Gangsters in Blue

Off-duty Officer Harrasses Pitsburgh CopBlock Founder is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

Guest Post by Katie McCall

I must apologize… this story is a little old. But the victims are still suffering and it needs to be told.

Meet the Hendersons: Father, Jeffrey, is a big, intimidating individual but tenderly in love with his children. Mother, Erica, is a very nurturing mother. Together they have six children and lived together without incident in their Pasadena, California home.

Are they typical parents? No. They keep a kosher diet, they homeschool
and breastfeed and homebirth. They follow orthodox Jewish law. But is being “different” a reason to have your rights trampled?

In May 2010, the police were called by a disgruntled neighbor who reported having “heard” Jeffrey slap their oldest child. The police responded by demanding entry. Jeffrey and Erica
refused their requests and instead had the children come to the front window next to their door to show that they had not been harmed. Here you can see Jeffrey and Erica refusing entrance prior to deciding to parade their children’s well being in the window:

The Henderson’s refuse entrance to the police in Pasadena

Apparently, visually seeing the children was not enough for the Pasadena police. Without a warrant they barged into their residence as the family sang Jewish songs of worship. They beat Jeffrey to the point he needed to be hospitalized, removed the children and gave them to DCFS and locked both Jeffrey and Erica in a cage.

Surprise, surprise! The courts eventually found that the accusation that prompted the violence was unfounded and dropped all charges including an obstruction charge for not opening the door to their home.

But the damage control was already insurmountable. Erica spent two months in county jail where she suffered the pains of breast infection and was denied treatment. She was restricted from breastfeeding her two youngest children who had been placed in foster care as a seven month old, and two year old. She was not given access to a breast pump. Jeffrey was held for three months. Both Jeffrey and Erica lost their home and Jeffrey lost his job for being a no show while in jail. When they got out they found themselves penniless and homeless. They shared their story shortly after their release in this interview.

As if that isn’t ugly enough, here’s where it gets really ugly. Because DCFS decided that even though the Henderson’s were not prosecuted and were NOT convicted of any wrong doing by the court, they were somehow entitled to keep their children anyway. According to DCFS, the Henderson’s were abusive because they refused to open the door for police and therefor put their children at risk of being injured by the battering ram the police department used to gain (unlawful) entry to their home. Consider the absurdity that is the state – police are not punished for their violent, unjustified actions; instead, their victims are.

DCFS required them to show up for several visits per week when ordered which were, of course, scheduled in the middle of the work day. These visits needed to be complied with or DCFS would note their disinterest and lack of involvement in resuming custody of their children. And then there were all of the department mandated classes they were ordered to attend. All of this kept them from employment and finding a home. And then the most logical step of all… DCFS also required them to provide “proper” shelter for their
six children, which in their eyes was a lot more lush than they had originally provided their children. Yet still they are attempting to meet every requirement. Even going above and beyond the department’s requests… bending over backwards and jumping through fiery hoops while the department sits and watched, entertained.

So, here we are. It’s now almost one year later. Where are the Hendersons? Well, the children still live in foster care and adoption is being fought for by the couple who have been caring for the youngest child. Most of their children are being held separately, not being fed the kosher diet their family raised them with, not attending the religious observances that are so close to their heart. Basically, the Hendersons are still desperately trying to reunite, despite a million miles of bureaucratic red tape.

Jeffrey has filed a habeas corpus and has made it public for anyone to see and use in their own defenses. He is resisting the assertion that the United States government has rights over his family. Interestingly, the Henderson’s youngest – a seven month old boy — had not yet had his birth registered when he was kidnapped by federal agents. He has no birth certificate and no social security
card. How can the United States government have any kind of say so in his welfare? How do they even know whose baby they took?

Those who believe badges grant extra rights apparently don’t just work in the police force.

In California, the Police are in the Business of Kidnapping Children is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

###

Family members and supports rally outside CA Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) headquarters in Sacramento yesterday to support the CA Hunger Strike and to protest the CDCR’s proposed changes to Security Housing Unit (SHU) regulations.

Listen to coverage of the rally and why prisoners are protesting conditions of their imprisonment, as well as how the CDCR justifies torture here.

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity’s mediation team received word yesterday that the CDCR (CA Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation) will meet with the mediation team and family member representatives on Thursday at CDCR Headquarters in Sacramento to discuss the CDCR’s proposed regulation changes on SHU (Security Housing Unit) placement. Legislative aides from the State Assembly and Senate will also attend the meeting.

