arpaio's detention officers against inmates in jails both grossly overcrowded and understaffed.

More akin to what happened to Alan DeLong than excessive force by officers was the case of Jeremy Flanders, a jail trusty nearly beaten to death by fellow inmates at Tent City in 1996.

A Maricopa County jury later awarded Flanders $440,532 in actual damages and $195,000 in punitive damages.

The judge in this case wrote, "The history of violence, the overcrowding, the abundance of weaponry, the lack of supervision, and the absence of necessary security measures supports the jury's findings of deliberate indifference to inmate safety."

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Flanders verdict in an opinion that was worded just as strongly.

Joel Robbins, a Phoenix attorney who is representing DeLong in an ongoing lawsuit against Sheriff Arpaio, also represented Flanders.

Arpaio's lawyers deny wrongdoing, writing that the sheriff "has consistently denied that he was negligent, much less grossly negligent. An assault by one inmate on another, because of a mistaken identity, does not equal gross negligence. Additionally, inmate-on-inmate assaults can and do occur in every correctional institution."

Correct, on the latter point.

But one of Arpaio's detention officers, James Sawyer, told the Discovery Channel team something on camera that altered the playing field in the DeLong civil case.

"When inmates first arrive to the facilities," Sawyer said, "you'll have these racially designated leaders, if you will, that will make up their own rules.

"The inmates do get brought around — they get shown what to do, where they can go. That's how [inmate leaders] maintain their interior social dynamics. These rules are not authorized by the county, and the inmates will follow these rules, or they'll be beaten up in the bathroom."

Attorney Robbins ran with that, noting in legal papers, "Officer Sawyer's comment suggests that "rather than being a case of [simple] negligence, [it] supports a conscious decision to permit the racial gangs to inflict injuries to enforce gang rules within the jail."

A trial date is scheduled for later this year.

"I knew in 2004 how crazy things were inside that place," Alan DeLong says. "Now I know a whole lot more."

He concedes that it was his fault that he landed in Durango for drinking and driving.

But he can't reconcile the loss of his eye with his belief that the unprovoked attack could have been prevented by basic security measures.

"I didn't have a life sentence coming to me for a DUI," DeLong says. "But I kind of got one anyway."

That he has to stick a glass eye into his empty right socket every day before work constantly reminds DeLong of 2004, as do the throbbing headaches, the depression, and other emotional upheavals.

"I want it all to be gone," he says of his trauma. "But I dream it, think it, feel it all day long. I can't escape it."

---

A cocky young man recently incarcerated on charges of heroin possession is about to be berated on camera by the head of the "Woods."

That would be short for "Peckerwoods," a slur usually employed against Caucasians, but is used in this instance by white inmates themselves at the Durango Jail to distinguish themselves from the "Pisces" (Mexican nationals), "Chicanos" (American-born Latinos), "Kinfolk" (African-Americans), and "Chiefs" (Native Americans).

The Woods' boss in this episode of First Week In is Jason Ginn, a burly, straight-talking fellow in his mid-30s. Standing in his jail black-and-whites, Ginn carefully explains his "law and order" role inside the pod.
"Basically, each race has its own head, [its] own counsel," says Ginn, who was facing aggravated identity theft and other charges at the time.

"We try to maintain order when someone needs to be disciplined. This whole place [the Durango Jail] has got cameras, so anytime we need to handle anything, it gets taken care of in the bathroom."

Yes, the infamous Durango bathrooms.

Two of Ginn's "aides" hover over the addict as Ginn evenly informs him that punishment is at hand (or fist).
"When you come in here, you read the rules," the boss tells him. "You understand that the number-one rule is no disrespect. I was told yesterday you disrespected the head of the Pisces. You said, 'You don't know who the fuck you're talking to.'"

The kid starts to say that he meant no disrespect to the Latino, but Ginn interrupts him: "Regardless of how you meant it, we take disrespect really seriously."

Ginn informs him that he will be punished inside the bathroom by a Woods torpedo with a punch or two to the jaw.

The torpedo of choice is 19-year-old Spencer Bird, whose broken right hand is wrapped in a cast, the result, he says, of a previous day's chin check in the same bathroom.

Bird leads the camera crew into the john and points to a corner where, he says, he prefers to administer chin checks.

This bathroom is designed just like the one in the pod where Alan DeLong was thrashed in 2004.

"It gets really ugly," Bird says. "People's teeth get chipped. I don't enjoy doing it. But when people break the rules, we gotta do what we gotta do to keep the peace in here."

The show never reveals whether the chin check ever happened.

---

Alan DeLong pleaded guilty to aggravated drunken driving in August 2004, and because of an earlier DUI conviction a decade earlier, he faced mandatory prison time.

He had migrated to Arizona from his native Missouri in his early 30s, stopping by to visit a sister after a trip to California.

