Video Released Of King County Sheriff Beating 15 Year Old Female Detainee

Updated video that shows what happened before, during, and after the girl was assaulted in the holding cell.

As we reported earlier this month, King County Sheriff's Deputy Paul Schene plead not guilty to fourth degree assault over what took place in the video shown above. If convicted he only faces a maximum of one year in jail.

The video was taken on November 29th in a SeaTac, Washington holding cell, south of Seattle, Washington. The video shows deputy Schene, another deputy, and a 15-year-old girl, (now identified as Malika Calhoun), he arrested on suspicion of auto theft for driving her parents' car.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer, who obtained the video after the judge allowed it to be released, also quotes from the deputy's report:

Schene wrote that the shoe hit him in the right shin, "causing injury and pain." He wrote that he "placed" her into handcuffs and that she needed medical attention for a "panic attack."

He wrote that he required treatment at Auburn General Hospital for a "blood filled pocket" on his shin, according to his report. The video, however, appears to show his shin strike a metal toilet in the cell as he pushes the girl against the wall.

Schene's attorney, Anne Bremner, who represents most officers in Seattle in criminal and civil cases, argued desperately with the judge in this case to keep this video from being released, suggesting that there is more to this story than we're seeing...

You tell me, what more could there be?

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.

One DOJ Report And One Inquest Later, Abuses Continue At The King County Jail

In March of 2008 we reported that a woman who was recovering from reconstructive surgery was denied medical care while at the King County Jail despite just having surgery a few days before her arrest under allegations of shoplifting.

In that case the jail staff had verified that she was under a doctor's care and had valid doctor's instructions for care of that wound, but the staff ignored her requests anyway. Instead almost letting her go into shock while left in a cell with a small blanket and none of the medications she had been prescribed by her doctor.

It appears that this kind of mistreatment is still ongoing for people detained at the King County Jail. We've just received another complaint that is almost identical to the one we received in March, but this time it's from a woman who has actually worked as a corrections officer elsewhere... and she says she's never witnessed mistreatment like what routinely occurs at the King County Jail in all her years as a corrections officer.

She starts her story with her driving home just a few days after having major abdominal surgery, with her stomach still sutured, when she says she was pulled over by the police. At first she was confused about why she was stopped although she admits going maybe 2 mph over the limit.

During the stop and even after she was taken into custody she was never told by the officer why she was pulled over and never read her rights. Later she discovered that she was pulled over and arrested that night because she had mistakenly missed a court date for a traffic violation, a court date that she was not notified of, and because of this she was unknowingly driving with a suspended license as a result.

After she was arrested she was taken to the King County Jail. This is where she claims that she repeatedly told police officers and jail staff that she had recently had surgery and that she needed to be careful as to not reopen the surgical wound or cause any internal damage. Instead of at least looking to see if she was telling the truth, guards and officers alike ridiculed and made fun of her instead. All of this even though she offered to show them the sutures that were still running across her abdomen.

Once booked into the jail the abuse didn't stop. She told us that she was denied food and water for 10 hours and denied even a basic medical examination. Eventually, though, she was finally seen by a nurse, but even after that they continued to refuse her reasonable requests for things like some additional bedding to protect the surgical site, use of a wheelchair, assistance with getting to and from the restroom, or even the medication that she had been prescribed by her doctor.

In the letter she sent us she described her treatment as "The most egregious, inhumane treatment I've ever experienced by another human being." And that as a former corrections officer with a degree in Criminal Justice that "…despite all of the corruption and verbal and physical abuse I was subjected to while a CO, I can say with a clear conscience that I have NEVER EVER treated an inmate the way I was treated by the police officers and the King County Jail staff… their behavior toward me was absolutely inexcusable, inhumane, and totally unjustified."

She claims that she was never rude or belligerent to anyone during her arrest and the time she spent in the jail. She also claims that shortly after being released she went back to her surgeon in order to make certain that there wasn't any damage done and was admitted to the hospital for a few days. Her doctors have told her that they hope she files a civil suit over her mistreatment by the police and the King County Jail, and she says she intends to do just that.

