By Bob Walsh
Tierne Ewing had the misfortune to be married to a violent asshole. Earlier this year her husband kidnapped her, locked her in a closet, pistol whipped her, choked her out, burned and beat her and forced her to sleep with a noose around her neck. He repeatedly pointed a gun at her and threatened to kill her.
On July 8 she managed to get away when her hubby allowed her to enter a bank. She got the tellers to call the cops. When the cops showed up she was afraid to even leave the bank.
Hubby was arrested on multiple charges, and later released on $100,000 bail.
Two months later he again kidnapped his wife and murdered her, then shot himself to death.
I humbly and respectfully suggest the authorities in Washington County, PA. need to review their bail criteria.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Constitution prohibits excessive bail. The purpose of bail is to assure the accused’s appearance in court, not to protect a wife from her husband from hell.
Friday, September 09, 2016
MIRACLE ON DEVIL MOUNTAIN
By Bob Walsh
OK, it might not be a miracle miracle, but it is noteworthy, especially if you are a flower freak. It ranks up there with finding a live Passenger Pigeon or Dodo bird.
The Mount Diablo Buckwheat is a wildflower that was thought to be extinct. A patch of it was recently found on the 6,000 acre Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve near Antioch, CA.
The flower patch was actually discovered in May but it’s location was kept a deep, dark secret for fear that wild flower junkies would trample all over it.
Actually the thing was rediscovered 11 years ago, but had been thought to be extinct for nearly 70 years previously. It then took a long hiatus, but popped up again.
The plant, known officially as Eriogonum Truncatum, was first noted and recorded in 1862 on a ranch near Brentwood on land owned by John Marsh, one of the first Anglo settlers in the area. It has since been noted in only seven locations.
I realize in the great scope of things this isn’t a big deal, but I do think it is kind of neat. Maybe the Passenger Pigeon or Dodo bird will be next. After all, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker showed up long after it was thought to be extinct, so there is hope.
OK, it might not be a miracle miracle, but it is noteworthy, especially if you are a flower freak. It ranks up there with finding a live Passenger Pigeon or Dodo bird.
The Mount Diablo Buckwheat is a wildflower that was thought to be extinct. A patch of it was recently found on the 6,000 acre Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve near Antioch, CA.
The flower patch was actually discovered in May but it’s location was kept a deep, dark secret for fear that wild flower junkies would trample all over it.
Actually the thing was rediscovered 11 years ago, but had been thought to be extinct for nearly 70 years previously. It then took a long hiatus, but popped up again.
The plant, known officially as Eriogonum Truncatum, was first noted and recorded in 1862 on a ranch near Brentwood on land owned by John Marsh, one of the first Anglo settlers in the area. It has since been noted in only seven locations.
I realize in the great scope of things this isn’t a big deal, but I do think it is kind of neat. Maybe the Passenger Pigeon or Dodo bird will be next. After all, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker showed up long after it was thought to be extinct, so there is hope.
WHERE CALIFORNAI DEATH ROW INMATES STAND
End the death penalty or speed up executions?
By Paige St. John
Los Angeles Times
September 7, 2016
California voters face two capital punishment choices on the November ballot: End the death penalty or speed the way for execution.
On death row, inmates are conflicted on the prospects of one-shot appeals, mandated lawyer assignments and simplified execution rules meant to rekindle a capital punishment system that hasn’t executed anyone in a decade, or the simple alternative, throw out the death penalty in favor of life without parole.
Scott Pinholster has more reason than most to care. He's one of only a dozen inmates, out of 747 California condemned, who have exhausted their legal appeals. In his words, he is “ready to go.”
But Pinholster expressed ambivalence — about the vote and about his own fate.
It’s been 34 years since he stabbed to death two men who barged in on the robbery of a drug house. The hope he once placed on legal appeals setting him free faded decades ago. And he doubts voters who refused to end the death penalty in 2012 have changed their minds.
“If they start up executions, I'll be in line, but it doesn’t matter,” the 57-year-old said in a drawl barely audible through the glass door of a solitary confinement cell. His neck and chest are as burly as when he was first locked up, but the thick black handlebar mustache is now salt-and-pepper. His bunk, cleared of bedding to double as a desk, was stacked with ink drawings done in painstaking detail.
“After 30 years, you don’t care one way or the other,” he said.
But pre-vote opinions among the condemned are varied at San Quentin, the historic San Francisco Bay prison that by state law houses both a new, never-used execution chamber and the state’s condemned men. In interviews by phone and during two rare tours, condemned inmates embraced the repeal of the death penalty even as others favored faster appeals, despite accelerating their own march to execution. And others voiced anxiety and predictions of violence if they were cast out into the general prison population.
“They’re a minority,” said Paul Tuilaepa, pacing beneath the bright sun in a kennel-sized exercise yard. Tuilaepa, condemned because he killed a man in 1986 who knocked down his partner during a bar robbery, said he was certain most welcome an end to the threat of death, “they just don’t say it.”
If the death penalty is divisive, it is more so on death row.
“Death row is complicated,” said state prison spokeswoman Terry Thornton, who has been fielding questions since 1999 about the Western world’s largest assemblage of men sentenced to die for their crimes.
Two measures on the November ballot propose to fix what proponents contend is a broken capital punishment system. Proposition 62 would convert death sentences to life without parole. Proposition 66 would set time limits on appeals, limit challenges to execution methods and allow the state to house condemned men outside San Quentin. If both measures pass, the one with more votes would become law.
The last time California voters went to the polls on capital punishment (Proposition 34 in 2012 would also have replaced the death penalty with life without parole), death row tensions ran so high the entire population was placed on suicide watch. Thornton said 24-hour vigils are again planned during voting this November to “address the mental health needs” of the condemned.
At San Quentin, the danger is real. In 2010, a despondent condemned man hung himself five days after a judge converted his death sentence to life.
Three-fourths of the condemned men at San Quentin live in East Block, a cavernous 1930s granite block building in which steel-fronted cells are stacked five high in two long rows. The inmates eat, sleep or otherwise occupy themselves in these single steel-front cells, allowed to leave a few times a week in small groups to exercise, or alone to shower or go to the law library.
Their days are largely undisturbed.
There are few newcomers and fewer departures. There have been only 13 executions since 1978, none since 2006.
Outside, the state’s 34 prisons remain crowded, with men double-bunked in cells built for one. Maximum-security yards are tense, rocked by the arrival of gang leaders released from solitary confinement, the result of a 2015 federal court settlement to disband the state’s gang management practice of indefinite isolation.
Many condemned inmates are leery of joining that world.
“There's a lot of anxiety building up. Some of them are scared,” said Clifton Perry, 47, condemned since 1995 for shooting a clerk during a robbery. “Me, I don't know if I can handle a bunkie after 20 years of living by myself.”
Perry’s worries include being moved from San Quentin, where he has struck up friendships with a college professor and a poet who visit and mentor him in theology and prose. How, he wonders, does that happen if you are a lifer locked away in the north woods at Crescent City’s Pelican Bay?
And he worries that men, “after being here chained up like monkeys and animals in a cage,” will have trouble adjusting to yards where violence is frequent.
“I’ll have to hurt someone,” was the immediate reaction of James Thompson, 64, grizzled and sitting in a tennis-court-size exercise yard. A guard stood overhead with a loaded rifle while a line of aging, heavily tattooed men in white boxer shorts paced in military precision.
On a new yard he will have to “re-establish” himself. After 20 years, Thompson is “comfortable” on East Block.
He is experienced in the differences between death row and ordinary prison. Before he robbed and killed a man in California, Thompson served a long stretch locked up in Texas, also for murder. What rubs him about California is the 20 years his appeal has been in limbo. He agrees with other condemned inmates who favor the ballot proposal to keep the death penalty but speed appeals.
“If you are going to execute me, execute me,” Thompson said. “But if you are going to let me go, let me go.”
Death row experts said states that have repealed the death penalty have successfully absorbed the condemned into their general populations, though in Connecticut, two killers had to be sent to Pennsylvania to ensure their safety.
California would relocate condemned inmates through the same assessment program it uses for new arrivals, Thornton said, assigning them to yards and cells based on their security threat.
There are other reasons condemned inmates may not root for an end to the death penalty, said Terry Kupers, a Berkeley-based forensic psychiatrist and expert on prison mental health.
Condemned inmates are guaranteed relatively extensive legal representation that can foster hope. They receive better-than-par psychiatric care. And they attract the attention of a large international anti-death penalty community.
In the general population, “they'll spend the rest of the lives behind bars,” Kupers said. “Prisoners are forgotten.”
By Paige St. John
Los Angeles Times
September 7, 2016
California voters face two capital punishment choices on the November ballot: End the death penalty or speed the way for execution.
On death row, inmates are conflicted on the prospects of one-shot appeals, mandated lawyer assignments and simplified execution rules meant to rekindle a capital punishment system that hasn’t executed anyone in a decade, or the simple alternative, throw out the death penalty in favor of life without parole.
Scott Pinholster has more reason than most to care. He's one of only a dozen inmates, out of 747 California condemned, who have exhausted their legal appeals. In his words, he is “ready to go.”
But Pinholster expressed ambivalence — about the vote and about his own fate.
It’s been 34 years since he stabbed to death two men who barged in on the robbery of a drug house. The hope he once placed on legal appeals setting him free faded decades ago. And he doubts voters who refused to end the death penalty in 2012 have changed their minds.
“If they start up executions, I'll be in line, but it doesn’t matter,” the 57-year-old said in a drawl barely audible through the glass door of a solitary confinement cell. His neck and chest are as burly as when he was first locked up, but the thick black handlebar mustache is now salt-and-pepper. His bunk, cleared of bedding to double as a desk, was stacked with ink drawings done in painstaking detail.
“After 30 years, you don’t care one way or the other,” he said.
But pre-vote opinions among the condemned are varied at San Quentin, the historic San Francisco Bay prison that by state law houses both a new, never-used execution chamber and the state’s condemned men. In interviews by phone and during two rare tours, condemned inmates embraced the repeal of the death penalty even as others favored faster appeals, despite accelerating their own march to execution. And others voiced anxiety and predictions of violence if they were cast out into the general prison population.
“They’re a minority,” said Paul Tuilaepa, pacing beneath the bright sun in a kennel-sized exercise yard. Tuilaepa, condemned because he killed a man in 1986 who knocked down his partner during a bar robbery, said he was certain most welcome an end to the threat of death, “they just don’t say it.”
If the death penalty is divisive, it is more so on death row.
“Death row is complicated,” said state prison spokeswoman Terry Thornton, who has been fielding questions since 1999 about the Western world’s largest assemblage of men sentenced to die for their crimes.
Two measures on the November ballot propose to fix what proponents contend is a broken capital punishment system. Proposition 62 would convert death sentences to life without parole. Proposition 66 would set time limits on appeals, limit challenges to execution methods and allow the state to house condemned men outside San Quentin. If both measures pass, the one with more votes would become law.
The last time California voters went to the polls on capital punishment (Proposition 34 in 2012 would also have replaced the death penalty with life without parole), death row tensions ran so high the entire population was placed on suicide watch. Thornton said 24-hour vigils are again planned during voting this November to “address the mental health needs” of the condemned.
At San Quentin, the danger is real. In 2010, a despondent condemned man hung himself five days after a judge converted his death sentence to life.
Three-fourths of the condemned men at San Quentin live in East Block, a cavernous 1930s granite block building in which steel-fronted cells are stacked five high in two long rows. The inmates eat, sleep or otherwise occupy themselves in these single steel-front cells, allowed to leave a few times a week in small groups to exercise, or alone to shower or go to the law library.
Their days are largely undisturbed.
There are few newcomers and fewer departures. There have been only 13 executions since 1978, none since 2006.
Outside, the state’s 34 prisons remain crowded, with men double-bunked in cells built for one. Maximum-security yards are tense, rocked by the arrival of gang leaders released from solitary confinement, the result of a 2015 federal court settlement to disband the state’s gang management practice of indefinite isolation.
Many condemned inmates are leery of joining that world.
“There's a lot of anxiety building up. Some of them are scared,” said Clifton Perry, 47, condemned since 1995 for shooting a clerk during a robbery. “Me, I don't know if I can handle a bunkie after 20 years of living by myself.”
Perry’s worries include being moved from San Quentin, where he has struck up friendships with a college professor and a poet who visit and mentor him in theology and prose. How, he wonders, does that happen if you are a lifer locked away in the north woods at Crescent City’s Pelican Bay?
And he worries that men, “after being here chained up like monkeys and animals in a cage,” will have trouble adjusting to yards where violence is frequent.
“I’ll have to hurt someone,” was the immediate reaction of James Thompson, 64, grizzled and sitting in a tennis-court-size exercise yard. A guard stood overhead with a loaded rifle while a line of aging, heavily tattooed men in white boxer shorts paced in military precision.
On a new yard he will have to “re-establish” himself. After 20 years, Thompson is “comfortable” on East Block.
He is experienced in the differences between death row and ordinary prison. Before he robbed and killed a man in California, Thompson served a long stretch locked up in Texas, also for murder. What rubs him about California is the 20 years his appeal has been in limbo. He agrees with other condemned inmates who favor the ballot proposal to keep the death penalty but speed appeals.
“If you are going to execute me, execute me,” Thompson said. “But if you are going to let me go, let me go.”
Death row experts said states that have repealed the death penalty have successfully absorbed the condemned into their general populations, though in Connecticut, two killers had to be sent to Pennsylvania to ensure their safety.
California would relocate condemned inmates through the same assessment program it uses for new arrivals, Thornton said, assigning them to yards and cells based on their security threat.
There are other reasons condemned inmates may not root for an end to the death penalty, said Terry Kupers, a Berkeley-based forensic psychiatrist and expert on prison mental health.
Condemned inmates are guaranteed relatively extensive legal representation that can foster hope. They receive better-than-par psychiatric care. And they attract the attention of a large international anti-death penalty community.
In the general population, “they'll spend the rest of the lives behind bars,” Kupers said. “Prisoners are forgotten.”
MAINE WORKS
A temp agency that gives ex-inmates a job, and a ride to work
By Claire Martin
The New York Times
September 3, 2016
In early August, Mark Eason was released from the Charleston Correctional Facility in Maine, where he had served eight months for drug trafficking. Given that it wasn’t his first felony incarceration, he knew his employment options would be limited.
The last time he had gotten out of prison, in 2005, the only work he was able to find was so low-paying that he couldn’t support himself and his family. So he went back to selling heroin.
“I had to survive,” he said. “If I have nothing, then I’m going to do what I know. And unfortunately, that’s dealing drugs.”
But his experience this time has been entirely different. Three days after emerging from prison, he was making $11 an hour loading trucks for a window company. It’s a job he loves, and one he says he wouldn’t have gotten without the Portland-based temporary employment agency MaineWorks.
All of MaineWorks’s 70 workers have committed crimes “directly related or derivative of substance use disorder,” said its founder and owner, Margo Walsh. The agency specializes in landscaping, industrial construction, and highway, bridge and road construction projects.
Ms. Walsh also helped secure Mr. Eason a spot in a sober-living home, picked him up and drove him to work on his first day and is helping him get dentures to mask dental damage caused by years of drug use.
Ms. Walsh is a former recruiter for Goldman Sachs’s investment banking division in New York, and for the human resources consulting firm Hewitt. She founded MaineWorks five years ago during a period of personal and financial hardship.
She had struggled with alcoholism, and she attended rehab in the late 1990s. She then moved with her family to Maine, where she began volunteering at a drug and alcohol clinic and at the county jail, giving talks about recovery.
In 2009, Ms. Walsh attended a local networking event that featured the lawyer F. Lee Bailey as a guest speaker. Mr. Bailey talked about the lack of job opportunities for convicted felons.
“Too many of these people get out, they hit a blind wall everywhere they turn, and they give up,” Mr. Bailey said. “They say, ‘Well, I guess I better go rob a bank or I’ll go hungry, or more likely a 7-Eleven or a liquor store.’”
Mr. Bailey recalls that his speech highlighted a program in which businesspeople gave jobs to carefully chosen early-release convicts and mentored them while they got back on their feet. It had been particularly successful in Minneapolis, where, Mr. Bailey said, it was able to reduce the recidivism rate to 19 percent from 73 percent.
Ms. Walsh approached Mr. Bailey after the speech and asked how she could set up a similar program in Maine.
“Margo, no one will hire them,” she recalled him saying. “That’s why I’m here talking about it.”
Mr. Bailey wasn’t aware of any for-profit businesses that were fully devoted to this model, so Ms. Walsh decided she would fill the gap. But she had a problem: a lack of start-up capital.
“I was a single mother, head of household, on MaineCare and SNAP benefits, which is food stamps,” Ms. Walsh said. (MaineCare is the state’s version of Medicaid.) “I had no assets, nothing,” she said. “Not even a 401(k). I blew that all when I was drinking.”
In the beginning, she worked out of her home to keep expenses low. She turned to her two sisters for help, each of whom lent her $2,000. And she secured a $2,500 asset-backed loan against her Subaru — money she used to make her first payroll.
Securing clients for MaineWorks turned out to be the easy part. Ms. Walsh credits changing attitudes toward addiction as part of the reason.
The MaineWorks business model differs from that of a traditional temporary employment agency in that it’s not a day-labor company where workers line up in the morning, work during the day and get paid at the end of the afternoon.
“Our guys are paid weekly, they’re fully employed, and they’re eligible for unemployment,” she said. They can also get loans and advances on their paychecks.
All of this makes for high expenses and low profit margins. In addition, one goal of the business is to help workers secure permanent positions with MaineWorks clients. This means Ms. Walsh needs to constantly recruit new laborers.
But she says she is able to charge construction companies more than her competitors do. And despite her high costs, she quickly started making money. In 2012, MaineWorks’s revenue was $250,000. By 2015, it hit $1.6 million. In March, the United States Small Business Administration named her Maine’s Small Businessperson of the Year.
