New York, New York, United States - Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Tuesday, April 1, 2014

New York, New York, United States - Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Tuesday, April 1, 2014
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The "Bounty" Police Force? Albuquerque Officers Face Protests, Probe over Spate of Fatal Shootings
Outrage is growing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after the latest incident in a spate of police shootings. Video footage captured by a police helmet camera shows officers killing James Boyd, a homeless man who appeared to be surrendering to them at a campsite where he was sleeping. Boyd is seen picking up his belongings and turning away when officers deploy a flash grenade and then fire six live rounds at him from yards away. The Albuquerque Police Department has come under federal scrutiny for being involved in 37 shootings since 2010, 23 of them fatal. This week the FBI confirmed it is investigating the killing of Boyd, and the Justice Department has already been investigating the city’s police shootings for more than a year. We are joined by Russell Contreras, an Associated Press reporter who was tear-gassed while covering the Sunday protest and has been following the police shootings. We also speak to Nora Tachias-Anaya, a social justice activist whose nephew, George Levy Tachias, was fatally shot by police while driving in Albuquerque in 1988. Tachias-Anaya is a member of the October 22 Coalition To Stop Police Brutality.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
RENÉE FELTZ: We begin today’s show in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where hundreds marched over the weekend to protest a spate of deadly police shootings. The march began peacefully, lasting at least eight hours, and ended when police fired tear gas at demonstrators who blocked traffic. Albuquerque has one of the highest per capita rates of fatal police shootings in the country. In the latest incident, police killed a homeless man named James Boyd, who appeared to be surrendering to them at a campsite where he was sleeping.
AMY GOODMAN: Video from a police helmet camera shows Boyd picking up his belongings and turning away from the police, when the officers deploy a flash grenade and fire six live shots at Boyd from yards away. That’s after he picked up his belongings and appeared to turn away. Police fired beanbags and let loose a police dog on Boyd as he lay on the ground, still alive, pleading with officers not to hurt him and saying he could not move.
This is a clip from the Albuquerque police video of their encounter with James Boyd. Boyd died from his injuries the next day. After footage of the police shooting him went viral, the hacker group Anonymous called on people in Albuquerque to protest.
ANONYMOUS: Recently, a video has been released to the public which shows Albuquerque police officers murdering a man in cold blood for illegally camping. This man, which was schizophrenic, obviously had no intention of hurting these police officers. On the contrary, this man looks as if he is simply attempting to protect himself from visually fierce, militarized thugs. Whether this man had a history of crime is irrelevant. We drastically need to address the growing police state that has occupied our country. When will we say, "No more"? How many more citizens will be murdered? Naturally, the APD will attempt to label Anonymous as a terrorist organization for our demands of justice. But the question has to be asked: Who do we terrorize? Is it not the growing police state that terrorizes its own citizens?
AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday, Anonymous claimed responsibility for taking down the Albuquerque Police Department’s website for several hours.
The police department has come under federal scrutiny for being involved in 37 shootings since 2010, 23 of them fatal. This week, the FBI confirmed it’s investigating the killing of James Boyd, and the Justice Department has already been investigating the city’s police shootings for more than a year.
We invited a spokesperson from the APD, the Albuquerque Police Department, to join us on the program, but we didn’t get a response.
For more, we go to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we’re joined by two guests at New Mexico PBS. Russell Contreras is a reporter for the Associated Press who was tear-gassed while covering Sunday’s protest and has been following the police shootings. Nora Tachias-Anaya is a social justice activist whose nephew, George Levi Tachias, was fatally shot by police while he was driving in Albuquerque in 1988. She’s a member of the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Russell Contreras, why don’t you begin? Talk about the protests of the last few days and the particular police incident that sparked these latest protests.
RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Well, the group purported to be Anonymous released a video last week calling for activists to take to the streets on Sunday, and they also vowed to hack the Albuquerque police websites the same day. On Sunday, around a few hundred protesters showed up in downtown, marching two miles away to the University of New Mexico, at which time, over the course of 10 to 12 hours, they marched back and forth.
Police—overall, the protest was pretty peaceful, but as the night progressed, the demonstrators got more aggressive. Some climbed—one particular person climbed a street pole. They attempted to take it down. People were very angry. They were all over the place in terms of demands. At which time, later in the evening, or in the afternoon, police in riot gear showed up. And at the evening, there were some tear-gas canisters fired a protesters by the University of New Mexico, and then again in downtown Albuquerque, when protesters showed up at the police headquarters. Over that course, it generally was peaceful, but there were interactions with demonstrators and police officers at certain spots. Police, for the most part, were restrained; they didn’t do much until the end. And what we found out later is that there were a number of 911 calls from residents. It seemed, overall, the demonstration was largely peaceful. It seemed to become a lot of anger. There were a number of protesters I talked to that said they either had family members or knew friends who were either shot by police or had been in various cases of excessive force.
This comes after we’ve had 37 shootings since 2010 and the police department going through a number of reforms. One of them is allowing—requiring officers to wear lapel cameras in all interactions with the public. This has put the—ironically, put the police under more scrutiny, because now we are seeing police action out in front of us. They often now released video of various shootings and interactions with the public, and now the public has seen how police work is done in Albuquerque.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, that is really astounding because that is the video that we’ve been showing, and that has gone viral, of the police shooting of James Boyd. It’s video that is on the helmet of the police officer, one of the police officers involved in this killing.
RENÉE FELTZ: And last week, Police Chief—
RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Exactly.
RENÉE FELTZ: —Gorden Eden said this shooting was justified after James Boyd threatened his officers with knives, but Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry rejected the chief’s assessment.