During Thursday’s meeting, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity’s mediation team and family member representatives will support the hunger strikers, their rejection of CDCR’s proposal, and their five-core demands (Earlier this Spring, shortly after the CDCR released it’s proposal, hunger strikers in the SHU at Pelican Bay rejected the CDCR’s proposal and issued a counter proposal).

We need to show the CDCR & State legislators that the hunger strikers do not stand alone!  Please come to Sacramento Thursday, April 26th, for an urgent rally outside CDCR Headquarters before the meeting.

By Peter Salazar, PBSP-Short Corridor, written on April 11, 2012

“I was incarcerated June 1995. I went through the prison receiving center in December of 1995.

In January of 1996, I was sent to High Desert State Prison. I was placed on a Maximum Security Yard because I was a lifer.

In April of 1996, I was taken to Ad-Seg by IGI. I was never told why I was being housed in Ad-Seg.

After several months in Ad-Seg. I was allowed to go back out to the General Population after a riot broke out, (which I was not involved in). I was taken back to Ad-Seg by IGI.

About a year later I was again allowed access to the mainline. The prison was on lockdown for 17 months. I never left my cell.

The day before we were to come off of lockdown, I was again escorted by IGI to Ad-Seg.

This time IGI told me that they sent a validation packet to Sacramento to validate me as a gang member.

I told IGI that I am not a gang member. IGI then told me that a prison informant said that I was trying to be a gang member and that was good for them.

IGI then told me that if I wanted to stay on the mainline all I had to do was tell on other gang members and I could stay on the mainline.

I told IGI: “I am no snitch.” I want to know who said that I’m a gang member. IGI said: “We don’t have to tell you that.”

I was sent to Pelican Bay State Prison SHU in 1999. I have been to every UCC and ICC Hearing.

I always tell them that I am not a gang member. But all they do is laugh at me, and make disrespectful comments.

I’ve been to (2) six year inactive reviews since I’ve been here in the SHU. Both times I was denied, because IGI/OCS and the committee said because in 1996 I was found guilty of gang activity I will have to stay here in the SHU.

I have repeatedly told committee that I’ve done nothing wrong in the last six years. Aren’t you suppose to let me go back out to the mainline?

Committee always says, “If you don’t debrief you can’t leave the SHU. Period!”

Now, I will be going to committee for my six year inactive review April 2012.

IGI searched my cell September 8, 2011. I was awoken at 4:00am, strip searched. Allowed only boxers and shower shoes, then taken to the rotunda and photographed.

All my property was taken by IGI. I was told it’s for my six year inactive review. Three days later I was given some property back.

IGI threw a bunch of my stuff away, and said it was “trash”. That was a lie by IGI. Some of my stuff they said was contraband and not allowed. The rest of the stuff they said was “gang activity”.

The items used by IGI will be (3) drawings. Two of which have the Mexican Huelga Bird, or United Farm Workers logo. One (1) item is a debriefers testimony.

None of these items constitute active gang activity, nor should they be considered gang activity. But I’m 100% sure that when I go to my inactive review in a few days committee will say “we are going to retain you in the SHU as an active gang member”

This process of, “how they get information to validate you and keep you in the SHU is foul”. I’ve been in the SHU (Short Corridor) for the last (7) years. I don’t see CDCR releasing anyone in the Short Corridor.

I have challenged my gang validation. I went as far as you can go. The CDCR system denied me at every level. The courts denied me, and said its an administration issue.

I refuse to believe that I should be treated like an animal. So that prison guards and politicians can line their pockets with fat pay checks for locking us in cells for 22 ½ hrs a day. Then calling it “security needs”.

The prison system has made solitary confinement a lucrative business. Housing us in solitary confinement costs $30,000. More than housing us in the General Population.

 I lost my mother to cancer on mothers day 2010. My biggest regret was not being able to hold her or kiss her on our last visit 2009.