When a worker first starts at MaineWorks, there is a two-week trial period. Then Ms. Walsh and her small team of office administrators meet with the employee to discuss the future.
“We say, ‘O.K., what do you need to move your life forward?’” Ms. Walsh said. The answers range from a driver’s license to dentures to housing. MaineWorks then refers the worker to various partners it has in the community, some of which provide free services.
“We don’t look at it as just trying to get bodies in there,” said Antonio Ramos, who started out as a day laborer for MaineWorks in 2012 and is now a project manager. “We’re generally trying to find people who are into their recovery or people who want to do something different with their lives and they just need an opportunity.”
The company pays its workers $10.10 an hour to start, which is well above Maine’s $7.50-an-hour minimum wage. Ms. Walsh estimates that half of her employees make $12 an hour and some make as much as $21 an hour.
But there are real challenges to working with a population of former prison inmates and addicts. Simply getting employees to show up to work on time can be difficult.
“It’s like herding cats, basically,” Ms. Walsh said, adding that most workers are 19 to 30 years old. “Many of them were young when they became addicted,” so they face cognitive difficulties. “They’re very scattered.” Hence the early-morning phone calls and ride offers.
For those like Mr. Eason, Ms. Walsh is something of a savior. In the coming weeks, he expects to start working full time at the window company he has been doing temporary work for through MaineWorks.
Mr. Bailey credits Ms. Walsh’s strong leadership for her success. She eschews the tough-love approach. If MaineWorks employees relapse, they aren’t sent out to work, but neither are they let go from the company. Instead, Ms. Walsh and her team help get them medical help or a bed in a sober house.
“It’s the most definitive program I’ve seen yet, and I’ve been at this reform business for 40-something years,” Mr. Bailey said.
The company has so far expanded to Tennessee, and Ms. Walsh has plans to move into New Hampshire and Massachusetts. She is also hoping to form a partnership with a large foundation to help spur quick growth nationwide.
“People feel like they’ve been able to replace their addiction with a sense of purpose and belonging,” Ms. Walsh said. “Once you put the heroin down, you need a replacement, and it can’t be a video game controller. So work is the answer.”
By Claire Martin
The New York Times
September 3, 2016
In early August, Mark Eason was released from the Charleston Correctional Facility in Maine, where he had served eight months for drug trafficking. Given that it wasn’t his first felony incarceration, he knew his employment options would be limited.
The last time he had gotten out of prison, in 2005, the only work he was able to find was so low-paying that he couldn’t support himself and his family. So he went back to selling heroin.
“I had to survive,” he said. “If I have nothing, then I’m going to do what I know. And unfortunately, that’s dealing drugs.”
But his experience this time has been entirely different. Three days after emerging from prison, he was making $11 an hour loading trucks for a window company. It’s a job he loves, and one he says he wouldn’t have gotten without the Portland-based temporary employment agency MaineWorks.
All of MaineWorks’s 70 workers have committed crimes “directly related or derivative of substance use disorder,” said its founder and owner, Margo Walsh. The agency specializes in landscaping, industrial construction, and highway, bridge and road construction projects.
Ms. Walsh also helped secure Mr. Eason a spot in a sober-living home, picked him up and drove him to work on his first day and is helping him get dentures to mask dental damage caused by years of drug use.
Ms. Walsh is a former recruiter for Goldman Sachs’s investment banking division in New York, and for the human resources consulting firm Hewitt. She founded MaineWorks five years ago during a period of personal and financial hardship.
She had struggled with alcoholism, and she attended rehab in the late 1990s. She then moved with her family to Maine, where she began volunteering at a drug and alcohol clinic and at the county jail, giving talks about recovery.
In 2009, Ms. Walsh attended a local networking event that featured the lawyer F. Lee Bailey as a guest speaker. Mr. Bailey talked about the lack of job opportunities for convicted felons.
“Too many of these people get out, they hit a blind wall everywhere they turn, and they give up,” Mr. Bailey said. “They say, ‘Well, I guess I better go rob a bank or I’ll go hungry, or more likely a 7-Eleven or a liquor store.’”
Mr. Bailey recalls that his speech highlighted a program in which businesspeople gave jobs to carefully chosen early-release convicts and mentored them while they got back on their feet. It had been particularly successful in Minneapolis, where, Mr. Bailey said, it was able to reduce the recidivism rate to 19 percent from 73 percent.
Ms. Walsh approached Mr. Bailey after the speech and asked how she could set up a similar program in Maine.
“Margo, no one will hire them,” she recalled him saying. “That’s why I’m here talking about it.”
Mr. Bailey wasn’t aware of any for-profit businesses that were fully devoted to this model, so Ms. Walsh decided she would fill the gap. But she had a problem: a lack of start-up capital.
“I was a single mother, head of household, on MaineCare and SNAP benefits, which is food stamps,” Ms. Walsh said. (MaineCare is the state’s version of Medicaid.) “I had no assets, nothing,” she said. “Not even a 401(k). I blew that all when I was drinking.”
In the beginning, she worked out of her home to keep expenses low. She turned to her two sisters for help, each of whom lent her $2,000. And she secured a $2,500 asset-backed loan against her Subaru — money she used to make her first payroll.
Securing clients for MaineWorks turned out to be the easy part. Ms. Walsh credits changing attitudes toward addiction as part of the reason.
The MaineWorks business model differs from that of a traditional temporary employment agency in that it’s not a day-labor company where workers line up in the morning, work during the day and get paid at the end of the afternoon.
“Our guys are paid weekly, they’re fully employed, and they’re eligible for unemployment,” she said. They can also get loans and advances on their paychecks.
All of this makes for high expenses and low profit margins. In addition, one goal of the business is to help workers secure permanent positions with MaineWorks clients. This means Ms. Walsh needs to constantly recruit new laborers.
But she says she is able to charge construction companies more than her competitors do. And despite her high costs, she quickly started making money. In 2012, MaineWorks’s revenue was $250,000. By 2015, it hit $1.6 million. In March, the United States Small Business Administration named her Maine’s Small Businessperson of the Year.
When a worker first starts at MaineWorks, there is a two-week trial period. Then Ms. Walsh and her small team of office administrators meet with the employee to discuss the future.
“We say, ‘O.K., what do you need to move your life forward?’” Ms. Walsh said. The answers range from a driver’s license to dentures to housing. MaineWorks then refers the worker to various partners it has in the community, some of which provide free services.
“We don’t look at it as just trying to get bodies in there,” said Antonio Ramos, who started out as a day laborer for MaineWorks in 2012 and is now a project manager. “We’re generally trying to find people who are into their recovery or people who want to do something different with their lives and they just need an opportunity.”
The company pays its workers $10.10 an hour to start, which is well above Maine’s $7.50-an-hour minimum wage. Ms. Walsh estimates that half of her employees make $12 an hour and some make as much as $21 an hour.
But there are real challenges to working with a population of former prison inmates and addicts. Simply getting employees to show up to work on time can be difficult.
“It’s like herding cats, basically,” Ms. Walsh said, adding that most workers are 19 to 30 years old. “Many of them were young when they became addicted,” so they face cognitive difficulties. “They’re very scattered.” Hence the early-morning phone calls and ride offers.
For those like Mr. Eason, Ms. Walsh is something of a savior. In the coming weeks, he expects to start working full time at the window company he has been doing temporary work for through MaineWorks.
Mr. Bailey credits Ms. Walsh’s strong leadership for her success. She eschews the tough-love approach. If MaineWorks employees relapse, they aren’t sent out to work, but neither are they let go from the company. Instead, Ms. Walsh and her team help get them medical help or a bed in a sober house.
“It’s the most definitive program I’ve seen yet, and I’ve been at this reform business for 40-something years,” Mr. Bailey said.
The company has so far expanded to Tennessee, and Ms. Walsh has plans to move into New Hampshire and Massachusetts. She is also hoping to form a partnership with a large foundation to help spur quick growth nationwide.
“People feel like they’ve been able to replace their addiction with a sense of purpose and belonging,” Ms. Walsh said. “Once you put the heroin down, you need a replacement, and it can’t be a video game controller. So work is the answer.”
Thursday, September 08, 2016
HOCKEY COACH: IF YOU DON’T STAND, YOU’LL SIT
“If any of my players sit on the bench for the national anthem, they will sit there the rest of the game,” is what Team USA hockey coach John Tortorella said when asked about the Colin Kaepernick protest
Newsday
September 7, 2016
If you don’t stand, you’ll sit.
That’s what Team USA hockey coach John Tortorella said when asked about the Colin Kaepernick protest.
The former Rangers coach told ESPN, “If any of my players sit on the bench for the national anthem, they will sit there the rest of the game.”
Tortorella will be coaching the United States team in the World Cup of Hockey, a two-week tournament that begins Sept. 17.
EDITOR’S NOTE: During the World Cup of Hockey games, the teams stand during the playing not only of their country’s anthem, but also for the opposing team’s national anthem.
The National Hockey league has teams in Canadian and U.S. cities. The teams are composed of Canadian, Russian, Swedish, Czech, American and players from several other countries. All NHL players stand when the Canadian or American anthems are played, regardless of what country they’re citizens of. I am sure the NHL would not tolerate any player sitting down while the Canadian or American anthem was being played.
And before you start saying hockey is a white man’s game, please note that there are some outstanding black players in the NHL.
So, shame on the National Football League for its support of Kaepernick’s stand up by sitting down protest!
Newsday
September 7, 2016
If you don’t stand, you’ll sit.
That’s what Team USA hockey coach John Tortorella said when asked about the Colin Kaepernick protest.
The former Rangers coach told ESPN, “If any of my players sit on the bench for the national anthem, they will sit there the rest of the game.”
Tortorella will be coaching the United States team in the World Cup of Hockey, a two-week tournament that begins Sept. 17.
EDITOR’S NOTE: During the World Cup of Hockey games, the teams stand during the playing not only of their country’s anthem, but also for the opposing team’s national anthem.
The National Hockey league has teams in Canadian and U.S. cities. The teams are composed of Canadian, Russian, Swedish, Czech, American and players from several other countries. All NHL players stand when the Canadian or American anthems are played, regardless of what country they’re citizens of. I am sure the NHL would not tolerate any player sitting down while the Canadian or American anthem was being played.
And before you start saying hockey is a white man’s game, please note that there are some outstanding black players in the NHL.
So, shame on the National Football League for its support of Kaepernick’s stand up by sitting down protest!
LONG WEEKENDS ARE A BITCH IN CHI-TOWN
By Bob Walsh
The violence-ridden and gang-infested shithole that was once the #2 city in America racked up 13 homicides over the long Labor Day weekend. Nine of those murders happened on Monday. Another 30 people were known to have been shot.
Among those shot in Chicago was a pregnant woman, who was gutshot. She was apparently collateral damage and is now in critical condition. The condition of the baby, which was delivered, is not publicly known.
This brings to 488 the total number of homicides in Chicago this calendar year, almost all of them black people shot by other black people. For all of last year there were only 481 homicides.
There have been more homicides in Chicago this year than in New York City and Los Angeles combined. I guess that strict Chicago gun control is working like a charm.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The blacks who live on Chicago’s South Side and West side, may not be able to spell ‘cat’ unless you spotted them the ‘c’ and ‘t’, but they sure excel in shooting at each other.
The violence-ridden and gang-infested shithole that was once the #2 city in America racked up 13 homicides over the long Labor Day weekend. Nine of those murders happened on Monday. Another 30 people were known to have been shot.
Among those shot in Chicago was a pregnant woman, who was gutshot. She was apparently collateral damage and is now in critical condition. The condition of the baby, which was delivered, is not publicly known.
This brings to 488 the total number of homicides in Chicago this calendar year, almost all of them black people shot by other black people. For all of last year there were only 481 homicides.
There have been more homicides in Chicago this year than in New York City and Los Angeles combined. I guess that strict Chicago gun control is working like a charm.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The blacks who live on Chicago’s South Side and West side, may not be able to spell ‘cat’ unless you spotted them the ‘c’ and ‘t’, but they sure excel in shooting at each other.
THE FORGOTTEN WHITE SLAVES
The Irish slaves that time and biased history books forgot
By John Martin | Global Research | March 17, 2015
They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.
Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.
We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? We know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade.
But, are we talking about African slavery? King James II and Charles I also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.
The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on its own to end its participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.
Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories.
But, where are our public (and PRIVATE) schools???? Where are the history books? Why is it so seldom discussed?
Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims merit more than a mention from an unknown writer?
Or is their story to be one that their English pirates intended: To (unlike the African book) have the Irish story utterly and completely disappear as if it never happened.
None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.
The original source of this article is Oped News and Global Research
By John Martin | Global Research | March 17, 2015
They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.
Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.
We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? We know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade.
But, are we talking about African slavery? King James II and Charles I also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.
The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on its own to end its participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.
Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories.
But, where are our public (and PRIVATE) schools???? Where are the history books? Why is it so seldom discussed?
Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims merit more than a mention from an unknown writer?
Or is their story to be one that their English pirates intended: To (unlike the African book) have the Irish story utterly and completely disappear as if it never happened.
None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.
The original source of this article is Oped News and Global Research
OUR TREATMENT OF AMERICA’S INDIANS WAS ABSOLUTELY ATROCIOUS
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman decided on a ‘final solution’ for the plains Indians because “We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress of the railroads.”
If Colin Kaepernick were an American Indian, he would have a good reason to bitch about the oppression of his people. And during the playing of the national anthem, he would be justified to stand up by sitting down in protest.
The treatment of America’s Indians following the Civil War was absolutely atrocious. The war against the Indians was waged in order to ensure the progress and protection of the railroads. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s ‘final solution’ for the Indians of the Great Plains was to kill off all the young men who were capable of warring against the railroads and white settlers.
Here is an excerpt from “Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman” by Michael Fellman:
Almost three million soldiers had enlisted in the American Civil War. By contrast, it only took 25,000 soldiers after that to prosecute America's tragic war to subdue the Indians (Native Americans) in the West, largely because much of this terrible work was done by disease, settlement, and the slaughter of the buffalo. This ignominious war, in many respects over by time of the death of Sitting Bull in 1890, was led by the triumvirate of the most successful generals of the Civil War, President Ulysses Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan:
"With the south at last subdued, American public energies could return to the long-term project of economic development and westward expansion. ... The key to the realization of this great national and international project, which was the American version of the shared expansionist dream of the Western world, was the transcon¬tinental railroad. The chief impediment to this objective was the no¬madic, buffalo-hunting, warlike Indians of the Great Plains, with whom white Americans were convinced they never could cohabit. They would have to be dealt with while the railroads were abuilding. And they would be combatted only by a small army, as Congress re¬duced it to fifty thousand, then to thirty-five thousand, and finally to twenty-five thousand in the first few postwar years. ...
"When pushed by this or that incident, [General William Tecumseh] Sherman's racial contempt would emerge through his more distancing natural law justifications. 'We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress of [the railroads], a work of national and world-wide im-portance,' he insisted to Grant in 1867... Sherman noted to Grant that 'increased [U.S.] population [migrating West] ... will divide the northern and southern Indians permanently, when [the army] can take them in de¬tail.'
"Disease, slaughter of the buffalo, their economic base, and intrusion of white settlement, together with the extermination of the most war¬like younger men, all were serving to eliminate the Indians. The cap¬stone, literally uniting the white surge, was, as Sherman had always believed it would be, the railroad. Railroads began to move settlers west, and goods, like wheat and buffalo hides, to market. They also made the small army far more mobile and capable of concentration in their attacks on the shrinking bands of 'hostile' Indians. The army was able to guard the railroads so effectively that raiding Indians failed to slow construction. ... With the Union Pacific through, and three more lines to follow in swift succession, with all their atten¬dant social, economic, and racial ramifications, Sherman could shove the Indians out of his mind while he and Progress were in the process of finishing them off on the ground.
"The remaining Indians were nearing starvation. 'I think the Sioux are now so dependent on us that they will have to do whatever they are required to do,' Sherman told Sheridan triumphantly and only slightly prematurely, on November 20, 1875. After a bit more mopping up he could believe he had achieved the final solution to the Indian problem as he had defined it a decade earlier -- extermination for the hostile; re¬duction to dependency in out-of-the-way reservations for the rest. And it really had been cheap in white soldiers' lives: From 1867 to 1884, 565 officers and men were killed and 691 wounded, far less than in an average Civil War battle. Financially as well, the war had proved no great drain on the treasury: 'It is all moonshine about the great cost of the war,' Sherman bragged to a friend in 1875."
EDITOR’S NOTE: Obama and the Europeans want the Israelis to return the ‘occupied territories’ to the Palestinians . Those lands were captured by the Israelis after armies from several Arab countries attacked Israel with the intention of wiping the ‘Zionist entity’ off the map. In other words, unlike the U.S. war against the Indians, Israel battled the Arabs strictly in order to survive.
I say that Israel should return the ‘occupied territories’ to the Palestinians when the United States returns the lands it occupied that had belonged to and was taken from the Indians by military force..
If Colin Kaepernick were an American Indian, he would have a good reason to bitch about the oppression of his people. And during the playing of the national anthem, he would be justified to stand up by sitting down in protest.
The treatment of America’s Indians following the Civil War was absolutely atrocious. The war against the Indians was waged in order to ensure the progress and protection of the railroads. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s ‘final solution’ for the Indians of the Great Plains was to kill off all the young men who were capable of warring against the railroads and white settlers.