In November of 2007 the United States Department of Justice issued a scathing report on their investigation into the King County Jail for alleged civil rights violations that continue to occur at that facility under the direction of King County DAJD director Reed Holgeerts and King County Executive Ron Sims.

That report detailed life threatening abuses that were termed as egregious violations of detainee civil rights which included a lack of reasonable medical care. The US DOJ Civil Rights division and the King County government are still in talks over whether the county will address the violations that were discovered at the jail, over a year after those findings were made public.

In addition to that, last week marked the end to an inquest into the gruesome 2007 death of a detainee named Lynn Dale Iszley at the King County Jail. Iszley's death due to lack of medical care was meticulously detailed and cited in the DOJ report that was released in November of 2007, over a full year ago.

That inquest, lasting only two days, came to the same conclusion that the Department of Justice investigators did, that the jail was ultimately responsible for that death due to a decided lack of appropriate medical care... that Iszley's death could have, and should have, been prevented.

Apparently, judging by the reports we received, many of which we don't publish at the request of the victim, the county has decided not to address the civil rights violations that were found during that investigation and it remains unclear whether the US DOJ will do anything to force the county to comply with their recommendations to address the deadly problems in that jail since it's been over a year since their report was released and almost a full year past the deadline provided for King County to address the problems found at their jail, which they clearly have refused to do.

Meanwhile, a class action lawsuit is in the works against the King County Jail for several detainees who contracted potentially lethal MRSA infections due to the lack of medical care in the jail. No court date has been set yet in that action, but it is restricted only to detainees who contracted MRSA and the lawyer in that action, Ed Budge, has told Sarah that he cannot represent her for her case, like others who were denied medical care but didn't contract MRSA.

The woman who contacted us and the others harmed by abuses in that jail, some of which were later found innocent of their charges, have pledged to continue their attempts to gain legal assistance and claim that they won't sit by quietly and let the county get away with violating their basic human rights like this, especially while the jail continues to mistreat other pre-trial detainees.

Meanwhile, King County Executive Ron Sims, who is currently in talks to gain a position in President-Elect Obama's administration, still refuses to address the problems that have been detailed to him by the DOJ, an inquest he himself asked for, and by the numerous reports in the media. Instead he has suggested all along that detainees don't have civil rights to protect… even those who are later found innocent of any crimes they might have been accused of committing.

Ultimately, the deadly problems at the King County Jail aren't due to just one guard, one police officer, or one doctor. It is a systemic problem that only continues to exist with, and due to, the express disregard for human rights and constitutional rights by the county administration itself. Until King County has a new administration, these problems will only continue to expose the county to liability and bad press while potentially innocent detainees continue to be exposed to deadly conditions at that jail.

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.

A Year In Review Part 1

A look back at a year's worth of misconduct and detainee abuses

For the anniversary of Injustice In Seattle I thought it would be interesting to look back at some of the stories that we've published to see if there has been any progress in the fight against police misconduct and detainee abuse since this site had started and how some of the stories that we've published have turned out since we last published them. This is the first part in a series that recaps the issues and some of the specific stories that we've published.

Deadly Rights Violations At King County Jail
One of our very first stories focused on the findings of a Department of Justice investigation into the King County Jail (or KCCF as it's now called) which uncovered serious abuses of detainee rights that caused the horrific death of at least one detainee and exposed several to sexual and physical abuse in that downtown Seattle jail.

Unfortunately, there hasn't been any progress here as the King County government and local media have been unwilling to talk about these ongoing problems and negotiations between the DOJ and King County to improve conditions there have gone nowhere, even though the findings were released almost a full year ago. Even local civil rights groups are dead set against addressing the problems in that jail since they are focused on detainee abuses allegedly occurring thousands of miles away. Meanwhile there continue to be reports of detainees who are being denied medical care and of guards physically abusing prisoners still coming out of that facility.

