King County and US Department of Justice Reach Agreement on Jail Reforms

King County Executive Ron Sims and the US DOJ released details on an agreement which outlines steps that King County must take in order to address the constitutional rights abuses the US DOJ discovered during it's year-long investigation last year into jail deaths and other abuses that occurred in the King County Correctional Facility (KCCF).

The agreement, a copy of which can be read here, outlines steps the county must complete within three years or else a federal civil rights suit, to be filed by the DOJ, will move forward in federal court against the county. As part of the agreement a monitor will be assigned and has full access to the jail, detainees, and all documentation and may report any lapses to the DOJ, but not the public or press.

While Ron Sims still insists the abuses at the jail were not violations of constitutionally protected rights, the agreement asserts that the problems found were violations of detainee rights. The agreement seeks to address problems with abusive use of force, sexual abuse of detainees by guards, lack of documentation for uses of force, lack of internal investigations, medical care, suicide prevention, corrections officer training, infection prevention, and hygiene.

We will also monitor the situation and report any new abuses as we hear about them, particularly the disturbing trend of reports we've received concerning intentional denials of medical care for detainees with verifiable medical conditions and standing orders from their doctors for needed medical care.

In the late 1990's the ACLU of Washington State also filed a similar lawsuit against King County over poor conditions at the jail but failed to perform the oversight that a settlement reached in that case allowed for.

A separate class action civil suit filed by a local law firm on behalf of detainees who suffered MRSA infections due to unsanitary conditions at that facility is still planned to move ahead.

Detainee Abuses Continue A Year After DOJ Investigation

This month marked two anniversaries that, unfortunately, remind me of things that I would rather forget and that happen to be oddly coincidental.

First, in November of last year the US Department of Justice released the findings of an investigation they performed into the treatment of detainees at the King County Jail (KCCF) that found, what they termed as, egregious and potentially deadly civil rights violations occurring at that facility which included the denial of medical care, physical abuse, and sexual abuse against detainees.

It’s been a year since those findings were made public, and yet there has still been no actions taken against King County or any agreements between the US DOJ and King County about how they would address and correct these problems. Meanwhile, I still get reports from people who have been denied medical care at that jail, many of those I won’t print at the request of those senders, but for whom I try to help as much as I can.

That brings me to the second anniversary marked by the month of November, that being the 2nd anniversary of my own mistreatment that I suffered while I was held at the King County Jail for a crime I had not committed and for which I was later found innocent of by police investigators and the King County Prosecutor’s Office. I endured weeks of agony suffering from injuries that were left untreated while being refused even the simplest of medications like Tylenol or Aspirin.

So, it’s frustratingly personal for me to see no progress made in regards to detainee treatment at the KCCF in these last two years, all the while having to try and do what little I can to be there for the people who, even as recently as this month, are still being made to suffer there for no real reason at all who write me when it becomes clear that there are no other resources out there to help them.

I still do what I can, I’m still there for anyone who suffers needlessly there, but it’s not enough, something needs to be done to stop the abuse there… I just wish more people cared enough to speak out about it. My one voice just seems too small to make a difference sometimes, especially when other voices who are supposed to speak out against such abuses, like the ACLU, the press, and the US DOJ, still remain silent.

For now, all I can do is keep hoping that, next year; I won’t need to mark these anniversaries with the same message, begging for something to be done for those who are not able to speak for themselves by those who are supposedly entrusted to speak on their behalf.

After all, simply being accused of a crime should not result a potential death sentence through mistreatment.

Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against King County Jail

I've been wondering when this would happen. It's good to see that the King County Jail (located in downtown Seattle) will finally be taken to task over it's failure to treat detainees in need of medical care and for not doing enough to prevent the spread of MRSA infections in that hellhole. Glad to see someone took up the call to represent all these people since the ACLU of Washington State sure wasn't interested in defending their rights!

The legal discussions between the jail and the US DOJ over their charges that the King County Jail violated the rights of detainees there are still ongoing, by the way... for seven months now. (how King County could stall the DOJ for seven months over this is beyond me!)

From the report in the Seattle PI:

Filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, the lawsuit contends jail officials failed to stop the spread of a highly infectious strain of staph infection called MRSA. During a five-month period beginning in September, at least 65 inmates were diagnosed with MRSA; one inmate afflicted with MRSA and a flesh-eating bacteria died while in custody.

The plaintiff, 40-year-old Matthew Wisecarver, suffered serious injuries when surgeons were forced to dig into his hand to remove an MRSA infection he contracted in jail, said his attorney, Ed Budge of Seattle. Wisecarver didn't receive treatment for the infection until he was released from jail, where he was being held pending trial on domestic violence charges.

The county's inability to stop the spread of the disease amounted to a violation of inmates' rights to equal protection under the law and freedom from cruel or unusual punishment, Budge said.

"As soon as they close that door behind you, you're pretty much at the mercy of those jailers," Budge said. "If they don't do what the Constitution mandates, which is get you immediate medical attention, there's not a darn thing you can do about it."

Last year, the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division released a report highly critical of the county Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention, which operates the Seattle jail. Justice investigators found that the jail didn't have proper procedures in place to deal with a host of problems, from handling suicidal inmates to investigating complaints against corrections officers.

Trust me, I know they didn't care if you were innocent or guilty, if you were just accused or had been convicted. Once they put you in that dungeon you lost all your rights and you were treated like an animal... hell, worse than that as most people would take their pet to the vet if they suffered like most people do in that inhuman place.

Even though their firm wasn't interested in helping me and I can't be a part of that class action suit, I still wish them all the best of luck and I hope all those victims find justice at long last... and I hope it sparks some interest in respecting people's constitutional and human rights at that jail.

King County Jail Inquest

The case of Lynn Iszley's slow and gruesome death in the King County Jail was first cited by the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division as one example of inadequate medical care at the King County Jail in it's investigation of that facility that ultimately slammed it for it's potentially deadly constitutional rights violations. However, while being a stark and very frightening example of a deadly lapse in the protection of the rights of those in custody by the King County Jail, his case was not the only one.

On the heels of a damning review by the King County Ombudsman into Iszley's death in custody, the case may now be the subject of a state inquest into the doctor who was the last to examine Iszley before his death. While this should be expected, the problem runs much deeper than one single doctor and the doctor in question has already resigned last year.

While we do support an inquest action and are not surprised by the jail's efforts to fight an inquest and keep it's details a secret from the public who pays their bills, we do not believe that it will lead to any significant improvements at that facility while the people who are in charge stated publicly that they do not believe such torturous deaths and conditions are a violation of anyone's civil rights.

Unfortunately, while DAJD head Holgeerts and King County Executive Sims are in charge, nothing will change there because the people of King County refuse to be outraged by what is happening in that jail... Furthermore, human rights and civil rights groups have remained quietly on the sidelines about these issues.

As this prevailingly permissive attitude towards torture prevails, county officials will not have any incentive to change a thing... So, indeed, these people will continue to suffer and die in our names... and limiting an inquest to a single doctor will only serve to produce a scapegoat to cover for the deeper systemic problems which still continue at that jail.

King County Jail Tortured A Man To Death

I think people need to read this article and understand that this man was literally slowly tortured to death in the King County Jail for nothing more than an alleged minor drug possession charge.

From the Seattle Times article:

"Two medical experts who reviewed Iszley's Jail Health Services file say caregivers overlooked or ignored symptoms that the 48-year-old inmate was in serious medical trouble the day before he died, including signs of acute dehydration and pain so severe that it left him sweating and writhing on his cell floor.

In the ombudsman's report, the experts found that the jail's medical staff failed to act on Iszley's escalating symptoms after he was booked into jail on July 16 for a minor drug-possession charge. He was treated with Motrin — a drug one of the experts said was inappropriate in a case of severe abdominal pain — and given oral fluids that he could not hold down as his heart rate soared above 130 beats per minute and his blood pressure dropped.

An autopsy found nearly two-thirds of a gallon of fecal matter had leaked into his abdomen through the ulcer, causing an infection that killed him.

"From an outside observer perspective is [sic] appears to me that they let this man suffer and did nothing," wrote Dr. Lori Kohler, the director of the Correctional Medicine Consultation Network and a professor of clinical family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

"It is unlikely that they would tolerate this kind of agony in a friend or family member," Kohler wrote of Iszley's three days of documented suffering in the jail. "His misery is quite obvious."

Iszley's mother, Lois Clayton of Seattle, called the ombudsman's findings shocking. She said she didn't realize how long her son had been denied treatment.

"I think it shows they just didn't pay any attention to him," she said this morning. "They just let him suffer.""

People either don't seem to believe me, (or maybe they support detainee torture), that the King County Jail intentionally lets detainees suffer and withholds treatment intentionally. In my case I know they let me suffer intentionally, in others I think it's also possible that they let them suffer or misdiagnose because they feel they can't be bothered or don't really listen to the symptoms being presented.