Here is an excerpt from “Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman” by Michael Fellman:
Almost three million soldiers had enlisted in the American Civil War. By contrast, it only took 25,000 soldiers after that to prosecute America's tragic war to subdue the Indians (Native Americans) in the West, largely because much of this terrible work was done by disease, settlement, and the slaughter of the buffalo. This ignominious war, in many respects over by time of the death of Sitting Bull in 1890, was led by the triumvirate of the most successful generals of the Civil War, President Ulysses Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan:
"With the south at last subdued, American public energies could return to the long-term project of economic development and westward expansion. ... The key to the realization of this great national and international project, which was the American version of the shared expansionist dream of the Western world, was the transcon¬tinental railroad. The chief impediment to this objective was the no¬madic, buffalo-hunting, warlike Indians of the Great Plains, with whom white Americans were convinced they never could cohabit. They would have to be dealt with while the railroads were abuilding. And they would be combatted only by a small army, as Congress re¬duced it to fifty thousand, then to thirty-five thousand, and finally to twenty-five thousand in the first few postwar years. ...
"When pushed by this or that incident, [General William Tecumseh] Sherman's racial contempt would emerge through his more distancing natural law justifications. 'We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress of [the railroads], a work of national and world-wide im-portance,' he insisted to Grant in 1867... Sherman noted to Grant that 'increased [U.S.] population [migrating West] ... will divide the northern and southern Indians permanently, when [the army] can take them in de¬tail.'
"Disease, slaughter of the buffalo, their economic base, and intrusion of white settlement, together with the extermination of the most war¬like younger men, all were serving to eliminate the Indians. The cap¬stone, literally uniting the white surge, was, as Sherman had always believed it would be, the railroad. Railroads began to move settlers west, and goods, like wheat and buffalo hides, to market. They also made the small army far more mobile and capable of concentration in their attacks on the shrinking bands of 'hostile' Indians. The army was able to guard the railroads so effectively that raiding Indians failed to slow construction. ... With the Union Pacific through, and three more lines to follow in swift succession, with all their atten¬dant social, economic, and racial ramifications, Sherman could shove the Indians out of his mind while he and Progress were in the process of finishing them off on the ground.
"The remaining Indians were nearing starvation. 'I think the Sioux are now so dependent on us that they will have to do whatever they are required to do,' Sherman told Sheridan triumphantly and only slightly prematurely, on November 20, 1875. After a bit more mopping up he could believe he had achieved the final solution to the Indian problem as he had defined it a decade earlier -- extermination for the hostile; re¬duction to dependency in out-of-the-way reservations for the rest. And it really had been cheap in white soldiers' lives: From 1867 to 1884, 565 officers and men were killed and 691 wounded, far less than in an average Civil War battle. Financially as well, the war had proved no great drain on the treasury: 'It is all moonshine about the great cost of the war,' Sherman bragged to a friend in 1875."
EDITOR’S NOTE: Obama and the Europeans want the Israelis to return the ‘occupied territories’ to the Palestinians . Those lands were captured by the Israelis after armies from several Arab countries attacked Israel with the intention of wiping the ‘Zionist entity’ off the map. In other words, unlike the U.S. war against the Indians, Israel battled the Arabs strictly in order to survive.
I say that Israel should return the ‘occupied territories’ to the Palestinians when the United States returns the lands it occupied that had belonged to and was taken from the Indians by military force..
TROOPER’S TACTICS IN 100 MPH CHASE QUESTIONED
“To me, it's incomprehensible that an officer that should be protecting my family ended up shooting my brother for speeding,” says Jason Donath, brother of Daniel Harris, who was shot by a state trooper after an Aug. 18 high-speed chase
BY Michael Gordon
The Charlotte Observer
September 7, 2016
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Two experts in law enforcement training say a North Carolina state trooper's decision to mount a high-speed chase that ended with the fatal shooting of a Charlotte deaf man may have escalated the incident beyond what was needed to make a safe arrest.
The Aug. 18 hot pursuit down Interstate 485 ended not far from Daniel Harris' home in northeast Charlotte when the 29-year-old was killed by Trooper Jermaine Saunders after he left his car and fled.
Saunders had chased Harris' car for some eight miles at speeds reaching 100 mph after the trooper said he clocked Harris' Volvo going 88 in a 70 mph zone. Saunders had also rammed Harris' car on a busy interstate exit ramp onto Rocky River Road in an attempt to stop his flight.
No bystanders were injured. But experts say high-speed chases pose a significant but less obvious risk: Triggering physiological changes in the drivers that can affect their decision-making. Police trainers call it "the adrenaline dump."
To me, it's incomprehensible that I lost my brother in such a senseless way..
"There's a sensory overload involved in a pursuit. The adrenaline amps up. You get tunnel vision," said Jeff Lockaby, a former training officer for the Greenville County (S.C) Sheriff's Office. "These are such dynamic, fluid situations that can change with the flick of an eyelash. When things go bad, they go bad very fast."
Geoff Alpert, a nationally known expert in police training, says Saunders' decision to chase Harris for that long a distance appears to have aggravated the situation, with Harris speeding up rather than slowing down after Saunders put on his blue lights.
Alpert believes Saunders should have backed off as the chase dragged on, particularly since officers apparently knew Harris was heading to his family's home in the Seven Oaks neighborhood and had another officer waiting there when Harris arrived.
"The whole point is to get the guy to slow down," said Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminologist and frequent critic of hot pursuits. "Why chase? It doesn't make sense. If they knew where he lived, why did they not just go to the house?"
"Officers need to get to the point where they do not raise the risks to themselves, the public, even the bad guy. You don't know why he was running. All he's doing is speeding."
A state investigation continues, and Saunders, a 28-year-old with two years on the force, remains on administrative leave. The North Carolina Troopers Association, which reportedly has hired a lawyer for Saunders, did not respond to a phone call or email seeking comment.
What led to the shooting remains unknown. The use of lethal force is considered legally justified when officers have the reasonable fear of imminent death or serious injury to themselves or others.
Harris' family says he was unarmed and was afraid of police due to past misunderstandings involving his deafness. Harris had been arrested in three states for resisting arrest. He was convicted in Connecticut; the other charges were dropped.
He was shot within seconds of Saunders reporting "a jump and run," meaning Harris had left his car and was trying to flee.
Under North Carolina law, driving 18 miles over the speed limit can be considered reckless driving.
Jason Donath, the dead man's brother, said in an email to the Observer that the law enforcement response was excessive given Hariris' alleged violation.
"To me, it's incomprehensible that I lost my brother in such a senseless way," Donath said. "An officer that should be protecting my family ended up shooting my brother for speeding."
Better or worse?
North Carolina Highway Patrol policy classifies speeders among the traffic violators "who present a substantial continuing hazard to the public."
"These persons should be apprehended as quickly as possible, consistent with the exercise of due care for the public's safety," the policy says.
If a trooper launches a hot pursuit, the officer and a supervisor "shall constantly evaluate (the) decision to continue a chase."
That choice basically boils down to a decision. Which poses the bigger risk: Not stopping the suspects or continuing to chase them?
Most police chases still involve relatively minor offenses like speeding. Given the threat to officers, bystanders and suspects, several states and cities have reduced the justifiable circumstances for a hot pursuit.
In 2012, the Florida Highway Patrol restricted chases to suspected felons, drunk drivers and reckless drivers. The number of pursuits dropped by half, USA Today says. But more than a third of the chases in 2013 and 2014 violated the new standards, the paper said.
Lockaby says his 30-year law enforcement career included occasions when he was behind the wheel during hot pursuits and the monitoring supervisor back at the station for others.
"When I first started, it was the norm to pursue someone to bring them to justice, to account for their actions, and officers were under a lot of pressure to do that. But innocent bystanders often got caught in between," he said. "The profession has evolved."
At the Observer's request, he listened to the 19-minute recording of radio dispatches between Saunders, his dispatcher and his trooper supervisor during the pursuit of Harris.
In a series of emails, Lockaby commended the trooper's frequent updates on his location, traffic and road conditions. While Alpert criticized Saunders' tactical decision to ram Harris' car on the exit ramp to Rocky River Road -- calling it a significant risk to nearby motorists -- Lockaby described it as "a clear indication of an officer thinking and acting rationally vs. reacting."
The so-called precision immobilization technique, or PIT, is designed to stop a fleeing car by knocking it sideways.
"It's kind of hard to argue that the trooper wasn't in control if he executed a complex maneuver involving two moving vehicles," Lockaby said
He said Saunders sounded "calm and controlled throughout."
Yet, he added. "The 'shots fired' airs VERY quickly after the subject exits his Volvo. These incidents almost always escalate very quickly in unexpected ways, which is all the more reason for calm, cool heads deciding to chase or not."
Alpert and Lockaby wondered how the incident might have ended if Saunders had stopped chasing Harris and instead driven to his home at a later and calmer time to make the arrest.
Said Lockaby: "As an officer, you always have to ask yourself: Are my actions making this situation better or worse?"
BY Michael Gordon
The Charlotte Observer
September 7, 2016
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Two experts in law enforcement training say a North Carolina state trooper's decision to mount a high-speed chase that ended with the fatal shooting of a Charlotte deaf man may have escalated the incident beyond what was needed to make a safe arrest.
The Aug. 18 hot pursuit down Interstate 485 ended not far from Daniel Harris' home in northeast Charlotte when the 29-year-old was killed by Trooper Jermaine Saunders after he left his car and fled.
Saunders had chased Harris' car for some eight miles at speeds reaching 100 mph after the trooper said he clocked Harris' Volvo going 88 in a 70 mph zone. Saunders had also rammed Harris' car on a busy interstate exit ramp onto Rocky River Road in an attempt to stop his flight.
No bystanders were injured. But experts say high-speed chases pose a significant but less obvious risk: Triggering physiological changes in the drivers that can affect their decision-making. Police trainers call it "the adrenaline dump."
To me, it's incomprehensible that I lost my brother in such a senseless way..
"There's a sensory overload involved in a pursuit. The adrenaline amps up. You get tunnel vision," said Jeff Lockaby, a former training officer for the Greenville County (S.C) Sheriff's Office. "These are such dynamic, fluid situations that can change with the flick of an eyelash. When things go bad, they go bad very fast."
Geoff Alpert, a nationally known expert in police training, says Saunders' decision to chase Harris for that long a distance appears to have aggravated the situation, with Harris speeding up rather than slowing down after Saunders put on his blue lights.
Alpert believes Saunders should have backed off as the chase dragged on, particularly since officers apparently knew Harris was heading to his family's home in the Seven Oaks neighborhood and had another officer waiting there when Harris arrived.
"The whole point is to get the guy to slow down," said Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminologist and frequent critic of hot pursuits. "Why chase? It doesn't make sense. If they knew where he lived, why did they not just go to the house?"
"Officers need to get to the point where they do not raise the risks to themselves, the public, even the bad guy. You don't know why he was running. All he's doing is speeding."
A state investigation continues, and Saunders, a 28-year-old with two years on the force, remains on administrative leave. The North Carolina Troopers Association, which reportedly has hired a lawyer for Saunders, did not respond to a phone call or email seeking comment.
What led to the shooting remains unknown. The use of lethal force is considered legally justified when officers have the reasonable fear of imminent death or serious injury to themselves or others.
Harris' family says he was unarmed and was afraid of police due to past misunderstandings involving his deafness. Harris had been arrested in three states for resisting arrest. He was convicted in Connecticut; the other charges were dropped.
He was shot within seconds of Saunders reporting "a jump and run," meaning Harris had left his car and was trying to flee.
Under North Carolina law, driving 18 miles over the speed limit can be considered reckless driving.
Jason Donath, the dead man's brother, said in an email to the Observer that the law enforcement response was excessive given Hariris' alleged violation.
"To me, it's incomprehensible that I lost my brother in such a senseless way," Donath said. "An officer that should be protecting my family ended up shooting my brother for speeding."
Better or worse?
North Carolina Highway Patrol policy classifies speeders among the traffic violators "who present a substantial continuing hazard to the public."
"These persons should be apprehended as quickly as possible, consistent with the exercise of due care for the public's safety," the policy says.
If a trooper launches a hot pursuit, the officer and a supervisor "shall constantly evaluate (the) decision to continue a chase."
That choice basically boils down to a decision. Which poses the bigger risk: Not stopping the suspects or continuing to chase them?
Most police chases still involve relatively minor offenses like speeding. Given the threat to officers, bystanders and suspects, several states and cities have reduced the justifiable circumstances for a hot pursuit.
In 2012, the Florida Highway Patrol restricted chases to suspected felons, drunk drivers and reckless drivers. The number of pursuits dropped by half, USA Today says. But more than a third of the chases in 2013 and 2014 violated the new standards, the paper said.
Lockaby says his 30-year law enforcement career included occasions when he was behind the wheel during hot pursuits and the monitoring supervisor back at the station for others.
"When I first started, it was the norm to pursue someone to bring them to justice, to account for their actions, and officers were under a lot of pressure to do that. But innocent bystanders often got caught in between," he said. "The profession has evolved."
At the Observer's request, he listened to the 19-minute recording of radio dispatches between Saunders, his dispatcher and his trooper supervisor during the pursuit of Harris.
In a series of emails, Lockaby commended the trooper's frequent updates on his location, traffic and road conditions. While Alpert criticized Saunders' tactical decision to ram Harris' car on the exit ramp to Rocky River Road -- calling it a significant risk to nearby motorists -- Lockaby described it as "a clear indication of an officer thinking and acting rationally vs. reacting."
The so-called precision immobilization technique, or PIT, is designed to stop a fleeing car by knocking it sideways.
"It's kind of hard to argue that the trooper wasn't in control if he executed a complex maneuver involving two moving vehicles," Lockaby said
He said Saunders sounded "calm and controlled throughout."
Yet, he added. "The 'shots fired' airs VERY quickly after the subject exits his Volvo. These incidents almost always escalate very quickly in unexpected ways, which is all the more reason for calm, cool heads deciding to chase or not."
Alpert and Lockaby wondered how the incident might have ended if Saunders had stopped chasing Harris and instead driven to his home at a later and calmer time to make the arrest.
Said Lockaby: "As an officer, you always have to ask yourself: Are my actions making this situation better or worse?"
INHALANTS - THE EASY TO ACQUIRE BUT DEADLY DRUG THAT NOBODY TALKS ABOUT
By Carter Sherman
Houston Press
September 6, 2016
Ever since he was a kid, Steven Allen liked to take things apart, see how they worked and put them back together again. “He made a computer for his little brother, just by spare parts that people threw out, one year for Christmas,” recalls Nellie Hencerling, his mom. He was a good kid, she says. Sure, he’d had issues with drugs back when he lived in their hometown of Victoria, but after he moved to Houston in 2012, he seemed to put those behind him. He was married, with a young son, a steady job and a home of his own.
Then, over just a few days in February 2014, Allen’s life unraveled completely. Chastity Graham, Allen’s wife, had only been 18 when she got pregnant with their son, Daemon — and just months into the marriage, she felt like the relationship had fallen apart. On the night that Allen returned home from a trip to California meant to secure him another promotion at work, Graham left him and took 15-month-old Daemon with her. Allen’s mother says the next day was her son’s birthday. He would turn 24.
While Allen wasn’t happy with Graham’s decision, the two were still on good enough terms to keep texting one another. Graham had no idea anything was wrong until a few days later, on Thursday, February 6, when she got a phone call from Allen’s co-worker at 7 a.m. Allen had left work early the day before and hadn’t come back. Allen had stopped returning his mother’s calls, and didn’t reply to any more of Graham’s texts.
Graham was staying with relatives outside of Houston at the time; she let police break into their home to see if Allen was there. She then met up with Hencerling in Houston, and they spent the day frantically searching for Allen. But no one could find him.
At about 4 p.m. on Saturday, February 8 — the same day that Allen was once supposed to hold a barbecue with his mom to celebrate his birthday — an employee at a north Houston Walmart spotted him walking through the store. Allen was pale and sweaty, his eyes “red and bulging,” witnesses said in police reports. There was dried vomit on his shirt. In his right hand, he clutched a can of Ultra Duster, a brand of aerosol cleaner typically sprayed on keyboards to blow dust off the keys. His left hand held two more cans.
While standing in line to check out, Allen put the nozzle of the computer duster to his lips and pulled the trigger.
Computer duster is sometimes called “canned air,” but it’s actually the toxic chemical 1,1-difluoroethane. As Allen pulled the trigger, sending a spray of 1,1-difluoroethane into his mouth, he probably felt a surge of euphoria — like going from sober to wasted in just one sip. Neurotransmitters in his brain released a flood of chemicals that confused his heart: It likely started beating faster, becoming inflamed, developing an arrythmia.
Oxygen stopped flowing to his brain, lungs and heart. Since 1,1-difluoroethane is related to surgical anesthetic, he felt effects similar to those experienced by someone who’s going under. Allen’s coordination and ability to control his bodily functions disappeared. The high didn’t last long — it was gone in about five minutes. Each time the high wore off and the chemicals drained from Allen’s body, his body was so confused that he risked slipping into a coma or ceasing to breathe.
Walmart employees had already pointed Allen out to Abraham Cortes, an Aldine Independent School District police officer working a side job at Walmart for the day. As Allen inhaled the duster, Cortes stepped in line behind Allen and snapped handcuffs around his wrists, detaining him on the charge of “inhaling an abusable volatile chemical.” He then escorted Allen to the back room where Walmart kept shoplifters.
Allen said he needed to use the bathroom, but Cortes told him to wait for police officers to arrive. Ten, 15 minutes went by. Suddenly, Allen slumped over and turned purple. Walmart employees called 911 while Cortes started performing CPR on Allen, but it didn’t help. At 5:24 p.m., Allen was pronounced dead of a cardiac arrhythmia.
Later officers searched Allen’s car and reported finding between 25 and 30 empty Ultra Duster cans.
Two weeks after Allen died, Hencerling called Walmart and asked if she could see the security footage of her son’s death. Walmart employees told her to call back in six months, she says. So she did. Then they told her that their surveillance system re-records over old footage and the footage in question had been destroyed.
Steven Allen’s case is far from the first time someone has inhaled, or “huffed,” computer duster at a Walmart. Thanks to its many 24-hour locations and nationally recognized security problems, it’s easy for huffers to go overlooked at Walmart. They often don’t even bother to leave the store’s property before they get started. Plus a three-pack of Dust-Off costs less than $12.