MAYOR RICHARD BERRY: He’s new in the chief position, but that’s no excuse. I think it’s—I think he was—you know, shouldn’t have said that. I think what we all need to do in a horrific situation like this is we need to thoroughly and comprehensively go through the process.
RENÉE FELTZ: Russell Contreras, can you talk about this reaction to the shooting from the police chief and from the mayor? This police chief is new, is that right? He was just recently selected from a nationwide search?
RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Yes, he’s only been there roughly a month, and so this was his first incident involving a police shooting. So, during his press conference, myself and another reporter asked him if he felt this shooting was justified, and he said, "Yes. Based on case law, I believe it was." He then recanted that after the mayor said, you know, "I think he spoke too soon." The investigation was still ongoing. After that, those remarks, the FBI announced that it was going to look into the shooting more closely. This comes as the department itself is under a Justice Department investigation, for more than a year, over alleged cases of excessive force and a number of shootings. I think this comes at a time where—because we have this video and it generated so much anger and so much criticism, that this is all the totality of the shootings since 2010 that the public is responding to.
RENÉE FELTZ: Now, Nora, I want to bring you into this conversation. Nora Tachias-Anaya, you were at the meeting last night of community members responding to this shooting and to all of the shootings, really. Can you talk about what people were discussing last night, about their reaction and some possible next steps?
NORA TACHIAS-ANAYA: Yes, we were brainstorming, trying to get something positive out of this. Basically, we were trying to list some of the demands that we’re asking, is to release the videos—most of the videos, we have never seen; please to drop charges on the protesters, because they do have a right to protest; also, to indict the officers that did the shooting.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, were you meeting with the police?
NORA TACHIAS-ANAYA: We were not meeting with the police. We were meeting with a lot of the coalitions that got together—Peace and Justice, and some Occupy were there, O22 was there, our group. And—
AMY GOODMAN: And what was your—what are your thoughts about the mayor contradicting what the new police chief said? Do you feel that he will push for a fair investigation of what has happened, not only to James Boyd, but this remarkable number, back to 2010, of 37 police shootings, 23 of which were fatal?
NORA TACHIAS-ANAYA: The mayor has just kept out of it for the last two years that I’ve been involved, never coming out to say anything. So I have very little reliability of him. I would hope that he would finally come out and say that there are things that need to be fixed.
AMY GOODMAN: Nora, you had your own experience—
NORA TACHIAS-ANAYA: These are [inaudible] that needed to be fixed a long time ago.
AMY GOODMAN: Nora Tachias-Anaya, you had your own experience, a loss in your family. Can you talk about what happened, though it was years ago?
NORA TACHIAS-ANAYA: Yes. In 1988, my nephew had just gotten out of Granada. He was in the Special Forces and 82nd Airborne. He was home for three months. He was—had a girlfriend that had gone to a party. He was at a party, and as—there was a fight that broke out. He—she had gotten shot by accident, and he carried her to his car and was driving her down Atrisco. And as he was driving her down Atrisco, the SWAT Elite shot through the window. The trajectory was right through his heart. And they both died that night. Never once did they allow us to see the body. There was never closure. There was never—
AMY GOODMAN: Was there an explanation of why they—
NORA TACHIAS-ANAYA: They never allowed us to sue.
AMY GOODMAN: Was there an explanation of why they shot your nephew dead?
NORA TACHIAS-ANAYA: Well, there was no witnesses, absolutely no witnesses. So the explanation was from what they thought might have happened.
RENÉE FELTZ: Russell Contreras, I want to ask you about the reforms that are being proposed and the police officers who would carry them out there in New Mexico. I want to read from one of your articles. You mentioned that there may be a change in how the police academy trains officers from using a reactive control model to what they call instead a "reasonableness standard model." Can you talk about this difference and what it means and what people are saying about the officers’ ability to carry this new model out, its practicality, and whether it might be too complicated?
RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Yes, right now the state police academy has changed its training on use of deadly force. For years, the state, Albuquerque Police Department and other agencies across New Mexico have been using this model, what they call the reactive control model. This is essentially—puts police officers in a box. When someone draws a knife, they are trained, the cadets are trained, is a police officer will immediately draw a gun. Now, this old model, which is copyrighted, does not give any sort of room for an officer to use other technologies, like Tasers, like other nonlethal force. Now, this model has not been updated since 2003.
What the state police academy is attempting to do is adopt a model that has been used in other states. That means that if a suspect draws a knife, depending on where the officer is, he or she may draw a Taser, may draw a gun, may take cover. They’re basically given a number of options. This is coming at a time when state police itself was going through its own spike in police shootings, so there had been pressure amongst agencies across the state to look at and change the model.
What we’re seeing in Albuquerque is that a lot of these officers involved in various shootings were trained on this old model. Now, there has been criticism by some activists that said, "Well, this old model is actually easier for cadets to understand." Given the fact that we do—we are in one of the poorest states in the country and that we have an educational system that is subpar compared to other states, so some activists are saying, "Well, let’s stick with this old model, because it’s easier to understand." However, it is an attempt by law enforcement agencies to say, "Well, it’s time to update, because it doesn’t take in consideration new technology that’s now available for various officers."
AMY GOODMAN: Russell Contreras, can you talk about the report—I think it was in The New York Times in 2012—that talked about an actual bounty, something like a thousand dollars per killing, that was given to Albuquerque police officers? Do I have that right?
RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Yeah, what would happen was that when an officer was involved in a shooting, whether it was fatal or not, the officer was placed on administrative leave. What the union would do is give the officer a certain amount of money to say, "OK, here’s some money to get out of town, go relax with your family, digest." And what the union was arguing at the time was that the police officer was going through some traumatic experience, and so this was an attempt by the union to say, "Look, we’re looking out for you." Since that broke, the union has pulled back on that. The officials that were involved in that are no longer with the police union. So that—it kind of told a story of what was happening in the culture of the police department. The reaction from elected officials was outrage, because they didn’t know this was going on; they weren’t involved in it. And it generally spoke to what the public was saying, was like, "Look, we need massive reform." This was a couple of years ago. And since then, they’ve instituted a number of reforms, and that was one of the things they wanted to get rid of.
AMY GOODMAN: The piece was very dramatic in the Times, talking about Mike Gomez, who lost his son—he was unarmed—to a police shooting, and Gomez said, "You’re telling police that if you shoot somebody you’re going to get paid leave and you’re going to get $500." He said, "If the police shoot a person they get this. What does the family get? A funeral bill," he asks.
Can you talk about who James Boyd was, Russell? What actually happened? What is the explanation that’s been given? When we see, in the police’s own video, as he’s negotiating with police and they’re telling him to come with them, he picks up his backpack, his back turns to them, and that’s when they shoot him six times with live ammunition. As he’s on the ground, they’re telling him to drop a knife that’s in his hand. He’s face down. He’s saying, "I can’t move." They are hitting him with bean bag, as well as a stun grenade. And then they sic a dog on him?
RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Exactly. What we know about that incident is that it was all—it was a—the shooting that we see now in the video that’s gone viral was the end of a long standoff in the Sandia Mountains, in the foothills. When he was approached by some officers—they’re called Open Space officers—they approached him, and they—you know, they basically were trying to talk to him and said, "You were camping illegally."
On video that was shown prior to that, that we obtained, that the police released, is that officers were attempting to frisk him, and then he pulls out a knife. And then the officers, at the time, who confronted him, at first, just pulled out Tasers. This confrontation went on for hours. According to police, he asked for a state police officer liaison. James Boyd also said that he was a federal agent. It seemed like the officers were very concerned about his mental health. So they called in some crisis management officers to come in.
What police say is that during the standoff he threatened to kill a number of officers, whether it was state police or Albuquerque police. And so, when we see the tail end, even though he was surrendering, officers say that, based on what they knew, is that he had threatened officers. And the police chief said, "Well, this was a result of a number of threats, and so this is what happened at the end." Now, despite that, authorities do say, yeah, that there may have been some problems with the shooting, and that’s why it’s under investigation now. But in general, it was a long standoff. We don’t see a lot of the video, but there was a lot of going back and forth with Mr. Boyd and various officers.
AMY GOODMAN: Of course, what counts is what happened at the end, you know, as they were talking this thing through, is those moments. He was far from them, picking up his backpack, his back turned to them as then they shoot him.
Russell Contreras, we want to thank you for being with us, AP reporter. Nora Tachias-Anaya, thank you, as well, member of the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality. Her nephew, George Levi Tachias, who was in the special forces in Granada, back in New Mexico, fatally shot by police when driving in Albuquerque in 1988.
This is Democracy Now! We have that video, the police video of the shooting of James Boyd, on our website at democracynow.org. When we come back, we’re going to look at the growing movement to reform prisons in this country, particularly solitary confinement, after a prisoner at Rikers Island who was in solitary confinement died. Stay with us. 
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Treating Humans Worse Than Animals: Prison System Voices Decry Solitary Confinement of Mentally Ill
Following the death of two prisoners at New York City’s Rikers Island facility, we look at mounting pressure on jails and prisons to reform their use of solitary confinement. A corrections officer was arrested last week and charged with violating the civil rights of Jason Echevarria, a mentally ill Rikers prisoner who died after eating a packet of detergent given to him when his cell was flooded with sewage. It was the first such arrest in more than a decade. Also last month, Jerome Murdough, a mentally ill homeless veteran, died in a Rikers solitary mental-observation unit where he was supposed to be checked on every 15 minutes. An official told the Associated Press that Murdough "baked to death" after temperatures soared in his cell. We hear from Echevarria’s father, Ramon, at a protest seeking justice for his son, and speak to former Rikers prisoner Five Mualimmak, who was held in solitary there. And we are joined by two guests from within the prison system calling for reform: Dr. James Gilligan, a psychiatrist who is helping reduce violence in prisons, and Lance Lowry, president of the Texas Correctional Employees, the union which represents Texas prison guards. Lowry is calling on the state to reduce the use of solitary confinement, including on death row. "Zookeepers are not allowed to keep zoo animals in the kind of housing that we put human beings in," Dr. Gilligan says. "We have created the situation; it is called a self-fulfilling prophecy: We say these are animals, they are going to behave like animals, then we treat them so that they will."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
RENÉE FELTZ: We turn now to look at mounting pressure on jails and prisons to reform their use of solitary confinement. This comes as a corrections officer in New York City was arrested last week by FBI agents and charged with violating the civil rights of a mentally ill prisoner held in solitary confinement at the city’s largest jail, called Rikers Island. It was the first such arrest in more than a decade. The prisoner who died was 25-year-old Jason Echevarria, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In August 2012, he ate a packet of detergent given to him by a guard after his cell was flooded with sewage, and he began vomiting and pleading for medical help. According to evidence filed in the case against him, Captain Terrence Pendergrass repeatedly ignored reports that Echevarria was ill. At one point, he told a subordinate he shouldn’t be bothered unless "there was a dead body." The next morning, Echevarria was found dead in his cell. According to the medical examiner, the linings of his tongue and throat were burned off by the soap’s chemicals.