I survived that place by the grace of god I think, as they ignored my symptoms of brain damage when I told them I had lost consciousness, convulsed, when my blood pressure kept dropping, when I couldn't eat for weeks, and when I was so pale the other detainees were sure I was going to die... But this person didn't, he was sentenced to death by torture.

Where are all those Seattle citizens that packed the King County Council chamber to protest the treatment of animals in the King County Shelters? Apparently they can't be bothered to care about humans being mistreated in their jail and many even seem to like the idea of pre-trial detainees being tortured in their name... as became apparent when I tried to distribute flyers about jail issues at an ACLU Guantanamo protest and was screamed at by protesters who were, oddly, supposedly protesting against torture.

Where's the press? The blogs? The local "progressive" independent weekly papers and blogs ignored this story just as they ignored it when the DOJ investigation ripped into the King County Jail last year for the deadly civil rights violations that were going on in there. Seems they also love torture so long as it's not happening in a third-world country or in Cuba.

Irregardless, this poor man was killed, in a very slow and agonizing fashion, by the King County Jail. I might be the only one in Seattle who cares, but I hope this poor man's soul has found peace and I have only the deepest sympathy for his family and those who knew him. I am profoundly sorry that this man suffered so for no good reason... lord knows I've been trying to stop the needless suffering and deaths occurring in that hellish place and catching hell for it.

Updated 04/16/07-16:22

Media Mistaken About King County Jail Problems

The Seattle Post Intelligencer recently printed an article about 65 cited cases of MRSA at the King County Jail within the last 5 months. While it's good that these sort of stories are being reported, there are some unfortunate inaccuracies in that report and it really doesn't do enough to describe how this should matter to the average citizen.

First, the article mistakenly suggests that the DOJ report only found fault with infection related issues:

"In a report released in November, investigators with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division suggested jail officials were failing to take basic measures to prevent the spread of such diseases, something they said could be accomplished by focusing on the personal hygiene of inmates, keeping the facility clean and laundering inmate clothing adequately."

That DOJ report also cited failures to provide medical care to detainees that resulted in at least one preventable death that occurred during the investigation. It also cited the jail for failure to protect detainees from sexual abuse by guards, failure to provide sanitary conditions, failure to prevent physical abuse by guards, and failure to adequately protect detainees from self-harm. Indeed, the civil rights violations at the jail are numerous and have been proven to be deadly, to understate them is a disservice to the community.

Next the article states that the jail has fixed those problems:

"Jail officials said they have taken several measures in recent months to improve conditions.

All inmates are now screened by nurses at booking. A new computer system allows arresting officers to determine if someone in their custody has previously been treated for tuberculosis, and a new Electronic Health Records system went online last summer, which is expected to help Jail Health nurses better track treatment of sick inmates."

...which is patently false. All inmates are not examined on booking and their treatment needs are not being tracked, as this woman's account of her recent experience in that jail proves. The problem is that they may have implemented these systems, but it appears as though there is no way to force the guards and medical workers to FOLLOW any policies to ensure they are used. Indeed, other allegations of lapses in medical care seem to indicate that denial of medical care isn't necessarily due to mistakes, but intentional withholding as a form of punishment.

Next, the report claims this:

"For years, upon booking, inmates have been given two sheets, a blanket, a towel, a pair of sandals, a single uniform, and one set of undergarments -- socks, underwear and, for women, a sports bra."

Which again isn't necessarily true, inmates have been known to go weeks without any footwear when there have been shortages in the past, this can be very problematic in the jail where the bathrooms and floors are not properly disinfected and flooding does occur from faulty bathroom drainage systems.

They also claim the following about hygienic concerns:

"As a rule, inmates can buy more underwear if someone on the outside deposits funds into an inmate account. Jail officials could not say how frequently inmates make such purchases.

"Our policy is if an inmate comes to the officer and indicates that he has some kind of soiled linen, bedding, or blanket, we exchange it at that time," Hayes said. "We don't play games."

Justice Department investigators heard something different during their review.

"Inmates informed us that the only way to obtain clean underwear is to purchase it from the commissary, or wash it themselves in the cell area using their hand/shower soap," investigators wrote in their report."

This is a bit misleading because a detainee in the jail cannot purchase items from the commissary until they are placed in the general population, until that time they are detained in "holding cells" which are large rooms that house up to 25 or more detainees (some on the floor when overcrowding occurs) in a single room. Some detainees will spend over a week in these holding cells before put in a regular cell block.

Now, detainees in general population are only allowed to order commissary once a week, and if you miss that day you must wait another week. So, many detainees transferred from holding to a regular cell can have to wait up to TWO weeks for new underwear and the soap to clean them. Plus, since they are only given a small hotel bar of soap that has to last until they make it to GP and they are not allowed to hang clothes to dry them, this means that they really don't have the opportunity to wash their underwear and clothes. Even once they make it into GP, they still can't hang underwear anywhere to dry them if they do wash them with that small bar of soap.

To say that the jail has a problem letting inmates stay clean is an understatement. Some inmates with open wounds have been left without treatment or bandages for days, and then left to use the same soiled and bloody clothes and blankets for two weeks since they are not offered a change of clothes or bedsheets until they get into a regular cell and this also happens once a week.

Now, the other problem is that people don't understand, which is made clear when you read the comments section of this paper's story, how this problem might affect them. Well, first, these detainees do get released into the population eventually and if left untreated with MRSA or TB they will spread those infections to the general public.

But, also, these are mostly pre-trial detainees at this jail. Some of whom do end up being found innocent yet were still forced to suffer that hell hole without compensation for being punished by the conditions in there despite not deserving to be punished there.

For those that think it's rare for people to mistakenly get put in that jail... think again.
Read Here and Here for recent cases of innocent people detained there, it happens quite a damn bit.

And as for the King County Councilperson's response to the article:

"King County Councilman Bob Ferguson, who is participating in settlement discussions with Justice, said the county is committed to making those improvements.

"You don't lose all your civil rights when you walk in the jail," he said."

That's not what the county executive Sims and DAJD head Holgeerts, who is in charge of the jail, seem to think. Since the council agreed with the county executive's statements insisting such conditions were not a violation of anyone's civil rights, we question the council's commitment to fixing these problems... and it's a valid question considering that these problems still appear to exist.

Animals > Human Detainees!

As promised earlier this week, we've analyzed the stories generated in the media stemming from the findings of inadequate care in King County's animal shelters and compared it to the number of stories generated a few months ago stemming from the Department of Justice's charges of inadequate care of human pre-trial detainees in the King County Jail. We wanted to use the media as a guage to determine whether people in Seattle cared more about human abuse or animal abuse, especially after the King County Council took such a hard line about the animal abuse findings while they were much more reserved about the detainee abuse findings.

The answer? If the media is a guage, King County residents care about animals being abused twice as much as they do about humans being abused on their behalf. The results break down as follows for a one week period following the story breaking for the report on King County Animal Shelter Conditions and the DOJ Report Of Constitutional Rights Abuses at The King County Jail:


Now, I was going to analyze the comment sections of the relevent reports to determine which stories generated the most positive responses, but the answer was pretty clear, people overwhelmingly thought abusing animals was bad, while most people appeared to think abusing potentially innocent pre-trial detainees was a good thing... so much for the right to due process and the idea of the punishment fitting the crime.

So, the results were pretty much as expected... PETA would be proud, and the results explain why the abuses at the jail are still ongoing and as a result there were 65 cases of MRSA infections at that jail within the last five months.

Human Detainees < Animals?

Is a person who is accused of a crime worth less than an animal and should that person be treated as such?

It seems that we have the chance, in Seattle at least, to put that question to the test. I've been a bit stunned that the King County Council has put more weight into fixing the problems discovered at the King County Animal Shelters than it did when they were told by the DOJ about the inhumane conditions at their King County Jail.

But... What is far more interesting is that the media seems more willing to report on animals being abused by county officials than reporting on when humans are mistreated by county officials. To me, this would point to a more definitive answer to that question, of whether people care more about mistreated animals or mistreated humans.

So, at the end of the week I'll add up all the stories in the press about the King County animal shelter story and I'll compare it to the stories put out about the DOJ report of deadly abuses at the King County Jail, along with comparisons of public reaction to those stories.

And, finally, we'll have an answer to the question of whether people care more about people being tortured in their name or animals suffering in their shelters.

King County Executive Ignores Civil Rights Abuses While Arguing For Social Justice

King County Executive Ron Sims has started a so-called crusade to examine issues of social injustices. This would be admirable if this weren't the same Ron Sims who insists that abusing pre-trial detainees and denying them medical care in the King County Jail wasn't a violation of their constitutional rights in response to a Department of Justice investigation that found deadly rights violations at the jail.

What's interesting is that it appears that the jail is continuing to practice the same abuses while Sims pretends to be concerned about issues of injustice and while King County tries to convince the DOJ that those problems no longer occur.