In 2013 Robert Pry bought $100 worth of duster at an Arkansas Walmart and huffed it all in just one day. Out of money, he holed himself up in a Kmart and spent the entire night huffing the computer duster in stock. In 2015 Melissa Wright scorched half of her jaw huffing duster in a Kansas Walmart, thanks to 1,1-difluoroethane’s ability to cause instant frostbite, according to media reports. Last May Lindsay Adams was caught huffing duster in the parking lot and bathroom of a Pennsylvania Walmart, three separate times by police — all within a four-day period. And these people were just the ones whose cases were so extreme that the media paid attention.
People have sniffed glue and gasoline since at least the ’60s, but experts say there are now likely more than 1,400 household products that people use to get high. Almost 21.7 million Americans ages 12 and older say they’ve used inhalants at least once, according to a 2012 open letter on inhalant abuse by Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. That’s more than five times the number of Americans 12 and older who, in 2011, reported using heroin at least once in their lives, according to a 2014 NIDA publication.
“It’s the forgotten epidemic,” says Harvey Weiss, who runs the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition, a Chattanooga, Tennessee-based organization that aims to fight against inhalant abuse. Weiss worked in Austin in the ’90s, developing the state’s educational programs about inhalant abuse. Back then, he says, people paid a lot more attention to the dangers. “If you look at data, you can see that there really hasn’t been that many significant changes and decreases in use. It’s just that other things have taken prevalence. It’s really not sexy to talk about inhalants.”
Yet anti-inhalant-abuse activists say that inhalants are among the deadliest drugs. Inhalant users need to breathe in only once for a fatal heart arrhythmia known as Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome to develop. “Inhalants are, almost more than any drug, more likely to cause death on first use,” says Howard Wolfe, director of the New England Inhalant Abuse Prevention Coalition. “You have many, many people dying from tobacco and alcohol. But very few the first time they’ve tried it.”
In September 2014 Roger Taft Collins was found dead in his car in a North Carolina Walmart parking lot, a few hours after buying computer duster from the store, according to media reports at the time. Last October Jett Fischer was caught huffing duster in a Walmart bathroom in Washington state. He was taken to the hospital and died a few hours later. In mid-July Sean Sobczak was found huffing in an Illinois Walmart parking lot, with 12 cans of duster in his car. He was also taken to a hospital, where he died the next day.
And on April 13, 2016, 24-year-old Karalee Williams was found dead of a 1,1-difluoroethane overdose in the parking lot of a Baytown Walmart store. Williams had parked her car in the Walmart parking lot on April 10, and — over the next two days — entered the Walmart nine times, ultimately buying 67 cans of computer duster, says Tracie Fisher, who says the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office officials who worked on Williams’s case told her this. Many of the cans were Dust-Off, another popular duster brand, according to crime-scene photos. Fisher is a senior paralegal working on a lawsuit against Walmart over what happened to Williams, as Williams’s adoptive mother, Deleese Allen (no relation to Steven), is now suing Walmart for wrongful death damages.
Yet North Carolina, Washington and Illinois all have laws to regulate the abuse of computer duster and other inhalants. Technically, Texas has a law like that too. But thanks to a loophole, maybe Allen should never have ended up in Walmart’s back room at all. Maybe the crime he was detained for wasn’t even a crime.
*****
Inhalants aren’t covered in the Controlled Substances Act, the federal law that governs the possession, sale and abuse of most major drugs. Instead, each state is left to devise its own laws to fight inhalant abuse. In Texas that law is the Abusable Volatile Chemicals statute. The AVC statute outlines guidelines for retailers who sell products that could be abused as inhalants, as well as criminal penalties for people who abuse them. It also defines what does, and doesn’t, legally count as an illegal inhalant in Texas.
To qualify as an AVC, a product not only must have the potential to cause intoxication, but must also be labeled with two very specific words: “Vapor Harmful.” This “Vapor Harmful” label must be written in all capital letters and be affixed to the front of the product — customers at a store should be able to see if something has the “Vapor Harmful” label without even taking it from the shelf. (Spray paint and most products that contain nitrous oxide also automatically count as AVCs.)
On April 19, 2015, just before midnight, Abilene police officer Chris Bisbee was dispatched to one of the town’s two Walmarts — someone had apparently stolen a can of computer duster. Behind the Walmart lies a wide, grassy field. That’s where Bisbee found Cody Critchfield out cold, still gripping a can of Ultra Duster. Scattered around Critchfield’s body were 31 more cans.
Though he was 31 at the time, Critchfield’s boyish face was mottled with blue and purple bruises, which he told Bisbee were from abusing the duster. “He was very straightforward about it,” Bisbee says. “He knew he had a problem.” Critchfield later admitted to having huffed all 32 cans in just one day.
Because Critchfield had a Walmart receipt for Ultra Duster in his pocket, he wasn’t arrested for theft. Instead, Bisbee arrested Critchfield for “possession and use of a volatile chemical,” the AVC statute’s criminal charge for users. As Bisbee noted in his report, Critchfield “admitted to using [the duster] in a manner contrary to its directions for use, cautions, and warning appearing on the label.”
There are usually many, many labels on computer duster cans that warn that inhaling the toxic chemical inside is dangerous. There are also first aid suggestions about what to do if someone inhales the duster. There’s even a warning about the computer duster’s “bitterant,” a bitter-tasting chemical added to many duster brands years ago in an effort to make them too disgusting for anyone to want to huff.
Yet neither Ultra Duster, the brand of duster Allen and Critchfield abused, nor Dust-Off, the brand Karalee Williams abused, has the words “Vapor Harmful” anywhere on its cans. That’s because “Vapor Harmful” is a label adopted from the Federal Hazardous Substances Act, which dictates how potentially dangerous household products should be labeled to help consumers safely navigate using them. The FHSA mandates that only products containing certain chemicals must be labeled with the words “Vapor Harmful” — and 1,1-difluoroethane isn’t one of them.
So yes, Critchfield was doing exactly what the labels warned him not to do. Yet, when it comes to the AVC statute, none of those labels count.
“As far as what we’re looking at, we’re focusing in on ‘Vapor Harmful.’ That’s it,” says Terry Johnson, manager of the Environmental Inspections Group for the Texas Department of State Health Services. His inspectors make sure that retailers who sell AVCs are properly following the AVC statute. (Among other things, retailers can’t sell AVCs to minors.) His team focuses so strictly on “Vapor Harmful,” in fact, that the Department of State Health Services’ online FAQ page for the AVC program warns that even if one brand of a product is an AVC, a different brand may not be.
“There may be other products available out there that you can still get high off of, so to speak,” Johnson admits.When asked if he knew of any other Texas laws that regulate inhalant sales or provide a different legal definition of inhalants, Johnson says he does not.
Because these duster cans are missing just two little words, they’re not defined as AVCs. Therefore, they likely can’t be governed by any of the statute’s regulations — civil or criminal.
Critchfield’s April 2015 arrest for “possession and use of a volatile chemical” wasn’t his first or his last. Since 2014 Critchfield has been booked four times for inhalant abuse, though his arrest by Bisbee ended up being dismissed. As a Class B misdemeanor, breaking the AVC statute is punishable by up to $2,000 in fines, up to 180 days in jail or both. As of press time, Critchfield remained in jail after being charged on August 5. Yet if the “Vapor Harmful” label requirement should still apply when charging someone with a criminal AVC violation, that might throw into question the legality of these charges — do prosecutors look for that all-important “Vapor Harmful” label?
The answer is no, at least when it comes to decisions by prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to charge people for breaking the AVC statute, says Jeff McShan, the office’s public information officer. McShan says he spoke with prosecutors. “They were saying, ‘Yeah, we usually ask if there’s a warning label on it.’ But they were making it very clear that they don’t have to have it,” he says. This contrasts sharply with the view of those enforcing the statute’s civil side, like Johnson, who rely so heavily on specific labeling.
“Whether it’s this law or any other law, right, if elements aren’t met, then I mean legally you can’t prosecute, ethically you can’t prosecute,” says Fort Bend County Executive Assistant DA Wesley Wittig, who cautioned that laws have surprising loopholes “all the time.” Of the potential problems with the AVC definition, Wittig says, “It is unfortunate and it is a loophole we’d like to close…It’s more troubling if folks are proceeding under, if nobody knew that it didn’t quite — it didn’t quite fit. That would be more troubling.”
However, no officials that McShan spoke with at the Harris County DA’s office remembered a case that was dismissed or lost because the AVC labeling requirements were brought up.
Anti-inhalant-abuse activist Weiss says he’s never heard of another state that uses federal labeling requirements as the rubric for defining something as an illegal inhalant. Instead, many other states’ inhalant abuse laws provide a straightforward listing of chemicals that are illegal to smell in order to cause intoxication. Often at the ends of these lists are the words “or other similar solvents.” Those words act as a legal umbrella, granting these state statutes the power to potentially cover any product that people abuse, an ability Texas lacks.
Allen was never charged with breaking the AVC statute, but he was once arrested after huffing in Victoria in 2012. Graham says she didn’t know that Allen huffed until after she already had gotten pregnant and moved in with him. They’d met online, through Facebook, and she thought Allen was kind, passionate and very smart.
Then, high on duster, Allen drove his car into a ditch. A police officer spotted him and arrested him for public intoxication, Graham recalls. But that wasn’t the only time Allen’s huffing scared Graham. He continued to disappear a lot. Once, after Allen had been gone a few days, Graham and his mother tracked him down to a parking lot where he’d been huffing computer duster in his car. “He just had vomit all over him. And he wasn’t waking up, and of course he had peed all over himself,” Graham recalls. She drove his car back to their place. “And then we called the ambulance because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Allen wasn’t arrested for that incident. Wittig says that someone huffing in a parked car, as Allen was, could have potentially been charged with public intoxication. When asked if someone could then huff computer duster legally, as long as he or she wasn’t in public, Wittig didn’t have an answer.
*****
Deleese Allen, the mother of Karalee Williams — the woman who died in the Baytown Walmart parking lot — is not the first person to sue Walmart over the superstore’s role in inhalant abuse deaths.
In September 2010, 38-year-old James “Jimi” Monticelli was found dead in his apartment after having bought large quantities of duster cans at Walmart. Monticelli grew up in Lakeland, a Syracuse, New York, suburb. In an already close-knit community, the Monticellis were one of the tightest families. Monticelli’s mom, Cathy, used to throw backyard barbecues for all of Monticelli’s friends. “They had a pool back there, they were cooking, we’d all go back there and hang out,” says Paul Trovato, one of Monticelli’s childhood friends.
The Monticellis and Trovato knew that Jimi Monticelli was addicted to prescription painkillers. Cathy even told Monticelli that he couldn’t “break bread” with the family until he got help for his addiction. But none of them — including Monticelli’s father, Jim — had any idea that Monticelli huffed. It wasn’t until after Monticelli died that they even realized that sniffing computer duster was a way to get high.
Cathy still remembers the night the police came to her house to tell her what had happened to her son. Cathy and Jim were sitting out on the deck, and had just decided to go to bed when they heard a knock at the door. “It was a police officer, and we both looked at each other. And he said, ‘You need to go the hospital.”
Afterward, Trovato volunteered to clean up Monticelli’s apartment. He ended up filling three garbage bags with cans of computer duster. “I would say 80 percent of the [duster] receipts that were there were from Walmart,” Trovato says. In just the week before his death, Monticelli bought duster from one Walmart store on three separate occasions, according to court documents the Monticellis later filed. At one point, Trovato remembers, Monticelli bought nine cans in a single trip.
As the executor of his son’s estate, Jim Monticelli sued Walmart in August 2012 for more than $15 million in damages. They ended up settling in 2014 for a much smaller amount, Cathy says, and nearly all of it went to paying for lawyers, investigators and scientists they had used in the lawsuit. But Jim and Cathy were too exhausted to keep fighting. “I know it’s not Walmart’s fault that Jimi had all that problem,” Cathy says, “but Walmart made it easy.”
Right now, Deleese Allen’s lawsuit against Walmart remains in legal limbo here in Texas.
Williams’s boyfriend, Steve Yang, told police that Williams never returned after leaving for a babysitting gig on the night of April 9. It wasn’t until about 10:30 p.m. on April 10 that Williams first walked into Walmart to buy duster. Tracie Fisher, the paralegal handling Deleese Allen’s lawsuit, says she learned this information from police officials working on Williams’s case. Throughout the night and early morning, Williams returned multiple times and bought more, Fisher says police told her.
At about 1 p.m. on April 11, Williams came into the store again. She looked scared and incoherent, “as if she didn’t know where she was,” wrote Walmart employee Stephanie Gary in a statement to the Chambers County Sheriff’s Department. (Gary declined to talk to the Houston Press.) Williams’s face and hair were matted with vomit, and she had defecated on herself. She told Gary that she had also just had a seizure, and asked for help. Gary got her cleaned up, gave her a new dress to wear and told Walmart management about Williams. Williams then headed to the electronics section, where she bought more cans of computer duster, and went to the restroom. Gary waited for her outside the restroom until she was called away. “After that, I never saw her again,” she wrote in her statement.
Then, just before 1 p.m. on April 13, a Walmart customer spotted Williams’s lifeless body. She was naked from the waist down, one foot pressed up against the windshield, and was still holding a can of duster. According to the coroner’s report, by the time they found her, Williams had been dead for about a day. The police had found 32 more duster cans in the car.
In May Deleese Allen sued Walmart, arguing that Walmart knew Williams was high on inhalants and still sold her the products that ultimately killed her. Allen’s lawyer, Jeff Steidley, filed a temporary restraining order to preserve evidence, such as surveillance footage, documentation of Williams’s purchases, and employees’ testimony. Just two hours before the case was supposed to go before a judge, Steidley says, Walmart’s lawyers filed a notice to move the case from district to federal court. This effectively prevented Steidley from seeing any evidence until October, when the first conference about the case is scheduled. “The design of Walmart [is] to be able to put witnesses in front of the camera, under oath, and for them to say, ‘Gee, that was several months ago, I can’t really [remember],’” Steidley says. “They’ve achieved that.”
When asked if the AVC definition would cause problems in Deleese’s lawsuit, Steidley says he has a few legal defenses prepared — but he thinks Walmart will “definitely” bring it up in court. “They’re going to come along and say, ‘We didn’t give her anything that violated the act because it’s not an abusable chemical, if it didn’t have this label on it. And that’s just another reason why we don’t have a responsibility to Karalee Williams or anybody else.’”
Williams’s family declined to be interviewed for this article. The Houston firm representing Walmart in Deleese Allen’s case, Daw & Ray, L.L.P., referred all requests for comment to Walmart. Walmart spokesman Charles Crowson, in response to questions about the case, sent only this emailed statement: “Our hearts go out to Ms. Williams’ family, friends and loved ones. Our response to the lawsuit is contained within the filed documents. Respectfully, we have denied the allegations and will continue responding appropriately as the lawsuit continues.” As for what happened to Steven Allen, Crowson said: “All we can do is confirm that there was an incident involving Mr. Allen at our Houston store in 2014.”
When asked if Walmart has any policies involving the sale of duster or other potential inhalants, Crowson said that Walmart follows all local, state and federal laws. Because Williams died from huffing Dust-Off, which doesn’t have a “Vapor Harmful” label, it might have been completely legal for Walmart to sell her the duster.
Walmart appears to have devised some of its own policies for selling duster. Jess Levin, a spokeswoman for Making Change at Walmart — a campaign run by the union United Food and Commercial Workers to improve Walmart as an employer — says her field staff spoke to four Walmart employees working in Texas about the issue. These employees, she says, were told to check the IDs of people buying duster to ensure they were over 18.
Yet as long as someone can hand over a valid ID, it seems that he or she can buy the duster, regardless of mental state. Levin’s staff spoke to Walmart employees across the country, including more than ten in Texas, and discovered that none of them knew exactly what they were supposed to do if a customer was on drugs. “What we found is that there’s no one overriding policy for all of Walmart when it comes to this issue,” Levin says. Fewer than half of the employees Levin talked to said they would tell their manager if they suspected someone was on drugs. Instead, a majority said they would do nothing. “If there is one [policy], workers don’t know that it exists,” Levin adds, “so there might as well not be one.”
In response to questions about what Walmart employees are told to do if customers are on drugs, Crowson only said, “If customers appear to be impaired, we do not discuss our policies and procedures.”
Texas bartenders risk being charged with a misdemeanor if they serve anyone who is obviously intoxicated. There’s no such law for inhalants.
*****
Tracking inhalant abuse is surprisingly difficult, so it’s hard to know the true extent of the problem. Inhalant-related deaths are not well recorded, says Sara Stickler, executive director of the Alliance for Consumer Education, an anti-inhalants-abuse group based in Washington, D.C. These deaths might be attributed to cardiac arrest, suffocation or drowning, since so many people abuse in the bath or shower, Stickler says. “You’re looking in the hundreds probably, annually, just from the alerts and the cases we are able to track on our own. But there’s probably many, many more that are being recorded as something else.”
Even when trying to determine whether someone has huffed, physicians need to run special blood tests. Many labs don’t even have the equipment to look for inhalant abuse. “Hospitals almost never are able to test for these things,” says Joseph Avella, a Nassau County, New York, medical examiner who has written academic articles studying deaths related to 1,1-difluoroethane. “So you have an individual [who] comes in; they’re under the influence of this drug. They withdraw [a] blood sample, they test it, they don’t detect it, and it’s cleared from the body so rapidly…There’s no recognition that this is what the person was doing, unless they self-report or somebody says something.”
