There Is No Excuse For This At All

The Fairfax County VA sheriff released the following video of the actions of her deputies that preceded the death of Natasha McKinney last February. The officers involved have been found to be not criminally liable.




There is no excuse for this at all. I haven't watched every minute of the video, and I don't recommend it as even something to witness in its entirety. It's a document of a horrible and inexcusable "extraction" for transport.

First off, Ms. McKinney should not have been in jail. She should have been seen and treated by mental health professionals for a serious condition that had previously manifested leading to the assault charges against her for which she was arrested and jailed.

Her condition deteriorated in jail to the point where the deputies decided she'd better be transported to the jail in Alexandria since the charge of assault was in Alexandria. The facility would not come for her. Therefore the deputies decided to transport her themselves.

In order to do this, certain jail protocols had to be observed, the first being that the inmate had to be restrained with handcuffs and shackles. Ms. McKenna at first agreed to be handcuffed, then refused.

The video begins with an officer stating the determination to "extract" Ms. McKenna against her will for transport to the jail in Alexandria.

Six officers in hazmat suits are delegated to perform the extraction along with another older deputy sheriff not in a hazmat suit who appears to be in charge of the operation. Three or four deputies -- also not in hazmat suits -- mill around at the end of the hall observing the procedure.

After some struggle, the older deputy manages to figure out how to open Ms McKenna's cell door, and she steps out. She is nude. She says, "You promised not to kill me!" At that point, I nearly lost it. Here are these men in hazmat suits, looking like some kind of hideous aliens, ordering her around and struggling with her, forcing her to the floor, and attempting for over fifteen minutes to secure her in various restraints, all the while shouting "Stop resisting!" and threatening her with a taser.

It's insane.

Part of the insanity is that these men are following protocols and do not know what they are doing. They are trying to achieve something that protocol demands -- the full restraint of the prisoner prior to transport -- without having a clue to how to accomplish it when the prisoner is a rather small nude woman having a serious mental health breakdown who would rather not be restrained, at least not the way these officers want to do it.

She's on the floor, on her stomach. There are four deputies on top of her pressing her head into the floor, and apparently also pressing down on her limbs and back. It's hard to tell from the angle of the videography just what they are doing, but they are clearly having a very difficult time restraining her.

One deputy has a taser and is not on top of her. The older deputy keeps trying to reason with her. The others are shouting and threatening and trying to force her legs and arms into position to shackle and handcuff her.

We've seen it a thousand times, even when people are not resisting at all officers are very seldom able to move arms or legs of detainees into the correct position for shackling and handcuffing without a tremendous struggle. I've often wondered whether they have any idea how to do it in the first place, and whether they understand why what they want to do is nearly impossible when the detainee is face down on the ground with three or four officers on top. It just doesn't work.

And the detainee is often injured, sometimes seriously, as the officers repeatedly attempt and fail to handcuff and/or shackle their quarry.

The procedure itself is faulty. It fails so often in fact that I've become convinced it is a deliberate form of "pain compliance" -- ie: torture -- for the purpose of asserting dominance, not in fact to "secure" the individual.

Ms. McKenna doesn't actually appear to be struggling or resisting; she appears to be responding to the pain being inflicted upon her.

More that fifteen minutes later, she is sufficiently restrained to be put in a prostraint chair for transport to a van which is supposed to take her to Alexandria.

Though they keep saying she's resisting, she doesn't appear to be. "Resisting" in this context seems to mean any movement at all. She's clearly uncomfortable and uncooperative. They want her to sit up in the prostraint chair and she doesn't do it. Ergo, she's "resisting" right? They keep telling her to stop kicking her legs, but she doesn't appear to be, or if she is, the movement is slight and may be involuntary.

So, because she continues to "resist" she's tasered. From what I saw, it appeared she was tasered once while she was on the floor, and three times while she was in the chair. Restrained. In other words, there was no need to shock her -- except for the fact that she wasn't in the exact position they wanted her to be in, and this was unacceptable.

Control is all-important.

Of course when a person is shocked with a taser, they can't obey orders to sit in such and such a position. When they're having a psychotic break, as Ms. McKenna may have been, they are rarely going to obey any order at all.

Police are the least qualified people to deal with a person in crisis, and what they do -- as amply demonstrated in this video -- is seriously detrimental to their own well being and that of their subject.

Ms McKinney appeared to go into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing shortly after she was tased for the fourth time in a few minutes. Medical personnel were summoned but did nothing. In fact, it appeared that CPR was eventually administered by the older deputy who had been trying to restrain her in the first place.

Ms. McKinney was revived [in the ambulance after 20 minutes without breathing or a pulse] and was taken to a hospital where she died in a coma a week later.

The medical examiner attributed her death to "excited delirium." Whatever that is. They say she was covered with bruises and lacerations, and apparently one of her fingers was amputated while she was in the hospital -- due to injuries sustained during the attempt to restrain her.