While efforts to publicize those abuses and the federal investigation into the jail have failed, there may still be some hope. A class action suit has been initiated against the jail for the denial of medical care for detainees. That suit is still in the initial stages and no scheduled date has been set for that suit to start, so if you have been denied medical care in that jail and wish to be a part of that suit, contact attorney Ed Budge of Budge and Heipt. Hopefully the cost of that suit to the county will spur some changes when other efforts have fallen on deaf ears.

Seattle Police Department
After the civilian oversight of the Seattle Police Department was shown to be ineffective in reigning in abusive officers in Seattle people stopped reporting cases of significant abuse, especially since it became well known that the city was using the complaint process to help lawyers defend against potential lawsuits instead of investigate allegations of corruption and brutality.

This led to a painful and embarrassing string of high-profile news stories of abuses and several successful civil rights suits against the city until it supposedly recognized the need to make sure an accountability and oversight system worked. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case and instead of implementing changes to fix the oversight system, the city ignored it's own committees that recommended more transparency and worked to make the system even more secretive and easier to abuse under cover of supposedly fixing the system.

We've been hearing rumors that have grown more urgent in recent weeks that the city is battling desperately to keep another series of civil rights suits under wraps by offering settlements with strict non-disclosure agreements to keep stories of abuses out of the press. According to our sources, at least three very serious civil rights cases are pending against the city that haven't even been covered by the media and the city is desperate to keep them from going public because it has been losing officers to other towns because many officers reportedly are ashamed to be associated with the SPD because of the bad publicity and the city's desire to cover up problems with misconduct instead of directly addressing them.

According to the source we heard from, even the record pay increase officers won earlier this year that makes them the highest paid in the state wasn't enough to stem the tide of officers who are too ashamed to stay in Seattle... and this isn't good news to us because it means the officers who actually care about their reputations are the ones who are leaving and officers who care about how the public perceives them are more likely to make efforts to do the best job they can and least likely to abuse their position. This, unfortunately, could mean Seattle will be left with a higher proportion of officers with a history of abuses which would mean we may see higher rates of misconduct in the future.

To determine the veracity of the rumors, a search through the Justia databases indicates that there are at least three civil rights lawsuits currently filed and active against the Seattle Police Department, one of these cases involves witnesses to the Alley-Barnes beating who were detained and had their cell-phone cameras wiped clean. As for officers leaving, we've not had any indication from the city that previous problems retaining officers have improved or worsened recently, but the city does plan on hiring at least 40 officers this year.

...To be continued
(next issue: a recap on some of the exclusive stories we published this year)

Allegations Of King County Jail Abuses Continue

The King County Jail, located in downtown Seattle Washington, serves as a detention center for both pretrial detainees and convicted felons in the greater Seattle and King County area.

In November of last year a Department of Justice investigation into that facility found, what it termed, egregious and deadly constitutional rights violations that directly caused the death of at least one detainee, if not more. Currently the DOJ and King County government are in negotiations over whether they will fix the problems and how they would go about doing that if they do. In the meantime a class action lawsuit is in progress against King County on behalf of a large number of detainees who contracted drug-resistant MRSA infections and suffered harm due to a lack of medical care and the unsanitary conditions in that facility.

Of course, everyone understands that people make mistakes and, while King County refused to agree that the problems in their jail rose to being violations of detainee rights, they did acknowledge that mistakes have been made. Accordingly, the expectation was that after being notified of these problems the King County government was taking steps to fix them... but such an expectation may be too generous.

To that end, in addition to a complaint we received a few months ago about a woman who was denied medication at the facility, we've received an email from a mother of an inmate in the King County Jail earlier this month who expressed serious concerns about how her son was being treated. She was distraught not only over her concerns about mistreatment, but also the apparent lack of action to address those concerns on the part of King County and its Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention (DAJD) and was searching for anyone who could help. Her son, Sam, was a prisoner at the King County Jail at the time and had been there since April after being charged for robbery. He later plead guilty to those charges and told the court that he was willing to serve his time in order to answer for what he did. But, his mother claims, he didn’t intend that serving his time would leave him permanently harmed.