While working as a doctor in Dallas, William Dinsfriend encountered this problem firsthand. In 2013, a 23-year-old man came into the hospital where Dinsfriend worked, complaining of chest pains. Doctors ran drug tests, but nothing turned up. The man left and returned to the hospital four months later in 2014 with the same complaints. On the patient’s second day in the hospital, Dinsfriend noticed that his heart rate was suddenly spiking. So Dinsfriend and another doctor walked into the man’s room, and caught him with a can of Dust-Off to his lips — while sitting in his hospital bed, still hooked up to the medical monitors.
“That’s not really mentioned in medical school and in residency training, so to be honest there’s just not that much known about it. And so I didn’t really know that much about it at all,” says Dinsfriend, who ended up writing an academic paper about the incident. Now, when patients present with similar symptoms, he often suggests doctors look into whether the patients are huffing. “A lot of the older doctors will be like, ‘What’s that?’” Dinsfriend says. “Some will be interested, and some will just kind of shrug it off.”
Before Allen died, Graham and Hencerling received that shrug from the drug abuse professionals they spoke to about Allen. Back in Victoria, Graham and Hencerling tried to take Allen to rehab for huffing, but no facility would accept him. Rehab administrators kept on insisting that inhalants weren’t drugs, Graham says, or that someone couldn’t be addicted to them. Eventually they gave up. After the couple moved to Houston in 2012, Allen really did seem to settle down. He still drank, but that didn’t bother Graham as much as the computer duster had. So she stayed with Allen, even as their relationship fell apart and he used duster twice more.
“But instead of me constantly nagging at him…I would just clean it up, let him shower, didn’t say anything,” Graham says. “And then I would tell him, ‘You know, you need to get help. We need to call somebody to help you.’” But when she called Houston rehab facilities, she got the same answer she had gotten in Victoria: No, computer duster isn’t a drug. No, we can’t take him.
She stayed in the relationship for so long, Graham says, for Allen’s mom’s sake. “She begged me, because she knew if I left that he would go off and do it again,” Graham says. “And I thought he was doing good. So I was scared that was going to happen, but I was really hoping it didn’t. But I guess I didn’t really get the best of luck in the end.”
Even now, when she sees computer duster stockpiled on stores’ shelves, Graham says she thinks the cans should be put behind a glass container. She wants the duster to be less accessible, its dangers more well-known — especially for children like her son, Daemon, who is now nearly four and remembers very little of his father.
“Every time I see a can of duster, I get sick to my stomach, because I think of the smell of the vomit and the pee,” she says. Graham pauses, then repeats, “It makes me sick to my stomach to this day.”
Houston Press
September 6, 2016
Ever since he was a kid, Steven Allen liked to take things apart, see how they worked and put them back together again. “He made a computer for his little brother, just by spare parts that people threw out, one year for Christmas,” recalls Nellie Hencerling, his mom. He was a good kid, she says. Sure, he’d had issues with drugs back when he lived in their hometown of Victoria, but after he moved to Houston in 2012, he seemed to put those behind him. He was married, with a young son, a steady job and a home of his own.
Then, over just a few days in February 2014, Allen’s life unraveled completely. Chastity Graham, Allen’s wife, had only been 18 when she got pregnant with their son, Daemon — and just months into the marriage, she felt like the relationship had fallen apart. On the night that Allen returned home from a trip to California meant to secure him another promotion at work, Graham left him and took 15-month-old Daemon with her. Allen’s mother says the next day was her son’s birthday. He would turn 24.
While Allen wasn’t happy with Graham’s decision, the two were still on good enough terms to keep texting one another. Graham had no idea anything was wrong until a few days later, on Thursday, February 6, when she got a phone call from Allen’s co-worker at 7 a.m. Allen had left work early the day before and hadn’t come back. Allen had stopped returning his mother’s calls, and didn’t reply to any more of Graham’s texts.
Graham was staying with relatives outside of Houston at the time; she let police break into their home to see if Allen was there. She then met up with Hencerling in Houston, and they spent the day frantically searching for Allen. But no one could find him.
At about 4 p.m. on Saturday, February 8 — the same day that Allen was once supposed to hold a barbecue with his mom to celebrate his birthday — an employee at a north Houston Walmart spotted him walking through the store. Allen was pale and sweaty, his eyes “red and bulging,” witnesses said in police reports. There was dried vomit on his shirt. In his right hand, he clutched a can of Ultra Duster, a brand of aerosol cleaner typically sprayed on keyboards to blow dust off the keys. His left hand held two more cans.
While standing in line to check out, Allen put the nozzle of the computer duster to his lips and pulled the trigger.
Computer duster is sometimes called “canned air,” but it’s actually the toxic chemical 1,1-difluoroethane. As Allen pulled the trigger, sending a spray of 1,1-difluoroethane into his mouth, he probably felt a surge of euphoria — like going from sober to wasted in just one sip. Neurotransmitters in his brain released a flood of chemicals that confused his heart: It likely started beating faster, becoming inflamed, developing an arrythmia.
Oxygen stopped flowing to his brain, lungs and heart. Since 1,1-difluoroethane is related to surgical anesthetic, he felt effects similar to those experienced by someone who’s going under. Allen’s coordination and ability to control his bodily functions disappeared. The high didn’t last long — it was gone in about five minutes. Each time the high wore off and the chemicals drained from Allen’s body, his body was so confused that he risked slipping into a coma or ceasing to breathe.
Walmart employees had already pointed Allen out to Abraham Cortes, an Aldine Independent School District police officer working a side job at Walmart for the day. As Allen inhaled the duster, Cortes stepped in line behind Allen and snapped handcuffs around his wrists, detaining him on the charge of “inhaling an abusable volatile chemical.” He then escorted Allen to the back room where Walmart kept shoplifters.
Allen said he needed to use the bathroom, but Cortes told him to wait for police officers to arrive. Ten, 15 minutes went by. Suddenly, Allen slumped over and turned purple. Walmart employees called 911 while Cortes started performing CPR on Allen, but it didn’t help. At 5:24 p.m., Allen was pronounced dead of a cardiac arrhythmia.
Later officers searched Allen’s car and reported finding between 25 and 30 empty Ultra Duster cans.
Two weeks after Allen died, Hencerling called Walmart and asked if she could see the security footage of her son’s death. Walmart employees told her to call back in six months, she says. So she did. Then they told her that their surveillance system re-records over old footage and the footage in question had been destroyed.
Steven Allen’s case is far from the first time someone has inhaled, or “huffed,” computer duster at a Walmart. Thanks to its many 24-hour locations and nationally recognized security problems, it’s easy for huffers to go overlooked at Walmart. They often don’t even bother to leave the store’s property before they get started. Plus a three-pack of Dust-Off costs less than $12.
In 2013 Robert Pry bought $100 worth of duster at an Arkansas Walmart and huffed it all in just one day. Out of money, he holed himself up in a Kmart and spent the entire night huffing the computer duster in stock. In 2015 Melissa Wright scorched half of her jaw huffing duster in a Kansas Walmart, thanks to 1,1-difluoroethane’s ability to cause instant frostbite, according to media reports. Last May Lindsay Adams was caught huffing duster in the parking lot and bathroom of a Pennsylvania Walmart, three separate times by police — all within a four-day period. And these people were just the ones whose cases were so extreme that the media paid attention.
People have sniffed glue and gasoline since at least the ’60s, but experts say there are now likely more than 1,400 household products that people use to get high. Almost 21.7 million Americans ages 12 and older say they’ve used inhalants at least once, according to a 2012 open letter on inhalant abuse by Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. That’s more than five times the number of Americans 12 and older who, in 2011, reported using heroin at least once in their lives, according to a 2014 NIDA publication.
“It’s the forgotten epidemic,” says Harvey Weiss, who runs the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition, a Chattanooga, Tennessee-based organization that aims to fight against inhalant abuse. Weiss worked in Austin in the ’90s, developing the state’s educational programs about inhalant abuse. Back then, he says, people paid a lot more attention to the dangers. “If you look at data, you can see that there really hasn’t been that many significant changes and decreases in use. It’s just that other things have taken prevalence. It’s really not sexy to talk about inhalants.”
Yet anti-inhalant-abuse activists say that inhalants are among the deadliest drugs. Inhalant users need to breathe in only once for a fatal heart arrhythmia known as Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome to develop. “Inhalants are, almost more than any drug, more likely to cause death on first use,” says Howard Wolfe, director of the New England Inhalant Abuse Prevention Coalition. “You have many, many people dying from tobacco and alcohol. But very few the first time they’ve tried it.”
In September 2014 Roger Taft Collins was found dead in his car in a North Carolina Walmart parking lot, a few hours after buying computer duster from the store, according to media reports at the time. Last October Jett Fischer was caught huffing duster in a Walmart bathroom in Washington state. He was taken to the hospital and died a few hours later. In mid-July Sean Sobczak was found huffing in an Illinois Walmart parking lot, with 12 cans of duster in his car. He was also taken to a hospital, where he died the next day.
And on April 13, 2016, 24-year-old Karalee Williams was found dead of a 1,1-difluoroethane overdose in the parking lot of a Baytown Walmart store. Williams had parked her car in the Walmart parking lot on April 10, and — over the next two days — entered the Walmart nine times, ultimately buying 67 cans of computer duster, says Tracie Fisher, who says the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office officials who worked on Williams’s case told her this. Many of the cans were Dust-Off, another popular duster brand, according to crime-scene photos. Fisher is a senior paralegal working on a lawsuit against Walmart over what happened to Williams, as Williams’s adoptive mother, Deleese Allen (no relation to Steven), is now suing Walmart for wrongful death damages.
Yet North Carolina, Washington and Illinois all have laws to regulate the abuse of computer duster and other inhalants. Technically, Texas has a law like that too. But thanks to a loophole, maybe Allen should never have ended up in Walmart’s back room at all. Maybe the crime he was detained for wasn’t even a crime.
*****
Inhalants aren’t covered in the Controlled Substances Act, the federal law that governs the possession, sale and abuse of most major drugs. Instead, each state is left to devise its own laws to fight inhalant abuse. In Texas that law is the Abusable Volatile Chemicals statute. The AVC statute outlines guidelines for retailers who sell products that could be abused as inhalants, as well as criminal penalties for people who abuse them. It also defines what does, and doesn’t, legally count as an illegal inhalant in Texas.
To qualify as an AVC, a product not only must have the potential to cause intoxication, but must also be labeled with two very specific words: “Vapor Harmful.” This “Vapor Harmful” label must be written in all capital letters and be affixed to the front of the product — customers at a store should be able to see if something has the “Vapor Harmful” label without even taking it from the shelf. (Spray paint and most products that contain nitrous oxide also automatically count as AVCs.)
On April 19, 2015, just before midnight, Abilene police officer Chris Bisbee was dispatched to one of the town’s two Walmarts — someone had apparently stolen a can of computer duster. Behind the Walmart lies a wide, grassy field. That’s where Bisbee found Cody Critchfield out cold, still gripping a can of Ultra Duster. Scattered around Critchfield’s body were 31 more cans.
Though he was 31 at the time, Critchfield’s boyish face was mottled with blue and purple bruises, which he told Bisbee were from abusing the duster. “He was very straightforward about it,” Bisbee says. “He knew he had a problem.” Critchfield later admitted to having huffed all 32 cans in just one day.
Because Critchfield had a Walmart receipt for Ultra Duster in his pocket, he wasn’t arrested for theft. Instead, Bisbee arrested Critchfield for “possession and use of a volatile chemical,” the AVC statute’s criminal charge for users. As Bisbee noted in his report, Critchfield “admitted to using [the duster] in a manner contrary to its directions for use, cautions, and warning appearing on the label.”
There are usually many, many labels on computer duster cans that warn that inhaling the toxic chemical inside is dangerous. There are also first aid suggestions about what to do if someone inhales the duster. There’s even a warning about the computer duster’s “bitterant,” a bitter-tasting chemical added to many duster brands years ago in an effort to make them too disgusting for anyone to want to huff.
Yet neither Ultra Duster, the brand of duster Allen and Critchfield abused, nor Dust-Off, the brand Karalee Williams abused, has the words “Vapor Harmful” anywhere on its cans. That’s because “Vapor Harmful” is a label adopted from the Federal Hazardous Substances Act, which dictates how potentially dangerous household products should be labeled to help consumers safely navigate using them. The FHSA mandates that only products containing certain chemicals must be labeled with the words “Vapor Harmful” — and 1,1-difluoroethane isn’t one of them.
So yes, Critchfield was doing exactly what the labels warned him not to do. Yet, when it comes to the AVC statute, none of those labels count.
“As far as what we’re looking at, we’re focusing in on ‘Vapor Harmful.’ That’s it,” says Terry Johnson, manager of the Environmental Inspections Group for the Texas Department of State Health Services. His inspectors make sure that retailers who sell AVCs are properly following the AVC statute. (Among other things, retailers can’t sell AVCs to minors.) His team focuses so strictly on “Vapor Harmful,” in fact, that the Department of State Health Services’ online FAQ page for the AVC program warns that even if one brand of a product is an AVC, a different brand may not be.
“There may be other products available out there that you can still get high off of, so to speak,” Johnson admits.When asked if he knew of any other Texas laws that regulate inhalant sales or provide a different legal definition of inhalants, Johnson says he does not.
Because these duster cans are missing just two little words, they’re not defined as AVCs. Therefore, they likely can’t be governed by any of the statute’s regulations — civil or criminal.
Critchfield’s April 2015 arrest for “possession and use of a volatile chemical” wasn’t his first or his last. Since 2014 Critchfield has been booked four times for inhalant abuse, though his arrest by Bisbee ended up being dismissed. As a Class B misdemeanor, breaking the AVC statute is punishable by up to $2,000 in fines, up to 180 days in jail or both. As of press time, Critchfield remained in jail after being charged on August 5. Yet if the “Vapor Harmful” label requirement should still apply when charging someone with a criminal AVC violation, that might throw into question the legality of these charges — do prosecutors look for that all-important “Vapor Harmful” label?
The answer is no, at least when it comes to decisions by prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to charge people for breaking the AVC statute, says Jeff McShan, the office’s public information officer. McShan says he spoke with prosecutors. “They were saying, ‘Yeah, we usually ask if there’s a warning label on it.’ But they were making it very clear that they don’t have to have it,” he says. This contrasts sharply with the view of those enforcing the statute’s civil side, like Johnson, who rely so heavily on specific labeling.
“Whether it’s this law or any other law, right, if elements aren’t met, then I mean legally you can’t prosecute, ethically you can’t prosecute,” says Fort Bend County Executive Assistant DA Wesley Wittig, who cautioned that laws have surprising loopholes “all the time.” Of the potential problems with the AVC definition, Wittig says, “It is unfortunate and it is a loophole we’d like to close…It’s more troubling if folks are proceeding under, if nobody knew that it didn’t quite — it didn’t quite fit. That would be more troubling.”
However, no officials that McShan spoke with at the Harris County DA’s office remembered a case that was dismissed or lost because the AVC labeling requirements were brought up.
Anti-inhalant-abuse activist Weiss says he’s never heard of another state that uses federal labeling requirements as the rubric for defining something as an illegal inhalant. Instead, many other states’ inhalant abuse laws provide a straightforward listing of chemicals that are illegal to smell in order to cause intoxication. Often at the ends of these lists are the words “or other similar solvents.” Those words act as a legal umbrella, granting these state statutes the power to potentially cover any product that people abuse, an ability Texas lacks.
Allen was never charged with breaking the AVC statute, but he was once arrested after huffing in Victoria in 2012. Graham says she didn’t know that Allen huffed until after she already had gotten pregnant and moved in with him. They’d met online, through Facebook, and she thought Allen was kind, passionate and very smart.
Then, high on duster, Allen drove his car into a ditch. A police officer spotted him and arrested him for public intoxication, Graham recalls. But that wasn’t the only time Allen’s huffing scared Graham. He continued to disappear a lot. Once, after Allen had been gone a few days, Graham and his mother tracked him down to a parking lot where he’d been huffing computer duster in his car. “He just had vomit all over him. And he wasn’t waking up, and of course he had peed all over himself,” Graham recalls. She drove his car back to their place. “And then we called the ambulance because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Allen wasn’t arrested for that incident. Wittig says that someone huffing in a parked car, as Allen was, could have potentially been charged with public intoxication. When asked if someone could then huff computer duster legally, as long as he or she wasn’t in public, Wittig didn’t have an answer.
*****
Deleese Allen, the mother of Karalee Williams — the woman who died in the Baytown Walmart parking lot — is not the first person to sue Walmart over the superstore’s role in inhalant abuse deaths.
In September 2010, 38-year-old James “Jimi” Monticelli was found dead in his apartment after having bought large quantities of duster cans at Walmart. Monticelli grew up in Lakeland, a Syracuse, New York, suburb. In an already close-knit community, the Monticellis were one of the tightest families. Monticelli’s mom, Cathy, used to throw backyard barbecues for all of Monticelli’s friends. “They had a pool back there, they were cooking, we’d all go back there and hang out,” says Paul Trovato, one of Monticelli’s childhood friends.
The Monticellis and Trovato knew that Jimi Monticelli was addicted to prescription painkillers. Cathy even told Monticelli that he couldn’t “break bread” with the family until he got help for his addiction. But none of them — including Monticelli’s father, Jim — had any idea that Monticelli huffed. It wasn’t until after Monticelli died that they even realized that sniffing computer duster was a way to get high.
Cathy still remembers the night the police came to her house to tell her what had happened to her son. Cathy and Jim were sitting out on the deck, and had just decided to go to bed when they heard a knock at the door. “It was a police officer, and we both looked at each other. And he said, ‘You need to go the hospital.”
Afterward, Trovato volunteered to clean up Monticelli’s apartment. He ended up filling three garbage bags with cans of computer duster. “I would say 80 percent of the [duster] receipts that were there were from Walmart,” Trovato says. In just the week before his death, Monticelli bought duster from one Walmart store on three separate occasions, according to court documents the Monticellis later filed. At one point, Trovato remembers, Monticelli bought nine cans in a single trip.
