Nice people don't become prison guards.

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LA Times - Inaction in New York Prison Abuse Stirs Anger

It was the first prison abuse scandal of the post-Sept. 11 era, when scores of immigrants were rounded up and jailed in New York after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

They were never charged with terrorism — but they endured abusive treatment that Justice Department investigators concluded was outrageous and cruel. It included being slammed into walls and subjected to unnecessary body cavity searches, some of it captured on videotape.

[. . .]

He also says he was physically abused. Guards slammed him face-first against prison walls, leaving him with a bruised and bloodied nose for weeks, he said. Guards often stomped on his leg chains with their boots, causing excruciating pain, he said.

"Here in Egypt, I would say 'Yes, this could happen to anybody.' In America, it was shocking and disappointing," Ebrahim said by phone from Egypt. "We learned everything about democracy and human rights from the United States."

[. . .]

Attention soon focused on the Brooklyn facility, where authorities held 84 detainees considered to be "of high interest." A report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine in June 2003 identified problems at the facility and criticized immigration and prison authorities, saying they held suspects too long and inappropriately denied them access to family members and lawyers.

Fine's investigators also found evidence of physical and verbal abuse, but were initially unable to corroborate the allegations. At the time, the guards denied they did anything wrong, and prison officials claimed that key evidence — videotapes from a prison recording system from the months after Sept. 11 — had been destroyed.

Many of the tapes later surfaced in a prison storage room — whether they were lost or intentionally hidden remains unclear — and in stark detail they revealed guards slamming inmates against walls, among other acts.

Armed with the tapes, Fine issued a follow-up report detailing myriad problems and evidence that officers "slammed detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains, and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time."

The report also identified a bizarre jailhouse ritual in which guards would "escort detainees down a hall at a brisk pace and ram them into a wall without slowing down before impact." Some were apparently slammed against a wall where a T-shirt hung with a picture of the American flag. The shirt bore the slogan "These Colors Don't Run" — and bloodstains.

May 21, 2005

So how many times are you going to believe these lying assholes when they launch into yet another song and dance routine proclaiming their innocence? How many times do you need to have your nose rubbed in the fact that these are not nice people before it finally sinks in?

Or do you not mind having this sort of thing done in your name?