My father was diagnosed with liver cancer and is dying. His last wish is to hug me and say goodbye. “

Contraband watch, also known as “potty watch,” something prisons throughout California have used for years to humiliate and torture prisoners, is becomming more common. In a recent interview, a prisoner in the Pelican Bay SHU told a legal representative that there were 15 watches happening at that time. “Potty watch” is the practice of forcing prisoners to wear a diaper and shackling them so that they cannot use their hands. In some cases, PVC pipes are placed over the person’s hands. The supposed purpose for doing this is so that the guards can find any illegal substances or items prisoners are not supposed to have that they have attempted to take into the prison by ingesting or otherwise inserting in to their body. The reality is that “potty watch” is used for punishment and retaliation. The result is days of both physical pain and psychological torture. Prisoners who have been subjected to the “potty watch” report that not being able to move freely is painful and that guards don’t always change diapers. In one case, a prisoner emerged from a 6 day”potty watch” to find that the skin on his thighs and buttocks had been burned from the ammonia in his urine. Prisoners are reporting that these contraband watches are usually lasting 3-6 days and that they are commonly used after transfers or visits, they are becoming increasingly arbitrary and common.

We live in a state whose citizens are more morally outraged about the confinement of chickens and dogs than of human beings. We are the loved ones of men and women who have been incarcerated indefinitely—some for decades—in California’s “supermax” segregated and administrative housing units.   Solitary confinement, even for short periods, has been known for centuries to cause irreparable physical and psychological damage: torture. Yet California continues to condone this practice in violation of both Constitutional and international law against the use of this and other inhuman and degrading treatment.

In March of 2012 the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) came out with its long-awaited proposal to overhaul its use of prolonged solitary confinement to manage gangs and violent prisoners.    Families, lawyers, prisoners and activists had hoped that after two peaceful hunger strikes in 2011 engaging 12,000 prisoners protesting CDCR’s illegal practices, the Department would follow several other states that have successfully and significantly reduced their use of solitary confinement and instituted effective rehabilitation and re-entry programs—and at great savings to overstressed state budgets.

Sadly, that was not the case. By definition “torture” is the intentional infliction of severe mental or physical pain or suffering by or with the consent of state authorities for a specific purpose.  With CDCR, this purpose is to extract information about gang activities, real or fabricated. There is nothing in these new proposals that leads any of us to believe that a sincere reform of CDCR’s extremist policies is at hand; in fact, the language is more obscure, the policies more layered, and the prisoners’ demands for decency and rehabilitation virtually ignored. Amnesty International and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture among others issued immediate statements repudiating this document as not going far enough to address the inhumane conditions that have persisted in California prisons for decades. If anything, much of the new document appears even more Draconian. We are very concerned for our loved ones inside this prison within the prison.

Prisons are by nature closed systems, yet they are funded by taxpayers and are public institutions whose function is to oversee the deprivation of liberty, an extreme use of power against an individual. Our loved ones are human beings first and prisoners second. Too many have endured retaliation, arbitrary interpretations of CDCR’s regulations code, poor food, medical negligence, and an inability to program out of solitary unless they self-incriminate, snitch, or die. This is not to ignore crime and punishment, but we believe the public interest in law and order can best be served through standards of morality and human decency.
All California communities are stakeholders in what happens in our prisons because many of these inmates will eventually return to society. Even if our state’s citizens may not generally be sympathetic to prisoners, we must hold our public institutions to high ethical standards, including assuring that both prisons and communities are safe.
California’s version of supermax is extreme on every level, involving more prisoners for more of their sentences under worse conditions. Many states are revisiting their use of solitary confinement, but given California’s documented tendency to create torturous conditions under the justification of security, large-scale use of solitary confinement in this state should end.

Substantial, meaningful and ethical revision of the CDCR proposals will be a large step toward addressing the barbaric and inhumane treatment to which SHU prisoners are currently subjected, with no threat to public safety. We believe Californians have a considerable stake in this humanitarian reform and we ask your participation in our efforts to raise awareness and end torture in California prisons.

California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement – CFASC   8108 E Santa Ana Canyon Rd. #100, 213  Anaheim, CA92808                

Contact us at 714.290.9077

Read more information about the event here.

By: Pyung Hwa Ryoo

Letter dated: March 23, 2012

When we, the prisoners housed in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) of CSP-Corcoran, initiated a hunger strike to protest against the inhumane conditions and constitutional violations we faced in the ASU1, the prison officials responded with retaliation and indifference. Their intent was clear: to set an example of what would occur if these protests that had been rocking the California Department of Corrections (CDC) this past year continued. Their statement was not only meant for the protestors in this ASU1, but for the entire class of oppressed prisoners in the CDC.

