Here’s the news from the streets of St. Paul and the cells of the Ramsey County Jail
Jason was tased seven times on the street, while completely unresisting. We just heard from him-he’s still pulling copper out of his hip from the taser gun, has a long, deep laceration in his leg that is still untreated, was beaten up badly and has a black eye, a hurt mouth and many lacerations, but says he’s doing great. Elliot Hughes, a sweet, nineteen year old who came to our day camp, was badly beaten when the cops knocked him off his bicycle. They stepped on his chest, and he was coughing blood all night but received no medical treatment. The guards were calling him ‘Princess’ and making homophobic remarks. We heard from Jason that last night, Elliot was making noises to protest not receiving any food for more than twelve hours. Twelve officers entered his cell. Screams were heard for over five minutes. He was tasered three times, maced, and beaten, then removed and the men were told he was being taken to a restraint chair.
[Starhawk]
To put it bluntly, uniformed "law" enforcement in St. Paul and Ramsey County:
- torture with electroshock weapons (Tasers)
- torture with chemical weapons
- stomp on a young man’s chest
- cruelly (perhaps fatally) deny medical care to a victim spitting up blood (the fancy medical name is hemoptysis) from thoracic trauma
- respond to calls for food with torture by beating, Taser, and chemical weapons: the same chemical weapons known to cause respiratory arrest and death in victims with pulmonary disease. "Spitting up blood" is a symptom of pulmonary disease so severe as to require emergency medical evaluation.
- then tie up the victim in "restraint chairs" known to exacerbate pre-existing breathing difficulties in some victims of thoracic trauma.
The Ramsey County Jail officials did this in plain earshot of other detainees: that’s a pretty strong sign they don’t see anything to hide. Which—when one’s been doing the same thing over and over for years—is a common assumption.
Does the torture inflicted on Elliot Hughes sound strange and alien to you? Not me. In the mid-90’s the Humboldt County Sheriff planned and carried out torture of three groups non-violent forest activists by painting their eyes with the chemical weapon known as "pepper spray". The "law" enforcement officers who did this thought it was such a good idea they made training videos. Those training videos, when they hit national news, provoked immediate revulsion, and helped turn public opinion against the brutal "policing" then the norm in California’s "Deep North". Ultimately, the forest protectors won their Federal civil suit against their torturers.
After I wrote articles about that use of chemical weapons for torture of restrained detainees (the forest defenders were locked to one another, to huge machines, or to one another around a large stump), I was deluged by requests from attorneys in the forested counties along the coast of northern California and central/southern Oregon. They all described clients who — while already restrained — were repeatedly sprayed with chemical weapons ("mace" or "pepper spray" or "tear gas"). Over and over, the attorneys reported the victims were tortured in this manner to punish speech: their clients had said something the "law" enforcement officers didn’t like.
Apparently a great many people who go to work in uniform with guns on their belts have such sensitive dispositions that when they hear speech they find disagreeable, they need to skip the charges, trial, jury, and judge: so they can torture the speaker with fists, electroshock weapons, and chemical weapons.
The first attorney to call me represented a client with permanent brain damage. He’d suffered lack of oxygen to the brain due to respiratory arrest. He suffered the respiratory arrest when the notoriously brutal Josephine County Sheriffs bravely strapped him into a "restraint" chair and repeatedly attacked him with chemical weapons.
Just as Ramsey County Jail "law" enforcement officials did to Elliot Hughes last night.
I couldn’t help the attorneys: they needed forensic pulmonologists and neurologists, not a psychiatrist.
Together, we can help the people currently locked up with the torturers who run the Ramsey County Jail — and help those still out on the street with the "law" enforcement officials who punish non-violent speech and public assembly with "snatch squads", brutal beatings, chemical weapons, explosive devices, and the electroshock torture device marketed as "Taser".
Last time I checked…. beatings, kidnappings, use of chemical weapons, use explosive devices against civilians, and electric torture were the crimes Saddam’s regime committed. What could be more patriotic than confronting terrorists right here in the Homeland?
Apparently, Fatherland Homeland Security and the Secret Service they command are too busy smashing down the public assembly and speech their corporatist masters fear to be troubled about a little thing like domestic terrorism. They have better things to do with all those billions in tax dollars.
So, pups: it’s up to us to act in solidarity and provide mutual support for the victims of terror and violence in St Paul and the Ramsey County Jail. When I spoke this afternoon with the Coldsnap Legal Collective, they told me Elliot Hughes had finally been released, but the torture in the jails and the violence against citizens on the street continued.
And they asked for help — our help.
Here’s what they ask folks to do:
Please call the following offices:
* St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman (651.266.8510)
* Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher (651.266.9333)
* County Chief Judge Gearin (651.266.8266)And demand the following:
* Immediate medical attention as needed for ALL arrestees;
* That the prisoners who haven’t given their names (Jane, John, and Jesse Does) have access to group meetings with a lawyer;
* Dismissal of all charges; and
* Release of all minors.
