$25 Million Jury Award to Baltimore City Prisoner For Guards Setting Up Retaliatory Gang Attack
Who do you think is paying for all of these verdicts? In this case, $25 MILLION. YOU are! You also are paying a fortune in the litigation costs from all of this preventable bullshit in our prisons!
Spending a fraction of this to prosecute those responsible and put them behind bars would end much of the abuse!
Excerpts from the Article:
A jury awarded a prisoner brutally beaten at the Baltimore City Detention Center $25 million, after guards allegedly worked in concert with a gang and arranged a beating as retaliation for complaints filed by a detainee awaiting trial.
The beating left Daquan Wallace in a coma for two months, and now he has to use a wheelchair and cannot talk. The incident happened in October 2014, after three Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) guards cooperated with members of the Black Guerilla Family gang to set up the brutal beating. Wallace’s lawsuit claimed that the beating was in retaliation for complaints by his mother that jailers weren’t protecting her son from the gang.
Wallace’s mother told jail staff numerous times that her son was routinely beaten for refusing to join the gang, the lawsuit said. In response, staff allegedly moved him to a unit with the gang members, with more unmonitored areas to allow the beating.
Wallace claimed that when everyone went to dinner one night, guards allowed gang members to stay back with their cell doors unlocked, against policy. Within minutes, Wallace was beaten by the gang. Wallace’s cellmate returned to find him unconscious with blood on the walls.
A spokesperson for DPSCS, who did not want to be named, said the three guards involved were fired, but would not comment on disciplinary action taken or the outcome of the internal investigation. However, after the internal investigation concluded, nobody was charged criminally for the attack on Wallace, according to a different spokesman for the department.
In 2013, state and federal officials said the Black Guerilla Family had effectively taken control of the jail. They were running a drug smuggling conspiracy with jail staffers, they said. Dozens of people were charged, and at least 40 were convicted. [PLN, April, 2015] The century-old jail was finally torn down months after Wallace’s attack. The decrepit conditions at the jail were a “black eye” for the state, the governor said.
See: Wallace v. Mayor and City Council Baltimore City, U.S.D.C (D. Md.), Case No. 1:2017cv-03718.)
Video: Emergency team fires non-lethal rounds at inmates after prison disturbance
This is good news, in that the guards did not use lethal force! Given all the prison abuse by staff, the uprising is quite understandable to me. But stupid to do this so close to release.
Video obtained by KOB 4 shows emergency teams firing off non-lethal rounds at 22 inmates after a disturbance at a New Mexico state prison facility.
The incident occurred on March 23. at the Northwestern New Mexico Correctional Center in Grants. The facility is a pre-release facility for men, meaning it’s designed to house inmates who are two years or less away from release.
Surveillance cameras inside the facility appear to capture inmates hatching a plan. The video shows inmates re-arranging furniture inside the pods to create a make-shift barrier, blocking windows with clothing and using soapy mops to cover the cameras overhead.
At one point, the inmates are forced outside to the grounds where they were surrounded by officers from at least six different law enforcement agencies. Video: Emergency team fires non-lethal rounds at inmates after prison disturbance. “Be advised, they’re throwing rocks up at the officers on the roof,” said one officer.
Eventually, emergency teams deployed non-lethal rounds at the inmates. The move triggered the inmates to back down as prison officials worked to restored order.
The state reports the inmates caused quite a bit of damage, including some broken windows in the pods and minor damage to a fire door.
At least 22 inmates were disciplined for actively participating in the stand-off. However, none of the inmates have been criminally charged so far.
Watch the Video and The Whole Story
LAPD Officers Accused of Entering Names of Innocent People Into Gang Database
They need to PROSECUTE any cops doing this. Sure looks to me like the California Gang Database unit needs an overhaul!
Excerpts from the Article:
Officers from an elite division within the Los Angeles Police Department (“LAPD”) are under investigation regarding allegations that they falsified reports and listed some innocent people as gang members.
LAPD Police Chief Michel Moore announced in January that he was seeking to fire one officer for his role in falsifying the records. “The California Gang Database is a critical tool for law enforcement in its efforts to solve violent crime,” Moore said. “The information entered must be accurate. We are committed to holding anyone who falsified information accountable and will also fully cooperate with the State Attorney General Office.”
In a letter sent on February 10, 2020, to the LAPD, Attorney General Xavier Becerra promised an independent audit of the department’s CalGang entries. “We do not have a full or clear picture of what occurred, but we know enough that we must act,” Becerra said.
