#OWS Update: Citizens who protest with the Occupy Movement are depicted as being not real Americans and so they have no legal redress for their basic rights being violated.
Is it the policy of all police forces in the United States to deny those in custody of needed medications . Isn't this somewhat criminal behavior on the part of the police or at least reckless endangerment. Becuse refusing medications may cause severe physical or neiurological or psychological stress and pain -can this be considered a form of abuse akin to torture.
Occupy Oakland protesters denied medication in jail
Detainees say medical treatment was conditioned on remaining in jail by Natasha Lennard at Salon.com, Feb. 2, 2012
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department in California has earned itself a reputation for heavy-handed responses to Occupy Oakland. Since Tuesday, allegations of abusive treatment by officers have escalated as arrestees detained during Saturday’s mass Occupy actions in Oakland were released after up to three-day stints in holding cells at the department’s Santa Rita Jail.
Salon has received three firsthand accounts, corroborated by reports from Occupy Oakland’s media team and the National Lawyers Guild, that ill and injured inmates were denied medication including anti-retroviral treatments for HIV-positive detainees.
...“It felt like we had disappeared. Deputies often didn’t know where individuals were and wandered from cell block to cell block looking for individuals to process,” the man said. “On multiple occasions, my cell block mic checked the guards and led chants, demanding in one voice medicine, food, and other necessities like toilet paper and maxi pads.”
...The denial of medication appears to be the most common complaint. According to a release from the Occupy Oakland media team, “detained protesters were kept in painful zip tie handcuffs — some for 8 to 12 hours — were not allowed to access bathrooms and were not given medical treatment for injuries or illness.”
Claire, 28, a special education teacher for the Oakland Unified School District, was another such detainee. She arrived at Santa Rita a little after midnight Saturday, following her arrest as a part of the previous day’s Occupy actions. She suffers from severe depression and anxiety disorders, for which she takes a medication called Celexa twice a day.
“The first person I notified about my need for medication was my arresting officer (Hazelwood),” Claire told Salon, via email. “I believe he noted it somewhere in my paperwork. He told me that I would be able to see a nurse at Santa Rita, and that they have several antidepressants available there,”
On being seen by a nurse, Claire mentioned her condition again and that she had gone 24 hours without medication. “The nurse signed the form to indicate that I was cleared to be put into a holding cell. Several times over the course of the night and next day, I and a few others in my cell told guards outside that we needed medication, but were ignored,” she added. During her detainment, Claire suffered from a mild but prolonged panic attack, during which she had difficulty breathing and controlling her muscles. She told Salon:
Around five p.m. on Sunday, a guard asked for the women who needed medication to come out of the holding cell, and said we would be processed and seen by a nurse. We were then fingerprinted and had mug shots taken. I again asked if I could see a nurse and explained my condition. I was told that I would not be able to see a nurse unless I wanted to stay in jail. The officer also stated that I would be getting out the following morning (Monday). Around midnight, we were released.
Alyssa Eisenberg, a 44-year-old Occupy activist and single mother, was also not given access to medication for 12 hours during her 18-hour detainment at Santa Rita. Eisenberg suffers from multiple sclerosis and retired early from social services work due to disability. She told Salon that she takes medication at least twice a day for pain and to aid with concentration, as her M.S. has led to cognitive dysfunction and memory loss.
“I was particularly concerned about the cognitive condition, about not understanding quickly what was going on in jail and struggling to process what guards were saying to me,” she said. Like others, Eisenberg informed a nurse of her medical condition and said that she saw at least two other people also express a need for medication. Eisenberg says she was detained for over 12 hours before being told that if she wanted to take pain medication, she would have to remain in jail for at least four more hours for observation. She told Salon that, based on comments from a number of officers, she believed she was soon to be released and so declined the medication, but was then held for six more hours.
“It was more than dehumanizing,” said Eisenberg, noting how lucky she felt that her detainment was so brief compared to long-term inmates.