Here’s the Northstar Health Collective’s statement from this morning on how we can help:
Ask politely that RNC protesters & community members in Jail be allowed visitors as is standard at other times. Families deserve to know their loved ones are healthy & OK.
Susan Gaertner is Ramsey County Attorney prosecutes all felonies. She is Democrat & interested in running for Governor. Call her to talk about your concerns (612) 978-8625 or (651) 266-3222 RCA@co.ramsey.mn.us
Ramsey County Jail Phone: (651) 292-3698
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman (651) 266-8510
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher (651) 266-9333
County Chief Judge Gearin (651) 266-8266
When you call the jail number above please be polite and courteous. The person answering the phone doesn’t run the place, can’t stop the torture, didn’t arrest the detainees, and can’t order their release. That jail number is the only portal we have to make sympathetic requests to honor the humanit of the detainees, and we can only do that by respecting the humanity of the person who picks up the phone.
We need to save the rest for the person in command of the jail.
Capt. Ryan O’Neill is the Head of Ramsey County Jail (where the torture is happening): his number is 651-266-9350, ext 1.
What can we tell Captain Ryan O’Neill, County Attorney Gaertner, Mayor Coleman, Sheriff Fletcher, and Judge Gearin?
We can tell them to restore the rule of law in their own damn jail and end the official campaign of violence against speech and non-violent assembly on the streets.
We can tell to place the Constitution ahead of orders from the Bushie Secret Service.
And we can remind them that "just following orders" didn’t work in Nuremberg: it won’t work in Minneapolis.
Related posts:
- Jawad, Ghailani Cases Challenge US Torture Under Rule of Law
- CIA Torture Report Remains Under Wraps; Has Rule of Law Resurfaced?
- On the Rule of Law and Crimes of Torture
- Vote Fraud in Clay County Should be Considered in Hanging of Census Worker
- With Pressure Growing over Torture Pics, Obama Turns to Supreme Court to Stop Release
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Oh, lord, Kirk, pups. This is horrible. My town. Ohmygod.
I guess that all the words written two-plus centuries ago by those old white guys wrote was for naught.
The right to peaceably assemble, the right to political dissent, the right to petition for redress of a wrong.
Civil disobedience does not equal Terrorism, except in the Bush Years. I hear lots of words from these shitheaded republicans about ”loving freedom”, but bullshit talks and freedom walks. Amazing.
I guess that by Mikey Huckabee’s standards, I’m safe cause I have ”earned my desk” unless I am a political protester in St. Paul Minnesota.
What is happening, and when will it stop?
One can only hope that enough pushback will be forthcoming from the public and the media…
i am utterly horrified. Please God no one dies. There has to be hell to pay – are these local police or Blackwater?
Oh no…! My Repug Guv, Linda Lingle, is addressing the convention…! My humble apologies… I didn’t vote for her…!
Digg it!
Urgh, trying again.
Cat got your tongue? ;-)
disgraceful. what country do we live in?
We can’t blame each other for our representatives, I hope. (Issa here)
I note with querulous dismay that Mayor Chris Coleman is a Democrat – it was way more comfortable to believe that police torture would not be countenanced under Democratic Leaders!
I also see that the mayor’s brother is Nick Coleman, a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Maybe he should get some questions about whether this is the sort of thing his family and the people of the Twin Cities stand for.
(veteran firepups will also be pleased to note that Nick Coleman is the stepson of Deborah Howell, the famous ombudswoman for the Washington Post)
Thank heavens the police haven’t murdered anyone ……..
I hope not either… Issa has been far more destructive than Lingle nationally…! *g*
rohrbach here
What the fuck? OMG
Sorry, Linda, this Hawaiian denizen is NOT doing fine…!
dugg!
great post, kirk. thank you.
and thank you also for the reminder that this didn’t start with the bush administration. but i do think it’s getting worse.
will make the calls – do you recommend i call now or in the morning?
Words fail. I am sick about this. I will call Kirk. Thanks for letting us know what we can do.
Ummmm… East Chinastan, in the suburb of Americaski?
lol I can’t stand him so much I spelled his name wrong Rohrabacher
Pretty clear why the party who gave us Abu Ghraib and Gitmo chose St. Paul to hold it’s convention.
Ouch
The corporatists have long sought to treat those sacred words – the words my father, uncles, and grand-uncles swore to give their lives to defend, and so many did give their lives to defend – as though they were for naught. With his treasonous contempt for the Constituion, Bushie is merely the corporatists’ useful idiot.
The Lake has already succeeded — with others — to deny a sitting Senator renomination, and — with others — to make defense of our Constitution a national issue.
Defense of freedom is like fly fishing: takes more than one cast to secure the prize.
