WHAT HAPPENED? ‘DEATH IN CUSTODY REPORTING ACT’ DEMANDS ANSWER
By Greater Long Beach
[EDITOR'S NOTE: This story by Hanna Levintova appeared on the website of Mother Jones magazine Tuesday, and GreaterLong Beach.com photographer Jeanine Birong noticed it right away---sensitized to the issue of in-custody deaths by the still-unexplained August 4 death of a prisoner in Long Beach Police Department custody. We contacted Levintova, explained the relevance of her report to Long Beach, and she granted permission to post the early paragraphs here.]
ON JULY 19, 2007, a 33-year-old Chinese immigrant named Hiu Lui Ng arrived at his final green-card interview. But instead of a green card, he got arrested—on a faulty, six-year-old deportation order that he had no idea existed.
A year later, Ng died in custody at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island. He had a fractured spine, bruises, a blood clot, and cancer that had gone untreated for so long that it had “spread throughout his entire body,” according to court records. Ng received medical care only five days before his death on the order of a judge, after begging—and ultimately, legally petitioning—to get it for seven months.
The grim details of Ng’s death likely would never have surfaced if his wife hadn’t teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union to file a suit—still ongoing—against Wyatt. Why? Because currently there isn’t a single federal law requiring state-run jails and prisons to report detainee deaths, or what caused them. Not one.
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee moved to change that, approving the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2011. If passed, the law would mandate that each time someone dies in the custody of law enforcement, the details of the death must be reported to the attorney general. The bill applies to people in the process of being arrested, inmates, and immigrants held in detention centers.
14 Comments
I think any state that receives federal funding for any law enforcement or custody application, should be required, as a condition of that funding, to report in-custody deaths and other data to US/DOJ and to report it in the manner US/DOJ requires.
Should a state legislature decline to receive such funding, I think they should still agree to voluntarily participate in this sort of nationwide data collection (as California currently does.)
If the state declines federal funding *and* declines to voluntarily participate, such data should *always* be collected at the state level, for all in-custody deaths within that state, so that the people of that state can better monitor this aspect of the operations of their own state’s criminal justice system.
The US/DOJ, Bureau of Justice Statistics has a very good resource page for such data at this link:
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/dcrp/dictabs.cfm
So all along the Cops could kill someone in custody and not report it. Why do I NOT find that surprising?
In my opinion no agency should investigate itself. In addition to this law, there should be a national agency that investigates local law enforcement transgressions.
Citizen Journalist Quote of the Day — Truly Horrible Lives
“If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.” — Charles Bukowski
“The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.” — Charles Bukowski
“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.” — Charles Bukowski
“I don’t like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.” — Charles Bukowski
“Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.” — Charles Bukowski
“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” — Charles Bukowski
“If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.” — Charles Bukowski
Source: brainyquote.com)
Mr. Ruehle’s statement that “all along the Cops could kill someone in custody and not report it” is false.
California Government Code Section 12525 is quite clear on this matter. In pertinent part:
“In any case in which a person dies while in the custody of any law enforcement agency or while in custody in a local or state correctional facility in this state, the law enforcement agency or the agency in charge of the correctional facility shall report in writing to the Attorney General, within 10 days after the death, all facts in the possession of the law enforcement agency or agency in charge of the correctional facility concerning the death.”
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=gov&group=12001-13000&file=12510-12530
Jeanine: I would prefer to *not* see the federal government assume such a primary responsibility. I would prefer that each State’s Attorney General have that responsibility within his or her jurisdiction (as is already the case in California) and that the US Attorney General have authority to investigate the State AG’s activities in this area where he or she deems it necessary. A State AG is, arguably, more responsive and responsible to the people in his or her jurisdiction.
As we have seen in a number of current and past examples, the current US Attorney General has been exceedingly…er…selective…about the laws he will or will not enforce. Individual States have little recourse or hope for a successful appeal whenever they disagree with such national level desicions that are more often based upon politics than a true desire to further the interests of justice.
Here’s a good, if now dated, Cal AG summary that analyzed California in-custody deaths from 1994-2003:
http://ag.ca.gov/cjsc/publications/misc/DINCoutlook.pdf
And another good resource with a more national-level focus:
http://www.ipicd.com/
Dwight K Snider, you forgot my favorite Charles Bukowski poem…..Thoughts While Eating a Sandwich:
we demand that our leaders possess
a certain clever charm, a certain mild wisdom, but no madness,
at least not madness at its
best.
Headline: Long Beach Police Officer Convicted of Statutory Rape of Minor
http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_18699869
The wife who is divorcing the Long Beach rapist cop read a statement aloud in court that said,” “You should be held to a higher standard for what you did because you abused your power of authority, being a highly respected police detective of the past 17 years.”
In my opinion, the only reason this cop was charged and convicted is because the incident occurred in Upland where his police union buddies could not protect him. The public never would have heard about this rape if it had occurred in Long Beach.
Greet should be responding shortly. Tic Toc, Tic Toc
When he does, keep in mind Long Beach Police Officer John B. Greet is one of those Police Union (POA) buddies who backs every Long Beach Police officer no matter what atrocious crime they are charged with.
Mr. Ruehle seems to have finally learned to expect that whenever he posts his false, fraudulent or otherwise misleading comments on sites like this, at least one person is now likely to call him on it.
Good.
Mr. Ruehle’s opinion that “the public never would have heard about this rape if it had occurred in Long Beach” has no factual foundation.
Mr. Ruehle *knows* this because he has personally posted links to stories of two other incidents involving former LBPD personnel and unlawful sex with minors that occurred in Long Beach, one in 1987 (Padilla) and another in 2009 (Frazier)
Despite *knowing* that his opinion had no factual foundation, Mr. Ruehle chose to post his fraudulent comment anyway.
Then Mr. Ruehle goes on to state that I am “one of those Police Union (POA) buddies who backs every Long Beach Police officer no matter what atrocious crime they are charged with”
This assertion is also false and he also knows it to be false because I am on record on this matter stating:
“These charges are tragic and, if true, acts that are utterly despicable when committed by anyone, let alone a person who had once sworn an oath to keep his “private life unsullied as an example to all.”
-and-
“Where we fail (to aspire to the ideals in the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics), it must be noted and dealt with swiftly and appropriately.”
-and-
“If these charges prove true, in my opinion there is no prison cell dark or dank enough in which the defendant should spend the rest of his natural life…let alone the “four years and four months” the PT is reporting to be possible upon conviction.”
http://belmontshore.patch.com/articles/lbpd-officer-charged-with-sex-crimes-has-left-job
Like so many other comments Mr. Ruehle posts about me, this one also has no foundation in fact.
by brother dies in Santa Ana,California 1/2/12 53 years old and was in the protection of the police,O.C. Register reporter,Sean Emery writes.and now we wonder is any of us safe in the hands of people we pay and trusted to keep us safe,and will this be pushed aside.I’m not sure will I need a lawyer that will help us.my 80 year old mother and I are not well off in health and finances do not even have the money to give a proper funnel.we will have to call the O.C.corners today and see how to deal with this.I hope he did not have to suffer much.what a new year to start with.
Mario Marin 53 dies in police protection,what did happen.
the los angeles county sherrifs killed my father while he was in custody in 2003 and they got away with it they put him in a choke hold then rushed him to the hospital 4 days later hes dead and they claimed he hung himself
they can do whatever they want there the biggest gang out there