GOP candidates blame those receiving aid from entitlement programs for much of the economic crisis now facing America. So rather than admitting that the economic crisis was brought on by deregulation and the greedy 1% Republicans and the presidential candidates are Scape-goating the poor , the unemployed and others struggling at a subsistence level just trying to get by.
The reason someone has no job the Republicans argue is because these citizens are lazy -and not because there are no jobs to be had.
Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney believe in deregulated unfettered capitalism and so are not going to blame the current economic crisis on the greed , recklessness and irresponsibility of the banks and other financial institutions and the corporations who claim to be too big to fail.
The GOP’s “entitlement society” myth by Robert Rech at Salon.com., Feb.2, 2012
Newt and Mitt blame our economic woes on the use of food stamps and unemployment insurance. They have it backwards
...They argue our economic problems stem from this sharp rise in “dependency.” Get rid of these benefits and people will work harder.
But they have cause and effect backwards. The reason for the rise in food stamps, unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs is Americans got clobbered in 2008 with the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. They and their families have needed whatever helping hands they could get.
If anything, America’s safety nets have been too small and shot through with holes. That’s why the number and percentage of Americans in poverty has increased dramatically over the past three years. According to a study by Northeastern University, a third of families with young children are now in poverty.
This is the real scandal. For example, only 40 percent of the unemployed qualify for unemployment benefits because they weren’t working full time or long enough on a single job before they were canned. The unemployment system doesn’t take account of the fact that a large portion of the workforce typically works part time on several jobs, and moves from job to job.
Republicans also object to Obama’s health care law, which covers 30 million more Americans than were covered before. That law still leaves over 20 million without health insurance. They’ll get emergency care when they’re in dire straights — hospitals won’t refuse them — but we all end up paying indirectly.
Regressive Republicans pretend they’re about opportunity. In reality they’re back at what they’ve been doing for years — promoting Social Darwinism.
.
People on various forms of government assistance it is claimed are spending their money in strip clubs and the GOP wants laws to stop this waste while defending the excessive salaries and bonuses of the super wealthy and arguing that this top 1% should be getting more tax breaks .
"I would add that “no one thinks welfare money should be spent at strip clubs” but if we don’t care how bankers spend bonus money received following billions in direct bailouts and loans from the discount window, I don’t give a rat’s ass if poor people spend some portion of their meager benefits at the package store."
Some Republicans are very concerned about the poor
They're mostly concerned that the poor are getting away with something by Alex Pareene at Salon.com, feb. 1, 2012
...One Republican who truly cares about the very poor is Rep. Charles Boustany Jr.
Boustany...read somewhere that poor people were spending welfare money at strip clubs, and so he has introduced legislation banning the practice.
...Boustany, whose district includes St. Landry Parish, where 29 percent of the population is below the poverty line, introduced the “no welfare funds in strip clubs” legislation “as part of a package of bills [Republicans] want included in a final agreement extending the payroll tax cut and other measures through 2012,” according to the Hill.
The problem is that the TANF benefit cards are able to withdraw money from ATMs that are sometimes located in places where people on government assistance should not be, like liquor stores and casinos. The EBT cards work like debit cards, and most states have lax rules governing where money can be withdrawn and there is no way of monitoring what poor people are actually spending cash on, because we have not yet microchipped each individual recipient of government anti-poverty spending, a plan I am sure Newt Gingrich has at some point proposed.
I would add that “no one thinks welfare money should be spent at strip clubs” but if we don’t care how bankers spend bonus money received following billions in direct bailouts and loans from the discount window, I don’t give a rat’s ass if poor people spend some portion of their meager benefits at the package store.
Boustaney is by no means alone in his concern for the very poor! In fact, Romney is something of an outlier in his party, with his blithe lack of concern that poor people might have it too easy. The Republican Party is so concerned with the very poor, in fact, that they have dedicated themselves to destroying various organizations that provide the very poor with assistance and services. ACORN and Planned Parenthood, to name two examples, have come under attack for using money the government stole from rich people on helping the very poor vote and receive cancer screenings.
No comments:
Post a Comment