As the executor of his son’s estate, Jim Monticelli sued Walmart in August 2012 for more than $15 million in damages. They ended up settling in 2014 for a much smaller amount, Cathy says, and nearly all of it went to paying for lawyers, investigators and scientists they had used in the lawsuit. But Jim and Cathy were too exhausted to keep fighting. “I know it’s not Walmart’s fault that Jimi had all that problem,” Cathy says, “but Walmart made it easy.”
Right now, Deleese Allen’s lawsuit against Walmart remains in legal limbo here in Texas.
Williams’s boyfriend, Steve Yang, told police that Williams never returned after leaving for a babysitting gig on the night of April 9. It wasn’t until about 10:30 p.m. on April 10 that Williams first walked into Walmart to buy duster. Tracie Fisher, the paralegal handling Deleese Allen’s lawsuit, says she learned this information from police officials working on Williams’s case. Throughout the night and early morning, Williams returned multiple times and bought more, Fisher says police told her.
At about 1 p.m. on April 11, Williams came into the store again. She looked scared and incoherent, “as if she didn’t know where she was,” wrote Walmart employee Stephanie Gary in a statement to the Chambers County Sheriff’s Department. (Gary declined to talk to the Houston Press.) Williams’s face and hair were matted with vomit, and she had defecated on herself. She told Gary that she had also just had a seizure, and asked for help. Gary got her cleaned up, gave her a new dress to wear and told Walmart management about Williams. Williams then headed to the electronics section, where she bought more cans of computer duster, and went to the restroom. Gary waited for her outside the restroom until she was called away. “After that, I never saw her again,” she wrote in her statement.
Then, just before 1 p.m. on April 13, a Walmart customer spotted Williams’s lifeless body. She was naked from the waist down, one foot pressed up against the windshield, and was still holding a can of duster. According to the coroner’s report, by the time they found her, Williams had been dead for about a day. The police had found 32 more duster cans in the car.
In May Deleese Allen sued Walmart, arguing that Walmart knew Williams was high on inhalants and still sold her the products that ultimately killed her. Allen’s lawyer, Jeff Steidley, filed a temporary restraining order to preserve evidence, such as surveillance footage, documentation of Williams’s purchases, and employees’ testimony. Just two hours before the case was supposed to go before a judge, Steidley says, Walmart’s lawyers filed a notice to move the case from district to federal court. This effectively prevented Steidley from seeing any evidence until October, when the first conference about the case is scheduled. “The design of Walmart [is] to be able to put witnesses in front of the camera, under oath, and for them to say, ‘Gee, that was several months ago, I can’t really [remember],’” Steidley says. “They’ve achieved that.”
When asked if the AVC definition would cause problems in Deleese’s lawsuit, Steidley says he has a few legal defenses prepared — but he thinks Walmart will “definitely” bring it up in court. “They’re going to come along and say, ‘We didn’t give her anything that violated the act because it’s not an abusable chemical, if it didn’t have this label on it. And that’s just another reason why we don’t have a responsibility to Karalee Williams or anybody else.’”
Williams’s family declined to be interviewed for this article. The Houston firm representing Walmart in Deleese Allen’s case, Daw & Ray, L.L.P., referred all requests for comment to Walmart. Walmart spokesman Charles Crowson, in response to questions about the case, sent only this emailed statement: “Our hearts go out to Ms. Williams’ family, friends and loved ones. Our response to the lawsuit is contained within the filed documents. Respectfully, we have denied the allegations and will continue responding appropriately as the lawsuit continues.” As for what happened to Steven Allen, Crowson said: “All we can do is confirm that there was an incident involving Mr. Allen at our Houston store in 2014.”
When asked if Walmart has any policies involving the sale of duster or other potential inhalants, Crowson said that Walmart follows all local, state and federal laws. Because Williams died from huffing Dust-Off, which doesn’t have a “Vapor Harmful” label, it might have been completely legal for Walmart to sell her the duster.
Walmart appears to have devised some of its own policies for selling duster. Jess Levin, a spokeswoman for Making Change at Walmart — a campaign run by the union United Food and Commercial Workers to improve Walmart as an employer — says her field staff spoke to four Walmart employees working in Texas about the issue. These employees, she says, were told to check the IDs of people buying duster to ensure they were over 18.
Yet as long as someone can hand over a valid ID, it seems that he or she can buy the duster, regardless of mental state. Levin’s staff spoke to Walmart employees across the country, including more than ten in Texas, and discovered that none of them knew exactly what they were supposed to do if a customer was on drugs. “What we found is that there’s no one overriding policy for all of Walmart when it comes to this issue,” Levin says. Fewer than half of the employees Levin talked to said they would tell their manager if they suspected someone was on drugs. Instead, a majority said they would do nothing. “If there is one [policy], workers don’t know that it exists,” Levin adds, “so there might as well not be one.”
In response to questions about what Walmart employees are told to do if customers are on drugs, Crowson only said, “If customers appear to be impaired, we do not discuss our policies and procedures.”
Texas bartenders risk being charged with a misdemeanor if they serve anyone who is obviously intoxicated. There’s no such law for inhalants.
*****
Tracking inhalant abuse is surprisingly difficult, so it’s hard to know the true extent of the problem. Inhalant-related deaths are not well recorded, says Sara Stickler, executive director of the Alliance for Consumer Education, an anti-inhalants-abuse group based in Washington, D.C. These deaths might be attributed to cardiac arrest, suffocation or drowning, since so many people abuse in the bath or shower, Stickler says. “You’re looking in the hundreds probably, annually, just from the alerts and the cases we are able to track on our own. But there’s probably many, many more that are being recorded as something else.”
Even when trying to determine whether someone has huffed, physicians need to run special blood tests. Many labs don’t even have the equipment to look for inhalant abuse. “Hospitals almost never are able to test for these things,” says Joseph Avella, a Nassau County, New York, medical examiner who has written academic articles studying deaths related to 1,1-difluoroethane. “So you have an individual [who] comes in; they’re under the influence of this drug. They withdraw [a] blood sample, they test it, they don’t detect it, and it’s cleared from the body so rapidly…There’s no recognition that this is what the person was doing, unless they self-report or somebody says something.”
While working as a doctor in Dallas, William Dinsfriend encountered this problem firsthand. In 2013, a 23-year-old man came into the hospital where Dinsfriend worked, complaining of chest pains. Doctors ran drug tests, but nothing turned up. The man left and returned to the hospital four months later in 2014 with the same complaints. On the patient’s second day in the hospital, Dinsfriend noticed that his heart rate was suddenly spiking. So Dinsfriend and another doctor walked into the man’s room, and caught him with a can of Dust-Off to his lips — while sitting in his hospital bed, still hooked up to the medical monitors.
“That’s not really mentioned in medical school and in residency training, so to be honest there’s just not that much known about it. And so I didn’t really know that much about it at all,” says Dinsfriend, who ended up writing an academic paper about the incident. Now, when patients present with similar symptoms, he often suggests doctors look into whether the patients are huffing. “A lot of the older doctors will be like, ‘What’s that?’” Dinsfriend says. “Some will be interested, and some will just kind of shrug it off.”
Before Allen died, Graham and Hencerling received that shrug from the drug abuse professionals they spoke to about Allen. Back in Victoria, Graham and Hencerling tried to take Allen to rehab for huffing, but no facility would accept him. Rehab administrators kept on insisting that inhalants weren’t drugs, Graham says, or that someone couldn’t be addicted to them. Eventually they gave up. After the couple moved to Houston in 2012, Allen really did seem to settle down. He still drank, but that didn’t bother Graham as much as the computer duster had. So she stayed with Allen, even as their relationship fell apart and he used duster twice more.
“But instead of me constantly nagging at him…I would just clean it up, let him shower, didn’t say anything,” Graham says. “And then I would tell him, ‘You know, you need to get help. We need to call somebody to help you.’” But when she called Houston rehab facilities, she got the same answer she had gotten in Victoria: No, computer duster isn’t a drug. No, we can’t take him.
She stayed in the relationship for so long, Graham says, for Allen’s mom’s sake. “She begged me, because she knew if I left that he would go off and do it again,” Graham says. “And I thought he was doing good. So I was scared that was going to happen, but I was really hoping it didn’t. But I guess I didn’t really get the best of luck in the end.”
Even now, when she sees computer duster stockpiled on stores’ shelves, Graham says she thinks the cans should be put behind a glass container. She wants the duster to be less accessible, its dangers more well-known — especially for children like her son, Daemon, who is now nearly four and remembers very little of his father.
“Every time I see a can of duster, I get sick to my stomach, because I think of the smell of the vomit and the pee,” she says. Graham pauses, then repeats, “It makes me sick to my stomach to this day.”
Wednesday, September 07, 2016
KAEPERNICK NOW AN EXPERT ON POLICE TRAINING
The police hating 49ers quarterback compares police training to that of cosmetologists
Colin Kaepernick, the hero to all those who believe America is rotten keeps piling it on the police. In addition to accusing cops of murdering black men and then getting put on paid leave,he has now made himself an expert on police training. On Sunday he said:
“You can become a cop in six months and don't have to have the same amount of training as a cosmetologist. That's insane. Someone that's holding a curling iron has more education and more training than people that have a gun and are going out on the street to protect us.”
What’s insane is the asshole’s comparison of police training to that of cosmetologists. That’s comparing apples to oranges. The training of cops is far more intense than that of cosmetologists. I know because the college I taught at has a cosmetology degree program.
I can assure you that a cop wielding a gun is far better trained than some woman wielding a curling iron. And in addition to their police training, many of today’s cops have four-year college degrees, something very few cosmetologists have.
When he shoots his mouth off about cops murdering blacks and police training, the Black Lives Matter and Black Panther lover doesn’t know his half-black ass from a hole in the ground. It should be obvious to everyone by now that Kaepernick is just another a police hating asshole.
Colin Kaepernick, the hero to all those who believe America is rotten keeps piling it on the police. In addition to accusing cops of murdering black men and then getting put on paid leave,he has now made himself an expert on police training. On Sunday he said:
“You can become a cop in six months and don't have to have the same amount of training as a cosmetologist. That's insane. Someone that's holding a curling iron has more education and more training than people that have a gun and are going out on the street to protect us.”
What’s insane is the asshole’s comparison of police training to that of cosmetologists. That’s comparing apples to oranges. The training of cops is far more intense than that of cosmetologists. I know because the college I taught at has a cosmetology degree program.
I can assure you that a cop wielding a gun is far better trained than some woman wielding a curling iron. And in addition to their police training, many of today’s cops have four-year college degrees, something very few cosmetologists have.
When he shoots his mouth off about cops murdering blacks and police training, the Black Lives Matter and Black Panther lover doesn’t know his half-black ass from a hole in the ground. It should be obvious to everyone by now that Kaepernick is just another a police hating asshole.
KAEPERNICK SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS LAUD BLACK LIVES MATTER, BLACK PANTHERS SINCE DATING ACTIVIST DJ
31 of Kaepernick’s last 42 posts often featured quotes from radical Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, Black Panthers founder Huey Newton and cop killer Assata Shakur
Fox News
August 30, 2016
NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s conversion to social activism coincided with his romancing of a hip hop DJ of Egyptian descent who has frequently spoken about perceived racial injustices and “Islamaphobia” in the U.S.
Kaepernick, 28, who has come under fire for his decision to remain seated during the playing of The Star-Spangled Banner before San Francisco 49ers games, reportedly began dating Hot 97 DJ and MTV host Nessa Diab in July 2015. A few months later, his social media posts began to reflect the Black Lives Matter and Muslim activism of Diab.
"History!" Kaepernick wrote on Instagram Oct. 15, when he marked 50 years since the Black Panther Party was founded.
Kaepernick has posted 170 photos or videos on his Instagram account in the four years since he created it. Most of his first 128 posts were pics of him in football gear, publicity photos or shots taken with friends. But 31 of his last 42 posts have strong social justice connotations, often featuring quotes from radical Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, Black Panthers founder Huey Newton and cop killer Assata Shakur. During a Sunday news conference about the flag flap, Kaepernick dressed in a black hat with a large, white “X” and a T-shirt that featured photos of Cuban despot Fidel Castro and Malcolm X.
Kaepernick, who was notably photographed with Bible quotes tattooed on his biceps when he first came into the league, also posted a greeting in July acknowledging “a lot of people” who he knew fasting during the Muslim holiday of Ramadan and wishing them “a Happy Eid!” He also was heavily critical on social media of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims.
Diab’s Twitter and Instagram account is a mish-mash of black activism, celebrity pics and the occasional defense of Islam. She frequently retweets Black Lives Matter supporter and newspaper columnist Shaun King on race-related issues. On Aug. 18, Diab retweeted another user’s musings that black athletes face a backlash for expressing political opinions with the added comment “YESSSSSS.” She defended Kaepernick in an Aug. 28 tweet, writing, “I’m always proud of him and always will be @Kaepernick7 . Please take the time to UNDERSTAND what he is saying,” followed by a link to a transcript of his news conference.
Diab said in a March 2014 interview that she spent many of her formative years in Saudi Arabia, after her dad was transferred there from a job in California. She described being in the Kingdom during the Gulf War and how the threat of bombings later colored her impression of American tragedies.
“When 9/11 happened, it didn’t surprise me at all,” Diab said on the Guy Code Podcast. “’Wow. Mmkay. This is what we went through, probably, every couple months.’”
On the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Diab posted a quote on Instagram from President Obama saying in part “ISIL does not speak for Islam.” Diab added: “Had to repost @ebroski on this and also check those comments out #knowledgeispower #enlightenment.”
Posting about Alton Sterling’s controversial shooting by police officers, Diab remarked “they will also try to discredit the store owner’s account of what occurred because he’s Muslim and we know Islamaphobia is at an all-time high in this country.”
Diab said her parents, who were originally from Egypt, were highly educated, but denied some jobs in the U.S. “because they have an accent.”
On August 18, Diab posted a defense of Kaepernick on Instagram:
If a Black athlete or entertainer says something political along the lines of “Isupport the troops” or ‘the nation is beyond race,” America LOVES it. They hoist those African-Americans on their shoulders, shroud them in an American flag, and parade then around as the New Negro Flavor of the Month. But let a Black athlete or entertainer say ANYTHING hinting towards the horrors Black folks experience in America .. America don’t love you no more.
Kaepernick said on Sunday that his sitdown is for “people that are being oppressed” and he'll end the protest when “I feel like that flag represents what it’s supposed to represent.”
Kaepernick said he planned further activism beyond the seated demonstration.
Fox News
August 30, 2016
NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s conversion to social activism coincided with his romancing of a hip hop DJ of Egyptian descent who has frequently spoken about perceived racial injustices and “Islamaphobia” in the U.S.
Kaepernick, 28, who has come under fire for his decision to remain seated during the playing of The Star-Spangled Banner before San Francisco 49ers games, reportedly began dating Hot 97 DJ and MTV host Nessa Diab in July 2015. A few months later, his social media posts began to reflect the Black Lives Matter and Muslim activism of Diab.
"History!" Kaepernick wrote on Instagram Oct. 15, when he marked 50 years since the Black Panther Party was founded.
Kaepernick has posted 170 photos or videos on his Instagram account in the four years since he created it. Most of his first 128 posts were pics of him in football gear, publicity photos or shots taken with friends. But 31 of his last 42 posts have strong social justice connotations, often featuring quotes from radical Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, Black Panthers founder Huey Newton and cop killer Assata Shakur. During a Sunday news conference about the flag flap, Kaepernick dressed in a black hat with a large, white “X” and a T-shirt that featured photos of Cuban despot Fidel Castro and Malcolm X.
Kaepernick, who was notably photographed with Bible quotes tattooed on his biceps when he first came into the league, also posted a greeting in July acknowledging “a lot of people” who he knew fasting during the Muslim holiday of Ramadan and wishing them “a Happy Eid!” He also was heavily critical on social media of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims.
Diab’s Twitter and Instagram account is a mish-mash of black activism, celebrity pics and the occasional defense of Islam. She frequently retweets Black Lives Matter supporter and newspaper columnist Shaun King on race-related issues. On Aug. 18, Diab retweeted another user’s musings that black athletes face a backlash for expressing political opinions with the added comment “YESSSSSS.” She defended Kaepernick in an Aug. 28 tweet, writing, “I’m always proud of him and always will be @Kaepernick7 . Please take the time to UNDERSTAND what he is saying,” followed by a link to a transcript of his news conference.
Diab said in a March 2014 interview that she spent many of her formative years in Saudi Arabia, after her dad was transferred there from a job in California. She described being in the Kingdom during the Gulf War and how the threat of bombings later colored her impression of American tragedies.
“When 9/11 happened, it didn’t surprise me at all,” Diab said on the Guy Code Podcast. “’Wow. Mmkay. This is what we went through, probably, every couple months.’”
On the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Diab posted a quote on Instagram from President Obama saying in part “ISIL does not speak for Islam.” Diab added: “Had to repost @ebroski on this and also check those comments out #knowledgeispower #enlightenment.”
Posting about Alton Sterling’s controversial shooting by police officers, Diab remarked “they will also try to discredit the store owner’s account of what occurred because he’s Muslim and we know Islamaphobia is at an all-time high in this country.”
Diab said her parents, who were originally from Egypt, were highly educated, but denied some jobs in the U.S. “because they have an accent.”
On August 18, Diab posted a defense of Kaepernick on Instagram:
If a Black athlete or entertainer says something political along the lines of “Isupport the troops” or ‘the nation is beyond race,” America LOVES it. They hoist those African-Americans on their shoulders, shroud them in an American flag, and parade then around as the New Negro Flavor of the Month. But let a Black athlete or entertainer say ANYTHING hinting towards the horrors Black folks experience in America .. America don’t love you no more.
Kaepernick said on Sunday that his sitdown is for “people that are being oppressed” and he'll end the protest when “I feel like that flag represents what it’s supposed to represent.”
Kaepernick said he planned further activism beyond the seated demonstration.