If Sims would have accepted the findings and pledged to make sure they don't happen anymore, and if there weren't new reports of abuses continuing to come from people who had been detained there as recently as this month, then maybe he would be a credible speaker as to the issues of social justice. Instead his track record in this regard only serves to undercut his message and makes it sound like a sick joke in the same vein as if Eliot Spitzer were to take the pulpit and speak out against the injustices of prostitution.

One would think that even he would see the obvious absurdity. Indeed, an editorial in the Seattle Times asks "Sims is doing some agitating, putting this in everyone's face. We won't know whether it will work until the county has to make a hard choice that tests its commitment, and ours."

...Seems that the DOJ investigation already tested that commitment and Sims failed to rise to it... unless, of course, he really does feel that abusing potentially innocent civilians in his jail is socially just.

Woman Recovering From Surgery Denied Medication At King County Jail

Imagine receiving a call one day telling you that your sister, who was heavily medicated and recovering from reconstructive surgery, had gone missing. Imagine searching everywhere with your family and friends for days, only to discover that she was in the last place you thought to look... in jail. Imagine then that, once you found out, you contacted the jail to inform them of her medical needs and was assured that her medical needs would be taken care of... but they weren't.

Last week we received a report from someone who told us just such a story. It seems that while King County officials were busy assuring the DOJ that they have taken care of the medical care problems at the King County Jail, they repeatedly ignored his sister's and her family's repeated requests to give the post-operative medication and care that she had already been prescribed.

Her ordeal started when she was arrested and detained under suspicion of shoplifting while she was under the influence of medication prescribed to her after she underwent reconstructive surgery a few days before. His sister had no previous record and several people who know her insist that such a charge seems contrary to her character. Indeed, whether or not she might have knowingly did anything wrong, she didn't deserve to suffer in needless agony for it.

When he contacted us, her brother had this to say:

"...What is most frustrating, is I'm her brother and the rest of our family didn't even think to call the King County Jail as to her location... (we were) doing a complete manhunt to find her car downtown(figured this was the best first step). We put out a missing persons report, and the police were delayed to arrive. While waiting for the police to arrive to her house, I took off and was driving towards downtown to where she last was known to be...

Thereafter, when we found she was in jail (thank god somebody had the idea to call). My sister had medical needs... and she had medication she needed for pain. My father had called the jail to let them know about her situation and what medication she needed and they told him that she would be taken care of. Long story short, is they did not take care of her and she was in serious pain her entire duration of her stay.

At the end of the day, this was bad luck for her that she experienced a knee jerk mechanical, unintuitive, and uncompassionate system for people (of which is there to serve and protect us as citizens).

Yes, is the experience, and when I saw that you had some info. online decided to send this email, cause I honestly have a hard time living in this town knowing that sometimes guilty but sometimes innocent people are treated this inhumanely."

Her brother was finally able to forward his sister's own account of her experience to us with permission to publish it, and his sister had this to say about her ordeal:

"A police officer came and handcuffed my hands behind my back, I requested he do this in front, so I could continue to wipe my nose (that was bleeding at the time), but he denied my request. He took me to the police station and put me in a holding cell while he did paper work. I have no idea how long I was there and was cold and my nose was a mess.

Finally I was booked in King County Jail, my belongings were taken into evidence, and I was put into a holding cell with phones that allow you to make a collect call but I keep all my phone numbers in my cell phone and don’t know any by heart. I must have asked several times to have someone look up a number for me on my cell phone (that was taken during booking), so I could let people know where I was, but my requests were ignored. Finally, I was told I would have an opportunity to use a phonebook later that evening, but by then my pain medication had worn off. I tried again to get the guard’s attention (to ask for medical care) but I was ignored.

I was crying, in pain, and worried that my family would be scared that I didn’t come home when I was put into another room where it was smaller with no phone. I was very cold, in a lot of pain, and very scared by then and I tried to get someone’s attention to ask for a blanket… but when I finally did get someone’s attention they just ignored me again. To stay warm I curled up in a fetal position with my face down even though I was not supposed to do because of my surgery… but I was too cold not to. Around 11pm they took me straight to my cell to sleep for the night and they never did let me have a phonebook to call someone like they promised.

The next morning I asked some of the other inmates how I could get a hold of a phone book and how to request medical attention. They showed me a wall where there were forms that I had to fill out and give to one of the officers, so I filled out forms (called kites) requesting medical attention and a phonebook. At some point, late in the afternoon, I finally saw a nurse who took my vitals. I told her again about my medical condition, the medications that I need, and the care instructions for my surgical care. I also told the person that my splint had come off early last morning and I was scheduled to see my doctor today to have it put back on. I told them if they called my roommate that I had the splint at home and she could bring it to them to put it on.

I gave my roommates name, and told them that they could find her number in my cell phone that was detained with my belongs and they said that they would contact her… but, they never did. I was given some Neosporin, a blanket (which was to elevate my head…it did about one inch), 2 antibiotics, and a nasal spray… which I guess considering the stories I have heard from other inmates was generous. This might have been appropriate care for someone with allergies and a nose rash… but very negligent care for someone who had just had 3 hour reconstructive surgery for a broken nose.

I sent repeated medical slips (kites) requesting my medication, my nose splint, and icepacks, but they were ignored. I sent 3 kite forms requesting a phonebook to contact my family and they were completely ignored as well. I told anyone who would listen that I needed to contact someone to let them know I was alive but the doctor, the officers, and everyone continued to ignore me. I didn’t know what the status of my case was and I wasn’t told when or if I was going to see a judge. I became so afraid of the lack of care and communication that I spent most of my time in my cell. For two nights and three days I was in King County Jail and I spent most of my time lying in a fetal position on my bed crying and believing that they had forgotten about me… I even started thinking that I might be there for months.

I know this sounds dramatic and it would to me if I was someone else reading this, but it is difficult to understand without experiencing. I have never been to jail, never arrested for shoplifting. I was locked in with no information about my case, while knowing my family was going to be worried sick but denied the ability to contact anyone. I heard several stories of some of the other inmates who have been neglected medically for months. I never realized how poorly the King County Jail system was run, and I found it to be very cruel and inhumane."

The King County Jail gives powerful narcotics to junkies as soon as they are booked to help them avoid the symptoms of withdrawl. They also don't have any policy against giving prescription pain medication to suspects injured in the course of arrest... that they would ignore repeated requests to supply prescribed medication to a woman recovering from surgery over a simple shoplifting charge is beyond comprehension. To ignore her family's concerns as well as her own agonized pleas for help is unconscionable.

Now, before anyone dismisses this as an overreaction, consider this... Imagine that you were disoriented and injured and put in a cell without being told anything about what's happening to you. Imagine then that the pain grows worse and your pleas for help are ignored... There is nothing to distract you from the pain you feel and this amplifies your agony as it's the only thing you have to think about. You've been cut off from your family, friends, everyone... and the only people you have to turn to for help seem to take perverse joy in your suffering... Believe me, it's nothing short of torture.

Fortunately, at least, it appears as though the case against her has been dismissed. We sincerely hope that she and her family are doing better and that this horrible ordeal has not hampered her recovery.

The brother and his sister have given us permission to publish their story, but because of our policy regarding the protection of identities for people who have been mistreated in custody, we have removed any identifiable information in order to protect victims of abuse.

While DOJ Investigation Continues... So Do The Abuses

As negotiations between the US Department of Justice and the King County Jail continue over findings of deadly constitutional rights violations that the DOJ investigation found to have occurred at the Seattle jail in November 2007, we've continued to receive credible reports that those same abuses are still occuring at that facility.

As recently as last week we have received reports of pre-trial detainees being denied medical care and suffering needlessly before even getting their day in court, including at least one case where a needlessly mistreated detainee was later cleared of wrongdoing. This type of abuse goes against everything the United States is supposed to stand for and illustrates how these inhumane abuses are clear violations of constitutional rights for pre-trial detainees... detainees that should be considered and treated as innocent citizens prior to their day in court.

Such ongoing cases of mistreatment in the King County Jail clearly illustrate how King County's public relations efforts are clearly just attempts to whitewash the problems that still occur at the facility and how their belief that such abuses are not a violation of constitutionally protected rights directly affects detainee treatment.

After all, if the county government and director of the department of corrections believe that detainees have no rights, then the corrections officers will not see any reason to treat detainees humanely. This also makes statements by Reed Holgeerts, the director of the Department of Adult and Jeuvenile Detention, that offering officers OPTIONAL training is a valid solution for mistreatment clearly mistaken.

Unfortunately, these ongoing incidences of mistreatment also seem to indicate that the DOJ is not continuing to monitor the jail while negotiations over the findings continue, which indicates that they would not likely continue to monitor the jail after reaching an agreement with the county. This essentially allows the county to continue abusing pre-trial detainees and denying them their constitutional right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment while being investigated for doing just that.

Our sympathies to all who continue to suffer needless abuses at the deadly King County Jail.

*updated 2:08pm with correction to clarify that we've received reports of abuse (see comments).