While Becerra acknowledged that those wrongly added to the database could be subjected to additional police scrutiny, he defended CalGang as a “good policing tool that keeps the community safe.” Nearly 80,000 persons are listed in the database.
In 2016, a state audit of CalGang revealed racially biased entries, violations of civil liberties, inaccurate entries, including “gang members” younger than one, transparency problems, and failures to follow basic rules.
Health Care Services Killing Women at Virginia Prison
I have news for you: Health care services are killing men and women at all prisons. See scores of articles on this website or google it!
READ Prison Abuse – Why Massive Indifference is a Massive Mistake – kra
Excerpts from the Article:
With four deaths in five months at Virginia’s Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women (FCCW), a federal district court began moving its focus from care for individual prisoners to systematic change in July 2019.
The Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) was party to a 2016 settlement in a lawsuit alleging the provision of medical care at FCCW violated prisoners’ constitutional rights. (Scott et al v. Clarke, U.S.D.C. (W.D. VA), case No. 3:12-cv-00036.) The agreement required VDOC to meet 22 health-care standards.
VDOC failed to fulfill its end of the deal and by January 2019 twelve prisoners had died while in FCCW’s custody since the settlement was approved. “Some women have died along the way,” said federal district Judge Norman K. Moon. VDOC vowed to hire 78 more nurses at that hearing.
That order is significant but not enough, said Shannon Ellis, an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center. “The judge’s order did not specify what level of qualifications the nurses need to have, and a historic problem at Fluvanna and at prisons across Virginia is very underqualified medical professionals,” Ellis said.
Margaret Breslau, head of the Coalition for Justice in Blacksburg, related a story that illustrates Ellis’ point. “A woman, after trying to get on sick call forever and ever and ever finally gets to see an OB/GYN, and they discover a mass the size of an eggplant. She has had pain. She’s had bleeding. The doctor tells her — and she has paperwork on this — to eat more vegetables.”
The care provided to prisoner Margie Ryder was brought to the court’s attention. Ryder suffered from pulmonary arterial hypertension, a terminal disease if not treated properly. “She depends on life-saving medication that has to be administered every two days,” said Ellis. “She’s been hospitalized … multiple times because of failures to have her medication available, failures to have the pump necessary to administer it, administration of the medication in incorrect amounts, so at times she has symptoms of toxicity.”
Ryder, 39, died in July 2019, just three months prior to her scheduled release. VDOC issued a statement after her death. “As is public knowledge following her lawsuit, she had a terminal illness.” Left unsaid was that University of Virginia Medical Center staff expressed concern with the care she was receiving at FCCW.
“My conscience says I have to speak out on Ms. Ryder’s behalf,” nurse Lauren Bedard wrote in a court filing. “Every time I see this patient … I wonder if it will be the last time I see her alive.”
Prisoner Shannon Dillon said prisoners often have to practice Civil War medicine. “I had a tooth pulled, and I kept telling them, ‘It still hurts. I think it’s infected.’ They still didn’t have me on the appointment list,” she said. “It’s starting to smell. It is killing me, so I got a bunch of Q-tips and a bunch of salt from the chow hall, and I dug out the infection with the Q-tips and packed it with salt from the chow hall.”
Ellis said FCCW is not the only prison with poor medical care. “At Goochland Women’s Prison, which is about 20 miles down the road from Fluvanna, the same practices that led to our lawsuit at Fluvanna are going on,” she said. “For example, LPNs conducting sick call. Having these underqualified nurses making diagnostic decisions is something the Department of Corrections is clearly aware is an unacceptable practice.”
Prisoners, meanwhile, pray that they don’t have any health issues while imprisoned. “It is a fear, an inherent fear with all women here, that if you get sick it could possibly be fatal,” said Dillon.
For Eric Garner’s mom, video of man pleading ‘I can’t breathe’ to police is ‘reoccurring nightmare’
Young black men, old white women, and everyone else should RAISE HELL about this man’s death.
In recent years, only 1% of excessive force claims against police for attacking blacks have been prosecuted.
Excerpts from the Article:
Gwen Carr was horrified by what she saw in the video — a black man groaning on the ground with a police officer’s knee on his neck, his repeated cries of “I can’t breathe” — which brought back a painful memory for her. Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died after he was held in an apparent chokehold by a New York Police Department officer in July 2014, said Tuesday that she could barely stomach this latest viral cellphone recording of the man’s Memorial Day death in Minneapolis, which has triggered a national outcry and an FBI investigation.