AND ANOTHER FIRING RANGE BITES THE DUST
By Bob Walsh
I have written a couple of times about the eminent demise of the very nice public firing range run by the Chabot Gun Club on Redwood Road on land owned by the East Bay Parks District. Labor Day was their last day of operation of the 65 acre operation. The club had a total of 176 firing positions on the public ranges, making it one of the largest such operations in the [San Francisco] bay area.
The range has been under assault for several years by anti-gun assholes who are offended by the mere presence of firearms and firearms owners. They managed to assert that the presence of the fired lead projectiles in the berm is somehow a significant health threat. (It really isn’t. Lead salts can be an issue. A chunk of lead lying on the ground isn’t.)
The club has just about 1,000 actual members and the range’s hosted about 45,000 individual shooters per year on the public ranges. There were also several closed ranges used by private security trainers, police departments and others.
The district managers, who voted unanimously to evict the range, asserted that they feared that there might be a significant cleanup cost down the line which the Park District might be on the hook for if the gun club could not cover it.
In actuality the range was shut down by a pack of gun-hating liberal assholes, which is not a small minority in the San Francisco Bay Area. Just one more attack on the Second Amendment from a functional standpoint.
I have written a couple of times about the eminent demise of the very nice public firing range run by the Chabot Gun Club on Redwood Road on land owned by the East Bay Parks District. Labor Day was their last day of operation of the 65 acre operation. The club had a total of 176 firing positions on the public ranges, making it one of the largest such operations in the [San Francisco] bay area.
The range has been under assault for several years by anti-gun assholes who are offended by the mere presence of firearms and firearms owners. They managed to assert that the presence of the fired lead projectiles in the berm is somehow a significant health threat. (It really isn’t. Lead salts can be an issue. A chunk of lead lying on the ground isn’t.)
The club has just about 1,000 actual members and the range’s hosted about 45,000 individual shooters per year on the public ranges. There were also several closed ranges used by private security trainers, police departments and others.
The district managers, who voted unanimously to evict the range, asserted that they feared that there might be a significant cleanup cost down the line which the Park District might be on the hook for if the gun club could not cover it.
In actuality the range was shut down by a pack of gun-hating liberal assholes, which is not a small minority in the San Francisco Bay Area. Just one more attack on the Second Amendment from a functional standpoint.
THE KIND OF PRESIDENT AMERICA NEEDS
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warns 'son of a bitch' Obama not to question his war on drugs that has killed 2,400 within three months
By Hannah Parry
Daily Mail
September 5, 2016
The Philippine's hardline president - dubbed 'The Punisher' - warned Barack Obama not to ask about extrajudicial killings, or 'son of a bitch I will swear at you' when they meet in Laos during a regional summit.
More than 2,000 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte launched a war on drugs after taking office on June 30 this year.
It isn't clear whether President Obama plans to raise the issue of extrajudicial killings with Duterte during a meeting on the sidelines of the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
But Duterte warned that he is a leader of a sovereign country and is answerable only to the Filipino people.
'Who is he to confront me?' he said, adding that the Philippines had not received an apology for misdeeds committed during its U.S. colonization.
'I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody.
'You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. Putang ina I will swear at you in that forum,' he said, using the Tagalog phrase for son of a bitch.
The Philippines president pointed to the killing of Muslim Moros more than a century ago during a U.S. pacification campaign in the southern Philippines, blaming the wounds of the past as 'the reason why (the south) continues to boil' with separatist insurgencies.
Duterte has also made it clear he will take no lecture on human rights from Obama, when in the United States he alleged 'black people are being shot even if they are already lying down'.
Last week, Duterte said he was ready to defend his bloody crackdown on illegal drugs, which has sparked concern from the U.S. and other countries.
Duterte said he would demand that Obama allow him to first explain the context of his crackdown before engaging the U.S. president in a discussion of the deaths.
Last week, the number of people killed since July 1 reached 2,400: about 900 died in police operations, and the rest are 'deaths under investigation', a term human rights activists say is a euphemism for vigilante and extrajudicial killings.
Duterte has been unapologetic in his war on drugs, telling a news conference on Monday that 'plenty will be killed' in his campaign.
'Until the (last) drug manufacturer is killed we will continue,' Duterte told reporters before leaving for a regional summit in Laos, where he is due to meet U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday.
The White House had no immediate reaction to Duterte's comments. Obama has been attending a meeting of the Group of 20 nations in Hangzhou, China.
Duterte won elections in May and immediately promised a law-and-order crackdown on drugs.
'These sons of whores are destroying our children. I warn you, don't go into that, even if you're a policeman, because I will really kill you,' the president told an audience during a speech in the country's capital, Manila.
Duterte made it clear he would pardon police if they were charged with human rights violations for carrying out his merciless orders.
Nearly 60,000 Filipino drug addicts surrendered themselves last month to the government after President Duterte urged citizens to 'go ahead and kill' drug dealers and users.
President Duterte has warned of widespread bloodshed as part of the government's war on drugs.
He vowed on one occasion during the election campaign that 100,000 people would die, and so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that the fish there would grow fat from feeding on them, according to the South China Morning Post.
The government's top lawyer called for police to kill more suspected drug criminals, as he defended president Duterte's brutal war on crime against mounting criticism.
As the official death toll has mounted, and other bodies not confirmed killed by police have been found with placards declaring them drug traffickers, human rights lawyers have expressed deep concerns about the war on crime spiralling out of control.
In response to the criticism, Solicitor General Jose Calida held a press conference on Monday at national police headquarters to insist on the legality of the police killings and to encourage more deaths of people suspected of being involved in the drug trade.
'To me, that is not enough,' Calida said of the killings so far.
Reuters interviews reveal that the police's Internal Affairs Service (IAS) and the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) are so overwhelmed by the killings that they can investigate only a fraction, and there is scant hope of establishing many as unlawful because witnesses are too terrified to come forward.
Meanwhile, the immense popularity of Duterte's crusade and a climate of fear it has engendered have severely restrained dissent from civil society. Hardly anyone turned up at candlelight vigils in Manila recently to protest against extrajudicial killings.
Even as the death toll rose, a July poll by Pulse Asia put Duterte's approval rating at 91 percent.
Anxious reminders by the Catholic Church of the commandment 'thou shalt not kill' make few headlines in the predominantly Catholic country, with newspapers preferring to carry breathless accounts of the latest slayings.
Duterte has delivered withering attacks on his chief critic, Senator Leila de Lima, accusing her of dealing in drugs herself and having an affair with her driver.
'It's only the president who can stop this,' de Lima told Reuters last week, deploring what she described as the 'madness' that led in one case to a five-year-old girl being shot in the head.
'How many more of these cases of collateral damage are we willing to bear before we can really start screaming about it?' she asked.
As for critics abroad, Duterte pours scorn on them in language larded with curses.
He lambasted the United Nations after it criticised the surge in killings and he turned down a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at a summit in Laos this week.
Duterte may intensify the crackdown after 14 people were killed on Friday in a bomb attack at a market in his hometown, Davao.
Police blamed the Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic State-linked group Duterte has vowed to destroy, but his war on the drug trade is making enemies elsewhere and the attack quickened rumors of a plot to kill him.
Duterte has declared a nationwide 'state of lawlessness' after the blast that authorises troops to reinforce the police with checkpoints and patrols.
He has managed with remarkable speed to nationalize a model for fighting crime that he pioneered as mayor of Davao for 22 years.
Across the country now, lists of suspected drug pushers are being provided to police by neighborhood chiefs, adding to a sense of fear and distrust across communities.
Politicians of all hues have gone quiet, and a Senate enquiry led by de Lima only has the power to propose legislation.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This ruckus started when Obama condemned Duterte’s drug crackdown. Now Obama has cancelled a scheduled trip to the Philippines because Duterte called him a son of a bitch.
I would say that in the context of the way he used the term, Duterte pegged Obama for what he is.
Duterte is the kind of president America needs.
By Hannah Parry
Daily Mail
September 5, 2016
The Philippine's hardline president - dubbed 'The Punisher' - warned Barack Obama not to ask about extrajudicial killings, or 'son of a bitch I will swear at you' when they meet in Laos during a regional summit.
More than 2,000 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte launched a war on drugs after taking office on June 30 this year.
It isn't clear whether President Obama plans to raise the issue of extrajudicial killings with Duterte during a meeting on the sidelines of the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
But Duterte warned that he is a leader of a sovereign country and is answerable only to the Filipino people.
'Who is he to confront me?' he said, adding that the Philippines had not received an apology for misdeeds committed during its U.S. colonization.
'I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody.
'You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. Putang ina I will swear at you in that forum,' he said, using the Tagalog phrase for son of a bitch.
The Philippines president pointed to the killing of Muslim Moros more than a century ago during a U.S. pacification campaign in the southern Philippines, blaming the wounds of the past as 'the reason why (the south) continues to boil' with separatist insurgencies.
Duterte has also made it clear he will take no lecture on human rights from Obama, when in the United States he alleged 'black people are being shot even if they are already lying down'.
Last week, Duterte said he was ready to defend his bloody crackdown on illegal drugs, which has sparked concern from the U.S. and other countries.
Duterte said he would demand that Obama allow him to first explain the context of his crackdown before engaging the U.S. president in a discussion of the deaths.
Last week, the number of people killed since July 1 reached 2,400: about 900 died in police operations, and the rest are 'deaths under investigation', a term human rights activists say is a euphemism for vigilante and extrajudicial killings.
Duterte has been unapologetic in his war on drugs, telling a news conference on Monday that 'plenty will be killed' in his campaign.
'Until the (last) drug manufacturer is killed we will continue,' Duterte told reporters before leaving for a regional summit in Laos, where he is due to meet U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday.
The White House had no immediate reaction to Duterte's comments. Obama has been attending a meeting of the Group of 20 nations in Hangzhou, China.
Duterte won elections in May and immediately promised a law-and-order crackdown on drugs.
'These sons of whores are destroying our children. I warn you, don't go into that, even if you're a policeman, because I will really kill you,' the president told an audience during a speech in the country's capital, Manila.
Duterte made it clear he would pardon police if they were charged with human rights violations for carrying out his merciless orders.
Nearly 60,000 Filipino drug addicts surrendered themselves last month to the government after President Duterte urged citizens to 'go ahead and kill' drug dealers and users.
President Duterte has warned of widespread bloodshed as part of the government's war on drugs.
He vowed on one occasion during the election campaign that 100,000 people would die, and so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that the fish there would grow fat from feeding on them, according to the South China Morning Post.
The government's top lawyer called for police to kill more suspected drug criminals, as he defended president Duterte's brutal war on crime against mounting criticism.
As the official death toll has mounted, and other bodies not confirmed killed by police have been found with placards declaring them drug traffickers, human rights lawyers have expressed deep concerns about the war on crime spiralling out of control.
In response to the criticism, Solicitor General Jose Calida held a press conference on Monday at national police headquarters to insist on the legality of the police killings and to encourage more deaths of people suspected of being involved in the drug trade.
'To me, that is not enough,' Calida said of the killings so far.
Reuters interviews reveal that the police's Internal Affairs Service (IAS) and the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) are so overwhelmed by the killings that they can investigate only a fraction, and there is scant hope of establishing many as unlawful because witnesses are too terrified to come forward.
Meanwhile, the immense popularity of Duterte's crusade and a climate of fear it has engendered have severely restrained dissent from civil society. Hardly anyone turned up at candlelight vigils in Manila recently to protest against extrajudicial killings.
Even as the death toll rose, a July poll by Pulse Asia put Duterte's approval rating at 91 percent.
Anxious reminders by the Catholic Church of the commandment 'thou shalt not kill' make few headlines in the predominantly Catholic country, with newspapers preferring to carry breathless accounts of the latest slayings.
Duterte has delivered withering attacks on his chief critic, Senator Leila de Lima, accusing her of dealing in drugs herself and having an affair with her driver.
'It's only the president who can stop this,' de Lima told Reuters last week, deploring what she described as the 'madness' that led in one case to a five-year-old girl being shot in the head.
'How many more of these cases of collateral damage are we willing to bear before we can really start screaming about it?' she asked.
As for critics abroad, Duterte pours scorn on them in language larded with curses.
He lambasted the United Nations after it criticised the surge in killings and he turned down a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at a summit in Laos this week.
Duterte may intensify the crackdown after 14 people were killed on Friday in a bomb attack at a market in his hometown, Davao.
Police blamed the Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic State-linked group Duterte has vowed to destroy, but his war on the drug trade is making enemies elsewhere and the attack quickened rumors of a plot to kill him.
Duterte has declared a nationwide 'state of lawlessness' after the blast that authorises troops to reinforce the police with checkpoints and patrols.
He has managed with remarkable speed to nationalize a model for fighting crime that he pioneered as mayor of Davao for 22 years.
Across the country now, lists of suspected drug pushers are being provided to police by neighborhood chiefs, adding to a sense of fear and distrust across communities.
Politicians of all hues have gone quiet, and a Senate enquiry led by de Lima only has the power to propose legislation.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This ruckus started when Obama condemned Duterte’s drug crackdown. Now Obama has cancelled a scheduled trip to the Philippines because Duterte called him a son of a bitch.
I would say that in the context of the way he used the term, Duterte pegged Obama for what he is.
Duterte is the kind of president America needs.
Tuesday, September 06, 2016
THE NATIONAL ANTHEM ACCORDING TO COLIN KAEPERNICK
The hero to all those who believe America is rotten has penned his own version of the Star Spangled Banner
San Francisco Forty Niners quarterback Colin Kaepernick announced Sunday that he would continue to sit or kneel during the playing of the national anthem.
However, the hero to all those who believe America is rotten said he would stand if a band played the anthem as he has penned it. This is his version:
O say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
Cops murdering people of color at the twilight's last gleaming,
Black Panthers defending African-Americans through the perilous fight
With our smartphone cameras we watch'd
Cops shooting unarmed black men for no reason
And the gunfire’s red glare, the shots bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that to white cops black lives do not matter
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of oppressed African-Americans and the home of the Ku Klux Klan
The National Football League announced it supported Kaepernick 100 percent for standing up by sitting down. The NFL also revealed that Beyonce had volunteered to sing Kaepernick’s anthem. However, so far the league has been unable to find a band willing to play it.
San Francisco Forty Niners quarterback Colin Kaepernick announced Sunday that he would continue to sit or kneel during the playing of the national anthem.
However, the hero to all those who believe America is rotten said he would stand if a band played the anthem as he has penned it. This is his version:
O say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
Cops murdering people of color at the twilight's last gleaming,
Black Panthers defending African-Americans through the perilous fight
With our smartphone cameras we watch'd
Cops shooting unarmed black men for no reason
And the gunfire’s red glare, the shots bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that to white cops black lives do not matter
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of oppressed African-Americans and the home of the Ku Klux Klan
The National Football League announced it supported Kaepernick 100 percent for standing up by sitting down. The NFL also revealed that Beyonce had volunteered to sing Kaepernick’s anthem. However, so far the league has been unable to find a band willing to play it.
FRON ENGLISH DRINKING SONG TO AMERICA’S NATIONAL ANTHEM
Here’s something I just learned about the origin of ‘The Star Bangled Banner’ after reading a column by Wesley Pruden:
The anthem was originally an English drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven," and even as "The Star-Spangled Banner" almost nobody sober can properly sing it. The song was frequently sung at a London drinking club as a tribute to the ancient Greek poet Anacreon, and the club made the mistake of inviting the Duchess of Devonshire to one of its meetings. She primly observed that some of the comic songs "were not exactly calculated for the entertainment of ladies," and after the singers restrained themselves several members resigned, "one after the other." The club was dissolved.
A century later the tune was revived when Francis Scott Key was inspired by the assault on Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor to write a poem - the first words being, "Oh, say" - and set to music it became the national anthem in 1931, beating out the much easier to sing "America, the Beautiful."
So, does the fact that The Star Bangled Banner originated as an English drinking song make our national anthem less sacred? Hell no! It just makes it more colorful.
And to every American I say: Stand proudly at attention every time the national anthem is played! If you fail to stand, you will be dishonoring our country.
The anthem was originally an English drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven," and even as "The Star-Spangled Banner" almost nobody sober can properly sing it. The song was frequently sung at a London drinking club as a tribute to the ancient Greek poet Anacreon, and the club made the mistake of inviting the Duchess of Devonshire to one of its meetings. She primly observed that some of the comic songs "were not exactly calculated for the entertainment of ladies," and after the singers restrained themselves several members resigned, "one after the other." The club was dissolved.
A century later the tune was revived when Francis Scott Key was inspired by the assault on Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor to write a poem - the first words being, "Oh, say" - and set to music it became the national anthem in 1931, beating out the much easier to sing "America, the Beautiful."
So, does the fact that The Star Bangled Banner originated as an English drinking song make our national anthem less sacred? Hell no! It just makes it more colorful.
And to every American I say: Stand proudly at attention every time the national anthem is played! If you fail to stand, you will be dishonoring our country.
AN HONEST CRIMINAL
By Bob Walsh
Victor Rodriguez, 20, was a guest of the people of the city and county of San Francisco until last Wednesday. He was doing a brief stretch for robbery and battery, and was undergoing charges for threatening a deputy while in the jail. One of the charges against him was dropped, but a second one was not dropped. However, a clerical error in the court indicated that ALL charges against Rodriguez had been dropped and he was kicked out.
Rodriguez asserts that he told the jailers that there had been a mistake and he was not supposed to be released. The jail is not disputing his allegation, but they kicked him out anyway.
The following day the error was noticed and a warrant for Rodriguez was issued.
Rodriguez became aware of it and called a local TV station, explained the situation to them (I guess he wanted to cover his butt, and were I in his position, I would probably have done something similar) and told them he intended to turn himself in. He in fact did so on Saturday, walking into the jail at 0900.