We’ll secure the prize of a free Republic governed under the Constitution: but — as in fly fishing — we need to see what the waters conceal to plan out moves.
This post peeks under the waters. The phone campaign — and email campaign — is our first move to provide mutual aid in solidarity with the folks in the Twin Cities.
One thing you all can do to help tonight is make the calls.
The second thing is to find — and post here — the phone numbers and emails of all the city council members from Minneapolis and St Paul.
Please keep in mind that some of the city council members (like the councilperson for Minneapolis’ Second Ward) opposed giving the Secret Service the power to take over the Twin Cities.
Researching via teh Google who supported the “city services agreement” that surrendered city control to Fatherland Security/SS and who did the right thing and opposed those agreements is our third task.
Shining the light on the City Council pols who willingly gave away the Twin Cities’ freedoms….and demanding they make good their error by restoring the rule of law and the Constitution: that’s the task for Thursday.
Let’s start calling and searching tonight!
Makes me wonder if the U.S. is forever lost. Is this what we are now?
So sickening, i can’t do snark. These people are as funny as the plague.
I find it bitterly ironic that the Repugs continually say that McSame will do the RIGHT thing for America… I guess they are RIGHT after all…! ;-)
Jane is upstairs with the liveblog.
I suspect it would have been like this wherever the Repugs held the convention. I understand the Secret Service, not the local law enforcement officials, is calling the shots, and for $50 million, the locals are compliant.
But I don’t know that. Does anybody know what kind of reputation the St. Paul law enforcement establishment had prior to this convention?
Now, if possible. We can always leave messages and call again in the AM to get a live answer.
And we all need to remember to make the call to the jail itself polite and constuctive: focuse wholly on the shared humanity of the inmates, their need for humane care, and the need to stop any form of beatings or punishement with Taser/chem weapons.
Take Linda Lingle– Please!
I didn’t vote for her either!
Bob in HI
yes…Far Right
Rudy 9/11 Ghouliani 9/11 is speaking now 9/11
Neuro, you’re correct. The SS is calling the shots, and we’ve seen the pattern of abuse in NY, Philly, LA. Denver made strenuous efforts to stamp on public assembly and speech: that’s what the “free speech zones” do.
Because it has a Republican Governor willing to turn loose the Gooper Goon squad?
Bob in HI
With the exception of this and a few other sites and Democracy Now I haven’t followed the news this week. Have any of the corporate media covered these events? Shouldn’t we also be making an effort to shame the msm into reporting what’s happening on the streets and in the jail cells?
This whole thing is shocking. I thought Minneapolis/St. Paul was one of those sane & moderate places. But that the press pays no attention is the most frightening of all.
“Does anybody know what kind of reputation the St. Paul law enforcement establishment had prior to this convention?”
They’ve been known to lock undesirables up in the trunk of patrol cars– but that was at least 10 years ago.
Bob in HI
very glad to hear it. the corporatists want to keep us divided. because when we stand together, we are strong.
The old divide and conquer routing. And the Zimbardo Experiment repeated over and over with the same horrific result. It’s at the point where the International Red Cross would normally have to intervene?
…routine, not routing. The ICRC is what I had in mind.
thanks kirk, called them all. one mailbox full, one busy signal but i was able to leave a few voice mails and will call again in the am.
appreciate your advice about being polite. some of the people we call may already be sympathetic and for those who are not, it is up to us to begin the process of trying to win them over.
many thanks again for this post.
…divide and rule…
That they stomped on someone’s chest, denied treatment when he coughed blood, and (was it the same prisoner?) used a restraint chair that is a problem to people with respiratory distress is extremely serious.
The medical examiner’s report on Manadel al Jamadi (the so-called Ice Man) at Abu Ghraib was that he died from pulmonary trauma caused by being stepped on during arrest, followed by being put in a position known as “Palestinian Hanging” (M.E.’s words, the original name for it is strappado), and so died from positional asphyxiation. Errol Morris wrote it up in May, and Jane Mayer’s book has a description, too.
The U.S. got heavily criticized for some of its practices in 2006 by the Committee Against Torture (the body that is the equivalent with respect to the CATCIDT of the ICRC for the Geneva Conventions), and not just in Afghanistan and Iraq, either.
Thanks, Kirk, for framing this the way it deserves to be framed.
The words of Pastor Martin Niemoller* come to mind. When they started doing this at Abu Ghraib, at Guantanamo Bay, and at un-numbered, un-named undisclosed locations in Eastern Europe and Gawd-knows where, it was inevitable that these techniques would find their way home in one way or another.
* = “When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.”
ondlette, thank you. And thanks for the good work you do at your blog: it learned me.
Obama won’t remain silent …. will he?
oh well He must be supported no matter what, anyway.
its just like being on the No-Fly-List.