The Waiting Game

It appears as though an uneasy silence is hovering over the city of Seattle as a few different shoes are preparing to drop... Here's a look at the issues currently waiting for resolution:

The US Department of Justice investigation into deadly constitutional rights violations at the King County Correctional Facility(KCCF) is still ongoing. There have been no new updates from the DOJ nor King County, and judging by past investigations the process averages about 11 months from findings of abuse to legal action, so we anticipate an update by October... In the meantime, while they take their time arguing, more potentially innocent pre-trial detainees are likely suffering abuses and torture.

The Seattle Police Officers Guild is still planning for their march on city hall in an attempt to force the city to drop demands for police accountability reforms while still demanding hefty pay raises during their stalled contract talks. I've requested information from the city to determine when the police union got their permits to picket and what I can do to counter-protest but I've received no reply...

I've issued requests to each member of city council to see where this is heading and to see if they are losing their backbone. If all 29 recommended reforms are not enacted, the civilian oversight and police accountability system in Seattle will remain unreliable, allowing abusive and corrupt officers to escape discipline for misconduct... so don't fall for it if both sides claim progress for implementing a couple reforms and dropping the rest, each item is essential and you can bet that if any item is dropped that it would be a key item in the recommendations.

I'll post an update as I hear more.

UPDATE: So far there has been only one council member who was very kind enough to take the time to respond to our questions about the current situation with the police guild's contract and police accountability reforms. I'm currently deciding between posting individual responses or waiting to post an aggregate if I get any other responses.

I may give it a few more days to see if I hear anything else.

DOJ Investigation of King County Jail "Still Active"

**Bumped** (The January deadline has passed and still no word. Last I heard from the DOJ, at the end of January, the investigation was still active. We presume it is still active.)

In November of 2007 the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division issued a scathing report about the unconstitutional conditions and treatment occurring at the King County Jail (KCCF) located in downtown Seattle, Washington. While this facility is managed by King County, it is used to house pre-trial detainees for the Seattle Police Department and other area law enforcement agencies.

The DOJ gave King County until January to address the constitutional rights violations it identified as part of it's investigation which included failures to provide medical treatment to detainees, physical abuse of detainees, sexual abuse of detainees, and a lack of adequate self-harm prevention at the jail. King County responded by agreeing that such conditions exist at the jail but that such conditions were not violations of the US Constitution and the rights guaranteed to US citizens therein.

In our effort to keep track of this case, we sent requests to the US DOJ to clarify the process and to give us an update on what they thought of King County's disturbing response to their investigation, especially since the supposed deadline for King County to address these issues expires tomorrow.

DOJ representatives responded by saying that the investigation is still active and because of this they are limited in what they may discuss. They gave some background on what to expect by stating that:

"...after we issue an investigative report concluding that unconstitutional conditions exist at a facility, we work with the jurisdiction to reach an agreement on remedying the deficiencies we have identified.

If we reach an agreement, that document is posted on our website and becomes a public document.

If, after diligent efforts, we are unable to reach an agreement, then our statute permits the Department of Justice to initiate a lawsuit seeking to compel the jurisdiction to remedy the deficiencies. Any such lawsuit would also be posted on our website and become a public document."

However, when asked for some clarification as to whether there was an enforcement or oversight mechanism that ensured that the jurisdiction followed their agreement if one was reached the DOJ representative didn't answer in time for this article.

Clearly, it appears as thought the county and DOJ are still negotiating terms that would bring the facility into compliance with the Civil Rights for Institutionalized Persons Act, however it is disturbing that there might not be an oversight mechanism that ensures the county complies with its agreement, especially in light of its disturbing public response to the grievous violations.

Given some evidence of collusion between the SPD and KCCF to intentionally withhold medical treatment for some prisoners and the Seattle police force's reluctance to negotiate on oversight reforms sparked by several misconduct cases last year, the prospect of the intentional mistreatment of detainees in Seattle would appear plausible. If such is the case then it's clear, when combined with King County's disregard for the constitutionally protected rights of the accused, that there is ample reason to suspect that the county will not hold up its side of the bargain if they do reach an agreement with the DOJ.

Because of these reasons, there must be some sort of oversight implemented for the King County Jail to ensure it protects the rights of the US citizens it detains in compliance with the US Constitution, federal laws, and international bans on cruel and unusual punishment.

Whitewashing the Deadly King County Jail

King County issued a press release yesterday regarding how they are taking steps to address the Department of Justice investigative findings of blatant and deadly constitutional rights abuses that have been occurring at the King County Jail located in Seattle. While this would seem like a positive step at first blush, when taken in context with other statements coming out of King County government and specific statements from Reed Holtgeerts, the head of the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detentions (DAJD), who is responsible for running the King County Jail, it becomes an obvious whitewash effort.

King County Executive Ron Sims and DAJD head Reed Holtgeerts issued a slightly different press release just prior to the official release of the DOJ findings of potentially deadly civil rights abuses that agreed with the findings of abuse but disputed the fact of these findings equating to abuses of constitutionally protected rights. Now, since they agree with the abuses that occurred to detainees in their jail, some of which happened while DOJ investigators were visiting, their insistence that these abuses are not a violation of civil rights can only be taken to mean that Sims and Holtgeerts are of the opinion that detainees have no rights to be protected from potentially deadly abuses at the hands of their guards.

Since both appear to be asserting that detainees have no rights to protect, and since the King County council also agreed with this press release in their latest hearing on the subject of the DOJ investigation, it appears as though the King County government is insisting that there is no reason to comply with the DOJ investigation’s resulting recommendations of what it would take the King County Jail to become constitutionally sound.

When this insistence that detainees have no rights is viewed in combination with other statements from Holgeerts regarding past abuses of detainees this perception is further justified. Consider that Holtgeerts insisted that the issue of guards being caught sexually abusing detainees was merely a “training issue”. Yes, Holtgeerts insists that sexual abuse is a training issue, which we can assume means rapists should just be offered training.

But now, yet again, in the case of these latest abuse findings he is still insisting that abusing detainees and intentionally denying them access to medical care is another “training issue”. What’s worse is that he insists these problems can be fixed by offering guards “the option of additional training”, which makes King County’s response to the DOJ findings especially troublesome.

Also consider that, while King County insists that it is working to improve internal investigative capabilities, it is still not fixing the biggest problem involved with catching abuses, that being the kite system. Detainees can only make reports of abuse via a kite which is a paper form that is filled out by the detainee and handed to a guard on duty, who is supposed to turn the form over to the proper channel. What happens is that nothing really prevents that guard from just throwing the kite away.

The kite system is also the method detainees must use to request medical assistance, which is how guards can intentionally deny medical care to detainees that they have been told to ignore. So, we see that these deadly abuses are more than a training issue; it is a fundamental flaw in the abuse reporting system that no amount of training will fix. Therefore, by saying these problems are training issues, Holtgeerts is being flatly disingenuous.

Clearly, King County’s efforts are not geared towards fixing the problems, but towards a thinly veiled PR initiative that they hope will mollify the Department of Justice so that they won’t be required to actually fix any problems and continue to allow guards to abuse detainees. Until there is more pressure made to bear, it appears as though these deadly problems will continue despite the DOJ’s scathing investigation, and despite Holgeerts and Sims efforts to cover up the fundamental flaws at their brutally deadly jail.

ACLU Ignored Detainee Abuses at KCCF

When the news broke that the US Department of Justice found evidence of deadly civil rights abuses occuring at the King County Correctional Facility in Seattle, Washington I was struck by one specific blurb in one of the articles in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, here.

The particular part in the article that caught my attention was this:

"The threat of a contagious, antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection known as MRSA has been a particular focus of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, which monitors jail conditions for compliance with a settlement agreement resulting from a 1989 lawsuit, state ACLU spokesman Doug Honig said Wednesday.

"This report from the Justice Department reinforces what we've been saying about the concerns about hygiene at the jail and the need for officials to address those concerns," Honig said."

Well, what struck me wasn't that the paper talked with the ACLU about a prisoner abuse case, it was that I was suprised that the ACLU was actually concerned and doing something about the prisoner abuse... because I have not seen any evidence that they were doing anything at all.

So, I decided to do a bit of research, after all, if the ACLU was concerned and had spoken up about their concerns, I would be able to find out what they said and when.

Several searches later, nothing. No news stories, no papers on their website, no mention, no lawsuits... Not One Thing.

That's right, the ACLU actually has done nothing at all about the prisoner abuse that they had supposedly been allowed to monitor at the King County Jail. In fact, there were no news articles with the Washington state ACLU speaking out about the torture that hundreds of detainees had experienced in that facility. There was also NO MENTION whatsoever of the ACLU speaking out on their own website here. Sure, plenty about Gitmo torture, but not one single solitary mention of the long torturous deaths by infection nor the sexual abuse, or any of the abuses that go on at the King County Jail.