DeLong stayed here and found a job with Paddock Pools, for whom he had worked for more than a decade by 2004. After his guilty plea, company officials promised DeLong they would rehire him after prison.

He was incarcerated at the Durango Jail after his guilty plea, where he awaited a sentencing date in late September 2004.

It was hellish at the jail.

More than 100 prisoners crammed into the D-pod, designed to hold just 32. They spent much of their days in "boats," which is what inmates called their plastic cots they stuck wherever they could find a space — anyplace but the bathroom.

"It was wall-to-wall men in there," DeLong says.

That led to increased tensions and almost-daily fights and chin checks, most of them relegated to the bathroom.

"It was gladiator school in there," former inmate Ronald Paliai said of Durango during his deposition in DeLong's civil case.

"You gotta realize you're in jail, where there's no supervision at all. You got a [detention officer] that walks in there every 30 minutes. He's just getting a paycheck.

"I'm not saying their job is not dangerous, because they have things they have to deal with. [But] just because you made a mistake in life and you're being detained until you have your day in court, regardless of the charge, you're not supposed to be treated like an animal . . . It's living back in the 1800s."

Detention officers were scarce at Durango, often with only two or three on duty at any given time.

That wasn't nearly enough manpower to provide meaningful security for DeLong's D-pod and its 100-plus inmates, much less for the entire jail, more than 2,000 prisoners in September 2004.

DeLong recalls that the then-head of the Woods told him briefly about the jail's unofficial inmate rules when he first got there, just as the modern-day gang leader instructed the young heroin addict years later on the Discovery Channel show.

In September 2004, that Woods leader was Jason Lewis, an honorably discharged U.S. Marine now in prison for armed robbery.

DeLong is a bulky man who has been in a fight or two in his time. But he says he didn't need anyone's advice on how to behave in the jail.

"I laid low 24-7," he says.

DeLong positioned his "boat" where detention officers, if they were around, might see him. He read books or just daydreamed as days passed, killing time until his sentencing on September 21, 2004.

Both inmates and detention officers questioned later in DeLong's civil suit remembered him as low-key in the jail maelstrom.

As he tried to stay invisible, DeLong says, he also kept vigilant. He says he saw three or four assaults in D-pod during his month there and observed one inmate exit the bathroom holding teeth that just had been knocked out.

"I wanted to roll up out of there because it was insanity," he tells New Times. "I told the guards it was a madhouse, and they needed to put me someplace else, anyplace. They said, 'You did the crime; just do the time. Get back where you belong.'"

Which DeLong did, until the night he fatefully stepped into D-pod's wicked bathroom.

About 10:30 p.m., DeLong decided to fill up his water jug to make some Kool-Aid from his personal stash.
He told an attorney during a 2007 deposition what happened next:

"I remember getting out of bed and going to the bathroom. I walked in there, and the next thing I know, I was getting tapped on the shoulder in the kind of dark in there and the lights out.

"And I turned to my right to see who it was, and I got hit in the eye. And then, like, four or five other guys jumped in on that, and I was beaten and hit and slammed to the floor, and I didn't know what was going on.
"I was screaming for help and fighting to get out of there before any more damage was done to me. I didn't know it was coming . . . My mouth was busted, my teeth were all knocked loose. I had ribs caved in. My knees were raw, no skin, scratches. Just pretty messed up."

He says he recognized the man, Abel Hinojosa, who smacked him in the eye, an inmate with whom he never had communicated in any way.

"I had a direct view of him," DeLong says. "The others rat-packed me. I didn't see them."

Immediately after he escaped from the bathroom, DeLong says, he ran to an emergency buzzer in the pod, and, "I pressed and pressed, but nobody came."

The "bubble," which is where detention officers often sit, was empty, so DeLong retreated to his cot. He grabbed a towel to hold over his destroyed eye.

The pain, he says, was awful.

"Blood was all over me," DeLong says. "I sat there, started passing out, as white as a ghost. Then I got a second wind and was ready to go back and get the guys that did this to me. They all backed off, apologized to me. I was the wrong guy."

Jason Lewis, head of the Woods, says he learned about the attack on DeLong within moments and immediately walked over to address the Chicanos' boss, his equal inside Durango.

In a deposition, Lewis said the other guy avowed that DeLong's beating was "unsanctioned," which meant Hinojosa and the others had made a serious mistake.

Several inmates said later that it took about a half-hour before detention officers responded, during which time emotions inside the pod reached a fever pitch.

The Woods and Chicanos lined up across from each other, hurling insults and threatening to wreak violence on each other.

"It was about to pop," Jason Lewis later recalled, but somehow it didn't.

Finally, the officers unlocked a door and allowed DeLong to leave.

