Well, it's a long three day weekend coming up, sort of happy this one is over. The last few weeks were pretty bad with the city caving in to the police union to weaken accountability reforms and this week has ended on some shaky ground too with me being reminded of how I'll never see anything positive come from what happened to me.
To end it, last night I sent out some emails to a few of the local Seattle civil rights attorneys to see what advice they would give victims of police misconduct or abuse in custody so I could put up a new section for victims of abuse and their families so they would know what they should and shouldn't do when it happens to them... unlike how I had to go through it blindly and without any help.
Well, if the first response is any indicator, I'm sorry I did. The first lawyer was really terse in response and didn't intend to help at all. I don't understand it, I wasn't asking for his help for me, I was asking him to help his potential future clients to be better prepared for legal action in response to being abused... in return he responded to me like I was some subhuman piece of shit. It really upset me, and if I wasn't doing it to help others I would have deleted his contact info off the list of lawyers.
Why did he react that way to me?
I don't know what it is, maybe Scott from Simple Justice was right about what's happening to me... Maybe I'm part of some racial middle ground, dark-skinned enough for a bunch of neo-nazi racists to get their jollies stomping on my head while I lay unconscious in a street and for cops to torture based on what the racists said, but too light-skinned for justice when it turned out I was just some innocent schmuck. I'd imagine some people will hate me more for saying that, but I doubt that makes a difference since most of Seattle seems to think I'm less than an animal and had somehow deserved to be beaten and left on the street to rot like one.
As I said in the previous post... sometimes, it really does seem that I'm part of some untouchable class now, a person who doesn't deserve the same rights and freedoms as the rest of you, someone who everyone is free to beat down and torture on a whim... and there really isn't anything I can do about it and not a single damn thing that I actually did to deserve this.
...and nobody even wants to help when I'm just trying to make something positive come from it and help others avoid the pain I've gone through. I really seem to be that subhuman to everyone here in Seattle.
I just don't know... so, there's some more music for you to start off your three day weekend, folks... hope you enjoy it and stay safe.
2 comments:
I'm not an attorney, and this doesn't directly relate to police misconduct or abuse in custody, but Don't Talk to the Police is a great law school lecture.
A good way to not be abused in custody is to not be innocently held in prison because you accidentally incriminated yourself.
Thanks for the comment and advice!
"Don't Talk To The Police" has always the quintessential advice for anyone dealing with law enforcement prior to trial, isn't it? It's based on the premise that you will never be able to convince police officers that their assumption of your guilt is incorrect and that they will seek to only gather evidence and statements which support their cause for arresting you in the first place and ignore anything that proves otherwise.
Given the premise of this advice to pre-trial detainees, it would seem only logical to carry it over to post-trial since the police will still only be interested in details which bolster their case... Though on the defensive side of a lawsuit instead of the accusatory side as in a criminal case.
Thus, it seems the "Don't Talk To The Police" advice is pertinent to victims of police misconduct and abuse in custody. Therefore, it would be wise to never report police brutality to the police.
Since Seattle still staffs the OPA with police officers, and they are the ones who interview those bringing accusations of misconduct, it would seem that the advice would be, "Never Report Police Brutality To The Seattle Police Department."
At least, that is, by process of logical progression.
Thanks again for the comment!
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