So, it seems that the ACLU lied, they have not been talking about the abuses that occured at the King County Jail, not even since the DOJ's report has the ACLU said one solitary word except for the blurb in this one news article.

I had wondered why I never received a response from the ACLU when I told them how I had been tortured in that jail. It was that the ACLU doesn't really care about the torture of American citizens in American jails, especially when it is done by a supposedly liberal local government, it's not politically expedient for them I suppose... but Gitmo abuses are politically advantageous for their agenda, so that gets plenty of their attention and a vast number of pages on their website as well.

It's a sad day when the US DOJ cares more about the constitutional rights abuses of prisoners in a Seattle jail than the ACLU does. It makes me wonder who is left to defend our rights, because the ACLU isn't.

More than this, the ACLU's silence about the torture of detainees in King County makes them a complicit partner in that torture, especially if it is true that they were charged with monitoring conditions at that jail

UPDATE: To be fair I've sent out requests for official responses to the DOJ report of deadly civil rights abuses at the King County Jail to all civil and human rights organizations. I'll report on what I find out as these reactions, or the utter lack thereof, come in.

The State Fixes Problems Seattle Refuses To Address

The Washington State Department of Corrections has responded to rising cases of sexual abuse and outright rape of female prisoners by investing millions in new cameras for prison facilities so that there are no gaps in video coverage where guards and other staff can molest female inmates.

Story at The Seattle Times

Meanwhile, King County executive Sims and the head of King County's Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention, Holgeerts, are still on record insisting that raping detainees, killing detainees by denying them access to medical care, and severely beating detainees after they have been restrained is not a violation of their constitutionally protected rights in response to findings by the US Department of Justice of these kinds of incidents at their facility. I believe we can safely assume that there will be no cameras installed in the deadly King County Jail any time soon.

The same holds true for the Seattle Police Department precincts where the Seattle Police Officer's Guild has been dead-set opposed and have successfully killed the idea to install cameras in all areas of police precincts where detainees would be held or transported through. With the recent appointment of the heavily SPOG funded Tim Burgess to the city council's Public Safety committee that is responsible for police oversight and accountability issues, it's also safe to assume there will be no cameras installed in Seattle police precincts either.

Funny how the state of Washington has made the effort to protect convicted prisoners but the city of Seattle and the surrounding King County refuse to make the effort of similarly protecting pre-trial, and thus potentially innocent, detainees.

It's also funny that, the very instrument that would best protect the police and corrections officers from false accusations of abuse are opposed by those same officers and guards that lament their bad reputations.

King County Council Takes DOJ Report Seriously (NOT)

UPDATE:

Disregard everything below this. The news article about the King County Council's response to the DOJ report citing constitutional rights violations at the King County Jail is entirely innaccurate.

I watched a video recording of that hearing and all the council members did was talk about how they could answer the report in a way that limited what they had to do to fix the problems cited. In other words, they talked about how they could whitewash the whole thing and keep on abusing detainees as usual.

It was a shameful disgrace, and after watching that video I am now more certain than ever that the abuses and torture will continue at the King County Jail.

--------

Finally, someone actually understood how important the DOJ investigation into civil rights abuses at the King County Jail really is. The King County Council had some very harsh words for the KCCF administrators who insisted that abusing prisoners and denying them access to medical treatment wasn't an abuse of constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Councilman Dan Ferguson seemed to understand the disconnect clearly when he told the head of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention that "There's a huge divide between 'room for improvement' and what's in the report." in response to King County Executive Ron Sims' and DAJD head Reed Holtgeerts' attempts to cover up problems by denying that endangering pretrial prisoners was a violation of their rights.

While the jail, despite insisting that the existing jail practices are not in violation of anyone's civil rights, states it is working with the DOJ to correct the potentially deadly items cited in the DOJ report, the King County Council suggested that it might be a good idea to create an oversight board to ensure the jail conforms to expected standards of prisoner care.

As an innocent victim of abuses in that jail, I personally thank the King County Council for seeing how damning that report really is and wholeheartedly encourage the pursuit of establishing an oversight board due to the jail's repeated attempts to cover up deaths and downplay abuses at the facility.

full story at The Seattle Post Intelligencer

UPDATE: The Seattle Post Intelligencer changed the story a few times on their website, so if the link doesn't work let me know.

But further than that, after changing the story they watered it down a bit by describing the physical abuse cited in the report as merely a matter of guards pulling prisoner's hair. The report actually describes this as a "hair-hold maneuver" which is also used as a martial arts take-down move which can be exceptionally risky, as the report specifically describes, when used on prisoners who have their hands cuffed behind their backs because they cannot slow their momentum as their faces are driven down into the concrete floors.

Indeed, the report specifically cites at least two cases of prisoners being spun around and driven face down into the floor by use of the hair hold takedown, some of these cited cases resulted in multiple contusions, bleeding from the ears, and eye lacerations that required sutures.

Clearly these are more than just a matter of guards grabbing prisoners by the hair, it is a matter of egregious physical abuse that violates the constitutional protections for pretrial prisoners. It's important that the media reports this accurately.

Seattle's Response to the DOJ KCCF Investigation

The King County and the city of Seattle has responded to the DOJ investigation which accuses the King County Jail of violating the constitutionally protected rights of detainees. Let's analyze the response to the findings of civil rights abuses and see why it's so disturbing.

1. The King County Jail (aka. KCCF) is a corrections facility operated under jurisdiction of King County Washington which houses an average of over 1,200 prisoners at any given day, a majority of which are persons detained for alleged criminal offenses by the Seattle Police Department and awaiting trial for either felony or misdemeanor offenses.

2. The DOJ report insists that numerous abuses were discovered during it's investigation into the King County Jail, including failure to protect detainees from physical harm at the hands of guards, failure to protect prisoners from sexual abuse from guards, failure to protect detainees from self-harm, and failure to allow inmates access to medical care.

3. The city of Seattle and King County Washington, via the offices of County Executive and the DJAD, has officially responded that it agrees with all findings of abuse as detailed by the DOJ investigative findings report.

4. The DOJ report classifies the abuses discovered as severe and life-threatening, that such abuses are severe enough to cause organ failure or death of detainees, and as such they are violations of constitutionally protected civil rights.

5. Ron Sims, the King County Executive, and the KCCF (King County Jail) have officially responded by stating that while they agree that the abuses described are occurring and are as severe as the DOJ states, that these abuses are not civil rights abuses.

... Recap so far, King County, as represented by King County Executive Ron Sims who is responsible for Jail administration, agrees that life-threatening abuses occur at it's jail but argues that such abuses are not illegal.

6. If, as the King County Executive and DAJD head claim, abusing prisoners in ways that can cost them their lives is not an abuse of constitutionally protected civil rights, it also contends that it has the authority to commit such abuses.

7. Furthermore, if that assertion is correct, King County and the DJAD are suggesting that they have no real legally binding reason to ensure that such abuses do not continue.

8. If so, they conclude that they do not really have to abide by the recommendations outlined by the DOJ report, a report that carries with it the threat of legal action against the city if all complaints have not been addressed.

9. Finally, by concluding this, they also conclude that they have the legal right to torture citizens by merely accusing them of a criminal offense. (remember, the jail houses mostly pretrial detainees and the city agrees that deadly abuses occur, also that torture in the US is defined as pain intentionally inflicted of such intensity that it simulates or causes organ failure or death).

So, we see that the specific argument being used is an assertion that the Seattle Police Department, King County Sheriff's Department, and the King County Jail staff may simply accuse someone of a crime, misdemeanor or felony, in order to have legal standing to torture , maim, or murder that person without fear of legal sanction.

While one would hope that this is not the intended end result of such an argument, it is the ultimate logical conclusion to the use of said argument and, unfortunately, given the recent track record of the city in regards to police misconduct and prisoner abuses, it seems quite possible that this is their actual intent.

DOJ Report Cites Constitutional Violations at King County Jail

If anyone doubted my claims that prisoners have been tortured in the King County Jail; seems the US Department of Justice has found enough evidence of it to threaten suit...

The United States Department of Justice has just released a report which has found that conditions at the King County Jail in Seattle rise to the level of a violation of prisoners' constitutional rights, specifically in the area of medical care, use of force by guards, sexual abuse by guards, and suicide prevention measures.

The DOJ report specifically states that these violations have directly contributed to the preventable death of at least one pretrial detainee. The official response from city government and the jail is "we might have some room for improvement, but it's not that bad, these aren't abuses of civil rights."

Preventable deaths of pretrial prisoners in your custody "isn't an abuse of civil rights?" The utter disregard their reaction to the report shows for the safety of pretrial prisoners at this jail is unconscionable. These people they are killing and abusing haven't even had their day in court, they are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but the jail is punishing them before hand, even killing them, anyway.

The constitutional violations at KCCF (King County Correctional Facility) are not errors, they are intentional abuses, this is what makes them so egregious and frightening... Combine this report with the continuous reports of unpunished police misconduct and it's easy to see that prisoner abuse occurs as a pattern of collusion between the SPD and the KCCF. It also becomes clear that this pattern of intentional abuse is encouraged from the top down, especially when considering the city's response.