A SWAT team armed with guns and tear gas entered the pod, locked it down, and soon started their routine of "knuckle checks" — observing inmates for signs of blood or bruising.

DeLong penned a short statement at the request of authorities before they transported him to the Maricopa Medical Center.

"The Hispanics in the pod said they made a mistake," he wrote that night. "I was not the intended victim!"
DeLong recalled in his deposition that one detention officer told him at the time, "That's what you get for not ducking."

Another allegedly said, "'You're just trying to get your name in the New Times like every one of you SOBs.' They were very hateful."

Except, DeLong added, for detention officer Raymond Ferreira.

"He was telling me how his wife wanted him to quit," DeLong says. "He held my hand right into the surgery room when they were taking my eye, prayed over me. He was a really nice fellow."

Ferreira is a retired firefighter and U.S. Army veteran. When lawyers in DeLong's lawsuit deposed him, he already had left the Sheriff's Office and was working for the Arizona Department of Education.

But in September 2004, Ferreira was deployed to the county hospital to guard DeLong after the Durango assault. He said he never had spoken to the inmate before that night.

DeLong was "a real easygoing guy," Ferreira told lawyers, who had spoken openly about the attack in the Durango bathroom.

"The bathrooms are a problem from this regard," the ex-detention officer testified. "They don't have any security cameras."

Ferreira said he prayed with DeLong at the hospital that night:

"I mean, we're human just like they're human. As far as I'm concerned, anyone [who] was at Durango, until he went before a judge and was found guilty, was just an inmate that was there. [DeLong] was the wrong tall white guy. Tragic. And it cost him an eye."

By the way, the inmate who was the torpedo's actual intended target soon left D-pod without getting injured.

---

At the hospital that night, another MCSO detention officer saw the extent of Alan DeLong's eye injury for the first time.

"The eye bulged," the officer (now a probation officer) said in a deposition. "I fainted. The hospital has security that came in. I guess I was only unconscious for, like, five seconds, they said."

The specialist told DeLong how bad the injury was and that he probably would lose the eye.

"I went into a frenzy just thinking about that," DeLong says.

His longtime girlfriend, Cindy Dubois, and his since-deceased sister didn't find out what had happened until the following day.

"We thought he was going off to prison, and then this," says Dubois, a mother of six grown children who stuck with DeLong throughout the ordeal and subsequent prison term.

A sheriff's investigator interviewed DeLong at the hospital. The inmate was able to identify Abel Hinojosa in a photograph as the man who had clocked him in the bathroom.

The investigator then went to Durango to chat with Hinojosa, who proclaimed innocence.

Hinojosa succeeded in persuading officers to remove him from D-pod because he feared for his safety in the aftermath of the assault.

He didn't say who scared him more, the Woods or his own group, the Chicanos.

County prosecutors later added an assault charge to Hinojosa's criminal-damage case. He pleaded guilty to the assault, but served only about a month more behind bars (less than a year in all) than he would have on the original charge.

"One month for one eye," Alan DeLong says. "Justice."

(Court records show that Hinojosa was sentenced last February to 11 years for a subsequent aggravated assault in Pinal County.)

Doctors removed DeLong's right eye six days after the beating.

Infections hampered his recovery after hospital officials returned him to a county jail in downtown Phoenix for what he describes as a nightmarish few weeks. Remarkably, the officials wanted to ship him back to Durango until he complained mightily.

On October 13, 2004, authorities finally transported DeLong from the county jail to a minimum-security prison, where he quietly served his DUI sentence until his July 2006 release.

He caught a break when his sister successfully appealed to a local Lions Club to donate money for a glass eye — at a cost of about $3,000.

Though he still prefers to wear dark glasses in public, DeLong says that the "new" eye helped him feel a bit better — "on a good day" — about how he looks.

---

Alan DeLong's reentry into society in 2006 was eased by the positive presence of his girlfriend and by the job that Paddock Pools held for him as promised.

He still works for the firm, in a customer-service capacity. But all is not well.

"I feel ashamed of myself," he said during his civil deposition (a sentiment he repeated to New Times in a recent interview).

"I don't feel like I'm complete anymore. I cry a lot about that, not being able to do the things I used to do. I feel like people are staring at me a lot. Like I used to do to people, and now I know how it feels. It's horrible."

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

Stauffer on Atencio and the abuse of prisoners at the MCSO

Keep in mind that the following is coming from a conservative challenger 

to Joe Arpaio in 2012

-------------------from the Tucson Citizen--------------

Law Enforcer Mike Stauffer reacts to death of Ernest M. Atencio
by Hispanic-Politico on Dec. 26, 2011,
TUCSON CITIZEN

Law Enforcement Analysis of the Ernest Atencio Incident
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December 26, 2011
Police Lt. Mike Stauffer
MCSO Candidate • 2012


In expressing my dismay about the incident that occurred in the MCSO 4th Avenue intake area on December 16, 2011, I have angered some people employed by MCSO. To those individuals, I say, the information that I acted on came from inside the MCSO. There are employees of the organization who are disgusted by the actions of a few and will speak out.