AMY GOODMAN: Echevarria’s supporters recently rallied to call for Pendergrass’s firing. In this report, we hear from Echevarria’s father, Ramon, as he joins members of the Jails Action Coalition. We also hear in detail about the use of solitary confinement at Rikers Island from a former prisoner there named Five Mualimmak, who has since been released.
JENNIFER PARISH: My name’s Jennifer Parish. I’m an attorney, and I’m also a member of the Jails Action Coalition. The Jails Action Coalition is here to call attention to the death of Jason Echevarria. He was a young man who was in solitary confinement at Rikers Island. He was in crisis and needed medical attention. And the captain, Terrence Pendergrass, refused to have him moved out of the cell. The Bronx District Attorney’s Office investigated, because it was ruled a homicide by the Medical Examiner’s Office. They didn’t prosecute anyone. The Department of Correction fired the lower-level correction officers. And the captain, who was most responsible, still works at Rikers Island today.
RAMON ECHEVARRIA: Officer Pendergrass, I think he should have been handcuffed in the jail right there and taken to Central Booking, and he should be in jail. Solitary confinement, to me, is a torture box. When you put a person in a SHU, you’re breaking this person’s mental capacity down to zero. He did something bad, fine. But treat him as a human being, not like an animal. He’s got rights in this world.
FIVE MUALIMMAK: My name is Five Mualimmak. I am the executive director of the Incarcerated Nation Campaign, which is a grassroots movement to support those incarcerated. Oftentimes we let the correctional institutions paint this picture that solitary confinement contains the worst of the worst, like the Hannibal Lecters of the world. But actually, the system itself is the worst of the worst.
I spent 12 years incarcerated; five of that I did in solitary confinement. I did time at Rikers and also MCC. During my time in solitary confinement, I was tortured. We’re talking about sensory deprivation. We’re talking about being away from your loved ones and family members, being away from your children. My son missed me his entire life. When I first went to solitary, it was on Rikers, and there was a fight that broke out in the dorm. And they have a thing called prehearing detention, so basically everybody goes to the box. So, for about a week or so, you’re in this cell for 24 hours a day, isolated, with no property, were not allowed to have any visitors. And we’re talking about city jail now; we’re not talking about people who are convicted of a crime, just people who are too poor to afford their bail.
A friend of the family had sent me a book called Revolutionary Suicide. And that book got me a ticket, because I’m not allowed to have materials in, even though I have no control over who’s sending me materials. I was sent to the solitary for having too many pencils, too many postage stamps. For not getting out of the shower fast enough, I got another ticket. I had a ticket for eating an apple. Apple seeds contain arsenic. So, somehow, eight and 10 makes four for them, you know? And they add that up, and you’re not supposed to eat the core, so I got a ticket for that. So the next day I was so fearful, I didn’t eat the apple at all. I didn’t want to touch it. So I got another ticket for refusing to eat. You end up spending time just wasting away, sleeping under your bed, trying to turn days into weeks. There’s light deprivation. You don’t know when day turns into the next.
And you have a person who is emotionally damaged, mentally damaged, and then they just give you a bus ticket, $40 cash and then send you on a bus, and you’re back in. I went from solitary confinement one day to, next day, 10 million commuters, right at 42nd Street, right off the bus. That reintegration process is like a crash, an attack on your senses. So, I’ve been home a little over two years. Roughly 2,000 people are released right back into society directly from solitary confinement. You come out of incarceration, you’re disenfranchised. You can’t vote. You can’t get low-income housing. You can’t get city housing, not allowed on federal housing. You can’t get social services. You can’t get food stamps. You can’t get Medicaid. These are our citizens returning back to the community.
We’re the financial capital the world, but guess what. New York City is also the torture capital of the world. We actually torture people and use solitary confinement four times over the national average. We have all these prisons and jails. And we need to be an example, as to the rest of the country, to humanely address the issues.
RENÉE FELTZ: That was Five Mualimmak talking about his time as a prisoner held in solitary confinement here in New York. Special thanks to Cassandra Lizaire for that report.
In other developments at Rikers Island, a mentally ill homeless veteran died last March in—last month, I should say, as he was held in a solitary mental-observation unit where he was supposed to be checked on every 15 minutes. Jerome Murdough had been arrested for trespassing as he slept in the stairwell of a public housing building, and was kept in jail after he was unable to pay $2,500 in bail. An official told the Associated Press Murdough, quote, "basically baked to death" after temperatures soared in his cell.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by two guests. Dr. James Gilligan is clinical professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine, adjunct professor in the School of Law at New York University. Last year he co-authored a report commissioned by New York City Board of Correction that found the use of prolonged punitive segregation of the mentally ill in the city’s jails violates the Mental Health Minimum Standards. Before that, he served on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School, where he was also director of the Institute of Law and Psychiatry, and directed mental health services for the Massachusetts prisons and prison mental hospital.
And from Houston, Texas, we’re joined by Lance Lowry, president of AFSCME Local 3807 of the Texas Correctional Employees Union, which represents the Texas prison guards. While these unions have sometimes been seen as an obstacle to reforms, in January Lowry wrote an open letter to Texas prison officials that called on them to reduce the use of solitary confinement, including on the state’s death row. He says similar steps should be taken in jails and prisons nationwide. Texas has more than 7,100 prisoners in solitary, including 2,400 who are mentally ill—among the highest in the nation. Meanwhile, a new study by the American Journal of Public Health found New York City jail inmates sent to solitary confinement are nearly seven times more likely to inflict self-harm than those never assigned to it.