On April 29^th a complaint filed by Sam claims that a guard approached him and asked if Sam was "sweet on him", to which Sam replied that he wasn't. It was then that Sam says he was slammed against a wall by the guard and taken to isolation for 12 hours without explanation. He filed a grievance over the incident and, as a result, his treatment only got worse… he claims that guards exacted retaliation against him as the result of his filing a complaint over the incident.

Sam alleges that the retaliation escalated up to a June 18th incident where Sam, who was assigned to stay in the "suicide tank" after the first incident, claims he was told to "cuff up" following a disturbance in the tank he was in. (In the jail, a tank is a larger cell that holds several smaller cells or bunks along with a small communal area). Sam says he refused to cuff himself because he claimed he wasn't a part of the disturbance and he asked for a sergeant to be called in to intervene and ensure he was treated fairly.

When a sergeant arrived Sam says that the sergeant put him in handcuffs and, while he was still handcuffed, the guards then grabbed him in a "hair hold technique" and dragged him by his hair to isolation. (A "hair-hold technique" is an older control move used by guards in the past but has since been outlawed in most jails because of the potential for harm, the use of this technique was sited as a significant problem in the DOJ report and the DAJD pledged to stop officers from using this outdated technique at that time).

After being dragged by his hair to an isolation cell, Sam claims he was brutally beaten, kicked, and then his legs were kicked out from underneath him so that he landed with the full force of his weight on his head, without having his hands free to stop his fall. He claims he was then jumped on by 5 to 6 different guards and picked up off the ground with such force that the handcuffs cut into his wrists. Sam then claims that after the beating was over that the sergeant that he had asked for to ensure his fair treatment said "Ah... Now I think I'll go have a beer" and he was left on the floor in a pool of his own blood for an undetermined amount of time.

At some point later, after the beating, a psychologist assigned to evaluate Sam came to check on his condition and noted that he was still laying on the floor in a pool of his own blood and ordered that he be taken to Harborview Medical Center for treatment. Sam spent 6 hours at the hospital having his injuries treated and was then sent back to jail. Sam claims that he still suffers from severe headaches and nerve damage in his hands and arms as a result of the beating to this day.

Sam spent 9 days in isolation after returning to the jail, and then was sent back to isolation yet again for another incident where Sam claims guards harassed him by repeatedly asking him if he “had a problem” over and over again. All told, Sam claims he spent over 26 days in isolation as punishment for his filing of a complaint over that first incident for which Sam claims that he had been targeted for as retaliation.

Sam's mom was understandably worried that Sam would be mistreated further because, even while the jail said it was investigating Sam's complaints, the investigations into his claims were going to take months from what she was told by jail administrators. So her primary concern was that while the investigation dragged on for months nothing was being done to protect Sam from further abuse and retaliation. His mother said she was heartbroken over his mistreatment and the perceived indifference over his well-being in that facility on the part of jail staff and county officials.

Sam's mother also says that as a part of the investigative process Sam was subjected to a polygraph test to ascertain whether he was telling the truth about his complaint. She says that he passed that test but that she is unaware as to whether the guards were subjected to the same test. She says that she has worked tirelessly to try to get the abuse to stop but to no avail. She contacted several government officials and jail staff regarding the ongoing complaints but the same answer always came back... These investigations take months and in the meantime, her son had been put back under the care of the same guards who he filed a complaint against in the first place and she only wanted to know that her son would be safe while he repays his debt to society...

That was when she reached out to us out of desperation; reassurances by the jail that his needs were being met left her distrustful: "Of course, they are not and I know that the opposite is true. He is on 15 minute watch, in which guards use the opportunity to taunt, belittle, and harass him regularly. I might add that my son has been the constant target of physical and emotional abuse because of valid complaints he submitted against certain guards. He committed a crime, has pled guilty and is willing to do "time" for it-- however, he should not have to suffer unnecessary harassment and abuse..."

In the DOJ report on constitutional violations at the King County Jail, the investigatory process was sited as problematic in addition to problems with physical abuse by guards and a lack of reasonable medical care for injured detainees. If true, the allegations that Sam's mother brought to our attention would indicate that the jail has done little to address the problems the Department of Justice outlined for them and had offered to help them fix. Meanwhile, a starkly similar case of jail brutality in Chicago just cost that city $750,000 in a jury trial decision earlier this month.