The only problem I have with the report is that it didn't discuss the cases where withholding medical care at the jail is an intentional act meant to punish prisoners, not an accidental oversight. It doesn't try to connect the dots between the patterns of SPD misconduct and civil rights abuses at the KCCF.

It also seemed to miss other cases of intentional prisoner abuse, including one case was when two prisoners were taken outside in the snow and shackled there without blankets for hours just for the minor infraction of talking after lights-out and another when guards intentionally ignored one prisoner as he repeatedly kicked another prisoner in the head while he was laying in his bunk.

The local officials have already denied that the problems are as severe as the federal investigation has revealed, thus meaning that they intend not to improve all the problematic conditions cited or the underlying causes of prisoner abuse in the jail despite the report citing these conditions as the direct cause of at least one death at the jail.

Remember, jails are not prisons, when abuses that cause fatalities occur at a jail it means that a potentially innocent person who has not yet had their day in court may have been murdered or tortured at the hands of the people who have been put in charge of their care.

Those people who have died at the King County Jail will never have their day in court, we will never know if they were innocent or if the crimes they were accused of really merited such a harsh sentence; like a slow painful death from preventable infection.

One example from the Report:

The most egregious example of KCCF's systematic failure to adequately assess and treat inmates (medically) -- and the grave harm that can result -- is a recent inmate death, which we found was likely preventable.

The incident involved an inmate with a history of alcohol withdrawal seizures and with skin infections on his legs who was admitted to the jail and sent the same day to the emergency room at Harborview Medical Center, where he was diagnosed with multiple abscesses, anemia and either cellulitis (a potentially serious bacterial infection).

Although arguably the hospital should have admitted him, it did not do so, instead, the inmate was returned to the jail, where he was not examined by a doctor even though he should have been and was forced to wait more than 30 hours for his first dose of the antibiotics prescribed for his infection.

When the inmate requested care and finally was checked by a doctor, the examination detected abdominal tenderness, indications of intestinal distress and "highly abnormal and unstable vital signs." But the doctor did not send him back to the hospital.

The following day, his third at the jail, the inmate experienced severe abdominal pain and was sweating and doubled over. Still, it was seven hours before he was re-examined by a doctor, who sent him to the hospital, where the inmate died -- apparently of a perforated gastric ulcer.

KCCF's inadequate diagnosis and inordinate delays in providing treatment likely contributed to this inmate's death.

A full copy of the DOJ report can be found HERE

News Reports at:
Justice Department Lambastes KCCF for Abuses
Justice Report Blasts King County Jail
DOJ Finds Life Threatening Abuses at Seattle Jail
Report Details Dangerous Conditions at King County Correctional Facility

The Funhouse Case

Illustration provided by permission of Robert Ullman, it originally appeared in a local weekly paper's article about this case, called "A Stab in the Dark"

(As you read this story, please keep in mind that I was eventually found innocent thanks to security camera footage taken at the scene of the incident. The news stories that mention the video evidence that eventually freed me can be found here and the follow-up news weekly article: Justice Delayed. Also, I know it's a long read, but I've tried to edit it down as much as I can.)

What Happened:
I was a 36 year old gainfully employed information technology professional and IT consultant with over 12 years of experience. I've been married to the same wonderful woman for 13 years and had 2 sons with a third on the way. Prior to the incident described here I had no criminal record and had never even been arrested before.

On Sunday, November 5, 2006, I went to a nearby venue to watch a few bands play and relax after having worked about 80 hours that week authoring several technical white papers and performing network engineering tasks as part of my position as a senior consultant with a local information technology company.

About an hour or two after I arrived I witnessed a one-sided fight unfold between two people I didn’t know. The attacker appeared to punch the victim with, in retrospect, a strange downward striking punch to the neck/shoulder area. The victim grabbed his assailant and they spun through the crowd before both of them fell to the floor.

At this point nobody stopped the struggle between the two so I rushed over and started to try and separate them while they were still on the concrete floor. While I was attempting to pull the victim off of the attacker the attacker slipped out from underneath his victim and fled through the crowd. Meanwhile, I continued to try and help the victim up but I couldn’t get a firm hold of him, and he was not responding.

Just as I noticed a significant amount of blood underneath the victim I was suddenly grabbed from behind and dragged backwards through the crowd towards the front door by security while I was being punched by several people. I was then pushed out of the front door and told to leave, nobody else followed me out at this point and the door was shut in front of me, even as I tried to tell them what happened.

At that point I decided it was best to just leave so I started to walk towards my home, which wasn’t too far away. A few seconds after I started walking a friend of mine came out and asked if I was alright. I told him I was fine, but as we walked about half way to the first intersection away from the venue we heard shouts coming from behind us and turned to see several people rush out the door.

People were pouring out of the doors and as they gathered on the street one person pointed at us and shouted “Get him!” The person who shouted grabbed the wooden placard in front of the door and raised it above his head as he started to run towards us with the rest of the large crowd following him. My friend yelled at me to run but I was already winded from being dragged out of the venue and punched several times, so I told him to get out of there and turned to face the rushing mob of people.

As my friend started to get away, the person with the placard reached me and he swung the wooden board at my head while still running forward. I was able to deflect the blow with my arm and as he pulled back for another swing I grabbed him in order to prevent him from hitting me again. However, at this point the crowd had swirled all around me and someone hit me from behind, which knocked me unconscious.

According to witnesses that I talked to later, the attack on me continued as I was dragged across the street, repeatedly kicked, and hit with various objects, ranging from metal pipes to wooden boards, over a period of several minutes. They said that while I was being beaten that security staff was encouraging the crowd to continue the attack by repeatedly shouting “Kill Him! Kill Him!” All of the witnesses who saw the beating agreed that it was the most brutal attack they had ever witnessed and that people in the crowd were saying they were sure I was dead or critically injured as I laid there in the street.

During the attack I kept drifting in and out of consciousness and I kept trying to shout that I didn’t do anything wrong, but the attacks kept up without slowing down. I kept hearing fragments of shouts, some of which sounded like racial slurs, as kept getting hit from all directions. Finally, the attacks let up somewhat and someone nearby said "You can get up now, the police are here." But as I lifted my head slightly a brutal kick slammed straight into the bridge of my nose and knocked me out again.

What Happened When The Police Arrived:
Again, I had to rely on what witnesses told me had happened next. Several have told me that when the police arrived the attack was still ongoing and the police did not do anything to stop it right away. Instead they started to ask people in the crowd what had happened as I was being beaten. The police did not try to assess my condition when they finally stopped the attack, instead they immediately handcuffed me while I was lying unconscious on the street and then they lifted me up by the handcuffs and dragged me to a nearby police cruiser.

Some witnesses say that they saw the officers attempt to toss me into the back seat of the cruiser but that they missed on the first try and rammed my head into the opened car door. But they finally managed to push me into the back seat on the second try and locked me inside. At that point they left me in the car and walked through the crowd to start taking statements from the same people who had just finished beating me in the street.

My recollections of the events that follow are somewhat hazy, but I do remember waking up on the floor of the cruiser as I was being driven away from the scene. I don’t recall the officer reading me my rights, but I do remember him asking me, "why did you stab that kid?" I was confused, but I told him that “I only tried to break up a fight.” He replied, “Why would you do a thing like that?” and I told him “I was just trying to do what was right.”

During the ride I kept drifting in and out of consciousness. I was having a lot of trouble breathing and I was in a lot of pain. The next thing that I can remember somewhat clearly is laying face down on the cement in what appeared to be a large garage with several police officers surrounding me, laughing, and threatening that if I didn’t get up quick I was “going to get some more”. An anonymous source informed me that I was dragged out of the cruiser feet first and my head bounced off the floorboard before I was dropped to the ground in that precinct garage.

I thought I heard my friend’s voice begging me to get up as well. My hands were still cuffed behind me and I could barely move. I tried to tell them that I was trying to get up but they kept yelling at me and laughing, calling me “turtle” for some reason that I still can’t figure out. I slowly struggled to get to my feet, but it was very difficult because I couldn’t use my hands, I was very dizzy, and nobody would help me.

When I finally got to my feet they escorted me from the garage into the precinct where they stood me in front of a shelf and started to empty my pockets. I cooperated as best I could and I never argued or struggled against them at any point. I tried my best to be polite as they asked me questions, but it didn’t matter.

When they finished with me they pushed me into a room with plexiglass walls and I fell to the floor without being able to use my hands to stop my fall. All I could do is lay there on the dirty floor with open wounds on my face, legs, and arms while I struggled to breathe. I realized that my ribs were likely broken or badly bruised; every breath was sharply painful so I could only take quick, shallow breaths.