Dr. James Gilligan and Lance Lowry, welcome, both, to Democracy Now! Dr. Gilligan, let’s go back to this case. In fact, very interestingly, the corrections officer, Pendergrass, was just indicted. Talk about what happened to this young man in jail, in solitary confinement. What happened with the soap?
DR. JAMES GILLIGAN: Well, what happened was that he was given a highly toxic antiseptic soap ball, which, according to the jail’s own regulations, was not supposed to be given to prisoners the way it was. It was supposed to be diluted in gallons of water, because it was highly toxic given straight. The correction officer clearly was insufficiently trained and insufficiently supervised by the administration of the jails. So he also—the officer was also clearly unaware of the implications of the fact that the inmate was mentally ill. So you have a mentally ill man given a highly toxic substance, who then swallows it, tells the officers that he is in trouble, that he’s in pain and vomiting and sick.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s in that soap?
DR. JAMES GILLIGAN: It’s an antiseptic, which is extremely toxic. It has to be.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s a special prison soap?
DR. JAMES GILLIGAN: Yes, it was being given because the toilets had overflowed.
AMY GOODMAN: And they were in—
DR. JAMES GILLIGAN: Yeah, they were—the inmates were given the job—
AMY GOODMAN: They flooded with sewage.
DR. JAMES GILLIGAN: The inmates were given the job of cleaning up their own cells with this highly toxic substance, which was supposed to be diluted so that it wouldn’t harm them. Instead, it was just given to him outright. And then he was ignored after he swallowed it. And, of course, this would be excruciatingly painful. It literally was burning off the surface of his tongue and his throat and killing him. And he died.
AMY GOODMAN: And this officer, Pendergrass, said, "I’ll get concerned when you show me a dead body."
DR. JAMES GILLIGAN: Well, that’s what—those are the reports in the paper. I wasn’t there, so certainly I can’t say, but that is what I have read.
RENÉE FELTZ: And, Dr. James Gilligan, you wrote this report for the City of New York board that oversees the Rikers Island prison where this prisoner died. And he—we noted he was in a mentally ill section of the prison—of the jail, I should say. And you wrote in your report about how "The nation’s jails and prisons have become de facto mental hospitals" for the past half-century. And you say even that the proportion of people in this country who are currently housed in a mental hospital or correctional facility, there’s about 95 percent in correctional institutions and only about 5 percent in these mental detentions, medical facilities. Can you talk about the situation with the mentally ill and the use of solitary with them in Rikers Island and prisons around the country?
DR. JAMES GILLIGAN: Well, as you mentioned, the U.S. has criminalized mental illness. We now put the mentally ill—instead of in mental hospitals, we put almost all of them, 95 percent, in prisons and jails instead, which is the worst possible place for them, even if they’re not put in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement alone, even in people with no history of mental illness, can provoke hallucinations, where people start hearing voices or seeing things that aren’t there. People can become delusional. They become disoriented to reality and lose touch with reality. They can become suicidal. That’s people with no history of mental illness. If you put somebody who’s already mentally ill and already struggling with these problems in solitary confinement, it’s the worst possible thing you can do for them.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Lance Lowry in Houston, Texas, you represent the Texas prison guards. Talk about the letter that you made public in January.
LANCE LOWRY: What we found is the overall use of solitary confinement in Texas was not serving its intended purposes. We went from a couple hundred lock-up cells to over 8,000 at one point. The state has taken measures to reduce the use of solitary. One initiative has been the use of the GRAD program, which is the Gang Renouncementing and Disassociation program, where gang members are offered a chance to get out of the gangs and go back into general population. Another program that has been successful here in Texas has been our Ad Seg pre-release program, or ASPP program, which prepares inmates that are in solitary for a number of years to get ready to be released out into the world. Unfortunately, in Texas, we release over 1,200 inmates directly out into the public. If these guys are too dangerous for our prison population, then imagine the public safety concerns when we’re releasing them out into out general public.
RENÉE FELTZ: So, Lance Lowry, we are talking with a psychiatrist and yourself, who has been a longtime guard in Texas prisons. You have your own laboratory with which to study these practices that you’re describing, the impact of the use of solitary. And I wanted to ask you about this—as you say it, a perhaps excessive use of solitary in prisons, and how this impacts the guards’ behavior, but also the prisoners’ behavior and the guards’ ability to control their behavior. I believe you’ve written about this. Can you describe what this is like, as you see it?
LANCE LOWRY: Well, when you place somebody in solitary, you lose a lot of management control over that person. There’s not much more you can do. And, you know, correcting bad behavior at that point is—it’s not a positive step. You don’t have the steps and the ability to correct negative behavior. Plus you have the aspects, increased exacerbation of mental health issues. I’ve seen offenders cut on themselves, go to the point of even rubbing feces on theirselves due to the rapid deterioration. There’s no sensory stimulation in these cells, and that creates a major problem.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Gilligan, you’re nodding your head.
