‘They were moving me all around and I had a broken neck.’
Imagine falling and breaking your neck, but no one takes you to the hospital right away.
That’s exactly what a local woman says happened to her inside the St. Clair County Jail and now she’s trying to make sure something like this doesn’t happen to anyone else.
Lisa Brown takes full responsibility for why she ended up briefly behind bars. But now she says a 20-day jail sentence has left her with a life sentence of partial paralysis and disability.
None of this is accidental or a failure of the system. The system works as designed.
Correct. Im friendly with a CO who regularly gets derided for taking inmates to the infirmary when they say they’re sick. The CO cultural MO seems to be everyone’s faking it unless you can see blood or bone. The dudes proactivity has stopped what could have been a major flu outbreak and still they ride his ass when he brings sick inmates to the infirmary. Even the doctors working there dont like that he brings sick patients to them. It’s rotten apples almost all the way down.
I imagine some of the problem is compassion fatigue - lots of prisoners are antisocial assholes who refuse to abide by society’s rules (or they’re just fucking criminally stupid).
It’d be tough to keep caring about that sort of group day in and day out.
I had a friend who was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. She told me she was going to police academy. I didn’t feel like she was the right kind of person for it because her family is full of drug addicts and she’s very bitter about it, which she has the right to be, it’s a rough life. I just worried she’d see addicts through the lens of her own issues, you know?
Well, somewhere along the way during police academy, she decided to become a CO for a bit. I had never told her about my own issues with addiction, but I decided that then was the time to do it. I thought that she would hear about my struggle and it would help to humanize the inmates a bit. Her response made me feel like I got to her. That made me feel better.
After a few months working there she started going on about those people as “animals”. She developed reputation for being a cruel and callous guard who reveled in the misery of the inmates on her watch.
She and I aren’t friends these days. She is a county cop now and I hope I never encounter her. I really do.
True, and this is why the system needs to provide mental health services for these caretakers too. Right now, you’ve got the overwhelmed and frustrated overseeing the overwhelmed and frustrated, which is a recipe for disasters like this. Add a profit motive, and now you’ve got yourself a stew going.
Got a close friend in CO training. They love him because he denies the inmates anything they ask for. Told him long before he started, they’re going to change him for the worse. And it’s happening.
The CO I know is close to retirement and cant wait for it. Its rough though because hes conveyed to me he knows it’s going to be a worse place when hes gone but the amout of pushback he gets from the other officers to the Brass just isn’t good for him, simply for trying to do the job as it’s writren in the book. He’s got a family himself and as bad as the system has always been, he didn’t sign up for what it’s become. Its no wonder they cant find new recruits like they used to. The money’s right, the hours arent, the work isnt, and the cowerkers can be as dangerous as the inmates. Plus from the stories I’m told, you’re almost necessarily going to see some shit you can not un see.
Sorry to tell you, your close friend is already a bad person. Good people don’t volunteer to oppress people and deny their needs, especially after being told it’s going to make them worse.
Something something the company you keep…
Even if only subconsciously, this is exactly the same side of humanity that came out in the Holocaust.
The Nazis didn’t just exterminate people in the Holocaust. They also mistreated them horribly, tortured them, played sadistic mind games with them.
That same shit is in all of us, and it comes out if we don’t manage ourselves correctly.
A woman who breaks her neck in jail and doesn’t get treated for three days is not just a story of incompetence. It is a story of sadism. It’s a story of evil.
That same shit is in all of us
I don’t believe this is true, I don’t believe I personally could ever take pleasure in another’s serious pain (i.e. doesn’t include laughing at my friend slipping on a banana). While many in nazi germany may have had a bit of repressed sadism, many others had to be tricked or coerced into doing banal evil things.
It’s all about empathy. If you dehumanise a group enough they become “other” to your human subconscious, and you exhibit sociopathic behaviour toward them.
The problem is that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you dehumanise someone to the smallest degree and feel guilt (because you’re still a good person), your subconscious will dehumanise them further in order to cope. (e.g they’re criminals so they’ve probably done worse). Then the next time you abuse them, it becomes easier.
This self perpetuating cycle keeps happening until you feel absolutely no sympathy for them, and consequently no guilt.
Now, the real question is whether or not you’re capable of dehumanising someone to begin with. I personally think that yes, we’re all capable, and all it takes is some bad influence (e.g bad preconceptions/media brainwashing), and in the case of police officers, a healthy dose of peer pressure.
Hopefully she wins a lawsuit
In a perfect world the payout fucking destroys this police force and a new one is built from the ground up.
Realistically something as bad if not worse will happen there within a year. 50/50 whether it even makes news.
The taxpayers are gonna lose millions while the cops responsible for this suffer no consequences whatsoever. And any politician trying to hold them responsible will be treated as being “weak on crime.”
The taxpayers are gonna lose millions while the cops responsible for this suffer no consequences whatsoever.
That’s the really disgusting part. It’s disgusting they designed a system like this, and that the system is working as designed. This is not an oversight. This is intentional.
ACAB
Prison reform is critical
Imagine living with the sound of gritty grinding reverberating through your skull from shattered vertebrae for three days
And all that for a 20 day sentence