The hunger strike in this ASU1 initially began on Dec. 28, 2011. It was a collective effort with various races and subgroups standing in solidarity for a common interest. A petition was prepared with the issues we wanted to address, and it was submitted to the Corcoran prison officials and also sent out to prisoner rights groups in an attempt to gather support and attention.

A few hours after the protest began, Warden Gipson sent her staff to move the prisoners who were allegedly, and falsely, identified as “strike leaders” to a different ASU. I was included in that category because my signature was on the petition that was submitted to prison officials. When we initially refused to move, the correctional staff came to our cells wearing full riot gear, to cell-extract and move us by force. Since we were engaging in a peaceful protest, we agreed to move and were placed in the other ASU, which turned out to be 3A-03 E.O.P., an Ad Seg unit that houses severely mentally ill inmates.

While isolated in that psychiatric ward, we continued to refuse food until we received word that the hunger strike ended in the ASU1. I later found out that the Warden and Captain had me with the spokesmen of the ASU1 protestors and promised to grant the majority of our demands, but requested three weeks to implement the changes and to have the agreements in writing. The protestors agreed to give the prison officials the benefit of the doubt, and for that reason the hunger strike was put on hold.

I continued to file complaints and 602s during this period asserting that my placement in a unit along with severely mentally ill inmates violated my Eighth Amendment rights because I was not mentally ill, and that my placement in this psychiatric ward was the result of illegal retaliation by prison officials against me for exercising my First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and protest.  These grievances went ignored. In addition to my isolation in the psychiatric ward, I received a 115 for “inciting/leading a mass disturbance” (12 month SHU term), and was later found guilty although they had no evidence to support that charge besides my signature on a petition. The other protestors who were also falsely identified as “Strike Leaders” were issued the same 115 for “inciting/leading a mass disturbance.”

On January 18, 2012, Warden Gipson ordered her staff to move me, as well as other isolated protestors, back to the ASU1, believing that the hunger strike was over. Before we were moved back, she sent an email to C/O Lt. Cruz, a correctional officer in 3A-03, and asked him to read it to us. It contained a warning that she would not tolerate any more disturbances in the ASU1, and a threat that any such behavior would carry more severe reprisals.

After 3 weeks had passed since the hunger strike was put on hold, it was clear that the prison officials had no intent to honor their word and keep their promises. The hunger strike resumed on January 27, 2012.

The ASU1 Lieutenant, after hearing that we resumed the protest, came to a few protestors and stated the following, “We are tired of you guys, all you guys, doing hunger strikes and asking for all this shit. I am not only speaking for myself, but for my superiors as well. There are correctional officers and staff getting laid off because the state doesn’t have money, and you guys in here are asking for more shit? You know what? We don’t care if you guys starve yourselves to death. You guys aren’t getting shit. The only thing you’ll get are incident packets.”

Two days later, on Jan. 29, 2012, Warden Gipson sent her staff again to round up the alleged “Strike Leaders” and place them in isolation. This time, the spokesmen who had previously come out to speak and negotiate with the prison officials regarding our demands were also included in that category. We were all moved once again to 3A-03 psychiatric ward, although we were not mentally ill. Furthermore, our visits were suspended by Classification Committee for the duration of our “involvement in the hunger strike,” and we were issued another 115 for “inciting/ leading a mass disturbance.”

The retaliation did not stop there. All the participants of the hunger strike were issued 115s for “participation in a mass disturbance,” and the most important of all, the correctional staff and prison officials were deliberately indifferent to the medical needs of the starved protestors in the ASU1. When some of the protestors started losing consciousness, experiencing serious pain and requesting emergency medical attention, the correctional staff  were deliberately slow in responding, and in many instances they just simply ignored them. This conduct and this mindset of prison officials, setting an example of action deliberately indifferent to the medical needs of the protestors, directly contributed to the death of one of our own. His brave sacrifice and unfailing personal commitment will never be forgotten, nor will it have been for naught.

This is where they stand. The oppressors who take away our freedom and liberty, continue to fight tooth and nail to deprive us of even our basic human rights. They employ brutal means of retaliation and suppression in an attempt to keep us from exposing the harsh truths of everyday life inside these prison walls. Although the ASU1 hunger strike may have ended, I will continue to have the spirit of resistance. The outcome will not be decided by a single battle but many, and I will do my part, in hopes that my small contribution may make a difference.

In Solidarity,

Pyung Hwa Ryoo

F88924

3A-03-213

Corcoran CA 93212