DR. JAMES GILLIGAN: Yes. This is a—this is a nationwide problem. The stories like the ones you just described at Rikers Island, I hear them from all over the country, from Massachusetts, from Arizona, from California. It’s just everywhere. We in this country have made the mistake of—after we closed down the mental hospitals in this country, starting in the 1960s, to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill, get them out of big, overcrowded, underserved mental hospitals, we never put in place the community resources, the community residences, the halfway houses, and the small intensive care units which the original Community Mental Health Act that President Kennedy signed into law required. The country simply closed down the mental hospitals and didn’t put anything remotely adequate in their place. As a result, the mentally ill have wound up either homeless, in jails and prisons, or dead, or, finally, overwhelming families who aren’t prepared and equipped to deal with somebody who is seriously mentally ill.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. James Gilligan and Lance Lowry, we’re going to go to break, and when we come back, we’ll continue this discussion. Then we’re going to the border to speak with a young man who was just deported, a young Phoenix man, and now is trying to come back into the United States today. I also want to ask you, Dr. Gilligan, about your recent tour of Rikers Island. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman, with Democracy Now!'s Renée Feltz. Our guests are Lance Lowry in Houston, president of the Texas Correctional Employees, and, here in New York, Dr. James Gilligan—for decades was at Harvard Medical School, now at New York University, clinical professor of psychiatry and adjunct law professor, co-author of a report for the New York City Board of Corrections that found that prolonged segregation of the mentally ill in the city's jails violates Mental Health Minimum Standards. The tour of Rikers, if you could briefly say what you saw and what you feel needs to be there?
DR. JAMES GILLIGAN: Well, first of all, the buildings themselves are outrageous. Zookeepers are not allowed to keep zoo animals in the kind of housing that we put human beings in, in jails like Rikers Island. We learned that animals die when they’re put in a concrete cage with bars on the walls. So zoos created, you know, gardens and places for animals to live the way they were evolved to live. We treat human beings worse than we treat animals, and then we act surprised when people behave like animals. But, of course, we have—we’ve created the situation. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy: We say, "These are animals, they’re going to behave like animals," then we treat them so that they will.
AMY GOODMAN: What could be done at Rikers?
DR. JAMES GILLIGAN: First of all, about 40 percent of the Rikers Island inmates have a diagnosis of mental illness of one sort or another. Close to 80 percent have a substance use disorder, alcohol being the most serious and severe, because that’s the one most associated with violence of all the drugs we have.
What I have proposed is that Rikers Island take the mentally ill inmates and create a mental hospital on the grounds of Rikers Island that would be staffed by a professional mental health staff, ideally affiliated with a local medical school, so that it can serve as an extension of the teaching hospitals in the medical school. New York University School of Medicine already provides inpatient care for the Rikers Island inmates, when they need that, in Bellevue Hospital, in the prison ward. It would be ideal if there were a mental hospital right on the grounds, or in other words, if about half of that jail was simply turned into a big mental hospital. As one psychiatrist pointed out, the biggest mental hospital in the country is the Los Angeles County Jail; the second largest is Rikers Island. If we’re going to put the mentally ill there, we should turn it into a mental hospital, because that’s what these people need.
Instead, we put the mentally ill in solitary confinement. For many, that became the default placement. And, you know, the United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights both have declared prolonged solitary confinement to be a form of torture. And it clearly is. It’s psychological torture. It drives people crazy and makes them suicidal.
RENÉE FELTZ: And, Lance Lowry, I want to end with you and briefly get your perspective on what needs to be done with the guards who are in these prisons and jails, in terms of training and how to deal with the mentally ill prisoners and those in solitary.
LANCE LOWRY: We definitely need to up our training on training these officers on how to deal with the mentally ill. You know, just like he said earlier, the largest mental health facility in the state of Texas is the Harris County Jail right here in Houston. And we need to be able to train these officers to recognize, identify these inmates with mental health conditions. And we also need to increase our treatment programs. These facilities lack a lot of resources. And this has been due to our legislative bodies not funding these entities and moving or closing down our mental health facilities and diverting them over to prisons. And we need to stop—stop diverting mentally ill people into the prison and divert them out.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us. Lance Lowry, president of the Texas Correctional Employees, speaking to us from Houston, and Dr. James Gilligan, a clinical professor of psychology and adjunct law professor at New York University. We will link to your report for the New York City Board of Corrections that found prolonged segregation of the mentally ill in the city’s jails violates the Mental Health Minimum Standards. And we’ll also post online Mr. Lowry’s report calling for a reduction of solitary confinement in Texas—again, particularly significant, as he is head of the Texas guards’ union.
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Right to Return: Deported After Protest by His Family, Mexican Immigrant to Attempt U.S. Re-entry
After being deported to Mexico from his home in Arizona earlier this year, Jaime Valdez joins us to detail his attempt today to re-enter the United States. Valdez says he was deported in retaliation for a hunger strike that his family took part in at the Phoenix offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to protest U.S. immigration policies. "All my family is in the U.S., so that’s why I’m trying to come back," Valdez says. "We’re going to try to get this message to the president, to stop the deportations and to stop the discrimination and injustice in detention centers." He and another immigrant hope to rejoin their families today by crossing at a checkpoint in the Mexican border town of Nogales, where the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is currently on a three-day tour visiting with Border Patrol agents and migrants.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, as we turn to our last segment today. Renée?
RENÉE FELTZ: Thanks, Amy. We end today’s show in Mexico, where two immigrants deported in February will try to re-enter the United States today. They say their deportation came in retaliation for a hunger strike their families participated in outside the Phoenix offices of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, or ICE. They’re going to try to re-enter at a checkpoint in the border town of Nogales, Mexico, which is where the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are on a three-day tour today visiting with Border Patrol agents and migrants. Later today, Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston will join them in a hike through part of the nearby desert where undocumented immigrants are known to pass.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Nogales, Mexico, where Jaime Valdez joins us via Democracy Now! video stream, one of the immigrants who will attempt to re-enter the U.S. today at 11:00 local time in Arizona in order to request his case to be reopened, that he be granted humanitarian parole.
Jaime Valdez, welcome to Democracy Now! We just have a few minutes. How did you end up south of the border when you really—what? You lived in—you grew up in Phoenix?