While we are hopeful that the jail is investigating Sam's complaints, the main concern we had is that there was no mechanism to protect him from retaliation for making those complaints. We asked the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division if they had comments on the story or progress of talks between the county and the DOJ over the violations they uncovered at the jail but they chose not to respond to our requests this time and in the past have stated they do not comment on cases that are currently ongoing.

We also asked the DAJD for information about this case and whether there were any policies concerning retaliation in response to complaints by inmates. Their response was that they are not free to comment on any ongoing investigations but they did forward us a copy of what appears to be a letter to staff outlining that it is illegal and against DAJD policy to retaliate against anyone who files a complaint. However, the document did not outline any process or mechanism to protect someone who filed a complaint and was dated 07/16/08 so we cannot determine if this was sent to any staff members or just created in response to our request. (Link to KC DAJD Anti-Harassment Memo). The memo also does not mention any steps that could be taken to protect someone who alleges ongoing abuse or retaliation while investigations are proceeding.

Ultimately, while King County has been given ample opportunities to correct their mistakes, we also hope that they give Sam a chance to be held accountable for his mistakes in a manner that is consistent with the spirit and letter of the law that protects detainees from cruel and unusual punishment as well... regardless of whether the jail intends to be accountable for their own mistakes.

(Note: this article was originally set to publish on July 17^th while Sam was still in the King County Jail but we held it back at the request of Sam and his mother who feared retaliation for it being published. Sam has since been transferred to a different facility and has given us permission to publish his story as a result.)

New Police Blog Praises Old Jail Accreditation

The Seattle Post Intelligencer's new (and pretty biased) police blog recently praised the King County Correctional Facility (aka KCCF or King County Jail) for obtaining a National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCHCC) accreditation for detainee medical care.

Their blog spins this as if it's some new development that demonstrates some measure of improvement for the same jail that, less than a year ago:

• was roundly condemned by the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division for inadequate detainee medical treatment that directly caused at least one death.
• sued to fight off a potentially embarrassing inquest into a detainee's slow tortuous death due to a lack of medical care that resulted in a doctor on it's staff resigning.
• now faces a class action civil suit filed on behalf of several dozen detainees who had contracted MRSA infections from that facility due to unsanitary conditions and a lack of suitable wound care.
• was roundly lambasted in the news over insisting that the sexual abuse of detainees by guards found to be going on in the jail was merely a "training issue".
  

The problem with this report is that it's not new news... the King County Jail has had NCHCC accreditation for several years already because it was forced to obtain and maintain that accreditation due to the requirements negotiated during the Hammer v King County lawsuit in the mid 1990's. In fact, King County executive Ron Sims even cited that same accreditation last year when he issued a statement defending the jail and insisting that no detainees had their rights violated there when the DOJ stated the conditions and treatment there were in violation of constitutionally protected rights.

So, the jail already had that "prestigious" accreditation when all those problems occurred last year, so nothing has really changed between then and now... in other words it's not news. But the county government is spinning it like it's some great new thing and the reporters are allowing the jail to skate by without actually fixing the problems that still occur there by parroting news releases without doing their own research to verify what they are being told to print as news.

So long as the press is too lazy to research questionable press release claims made by the government and is willing to give the jail a pass on murdering and torturing detainees there is little chance that the jail will actually commit to any real changes, even in the face of several legal actions on behalf of detainees and the federal government. So, shame on the Seattle Post Intelligencer's staff writers for not doing the job the public entrusts them to do; to do their due diligence when reporting on the news in an unbiased and professional manner.