After several minutes had passed a police officer finally came into the holding cell to take a picture of my face. I asked the officer to please call my wife and let her know where I was and I asked him if he could please get someone to help me because I was having difficulties breathing. He told me he would do that and he left after taking a picture of my face.

Later on, that same policeman came back and let some paramedics in to look at me. He also told me that he called my wife and I thanked him for doing that. The paramedics started to examine me, they looked at my face and hissed through their teeth in that way which told me I didn’t look good. They said I would need stitches and my nose looked broken. But as they started to check my breathing a second officer came in the room and told them “You’re done”.

The paramedics looked at each other and said “Ok.” They then packed everything back up and, on the way out, they told that officer “Well, he’s not cardiac yet, but…” and at that point the door was shut and I couldn’t hear anything else. It was a very frightening experience because I don’t know what the “but” was, if there was something else wrong with me, and I never found out what else they told him.

About a minute or so later that same officer who stopped the paramedics from examining me came back into the cell and took me into another room with a second officer. He then took off my handcuffs and ordered me to strip. I complied even though it was difficult to do and as I was taking off my clothes he told another officer who was there to leave and get something. At this point I was left alone with that one officer which was a violation of SPD policies regarding strip searches.

After I took all my clothes off and put them in a bag the officer started asking me questions, again without reading me any rights. Since I was still naked and pretty dazed from the beating I felt very vulnerable and I was afraid of what he would do to me if I didn’t cooperate.

He asked me, “Do you belong to any gangs?” I replied that I did not. He then asked me, “Do you have any tattoos?” I replied that I did and pointed to a tattoo on my shoulder. He did not look at it, or take any pictures of it, but he replied “That means you’re in a gang...” I started to protest but he ignored me and asked if I knew the kid that was stabbed. I still wasn’t sure about what happened so I asked if the victim was really stabbed and he said yes. The other officer came back and the questions stopped. They gave me a paper-like outfit to put on and told me to get dressed. I was then re-handcuffed and led back into the holding cell.

(I was never read my rights and was interrogated while standing there naked and bleeding. I do not belong to any gangs and I don't fit the profile in any way whatsoever. The officer strip searched me and interrogated me by himself while I was undressed, both are violations of the police department’s conduct manual. A reporter who wrote about the case later had contacted members of the gang that officers accused me of belonging to and the gang members denied even knowing me. Also, the prosecutor and lead detective put in charge of the case afterward admitted that they knew I wasn’t in a gang as well.)

What Happened At The Jail:
Eventually I was transported to the King County Jail in a windowless van along with my friend who I hadn’t realized had been arrested as well. When we arrived I was put in a holding cell for at least 30 minutes before they began to process me. After making me sign some forms, while I was still in that paper outfit they made me put on in the station, which was now wet and transparent from the rain, I was taken to a nurse who was stationed right next to the front desk.

The nurse had me sit down and she began examining me. First she asked me if I had lost consciousness but I was still so confused from both the attack and the shock of being arrested like this that I told her that I thought so, but wasn’t sure. I started to tell her that I didn’t remember some things that happened but then she cut me off as she examined my face.

She winced as she looked at my nose and told me it might be broken and that I definitely needed stitches. She started to clean the wound when she asked when the injuries occurred. I started to answer her but she looked up over my shoulder at someone behind me and told me that she was done. At that point one of the policemen grabbed me from behind and led me away before she had even finished examining me, let alone even started to treat any of my injuries.

The processing continued for at least another hour or so, during which I was fingerprinted, photographed, and given a bracelet that had my information on it. I was also finally given a red jail uniform to put on, it took a while because of my injuries and because the paper outfit had bonded with some of my wounds so I had to gently peel the outfit away from my cuts while I took it off. However, I was never given any footwear because the guard said they were out, even though the other prisoners all had slippers to wear.

During that process I was placed in and out of a holding cell that had about a dozen people inside, but it also had a phone so I finally had a chance to call my wife. I didn’t have long to talk, but I lied and told her I was OK despite still being confused and worried about my injuries. I didn’t want her to worry because she was pregnant at the time and has a chronic pancreatic condition that makes her sick when she’s under stress.

After being processed I was taken to an overcrowded cell that held about 20 people at the time, with only 18 actual bunks so I had to sleep on a mattress on the damp floor. I still had open and untreated wounds on my face, knees, head, arms, and side. But I was just too hurt and tired to care, so I just passed out until morning.

The next day I was able to get an open bunk along the wall since the other prisoners were worried that I had all those open and uncovered wounds. They told me that the jail was known for deadly MRSA infections which really frightened me since my injuries were still open and untreated. I was still in quite a bit of pain, was still having difficulties breathing, and could barely keep my balance when walking. But I was also still very confused about what was happening and had difficulty thinking straight because, as it turned out later, I had suffered a traumatic brain injury during the attack that left me with permanent brain damage.

It was difficult to even get out of my bunk on the first day when I tried to get medical treatment, but was denied. I couldn’t breathe well because my ribs hurt so badly and because I had blood clots in both of my nostrils so I could only take short shallow breaths through my mouth the whole time. I couldn’t sleep after the first day either because the pain was so bad. When I tried to lie on one side it would hurt my ribs and any other way I tried to lay down would cause excruciating pain in my head. I ended up not being able to sleep for several nights, and even when I did fall asleep I would wake shortly afterward with spasms that seemed like convulsions.

The next day I was denied medical attention again and the guards kept ignoring my requests to be seen by a doctor when I told them I was in a lot of pain and worried about my wounds becoming infected. I also found out that, because of the head injuries, I wasn’t able to eat and even the smell of food made me nauseous. It would be several days before I was able to eat again, and even then I ended up losing over 30 lbs in the course of the first two weeks of my stay.

On the third day I was finally taken to court where my wife and several other witnesses saw that my facial injuries were open and untreated and that I appeared dazed and barely able to stand on my own. My pregnant wife attempted to testify at that hearing and broke down crying in pain as her pancreas tends to make her very sick when she’s stressed. The prosecutor was nice enough to hold her up as she tried to tell the judge I couldn’t have done what they accused me of… but I was still ordered to be held with a $500,000 bond, which was lower than the $1,000,000 that the prosecutors wanted, but it didn't matter because we still couldn’t afford to pay that.

After the hearing several people expressed concerns about my untreated injuries and poor condition so my wife contacted a friend of ours who is a medic in the US Army to come and see me. He had just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq and came to visit me a day after the hearing. Up to that point I had still been unable to get medical assistance so after he looked at my untreated injuries, heard my symptoms, and heard how I had been treated, he got pretty upset.

He told me that they treated captured Iraqi insurgents, insurgents who had just shot at his fellow soldiers, better than I had been treated here in an American jail. He was ashamed that this was how I had been treated and told me that he was going to do what he could to make them treat my injuries.

He had me fill out a medical release form and requested my medical records several times over the next two days but was denied. He also contacted several doctors that he worked with in the Army who also tried to get permission to visit me or assess my condition but the jail refused to let them visit me. They were all denied access to my records as well, even with release forms that I signed, and they were all told that they were not allowed to visit me under any circumstances.

However, a day after my friend’s visit they finally let me see a triage nurse who cleaned my wounds and bandaged them. During the brief examination I was given some band-aids and told I was done, even after I told them I had trouble breathing, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, was in a significant amount of pain, and was worried that I had a concussion. They wouldn’t even give me Tylenol when I requested it even though other prisoners in the same cell I was in were getting narcotics for pain and others were getting Methadone for their addictions to drugs.

Later that night I started having convulsions and every time I would start to fall asleep I would suffer spasms that would arch my whole head and back up off the bunk. I was really worried about my condition but the jail would do nothing other than monitor my blood pressure and give me bandages to put on my wounds myself.

(I lost over 30 pounds during my stay, but my abuse wasn't the only case of mistreatment that I witnessed in that jail. I also saw cases of abuse where prisoners were allowed to beat up other prisoners and prisoners punished by handcuffing them in rooms that were without heat and exposed to the outside while it was snowing out, only to bring them back hours later, shivering uncontrollably.)

A reporter came to see me a day after my friend visited and told me that I was facing several years in prison for Assault in the 1st degree. This was the first time that I had heard why I was being held. She asked for my story and reluctantly I told it because she said the story she planned to write wasn’t going be very nice. After I told her everything that had happened she seemed to find what I said made more sense than the contradictory police statements that existed at the time and wrote the following story in The Stranger called A Stab in the Dark. (A follow up article written after the case was dismissed can be found here: Justice Delayed).

Meanwhile, the public defender assigned to my case kept trying to force me to take a plea bargain. She even told my wife and my boss that I should plead guilty. But, when pressed by my wife, she admitted that she hadn’t even read my case yet. Before one of my court dates, shortly after my first week in jail, she told me that the prosecutors shown her some video and it was “pretty wild”. She then told me again that I should plead guilty or else I was going to get 20 years in prison. However, she never offered to show me the video (and it ended up being the same video that eventually proved I did nothing wrong). I still told her I knew I would be proven innocent and I would never plead guilty for something I didn’t do.