Thank you, gracious Moderators, for every time you deign to allow such a lowly one as myself to post my humble comments in your quasi-public, quasi-free forum.
I doubt you will post this, but can you clarify, even to yourself, why you are imposing this pre-emptive, presumptive censorship of posts that contain no insults or banned words?
Thanks for all the information! Here’s what I just emailed to prosecutor Gaertner at RCA@co.ramsey.mn.us:
The Honorable Susan Gaertner
Ramsey County Attorney
PO Box 64326
St. Paul, Minnesota 55164-0326
Dear Ms. Gaertner:
I am a retired U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor.
As General Counsel of the INTERPOL U.S. National Central Bureau (1997-1999) I worked closely with the FBI, the Secret Service, and most other federal law enforcement agencies.
I am also an active fellow Democrat.
Obviously lawless actions by law enforcement personnel videotaped near the Republican National Convention, and which witnesses report as occurring in the Ramsey County Jail, concern me deeply.
These include:
* using tear gas on children attending an SEIU event with their families;
* torture, with repeated electroshocks (usually 50,000 volts each, I believe) of an unresisting demonstrator named Jason, whom police also beat and to whom they denied medical treatment (I saw a video of Jason when police had him down and restrained on the street, with an observer protesting that Jason was not resisting);
* denying medical treatment to a young man named Elliot Hughes, who spit up blood all night in Ramsey County Jail from thoracic trauma after police stomped on his chest (this is cruel; it could also prove fatal);
* about a dozen officers entering Elliot Hughes’s cell in the Ramsey County Jail and attacking Hughes with Taser, chemical weapons, and beatings after he’d mentioned not having had food for 12 hours; and
* using chemical weapons known to cause respiratory arrest, permanent brain damage, and even death in those with pulmonary disease. (Asthma is a nasty pulmonary disease. It is common among Americans. I have it.)
None of this could be imposed as a sentence for someone convicted in an American court.
Yet the police are doing it in Ramsey County, on your watch, to Americans entitled to a presumption of innocence. I would hate to think that you are indifferent to it.
The potential for civil liability seems very clear.
So is the potential for publicity highly damaging to Ramsey Country. It’s your jail, after all.
Furthermore, such police abuse can scarcely help your own campaign for any higher office. Most Democrats and Independents are appalled by what police are doing in St. Paul. Many Republicans are appalled, too.
Even after police have seized numerous cameras and laptops (and without probable cause, as far as I know), there yet are countless videos. Call it the Twitter Effect.
Numerous such videos show black-clad police (Blackwater, too?) in riot gear and on horseback on Ramsey County streets. The police are terrifying peaceful people, manhandling women and men who offer no resistance, and obviously arresting them without probable cause.
Victims include medics, and credentialled reporters (e.g., Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, and Nicole Salazar of the fine program, Democracy Now!).
The victims, and thus those in the Ramsey County Jail, are almost certainly Americans. Most if not all were merely exercising their 1st Amendment rights. That’s no crime.
Obviously, I support arresting and prosecuting those who damage property or hurt others.
But in videotapes of arrests I have seen, the only violence — and there is a lot — is by police.
Please therefore exert all of your authority and persuasiveness to restrain police operating in Ramsey County from
* arresting without articulable probable cause;
* torturing arrestees with pepper spray and tear gas, with Tasers, and by beating them;
* preventing arrestees’ consultation with attorneys; and
* denying medical care to arrestees.
And please exercise your prosecutorial discretion to dismiss promptly
* all charges against reporters doing their jobs; and
* all charges for which you lack solid probable cause.
This will undoubtedly include most, if not all, of the felony ‘conspiracy to riot’ charges.
If we Americans abandon the Rule of Law, what are we?
Sincerely,
Bless your work and your upholding the Rule of Law, greenharper.
Thank you.
You have left me weeping with gratitude.
Very well done mail greenharper. I especially like the reminder that this will come back to haunt her later as she’s a dem and dems don’t like this shit.
I cannot believe this is still happening. Makes me keep thinking about those “It’s 3am” campaign commercials…isn’t this one of those times, being that our citizens(consumers) & journalists(really?) are clearly under attack, that someone, somewhere should be making one of those calls? If this one slides, we are officially living in a police state. The silence is scary.
kimm, I share your concern. Yet with letters like greenhaper’s and the calls and emails other folk are sending, I know we’re not letting this slide: we’re putting on the breaks.
If your time tonight allows, you can leave messages at the numbers above (an ask the human on the other end of the line at the jail to respect the inmates’ humanity).
Thursday morning, as your time allows, you can call when everyone’s back at work.
The Bushies thought — wrongly — they could slide the Constitution, the Republic, and the Rule of Law off a cliff.
We’re stopping them and we’re NOT being silent: please add your voice to ours. When enough of us speak, they won’t need to wait for a 3 AM phone call: their consciences won’t allow them to sleep.