“It was déjà vu all over again,” Carr told NBC News about the parallels she noticed. “It’s like a reoccurring nightmare,” she added.
The man in the video, which was taken by a bystander, could be seen pinned by the officer on the roadside near the back tire of a police car.
“Please, please, please, I can’t breathe,” the man, later identified as George Floyd by his family’s attorney, is heard saying several times in the video. Police said he was unarmed.
Garner, a father of six, had uttered that same phrase — “I can’t breathe” — 11 times after Daniel Pantaleo, an NYPD officer in plainclothes, pulled him by the neck with his forearm and to the sidewalk in a case that was also captured on cellphone video. Garner, who was accused of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes, later died at a hospital, with nationwide protests erupting after a grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo. “I can’t breathe” was shouted at Black Lives Matter demonstrations, written on posters and worn on T-shirts, including by professional athletes at sporting events.
Carr said Floyd’s death was haunting for her after watching a portion of it.
“I don’t see any justification,” she said. “To put your knee on someone’s neck, you are obstructing their breathing. That is completely a no-no.”
Minneapolis police said the officers were responding to a report of a forgery in progress at a grocery store just after 8 p.m Monday night. Police said the man stepped out of his car when commanded, but then physically resisted. The officers were able to place handcuffs on him, but “he appeared to be suffering medical distress,” police said in a statement.
An officer placed his knee on the man’s neck for about eight minutes, doing so as the man appeared to remain unresponsive before paramedics arrived, the video shows. Police said that he was transported to a hospital, where he died a short time after.
Carr said the officer’s actions were jarring when it appeared that Floyd needed help. “Why would you keep your knee there?” she asked. “After three minutes, you don’t realize that this man is saying that he can’t breathe? And he’s struggling, struggling for life?”
The officers involved were not immediately identified and were initially put on paid leave, Minneapolis police Chief Medaria Arradondo said at a news conference Tuesday morning. But later Tuesday, Mayor Jacob Frey tweeted that four officers involved were fired.
The FBI was asked to assist in the case, Arradondo said, after a “community source” provided more context about the incident, causing concerns of possible civil rights violations.
While the federal agency is now leading the investigation, state authorities are also interviewing witnesses, and a completed review will be sent to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.
“Whatever the investigation reveals, it does not change the single truth that he should be with us this morning,” Frey told reporters about Floyd, adding, “Being black in America should not be a death sentence.”
Gwen Carr: I’ve waited five years for justice for my son Eric Garner. I’m still waiting.
While Minneapolis has moved swiftly to fire the officers involved in Floyd’s death, Carr said she hopes justice can be attained much sooner than it took in her son’s case. In the wake of Garner’s death, she called on Congress to pass a federal law barring officers from using chokeholds — aimed at creating more accountability for police departments.
“I hope this family doesn’t need to suffer like I suffered for six years,” she said.
RELATED ARTICLE: ‘I Can’t Breathe’: Man Dies After Minneapolis Police Officer Seen Kneeling On His Neck = https://www.huffpost.com/entry/minneapolis-man-police-death-cannot-breathe_n_5ecce405c5b648af37580559
Inside A Federal Prison With A Deadly COVID-19 Outbreak, Compromised Men Beg For Help Inmates incarcerated at the Butner federal prison complex in North Carolina have filed suit, saying federal officials have failed to take action to stop the spread.
No shit Sherlock! Prison “health care” is notoriously abominable. So if you get coronavirus – and it’s a place where you probably will! – you are in really deep shit. We shall never know the true number of inmates who die from the virus, because the lie often about cause of death!
READ Culture of Cover Up =
Excerpts from the Article:
Inmates locked up in a complex that houses some of the federal prison system’s most medically vulnerable prisoners say decrepit conditions and failed social distancing policies have allowed COVID-19 to spread throughout the facility in an outbreak that has already claimed the lives of nine men.
A new class action lawsuit filed on behalf of the inmates at federal facilities in Butner, North Carolina, gives the public an inside look at what life is like as the coronavirus pandemic ripped through a federal prison complex that houses inmates with severe medical needs.
Nine inmates incarcerated at Butner have died since the pandemic began. The latest was Eric Spiwak, a 73-year-old man serving a 15-year sentence for possession of photos of child sexual exploitation, who had been at Butner since 2009. Like most other Butner inmates who died, Spiwak was not brought to the hospital until Friday, after he had experienced respiratory failure. Spiwak was pronounced dead on Monday.