About two weeks after I was imprisoned, a nurse and an actual doctor finally sat down with me and let me talk about what happened to me and how I had been treated up to that point. She looked at my records and confirmed what I told her and said that what happened to me was inappropriate and that she was going to write a complaint about how I was mistreated, she also suggested that I do the same. She finally entered in a prescription for Tylenol and I received it that night. I filed a grievance and handed it to a guard the next day, which was what you were supposed to do, but nothing ever came of it.

A week later my bond was reduced with no argument from prosecutors. Interestingly enough as well, prosecutors had been telling my public defender that they had problems with the case and were unwilling to take it to trial, but the public defender didn’t bother to find out why… (We found out later that they had a video that showed I didn’t do what I was accused of and this was why they didn’t want to pursue the case. Everything would have ended there if the public defender would have asked them why they didn’t want to take it to trial, but she didn't.)

The day I was to be released I was held in an office from 7:00am until 3:00pm without anything to eat or drink and then I was told I had to give a urine sample in order to be released. I attempted to do so but I couldn’t since nobody let me have anything to drink at all during the whole day. When I was taken to the bathroom in order to give the sample, a guard who stood right next to me and kept saying “you got one minute, boy”, then “you have 45 seconds, boy.” “30 seconds”… It was impossible to urinate in those circumstances; even if I wasn’t completely dehydrated it would have been difficult. I was supposed to be given three chances but they never gave me another chance. I was returned to jail and my bond was revoked.

How The Case Ended
It wasn’t until almost another two weeks later, a full month after my arrest and after we went even further in debt to hire a real attorney that the I was finally released on bond. A few days after my release my attorney showed me the various statements and pictures that were part of the case against me. My attorney told me that this was a strange case because none of the testimonies actually described me and some even seemed to describe someone else entirely.

Worse than this, he showed me a picture that the police took of me when I was at the police station that showed some of my injuries. It was the first time I saw what I actually looked like since there were no real mirrors in the jail. He described the image as "something out of a horror flick". My face was covered in blood, one stomp from a boot landed so hard that it left a boot print on my cheek and the kick that hit my nose had inverted a flap of skin that embedded itself underneath the open gash it came from, making the wound look even more pronounced.

But, worst of all, there was also a photograph of the victim I saved, taken of him when he was in the hospital being treated, that showed him shirtless, with a large swastika tattoo on his chest and a German flag draped down underneath it.

Witnesses of the attack against me had said there were racial slurs being shouted by my assailants and I didn't believe it at first, but now it seemed possible these accusations might be true as well. It appeared that the attack on me was, at least in part, racially motivated. My skin tone is somewhat darker because of my Greek heritage and I get confused for being Mexican or biracial quite often, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with the attack until I saw that picture. It made me sick to think I went through all this for someone like that, that my good deed saved someone like that.

Things got even stranger after I had told him I wanted to go to trial right away because I knew I would be found innocent because after we met he called the prosecutor later that day and she told him she wasn’t ready and, in fact, she didn’t want this to go to trial at all. She even told him that “I have serious problems with this case and could not take it to trial in good conscience." He told her that, if this was the case, she had to drop the charges. But she said that her supervisor wouldn’t let her even though she wanted to drop the case against me.

My lawyer was given a video taken from the venue that showed the attack and he brought it to our home to view it with us. The video showed different frames at once, one frame showed the attack that I had stopped while a different frame from a different camera showed the attacker leaving the stage area after the attack. As he was leaving he looked almost straight at the camera as he folded his knife, put it in his pocket, and then grinned widely as he walked out a side door.

We arranged to see the video the next week with the prosecutor and the lead police detective. When we arrived everyone was nice and polite and we all went into a room and watched a video from the club’s security. The whole thing was there on tape, the actual assailant could even be plainly seen walking away from the stage folding up a knife and putting it in his pocket while grinning to himself.

I walked them through what I saw on the tape and told them what I had seen that night. I told them I didn’t know the attacker but would testify about what I saw because I didn’t want a guilty person to go free, I didn’t want to suffer needlessly for his crime. The kid who was stabbed didn’t fight back when that happened and didn’t seem to do anything that warranted being attacked like that. Though, again, when the attack occurred I didn't know he was a white supremacist.

They had this tape that would have clearly cleared my name since the very beginning but still kept trying to convict me. The detective in charge of the case admitted that after he saw the tape he knew I didn’t do what they accused me of… I was stunned. They both admitted that they now knew I didn’t do anything wrong that night and that I wasn’t a gang member. The prosecutor also told my attorney again that she wanted to drop the case but the supervisor still wouldn't let her.

It took another week until they finally agreed to drop the case because, despite the evidence for me, the prosecutor said that someone higher up was ordering her to keep the case going no matter what.

On January 5, 2007, the charges against me were finally dropped.

Afterward:
A week later I finally received most of my belongings that were taken from me by the police, it was the last time I talked to the detective that was put in charge of my case. It was there that detective admitted that they will probably never try to arrest the kid who did the crime I was put through hell for, even though they knew him by name and even though he had a previous record that included a stabbing.

Why didn't they go after the real criminal? Well, the victim never cooperated with the police at any point was the official response, but several lawyers told me that so long as they leave the case open they can make it harder for me to sue since all the evidence they have that could show I was innocent is also evidence being kept in an open case against someone else. What's the truth? I may never know.

Eventually, when the headaches didn't go away and I still had problems with my memory, I went to the doctor to get advice. The doctor referred me to the Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation Clinic at the University of Washington Medical Center where I underwent a battery of tests that showed I had permanent brain damage due to the numerous kicks I sustained to my head that night and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from the beating and subsequent mistreatment at the hands of police and the jail.

The doctors say I should have been hospitalized right after the attack and that they feel ashamed for what others in their professional allowed to happen to me while I was in jail. They wanted me to undergo extensive rehabilitation, speech therapy to help with my inability to find the right words in conversation, and vocational rehabilitation as well... all of which I cannot afford.

While the case against me is closed, the police and prosecutors refuse to go after the person who actually committed the crime. They also refuse to go after the people that had illegally beaten me so badly that night. This means that I went through all of this for nothing, less than nothing since they let a guilty person walk free for a crime I was wrongly tortured for.

My defense attorney urged me to file a lawsuit, as did the reporter that interviewed me and the medic that visited me.... everyone has. But I would have been willing to let it all go if I just had an honest apology for the mistakes they made and for the way I was treated and was compensated for the money I had lost defending myself from accusations that everyone knew were not true.

I tried everything I could to get the records and the video evidence so I could show lawyers and others that I was innocent and show them what happened so I could find justice but the police and the city refused to let me have access to that information and they threatened my lawyer to not let me have any copies of the photos and video since the case was technically open and revealing that information would be considered interfering with an ongoing investigation.

But, it ended up that there wasn't a single lawyer in Seattle who was willing to take my case. So, in the end, I suffered all this for nothing... for less than nothing. I was mistreated, slandered, and tortured for the crimes of another and left in debt for my trouble... all for trying to stop a fight that probably saved a person I didn't know... and even after the police and the government knew I was wronged, they refuse to make it right and have instead tried to cover up what others did to me, and what they did to me.

...but through all this I've found out that I'm not the only innocent person who's suffered abuse from the police and jail like this, I'm not the only one who has suffered the injustice of selective prosecution and racial bias by Seattle's government and legal system... so I started this site to hold people accountable when all others won't... I started this site to make something positive come from something so painful to me, in the hope it might help prevent it from happening to others.

While I might never see justice for what happened to me, perhaps I can still make something positive happen by helping others find justice even if it was denied to me.

Update 11/10/2008- It's been two years now since that fateful day in November when my life changed. I’ve found out that, because of the beating and brain injuries that my vision has been going bad in my left eye. The scars on my face have not gone away and every glance at a mirror reminds me of the price paid for doing a good deed. My debt incurred from my experience has grown by $3,500 to $18,300 which doesn't include the rehab I can no longer afford nor the tens of thousands in lost wages. It's true now, more than ever, that despite my innocence, the punishment continues for a crime I never committed and, in fact, tried to prevent...

...but, I'm thankful to be alive and free, and I am always mindful of how easily such things are taken for granted... so I spend each day making sure that I spend all the time I can with my wife and children, since I now know too well how easy it is to lose everything in a moment… so I spend every moment as if I'm already living on borrowed time.

Update 02/21/2010- It's been over 3 years now, despite a last ditch push to find someone to take up a lawsuit against the police and jail that mistreated me, the statute of limitations has expired for me to file a lawsuit for what happened but all the lawyers have said the case was too risky for them to take without payment up front, something I could never afford.

But, from it all, I've tried my best to make something positive come from everything that happened by creating the National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project in the hope that it can educate people about the issue of police misconduct and help improve attitudes towards victims, improve how victims of police misconduct are treated, and make it easier for them to find the kinds of help that were never available to me and my family.