When Numbers Gamble With People's Lives

Since the mid-1990s, Washington State jail populations have increased exponentially. Obsolete facilities built decades ago to hold a handful of prisoners are now packed like sardine tins, with as many prisoners sleeping on the floor as in bunks. Overcrowding has resulted in numerous problems in terms of security and meeting prisoner medical needs.
- "Washington Jail Prisoners Suffer from Overcrowding, Abusive Guards, Inadequate Health Care and Indifferent Politicians" by Roger Smith at Prison Legal News on 06/27/2008

The Stranger’s Jonah Spangenthal-Lee recently posted that the city of Seattle may not need to build its own jail anytime soon since the projected growth of the jail population in the King County Jail was outdated and that the jail is actually under capacity. Of course, this is with the proviso that three floors of that facility are currently under renovation, which reduces the number of detainees it can hold. While I don’t doubt his numbers, most people don't understand that even with those numbers the jail can still have overcrowding problems due to near constant renovations and floor closures, but also because of the constant influx of short-term detainees that doesn’t get counted in those numbers as they come in for a night and are gone the next day. In any case, the numbers just don't match up with the reality inside that jail.

Let me explain a bit by telling you about my experience there… When I was there in November/December of 2006 (on charges I was eventually cleared of), I spent two weeks in what is called a “holding cell” which is a communal cell that holds about 5-6 wall mounted double bunks (upper/lower for a total of 10-12 beds) and about 6-8 plastic cots for an average of 18 beds per cell. However, on any given night there would be about 25 people held in such cells, many of which would have to sleep on the floor with a very thin ripped mat between them and the concrete, which would always get wet in the morning when people took showers and the drains backed up. Even when someone’s bedding and clothes would get soiled with dirty water they wouldn’t be able to get a change of clothes or bedding.

A rough representation of a typical holding cell at the King County Jail.

Well, detainees are only supposed to stay for a day or two in holding cells because even when you get moved into general population, it can still take up to a week to get a change of clothes and commissary. So, when people are held in holding cells for weeks, you get stuck wearing the same clothes and underwear for 3 weeks or more since when you’re in a holding cell you don’t get the chance to order commissary, which is the only way you can get a change of underwear, and you don’t get a change of sheets nor clothes, which is why there have been so many deadly infections at that facility. This is also why each review of the jail cited the excessive time people were held in holding tanks as a major problem… a problem that still hasn’t been addressed.

Of course, when I was there I had open wounds that were left untreated, so my clothes were encrusted with dried blood for weeks before I finally got a change of clothes. Also, in the holding cells, you don’t have access to books and the televisions will often be broken. Needless to say that when you’re hurt and denied any treatment, this only makes the pain you feel much worse since there is nothing you can do to take your mind off of it. Most detainees pace relentlessly to keep their minds occupied, but since I was stuck in my bunk because of my injuries, what I did was laid in my bunk and made decks of cards (pictured at top), dominoes, and chess pieces out of the extra request forms that nobody used each day, and which the guards wouldn’t take from me since they were ordered to ignore my medical requests. I’d give them out to the others just to keep the peace a bit as well since I made about 6 decks of cards and 2 sets of dominoes during that time.

Now, the numbers given might show spare capacity at the jail, but they don’t take into account the daily inflow/outflow that goes on there which boosts the number of detainees at night but then lets several go during the day and doesn’t account for any renovations or construction going on at any given time. (Even on floors that were used there would be cells here and there that were being repaired due to damage such as TVs ripped off wall mounts). This is how, for a jail supposedly underutilized, you would still see more detainees in each cell than those cells were designed to hold and how detainees would get sick from a lack of clean clothes and bedding because it took overly long to get into a regular cell.

I strongly suspect that King County is now open to extending the contracts it has with the area municipalities isn’t because it has free beds in it’s jails… but because of the severe budget shortfalls they have been trying to address. After all, those lucrative fees the county charges for each detainee, (often pre-trial and potentially innocent), housed in those jails to area cities is extra income the county doesn’t want to toss away just yet. The more they can pack in like sardines is all the better, no matter if it risks their well-being or not.

Of course, I'm not advocating the Seattle be allowed to build its own jail. Give Seattle's record of detainee treatment and police misconduct it wouldn't be a good thing. But perhaps with better officer management to reduce wrongful or unnecessary arrests, improvement of diversionary programs like drug court and mental health treatment, and some needed management changes at the existing facilities to improve detainee treatment and processing procedures there wouldn't be a need for another facility and more money would be saved without risking public safety or human rights.

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.