It is unclear at this time if he will be charged with escape, but I sort of doubt it. I suspect the court and the sheriff will be just as happy if this whole thing goes away.
As a side note, I was in charge of the prison’s Reception Center at DVI for some little period of time. On three occasions we got prisoners in who asserted that they should not have been there. Two were intakes from local jails. One was a parole roll-up. All three were telling the truth. The two intakes were “wrong guy” situations, the prisoner we got had in fact not been convicted of anything. The parole roll-up had in fact closed out his parole two weeks earlier.
Excrement occurs and prisoners do not always lie.
Victor Rodriguez, 20, was a guest of the people of the city and county of San Francisco until last Wednesday. He was doing a brief stretch for robbery and battery, and was undergoing charges for threatening a deputy while in the jail. One of the charges against him was dropped, but a second one was not dropped. However, a clerical error in the court indicated that ALL charges against Rodriguez had been dropped and he was kicked out.
Rodriguez asserts that he told the jailers that there had been a mistake and he was not supposed to be released. The jail is not disputing his allegation, but they kicked him out anyway.
The following day the error was noticed and a warrant for Rodriguez was issued.
Rodriguez became aware of it and called a local TV station, explained the situation to them (I guess he wanted to cover his butt, and were I in his position, I would probably have done something similar) and told them he intended to turn himself in. He in fact did so on Saturday, walking into the jail at 0900.
It is unclear at this time if he will be charged with escape, but I sort of doubt it. I suspect the court and the sheriff will be just as happy if this whole thing goes away.
As a side note, I was in charge of the prison’s Reception Center at DVI for some little period of time. On three occasions we got prisoners in who asserted that they should not have been there. Two were intakes from local jails. One was a parole roll-up. All three were telling the truth. The two intakes were “wrong guy” situations, the prisoner we got had in fact not been convicted of anything. The parole roll-up had in fact closed out his parole two weeks earlier.
Excrement occurs and prisoners do not always lie.
QUANG NGUYEN, A PERSON OF COLOR, LOVES AMERICA ….. IN CONTRAST TO COLIN KAEPERNICK
Speaking at a Freedom Rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona on July 24, 2010, Vietnamese immigrant Quang Nguyen told the crowd he was thankful and proud to be an American citizen
“Thirty-five years ago, if you told me that I was going to stand up here speaking to a couple thousand patriots, in English, I’d have laughed at you. Man, every morning I wake up thanking God for putting me and my family in the greatest country on earth.
“I just want you all to know that the American dream does exist and I am living the American dream. I was asked to speak to you about my experience as a first generation Vietnamese American, but I’d rather speak to you as an American. If you haven’t noticed, I am not white and I feel pretty comfortable with my people.
“I am a proud US citizen and here is my proof. It took me eight years to get it, waiting in endless lines, but I got it, and I am very proud of it.
“I still remember the images of the Tet offensive in 1968, and I was six years old. Now you might want to question how a 6-yearold boy could remember anything. Trust me, those images can never be erased. I can’t even imagine what it was like for young American soldiers, 10,000 miles away from home, fighting on my behalf.
“Thirty-five years ago, I left South Vietnam for political asylum. The war had ended. At the age of 13, I left with the understanding that I might, or might not, ever get to see my siblings or parents again. I was one of the first lucky 100,000 Vietnamese allowed to come to the US. Somehow, my family and I were reunited five months later, amazingly, in California. It was a miracle from God.
“If you haven’t heard lately that this is the greatest country on earth, I am telling you that right now. It was the freedom and the opportunities presented to me that put me here with all of you tonight. I also remember the barriers that I had to overcome every step of the way. My high school counselor told me that I could not make it to college due to my poor communication skills. I proved him wrong. Well, I took the opportunity and here I am.
“This person standing tonight in front of you could not exist under a socialist/communist environment. By the way, if you think socialism is the way to go, I am sure many people here will chip in to get you a one-way ticket out of here. And if you didn’t know, the only difference between socialism and communism is an AK-47 aimed at your head. That was my experience.
“In 1982, I stood with a thousand new immigrants, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and listening to the National Anthem for the first time as an American. To this day, I can’t remember anything sweeter and more patriotic than that moment in my life.
“Fast forwarding, somehow I finished high school, finished college, and like any other goofball 21-year-old kid, I was having a great time with my life. I had a nice job and a nice apartment in Southern California. In some way and somehow, I had forgotten how I got here and why I was here.
“One day I was at a gas station and saw a veteran pumping gas on the other side of the island. I don’t know what made me do it, but I walked over and asked if he had served in Vietnam. He smiled and said yes. I shook and held his hand. The grown man began to well up. I walked away as fast as I could and at that very moment, I was emotionally rocked. This was a profound moment in my life. I knew something had to change in my life. It was time for me to learn how to be a good citizen. It was time for me to give back.
“You see, America is not just a place on the map, it isn’t just a physical location. It is an ideal, a concept. And if you are an American, you must understand the concept, you must accept this concept, and most importantly, you have to fight and defend this concept. This is about Freedom and not free stuff. And that is why I am standing up here.
“To be a real American, the very least you must do is to learn English and understand it well. In my humble opinion, you cannot be a faithful patriotic citizen if you can’t speak the language of the country you live in. Take this document of 46 pages -- last I looked on the Internet, there wasn’t a Vietnamese translation of the US Constitution. It took me a long time to get to the point of being able to converse and until this day, I still struggle to come up with the right words. It’s not easy, but if it’s too easy, it’s not worth doing.
“Before I knew this 46-page document, I learned of the 500,000 Americans who fought for this little boy. I learned of the 58,000 names scribed on the black wall at the Vietnam Memorial. You are my heroes. You are my founders.
“At this time, I would like to thank all the Vietnam veterans for my life. I thank you for your sacrifices, and I thank you for giving me the freedom and liberty I have today. I now ask all veterans, firefighters and police officers to please stand. On behalf of all first generation immigrants, I thank you for your services, and may God bless you all.”
“God bless America! One Flag, One Language, One Nation Under God.”
(Quang Nguyen is the Creative Director/Founder of Caddis Advertising, LLC)
“Thirty-five years ago, if you told me that I was going to stand up here speaking to a couple thousand patriots, in English, I’d have laughed at you. Man, every morning I wake up thanking God for putting me and my family in the greatest country on earth.
“I just want you all to know that the American dream does exist and I am living the American dream. I was asked to speak to you about my experience as a first generation Vietnamese American, but I’d rather speak to you as an American. If you haven’t noticed, I am not white and I feel pretty comfortable with my people.
“I am a proud US citizen and here is my proof. It took me eight years to get it, waiting in endless lines, but I got it, and I am very proud of it.
“I still remember the images of the Tet offensive in 1968, and I was six years old. Now you might want to question how a 6-yearold boy could remember anything. Trust me, those images can never be erased. I can’t even imagine what it was like for young American soldiers, 10,000 miles away from home, fighting on my behalf.
“Thirty-five years ago, I left South Vietnam for political asylum. The war had ended. At the age of 13, I left with the understanding that I might, or might not, ever get to see my siblings or parents again. I was one of the first lucky 100,000 Vietnamese allowed to come to the US. Somehow, my family and I were reunited five months later, amazingly, in California. It was a miracle from God.
“If you haven’t heard lately that this is the greatest country on earth, I am telling you that right now. It was the freedom and the opportunities presented to me that put me here with all of you tonight. I also remember the barriers that I had to overcome every step of the way. My high school counselor told me that I could not make it to college due to my poor communication skills. I proved him wrong. Well, I took the opportunity and here I am.
“This person standing tonight in front of you could not exist under a socialist/communist environment. By the way, if you think socialism is the way to go, I am sure many people here will chip in to get you a one-way ticket out of here. And if you didn’t know, the only difference between socialism and communism is an AK-47 aimed at your head. That was my experience.
“In 1982, I stood with a thousand new immigrants, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and listening to the National Anthem for the first time as an American. To this day, I can’t remember anything sweeter and more patriotic than that moment in my life.
“Fast forwarding, somehow I finished high school, finished college, and like any other goofball 21-year-old kid, I was having a great time with my life. I had a nice job and a nice apartment in Southern California. In some way and somehow, I had forgotten how I got here and why I was here.
“One day I was at a gas station and saw a veteran pumping gas on the other side of the island. I don’t know what made me do it, but I walked over and asked if he had served in Vietnam. He smiled and said yes. I shook and held his hand. The grown man began to well up. I walked away as fast as I could and at that very moment, I was emotionally rocked. This was a profound moment in my life. I knew something had to change in my life. It was time for me to learn how to be a good citizen. It was time for me to give back.
“You see, America is not just a place on the map, it isn’t just a physical location. It is an ideal, a concept. And if you are an American, you must understand the concept, you must accept this concept, and most importantly, you have to fight and defend this concept. This is about Freedom and not free stuff. And that is why I am standing up here.
“To be a real American, the very least you must do is to learn English and understand it well. In my humble opinion, you cannot be a faithful patriotic citizen if you can’t speak the language of the country you live in. Take this document of 46 pages -- last I looked on the Internet, there wasn’t a Vietnamese translation of the US Constitution. It took me a long time to get to the point of being able to converse and until this day, I still struggle to come up with the right words. It’s not easy, but if it’s too easy, it’s not worth doing.
“Before I knew this 46-page document, I learned of the 500,000 Americans who fought for this little boy. I learned of the 58,000 names scribed on the black wall at the Vietnam Memorial. You are my heroes. You are my founders.
“At this time, I would like to thank all the Vietnam veterans for my life. I thank you for your sacrifices, and I thank you for giving me the freedom and liberty I have today. I now ask all veterans, firefighters and police officers to please stand. On behalf of all first generation immigrants, I thank you for your services, and may God bless you all.”
“God bless America! One Flag, One Language, One Nation Under God.”
(Quang Nguyen is the Creative Director/Founder of Caddis Advertising, LLC)
COLOSSAL MISSING EVISENCE SCANDAL
Harris County [Houston] District Attorney Devon Anderson doesn't yet know how many criminal cases she'll have to throw out because of the scandal which has led to 142 dismissals so far since as many as 21,500 individual pieces of evidence may be missing
By Zach Despart
Houston Press
September 2, 2016
Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson laid bare the havoc a missing evidence scandal in Precinct 4 has caused within her office: 142 dismissed criminal cases to date, a list that grows longer each week.
"It's so critical that this gets under control," Anderson said at a Friday morning news conference, adding that she was not exaggerating in stating her attorneys have so far spent hundreds of hours trying to determine which cases to proceed with and which must be tossed.
Anderson said as many as 21,500 individual pieces of evidence may be missing.
Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told the Houston Press that back in January, he discovered a deputy had accidentally destroyed a large amount of drug evidence. Herman said he promptly fired the deputy, later identified as Christopher T. Hess, for the egregious mistake.
But Anderson, saying she was unsatisfied with "conflicting and inconsistent" reports given to her by Precinct 4, on Friday announced an investigation into the officers who work in the department's property room. She did not rule out criminal charges. Since February, Anderson said, the DA's office's Public Integrity Division has been trying to find out where the missing evidence went and how it came to be improperly disposed of.
Anderson said her office has 1,072 outstanding cases, which prosecutors must evaluate to ensure evidence needed to secure a conviction has not been destroyed. The district attorney also said her office has sent letters to about 600 defendants who were convicted or took plea deals in cases where evidence has been lost — raising the possibility that more suspects could be freed.
Another wrinkle in the case emerged Friday, as Houston attorney Burt Springer announced he was representing Hess, the fired deputy. Springer's office said Hess believes he was unfairly fired by Precinct 4.
By Zach Despart
Houston Press
September 2, 2016
Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson laid bare the havoc a missing evidence scandal in Precinct 4 has caused within her office: 142 dismissed criminal cases to date, a list that grows longer each week.
"It's so critical that this gets under control," Anderson said at a Friday morning news conference, adding that she was not exaggerating in stating her attorneys have so far spent hundreds of hours trying to determine which cases to proceed with and which must be tossed.
Anderson said as many as 21,500 individual pieces of evidence may be missing.
Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told the Houston Press that back in January, he discovered a deputy had accidentally destroyed a large amount of drug evidence. Herman said he promptly fired the deputy, later identified as Christopher T. Hess, for the egregious mistake.
But Anderson, saying she was unsatisfied with "conflicting and inconsistent" reports given to her by Precinct 4, on Friday announced an investigation into the officers who work in the department's property room. She did not rule out criminal charges. Since February, Anderson said, the DA's office's Public Integrity Division has been trying to find out where the missing evidence went and how it came to be improperly disposed of.
Anderson said her office has 1,072 outstanding cases, which prosecutors must evaluate to ensure evidence needed to secure a conviction has not been destroyed. The district attorney also said her office has sent letters to about 600 defendants who were convicted or took plea deals in cases where evidence has been lost — raising the possibility that more suspects could be freed.
Another wrinkle in the case emerged Friday, as Houston attorney Burt Springer announced he was representing Hess, the fired deputy. Springer's office said Hess believes he was unfairly fired by Precinct 4.
OBAMA JUST GRANTED CLEMENCY TO 111 FEDERAL INMATES, 35 OF WHOM HAD LIFE SENTENCES
The total number of prisoners granted clemency by Obama so far is 673, a massive number compared to his predecessors
By Tess Owen
VICE News
August 30, 2016
The summer after Timothy Tyler graduated from high school, he discovered the Grateful Dead. It was also when he says he first tried LSD.
That was in 1987. For years afterward, Tyler made his way across the country following the Dead, selling tequila shots, whippets, fruit smoothies, fried dough, and acid. He was arrested in 1991 and charged with possession of LSD; not longer after that, he got busted again, resulting in three years of probation. He then sold acid multiple times via mail to a friend who was working as an undercover informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Because of federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws passed in 1986, a 25-year-old Tyler was sentenced to life behind bars for selling about $3,000 worth of LSD. But on Tuesday, President Barack Obama granted Tyler clemency along with 110 other federal inmates. Thirty-five of them, including Tyler, were serving life sentences.
"They are individuals who received unduly harsh sentences under outdated laws for committing largely nonviolent drug crimes," wrote White House CounselNeil Eggleston. "The individualized nature of this relief highlights the need for bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation."
Until Tuesday, the Clemency Report, which identifies and profiles prisoners thought to be prime candidates for commuted sentences, listed Tyler as the prisoner most worthy of clemency in the entire country. In two years, he will be a free man, conditional upon his enrollment in a drug rehabilitation center.
This latest round brings the total number of prisoners granted clemency by Obama up to 673. It's a massive number compared to his predecessors, but it's also a far cry from the 10,000 inmates former Attorney General Eric Holder claimed would be eligible under a clemency initiative announced in 2014.
Though there have been increasing calls in recent years to abolish mandatory minimums, calls for stiffer sentences, not more lenient ones, are also making news of late. When Stanford University student Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in jail for a felony sexual assault conviction — he is set to be released this week after serving only three months — public outrage was so great that it inspired a California bill proposing mandatory minimums for people convicted of similar sexual assaults.
In addition, after NBA star Dwyane Wade's cousin was caught in crossfire in Chicago and killed on Friday, it was revealed that the alleged shooters were felons on parole. That in turn prompted calls from local officials for stiffer sentencing.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Tyler was far from being worthy of clemency. The worthless piece of shit was a repeat offender in the sales of LSD. While his life sentence may have been harsh, it was not unreasonable for a repeat offender.
As for non-violent offenders, I want to make two important points. First, today’s non-violent offender could become tomorrow’s murderous criminal. And I have this saying: A ‘non-violent’ criminal in jail is one less criminal on the street!
By Tess Owen
VICE News
August 30, 2016
The summer after Timothy Tyler graduated from high school, he discovered the Grateful Dead. It was also when he says he first tried LSD.
That was in 1987. For years afterward, Tyler made his way across the country following the Dead, selling tequila shots, whippets, fruit smoothies, fried dough, and acid. He was arrested in 1991 and charged with possession of LSD; not longer after that, he got busted again, resulting in three years of probation. He then sold acid multiple times via mail to a friend who was working as an undercover informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Because of federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws passed in 1986, a 25-year-old Tyler was sentenced to life behind bars for selling about $3,000 worth of LSD. But on Tuesday, President Barack Obama granted Tyler clemency along with 110 other federal inmates. Thirty-five of them, including Tyler, were serving life sentences.
"They are individuals who received unduly harsh sentences under outdated laws for committing largely nonviolent drug crimes," wrote White House CounselNeil Eggleston. "The individualized nature of this relief highlights the need for bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation."
Until Tuesday, the Clemency Report, which identifies and profiles prisoners thought to be prime candidates for commuted sentences, listed Tyler as the prisoner most worthy of clemency in the entire country. In two years, he will be a free man, conditional upon his enrollment in a drug rehabilitation center.
This latest round brings the total number of prisoners granted clemency by Obama up to 673. It's a massive number compared to his predecessors, but it's also a far cry from the 10,000 inmates former Attorney General Eric Holder claimed would be eligible under a clemency initiative announced in 2014.
Though there have been increasing calls in recent years to abolish mandatory minimums, calls for stiffer sentences, not more lenient ones, are also making news of late. When Stanford University student Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in jail for a felony sexual assault conviction — he is set to be released this week after serving only three months — public outrage was so great that it inspired a California bill proposing mandatory minimums for people convicted of similar sexual assaults.
In addition, after NBA star Dwyane Wade's cousin was caught in crossfire in Chicago and killed on Friday, it was revealed that the alleged shooters were felons on parole. That in turn prompted calls from local officials for stiffer sentencing.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Tyler was far from being worthy of clemency. The worthless piece of shit was a repeat offender in the sales of LSD. While his life sentence may have been harsh, it was not unreasonable for a repeat offender.
As for non-violent offenders, I want to make two important points. First, today’s non-violent offender could become tomorrow’s murderous criminal. And I have this saying: A ‘non-violent’ criminal in jail is one less criminal on the street!
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