As sheriff, I will not tolerate this behavior or this attitude. I will not tolerate those who stand by and allow this type of incident to take place. Know that the days of covering up behind stalling tactics are over. The cover-up is frequently worse than the incident itself. The MCSO is under a microscope. Even if it was not, I expect all the employees should understand that they are held to a very high standard of conduct and will be held accountable for their actions. I am outraged that even one employee of the MCSO would stand by as this incident unfolded and did nothing to intervene. I am outraged by the atmosphere and attitude fostered by Arpaio that allowed this to happen. Know that those who continue to carry this attitude will have no place at the MCSO.

I stipulate that I have not been privy to an unedited video and have formed some
conclusions based on the video available on You Tube (http://tinyurl.com/7evqt6n) and the report by Fox 10 News in Phoenix (http://tinyurl.com
/7nbuyma). What I saw disturbed me greatly on many levels.

Ernest Atencio according to reports, was arrested for misdemeanor assault. He had not seen a judge. He had not even gone through the full intake process.

Nevertheless, the offense he was arrested for, even if found guilty and convicted at trial, did not warrant a death sentence. American law enforcement is not judge or jury.

Ernest Atencio arrived at the intake area under his own power and apparently healthy. He did not initially appear physically combative, and in fact, the Phoenix Police officers released him from his handcuffs. It has not been reported what the conversation was between PPD officers and Mr. Atencio that precipitated the officers to grab him and attempt to restrain him.

If the reason for the physical contact was to put Mr. Atencio back into handcuffs, why do none of the officers have handcuffs out? There are no restraining tools of any kind visible.

As Mr. Atencio struggles with the officers, a Phoenix officer appears to put Mr. Atencio into a choke hold (2:11), which is considered a deadly force tactic, and takes him forcefully to the ground. It appears that Mr. Atencio goes limp for several seconds at this point. The Phoenix officer is then pushed away by an MCSO detention officer and at least six detention officers appear to be pinning Mr. Atencio to the floor.

Although he can’t be seen under the pile of at least six detention officers, it appears that Mr. Atencio suddenly surges and the detention officers apply a Taser in “drive stun” mode. This tactic involves firing a barb from close range, into the subject and then repositioning the Taser to make contact and complete a circuit that delivers an immobilizing electric current to the subject for a five second duration. The detention officers do not appear to be restraining Mr. Atencio during any of the applications, as those properly trained to use a Taser are instructed. Taser training also warns that repeated applications of the Taser is dangerous to the health of a subject and de-escalation tactics to bring the subject under control should be employed during the subject’s incapacitation to prevent the need for continued force.

Equally disturbing are the actions of the other officers in the area. Several officers run into view from other areas and try to join in the pile. Others appear to be mocking Mr. Atencio and laughing about the encounter. Their behavior reinforces the perception the officers have a callous disregard for Mr. Atencio’s well being.

In the holding cell, a detention officer is seen making what appears to be knee strikes to Mr. Atencio’s head. Another detention officer puts a restraining hand on that officer’s shoulder to stop him. This occurs while Mr. Atencio is being held down by at least five other detention officers. The application of knee strikes to the head while Mr. Atencio is being restrained is an inappropriately high level of force for the circumstances.

Mr. Atencio is limp and unresponsive; yet, he is stripped of his clothing and dumped on the floor of a holding cell. The medical personnel present do not appear to ascertain Mr. Atencio’s medical status. No medical follow-up is conducted and Mr. Atencio is left alone. This again is contrary to Taser policies and training. Training dictates that anyone subjected to a Taser application be seen immediately after the situation is stabilized by certified medical personnel. A person subjected to multiple Taser applications should be seen by an emergency room Physician.

The vague statement issued by Chief McIntyre that night after the story broke suggests an attempt to cover up the situation. His statement indicates that there was no in-custody death that night, an outright falsehood. The week delay in releasing the video and the timing of the release further suggests an all out attempt to bury the story by the MCSO.

These situations require an open, timely release of preliminary findings. Delay and vagueness only fuel anger and distrust in the community. Hiding behind a wall of silence is not appropriate. The leader of the organization must be front and center and accountable to the community. Only in this way can the organization be trusted to do what is right.

Police Lt. Mike Stauffer
MEDIA CONTACT:
West Kenyon
Campaign Manager
Police Lt. Mike Stauffer
Maricopa County Sheriff • Candidate 2012
t: 480.414.6868
e: west@votestauffer.com
w: www.votestauffer.com

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.

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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.