JAIME VALDEZ: My family with all—and other families were part of a demonstration with Puente, which was a hunger strike outside the ICE offices in Phoenix. We were doing our part within the detention center in Eloy, Arizona. And because that demonstration, they put me in solitary. And after that, because of that, they deported me.
AMY GOODMAN: Already detained—Jaime, you were already detained. Your family was outside ICE. They were on hunger strike. So they retaliated—the authorities retaliated against you, who was in detention?
JAIME VALDEZ: Yes, yeah, that’s what happened.
RENÉE FELTZ: And then, can you talk about what happened after you went back to Mexico, what life was like there for you briefly, and why you are working now to come back to the United States today to rejoin your parents and your family?
JAIME VALDEZ: Yeah. When I was deported, it was like another world to me, because I was living in the U.S. for 15 long years, and I was just deported like that. And I decided to come back, because in my hometown there’s a lot of violence going on. The drug cartels are killing people. And all my family is in the U.S., so that’s why I’m trying to come back here now. And we’re going to try to get this message to the president now to—to stop the deportations and to stop the discrimination and injustice in the detention centers all over the country.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you end up in detention? How did you end up being deported? And how were you put in the detention facility, to begin with?
JAIME VALDEZ: Because I was misrepresented by a criminal lawyer in the Maricopa County. And once I get with ICE, I was, like, once again, misrepresented by the immigration lawyers, too. So my family decided to get with this organization, Puente, and they started helping them with my case. And that’s why we were part of Puente now—we are part of Puente.
RENÉE FELTZ: And, Jaime Valdez, you’ve called this action you’re going to take place in today "the right to return." What do you expect to happen when you go to the border checkpoint in Nogales?
JAIME VALDEZ: Well, I hope they can hear us. They can—we can get our case reopened, and then we can get the human parole, so we can fight our case in American soil and get reunited with our families. And we want to get the message to the President Obama that we are here, and we’re going to fight for the rights of the immigrants, and we’re going to—and we’re going to continue with this.
RENÉE FELTZ: Do you think that you could be detained again today?
JAIME VALDEZ: That’s possible. Yeah, that’s definitely possible. And I am not afraid of that, because, you know, I’ve been detained for so long fighting my case. And I’m ready to still fight my case and be reunited with my family.
AMY GOODMAN: You had a brother who was deported, who ultimately died in Michoacán, where you come from?
JAIME VALDEZ: Yes, yeah. He was deported a year ago. And after that, he was—he was just killed. We still don’t know what happened. We don’t know who did it. And my family and I, we don’t want to go through that kind of stuff again. So that’s why I’m coming back and be reunited with my family.
AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of the latest news out of Rome, out of the Vatican? A 10-year-old California girl traveled to the Vatican to plead with Pope Francis to help as her father faced deportation. He was then released on Friday after she met with him, as she was getting on the plane to come back to the United States. Does that give you hope, Jaime?
JAIME VALDEZ: Yeah. I have faith. And I can think we can expect something good from the authorities, because that’s why I am doing these interviews, to raise my voice.
AMY GOODMAN: Jaime, we’re going to have to leave it there. Jaime Valdez, speaking to us from Nogales. We’ll see if he makes it into the United States.
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Headlines:
Obamacare Hits Deadline with Enrollment as High as 9.5 Million
The sign-up deadline for health insurance under Obamacare closed Monday with a surge in enrollment nationwide. Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the federal website, as well as local offices in multiple states. The Obama administration says it expects to well surpass its original goal of seven million enrollees. At the White House, Press Secretary Jay Carney said the program had overcome the botched rollout of six months ago.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: "There has been a remarkable story since the dark days of October and November, which has resulted in a situation where here, on the last day of enrollment, we’re looking at a number substantially larger than six million people enrolled. And I dare say that there are few people in this room, including some of the folks who work in the White House, who would have predicted that we would get to that number."
The federal website stopped working for several hours on Monday after a software glitch. The deadline has been extended until mid-April for those who tried to sign up but were unable to complete their enrollment. Some estimates have put the number of previously uninsured receiving coverage under Obamacare at as high as 9.5 million. The program marks the nation’s largest expansion of healthcare coverage since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.
Senate Report: CIA Misled Public on Extent of Torture, Intelligence Gains
Leaked details of a still-classified Senate report on Bush-era torture and rendition show the CIA misled the public on the extent of its prisoner abuses and the intelligence gained as a result. According to The Washington Post, Senate investigators have concluded CIA torture produced no information on top al-Qaeda leaders, including any that led to the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden. One U.S. official briefed on the report said: "The CIA described [its program] ... as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives. Was that actually true? The answer is no." In certain cases, CIA operatives continued to torture prisoners even after it was decided they had no more information to give. The report also exposes previously undisclosed torture tactics, including repeatedly dunking prisoners in tanks of ice water. The report has set off a public clash between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee, with accusations of CIA spying on the panel’s work. The Intelligence Committee is set to vote this week on whether to recommend declassifying the report’s summary and key findings.
GM Faces Congressional Hearings on Deadly Ignition Defect
The auto giant General Motors faces its first congressional hearings today on the safety scandal behind at least 12 and possibly hundreds of deaths. GM has recalled millions of cars after acknowledging faulty ignition switches shut down engines and disabled air bags. Documents released over the past several weeks show GM misled victims’ families despite being made aware of its vehicles’ flaws. Federal regulators also took no action despite the findings of its own investigators. Ahead of today’s hearing, Laura Christian, the mother of 16-year-old GM crash victim Amber Rose, spoke out to reporters.