“The situation inside [Federal Correctional Complex] Butner is dire,” the lawsuit states. “Plaintiffs, many of whom are medically vulnerable because of their age or serious medical conditions, must not be forced to sit helpless, hoping that chance favors them while Defendants’ combined inaction and defective practices roll the dice with their lives.”
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday on behalf of Butner’s prisoners by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of North Carolina, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, and the law firm of Winston & Strawn. The suit names Butner warden Thomas Scarantino, Bureau of Prisons Director Michael Carvajal and BOP Medical Director Jeffery Allen.
Declarations from Butner inmates describe a dirty environment where social distancing is impossible. The lawsuit states that inmates “are housed in close quarters and forced to eat, bathe, and perform all daily life activities in a communal setting where they cannot adequately social distance and protect themselves from this dangerous disease.” Both staff members and inmates travel throughout the complex, and inmates must line up multiple times a day for food and medicine. Inmates with symptoms are only removed if they meet certain conditions ― including requesting a sick call, which they have to pay for.
Michael Harrington, a 40-year-old inmate at Butner on a sentence for unlawful possession of a firearm by a person convicted of a felony, said he has stage IV colorectal cancer that spread to his liver. Doctors told him he has 13 months to live, and he has a bit over two years left on his sentence.
Harrington lives on a floor housing other inmates with cancer. He says he’s one of the youngest on the floor, and that most are older than 65. Since mid-March, Harrington says he’s been locked down in his cell “essentially 24 hours a day.” He shares the 12-foot-by-12-foot cell with another man, and says it is impossible for them to stay 6 feet away from each other when their beds are 4 feet apart.
“Prison officials have said that my floor is covered with coronavirus and that is why they have us locked in our cells,” Harrington said in his declaration.
One of my poems, worth repeating! Soon – kra
SOON – (room for improvement? You MUST be joking!)
I have my Court hearing this morning; super lawyers at the fore,
The goal is to get the bad guys onto that courtroom floor,
You see, the American trial process is designed to elicit the TRUTH, once you get in the door,
But if you’re a prisoner without counsel, the facts and the law, both the judge will ignore,
Heads are buried so DEEP in the sand concerning rampant problems in America’ prisons,
Legislators, clergy, so many others, even judges, see reality through very dark prisms,
The TRUTH is distorted, denied or ignored at every turn,
It’s enough to make your stomach churn,
The tragic dysfunction of our “corrections” (what!!??) system, could be easily solved,
By someone with integrity, professionalism, and sufficient resolve,
Good Lord, a handful of good managers could straighten out the mess,
And bring orderly progress to what is now chaotic distress!
Court today, moving in three days, a few days to get settled in, organized, back into gear,
Then on to expose America’s disgrace; got some new ideas to make the TRUTH perfectly clear.
KRA 3/27/13
I wrote this 13 months after my release, and the Courts are even more fucked up today!
Some tRumpsters say “Trump passed prison reform”. Are you shitting me! What he did was a drop in the bucket compared to what needs to be done and easily could be done! kra See so many articles on this website.
Judge Demands ICE Better Explain Why It Won’t Release Kids
Remember the kids in cages? How can we ever forget!
Anytime a judge calls out tRump’s racist, draconian, immigration policies, that is good news! A friend of mine knows judge Gee, and she will take no shit from ICE!
Excerpts from the Article:
A federal judge on Friday criticized the Trump administration’s handling of detained immigrant children and families, ordering the government to give the court detailed information about its efforts to quickly release them in the wake of the coronavirus. U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee on Friday ordered the U.S. government to better explain why it hasn’t released some of the approximate 350 parents and children in three family detention centers.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has come under fire for allegedly asking parents in custody if they would allow their children to be released without them.
Parents at all three facilities — one in Pennsylvania and two in Texas — were called into short meetings and asked if there were sponsors available to care for their children, lawyers who represent the families reported that late last week. They were then asked to sign a form.
ICE has declined to release the form.
Gee wrote that she didn’t find that ICE officially sought to get those formal waivers, but that officers’ conversations with detained parents “caused confusion and unnecessary emotional upheaval and did not appear to serve the agency’s legitimate purpose of making continuous individualized inquiries regarding efforts to release minors.”
While some parents reported slightly different details, the lawyers said they broadly believed they were being asked to choose between staying in custody with their children or letting their children leave.
“They were asking mothers to separate from their 1-year-old infants to go to a sponsor that perhaps had never even met or known the child,” said Bridget Cambria, executive director of the group ALDEA, which represents families at the ICE detention center in Leesport, Pennsylvania.
The Trump administration again faced allegations that it is trying to separate immigrant families as part of an overall border crackdown. The separation of immigrant families drew bipartisan condemnation in 2018 when the Trump administration implemented a “zero tolerance” policy on southern border crossings.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accused advocates of making “misrepresentations” and says it remains in compliance with President Donald Trump’s June 2018 executive order intended to stop family separation. In a statement Thursday, the agency said the form was used as part of a “routine parole review consistent with the law” and Gee’s previous orders.
“The court recognized that parents, not the government, should decide whether the juvenile should be released to a sponsor,” the agency said. “To comply with this order, ICE was required to check with each of the juveniles — and their parents — in custody … to make individual parole determinations with respect to those juveniles.”
In court papers filed May 15, the government noted more than 170 times that it had refused to release children currently in detention because the “parent does not wish to separate.” It labeled many children as flight risks without providing more specifics.
Gee wrote that she didn’t find that ICE officially sought to get those formal waivers, but that officers’ conversations with detained parents “caused confusion and unnecessary emotional upheaval and did not appear to serve the agency’s legitimate purpose of making continuous individualized inquiries regarding efforts to release minors.”
On Friday, Gee called on the government and advocates to devise a new process to determine whether families could be released.
Gee oversees a court settlement known as the Flores agreement, which controls how the U.S. is supposed to treat migrant children in its custody.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. government has imposed an effective ban on the entry of families and children seeking asylum. It has expelled hundreds of children within a few days of their crossing the border with Mexico instead of turning them over to government facilities designed to care for them, as normally required by federal law.
The agency says it releases most families from its detention centers within 20 days, the general limit under the Flores settlement for holding children in a secure facility. But many families currently in custody have been detained for months, some since last year.
Advocates contend that ICE should release all families from detention especially as the coronavirus has spread rapidly through immigration detention, with more than 1,100 people contracting COVID-19 and a positive test rate of about 50%. At ICE’s largest family detention center in Dilley, Texas, the detainees include a child with epilepsy, a 1-year-old with breathing problems, and several children with heart murmurs, according to Shalyn Fluharty, director of the legal group Proyecto Dilley.
ICE says it has released hundreds of people deemed to have heightened exposure to the virus, though it has contested lawsuits across the country demanding the releases of others.
The Trump administration is also currently appealing Gee’s order last year stopping it from terminating the Flores agreement.
The Whole Story:
DOC finds numerous jail violations in death of inmate in Bemidji, Minnesota
Another true horror story about “health care” in our jails and prisons. Another story of the anguish of inmates’ surviving family. I see, on average, at least two cases like this every week. All are preventable, and are costing YOU, the taxpayers, billions of dollars every year!
Excerpts from the Article:
Hardel Sherrell’s mother, Del Shea Perry, said she knew it all along.
She believes jail staff and medical personnel inside and out of the Beltrami County Jail in Bemidji completely disregarded her 27-year old son’s deteriorating health. She also says the in-house surveillance camera footage proves it.
The Department of Corrections Commissioner ordered a second more detailed investigation that uncovered a myriad of issues.
“They were doing whatever they wanted to do and treating him as a criminal, not as a human being who was sick and crying out for help, and they ignored all the signs – all of them.”
Hardel’s loved ones have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the county, jail staff, and healthcare providers stemming from the September 2018 death.
“This is a person who slowly progressed from being healthy, to being unhealthy, to being unable to move and then unable to breathe,” said attorney Zorislav R. Leyderman, who is representing the family.
The case is slowly working its way through the courts. This week, Del Shea and her legal team learned a new Department of Corrections review of the matter found “regular and gross violation of Minnesota jail standards.”
“This has to stop in all the jails, in all the prisons. This cannot continue,” Del Shea said. The DOC is responsible for licensing and inspecting county jails, and also reviews in-custody deaths.
The first time its investigators probed Hardel’s case, they did not find any violation of state standards and protocols. But, that review only looked at the 12-hour time period immediately preceding the death.
“We found that reviews we normally do are lacking,” said DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell.
After watching a FOX 9 story on the case and meeting with Hardel’s mom, Commissioner Schnell ordered a second, more detailed investigation that uncovered a myriad of issues. The issues were outlined in a strongly worded letter recently sent to the new sheriff in Beltrami County.