Laura Christian: "I contacted GM again a month ago. I simply wanted them to give my contact information to the other families, the other victims’ families, to hope to get us all together and maybe heal a little bit. But they pretty much have refused to do that. Apparently the only thing they listen to are things that affect their bottom line. It’s just a shame that corporations, big corporations, like GM, feel that they might be large enough to hide the truth from the public, but in this day and age, there are many people like me who will seek to uncover that information. There is no more hiding."
Amber died after crashing her 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt in July of that year, months after GM had internally recognized the model’s defective ignition switch. On Monday, GM recalled another 1.5 million cars, this time over a power steering problem. Around six million GM cars have now been recalled this year.
Obama Admin Mulls Release of Jailed Spy to Save Mideast Peace Talks
Secretary of State John Kerry visited Israel and the Occupied Territories on Monday in a bid to prevent the collapse of U.S.-brokered peace talks. Twenty-six Palestinian prisoners were due for release over the weekend, but Israel says it will now only release them if the Palestinian Authority agrees to extend the talks beyond next month’s deadline. In an effort to convince Israel to follow through on its pledge, the Obama administration is reportedly considering an early release for the jailed spy Jonathan Pollard. Pollard is a former U.S. intelligence officer convicted of passing U.S. secrets on to Israel. He is due for release next year, but could be freed under a rumored agreement to salvage the peace talks. At the White House, Press Secretary Jay Carney declined to deny that Pollard could see an early release.
Press Secretary Jay Carney: "On the question about release of prisoners, this is a complicated issue that is being worked through with the parties, and I’m not going to get into details about that. And with regards to Mr. Pollard, he is a person who was convicted of espionage and is serving his sentence, and I don’t have any update on his situation."
Russia Begins Troop Pullback from Eastern Ukraine
Russia has begun what it calls a partial withdrawal of forces from its eastern border with Ukraine. Around 500 troops are said to have pulled back so far. The build-up of Russian forces has emerged as a key point of contention between Russia and NATO countries in the aftermath of last month’s annexation of Crimea. NATO countries are meeting in Brussels today to discuss additional measures in response to the standoff with Russia, including joint military exercises between Ukrainian and U.S. forces.
World Court Orders Japan to Stop Antarctic Whaling
The World Court has ordered Japan to stop whaling in the Antarctic, rejecting claims of scientific research. Geert Vons of the Sea Shepard Conservation Society welcomed the ruling.
Geert Vons: "I don’t know if Japan will proceed with their whaling. They might find a new program, a new scientific research program, in the future. But for the moment, I feel very confident that that will not happen, because, as the judge said, they should fulfill their obligations. They should meet standards, and they have not done so far. International scientific community has to support. There has to be peer-reviewed articles, etc., etc. So this is, I think, a very positive, strong statement."
Al Jazeera Journalists Testify in Egypt Trial
Three Al Jazeera journalists appeared in an Egyptian court on Monday where they were allowed to testify for the first time since being detained late last year. Peter Greste, Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy are accused of belonging to or aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, deemed by the government a terrorist organization. In brief testimony, the three denied having ties to the Brotherhood and cited their longtime work as journalists. The trial has been adjourned until next week.
Mississippi Death Row Prisoner Wins New Trial
A death row prisoner set for execution in Mississippi has won a new trial. Michelle Byrom was convicted in 2000 of murdering her husband even though her son had reportedly confessed to the crime. Her execution was slated for last week. But on Monday, the Mississippi Supreme Court said Byrom is entitled to a new trial before a new judge.
Du Pont Heir Avoids Jail Time on Child Molestation Conviction
A wealthy heir to the du Pont family chemical fortune has avoided prison, despite being convicted of raping his three-year-old daughter. Delaware Superior Court Judge Jan Jurden said Robert Richards IV should be spared jail time because he would "not fare well" behind bars. Jurden ruled that Richards’ "treatment need exceeds [the] need for punishment," a reasoning almost never used in the case of child rapists. Richards is the great-grandson of billionaire du Pont family patriarch Irenee du Pont. The case has drawn comparisons to last year’s sentencing of a wealthy Texas teenager who avoided jail time for killing four people while driving drunk after claiming he suffered from "affluenza."
U.S. Faces Call for $30 Billion in Annual Climate Aid for Global Warming Mitigation
The United States is facing renewed pressure on financing climate aid for poorer countries in the aftermath of a U.N. report warning of global warming’s impact. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said Monday that climate change will have dire consequences for the world’s poorest countries, and urged rich countries most responsible for greenhouse emissions to help them adapt. The report cited a World Bank study calling on rich countries to provide climate aid of as much $100 billion per year, of which the United States would be responsible for up to $30 billion. Panel chair Rajendra Pachauri said climate change has become an issue of global security.
Rajendra Pachauri: "There is a reason for the world not really neglecting the findings of this report, because they are profound. And let me repeat once again, we have said very categorically in this report, the implications for human security. We have reasons to believe that if the world doesn’t do anything about mitigating the emissions of greenhouse gases and the extent of climate change continues to increase, then the very social stability of human systems could be at stake."
Malaysian Activist Irene Fernandez Dead at 67
The Malaysian human rights activist Irene Fernandez has died at the age of 67. Ferndandez faced government persecution for her devotion to championing the rights of women, migrants and domestic workers. She endured Malaysia’s longest-ever trial on charges of spreading "false news" after criticizing the treatment of migrant workers, winning acquittal after 13 years. She was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2005 "for her outstanding and courageous work to stop violence against women and abuses of migrant and poor workers."
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