“We want to make sure we are taking a look at what happens during the term of incarceration,” Commissioner Schnell said.
Among the violations Commissioner Schnell cited, included a failure to follow a medical directive to return Hardel to the hospital if his condition worsened.
The letter notes that there was a belief within the facility that Hardel was faking his medical condition, or what’s known as malingering. It states if there are continued violations, the state will be required to take action up to and including suspension or revocation of the county’s license to operate a jail.
Del Shea said she felt relief, satisfaction and validation with these new findings and said her quest for absolute justice in her son’s death remains stronger than ever. “I have to be my son’s voice, I have to be the voice for many others. It’s painful, but we will get justice.”
18 hours in C Building: Why we reported this series – And Access to All of It – kra
This is an excellent series, but far too long for me to have time to post all of it. The pertinent links are below. I did not encounter Floyd while I was in, but many, many inmates told me after the uprising that he was one of the worst for prisoner abuse. Killing him was not the answer, but I can understand why they did it!
My friend Steve Hampton continues the litigation regarding much of the illegal and brutal retaliation by guards, and the neglect of inmates’ injuries.
The Article about the Series of Articles:
For three years, reporters for Delaware Online/The News Journal have followed the aftermath of the riot at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center, which saw a correctional officer killed in the line of duty for the first time at Delaware Department of Correction.
The event remains one of the most dramatic and far-reaching stories in Delaware’s modern-day history. Our reporters have been writing about and thinking on the issue since that day and through the criminal trials that ended last year.
Despite weeks worth of trial testimony and hundreds of pages of public reports, many questions still remain unaddressed and some of those who were there that day haven’t publicly addressed those questions.
The uprising was not just inmates lashing out at a single correctional officer. Protests and unrest inside the building had been bubbling for years.
So what caused the men who did this to turn to violence? Why was Officer Steven Floyd killed while three other hostages made it out of the building alive? Why did the police wait 18 hours before breaking up the uprising? And where are those involved now?
On Tuesday, Delaware Online began publish a series of articles seeking to provide more information toward answering those questions.
18 hours in C Building:
Secret document shows as officer lay dying, prison leadership disagreed on how to handle Vaughn rioters
See how the Vaughn riot unfolded
A hostage and her protector
Never-released report shows prison officer’s death should not have happened
Correction officials say they’ve moved beyond problems that caused 2017 riot
Lawsuits claiming Delaware prisoner abuse, officer impunity continue
The Vaughn Files: The photo, videos and audio presented at trial
Our reporting includes a newly revealed internal report that sheds light on the mindset of the people protesting in the doomed building before the riot, how authorities responded to a series of peaceful protests preceding the uprising and why a plea foreshadowing disaster written by the very officer who would be killed was ignored a week before tragedy.
The articles detailing that report will be illustrated with never-before-seen sights and sounds from the Feb. 1, 2017 uprising at Delaware’s largest prison. They include the only images of inside the building immediately after police retook control of the prison, video footage of police rushing to break the uprising and the grim audio of hostage negotiations.
The photographs, audio clips and videos have not been seen outside law enforcement and the handful of members of the public who attended a series of criminal trials stemming from the fatal hostage standoff.
The News Journal has sought them from authorities for years, and with the conclusion of the criminal trials convinced the courts that those trial exhibits should be made public like others introduced in more mundane trials. Through that process, we’ve made clear to the courts and correction officials that we will not publish depictions from the building of the officer killed that day.
We understand and have heard that the photographs and videos from the scene may disturb some, particularly those who work in corrections.
We want you to know we have heard those concerns, take them seriously and seek to put enough warnings on sensitive material in the story to avoid unintended hurt.
With that said, we feel the public has a right to see and know, even if some might find the information unsettling. This can augment understanding of the situation help weigh investigators’ claims that their effort to collect evidence to seek justice for Floyd was hampered by the ransacked condition of the building.
We’ve also heard from victims of that day who say the newspaper needs to continue to press and put on record all facts related to the day.
It’s another chapter in the history of an event that will continue to bear on Delaware’s correctional system for years. This series won’t be the last installment and the situation will continue to be relevant to taxpayers and those held in lockup by Delaware.
We continue to follow the ongoing litigation against state officials that is likely to continue to cost taxpayers.
We are able to do that with the support of the public, specifically those that subscribe. We thank you and hope you will invite others to back our work.
Open All Links to the Whole Series
Contact Us
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