She shouldn't have been in the jail at all regardless of any charges that may have been made against her for things that happened while she was having a mental health crisis. Those restraint procedures should never have been applied to her (not to anyone). She should not have been tased (there was no need), and she should not have been tased four times within a few minutes.

The whole thing was a cockup, but the officers involved were exonerated of criminal liability, so they don't know that. The sheriff vows "changes" to protocols and procedures for dealing with mentally ill inmates.

She said the jail is where mentally ill individuals are sent more often than not.

This is wrong and insane, but according to those who say they know, Virginia does not have a public mental health care system. Mentally ill individuals who are acting out go to jail. There is no other facility available to most of them.

This is the legacy of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, coming right out of a belief that there is no such thing as mental illness, just behavior problems which can be corrected through medication, surgery or punishment.

Of course death is also a corrective for behavior problems, isn't it?

There is no excuse.

How Bizarre

That the question of torture is once again being "debated" in this country.

According to the Bright Lights of the Republican Party, at any rate, torture is OK with them, and if it is OK with them, then the question must be raised and engaged extensively in the media -- all media, including the New Media (ie: Blogistan) as if it were some Important Discussion to Have.

Bizarre and crazy.

Here's the thing: torture is illegal, and torture is used. Those who use torture -- for whatever reason -- face legal consequences, though generally speaking those consequences are mitigated based on the circumstances of the torture employed.

That's the way it is, and it is the way it has always been. Torture is -- and has long been -- used for a variety of state/official purposes (set aside "torture for pleasure" for the time being), and those who use torture may face legal consequences in the by 'n' bye. More likely, though, they will not -- if they are torturing in service to the state.

The "debate" hardly ever deals with those facts, and it almost never starts from that perspective.

It's like the notion that Law Enforcement Officers are not allowed to shoot unarmed, non-resisting suspects. Hello! It happens all the time. LEO's almost never face legal consequences when they do it. It's basically a judgement call on their part -- whether to use force against suspects, and what kind of force to use, up to and including lethal force. Their judgement is almost always ratified by Authority in the end. Whether or not the suspect is armed and/or resisting. It doesn't matter. What matters (generally) is whether the officer believed s/he was under "threat." Which can literally encompass any emotion or situation at all.

Just so, it is a judgement call on the part of interrogators whether or not to torture a captive. And whatever the interrogator decides to do will ultimately almost always be ratified by Authority, post hoc or as necessary.

The Osama Thing seems to have revived the "torture debate" because of certain claims that information that led to his liquidation in Pakistan was gained through "harsh interrogation methods" -- though there is dispute about it based largely on Party lines. Whether information was gained through torture or not is beside the point. Torture remains illegal, and those who engage in it are potentially subject -- at least in theory -- to legal consequences. That's the only thing that needs to be said about it.

On the other hand, from current reports it would seem that Osama was in fact summarily executed when encountered in his bedroom in the Bilal Town Compound. Summarily executed with the well-known "double tap." Supposedly, summary executions are illegal as well, but they have been employed relentlessly throughout our many overseas Imperial wars of aggression, and they are a feature of JSOC and Navy SEAL operations, widely celebrated and cheered. They call it Wet Work.

It is what Death Squads do.

It's as illegal as hell, but it goes on relentlessly, and our Armed Forces and their mercenary auxiliaries wouldn't know what to do without recourse to a whole suite of otherwise frowned upon or outright illegal techniques.

The debate we should be having is whether this is the kind of society and world we want. And if it isn't, what do we have to do to change it?

Those Who Are Not Persons

Lost in all the clamor over the Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court did something else regarding "persons" that is if anything even more outrageous.

Last December the Supreme Court let stand a DC Circuit Court ruling in Rasul v Myers, et al (pdf link) in which the lower court determined that 1) the plaintiffs may not sue Federal officials who ordered or participated in their torture because those officials were acting in their official capacity, not as "rogues," and such torture that may have occurred was "incidental" to their duties; 2) that “torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants” in any case and therefore, “it was foreseeable that conduct that would ordinarily be indisputably ‘seriously criminal’ would be implemented by military officials responsible for detaining and interrogating suspected enemy combatants;” 3) and finally, that the plaintiffs are not "persons" under the meaning of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and therefore they do not have the right to sue under its provisions, or for that matter under any other law or provision that applies to "persons" or "people", which these plaintiffs are not. 

So ordered.

The lower court ruling that the Supreme Court let stand in Rasul v Myers is so shocking on its face, and so at variance with even a minimal sense of justice, that it's very difficult even now for people of good will and moral conscience to come to grips with it.

It justifies torture as an "incidental" factor in the confinement and interrogation of suspected terrorists by military authorities and it further declares to these plaintiffs -- and to all and sundry -- that torture is a "foreseeable consequence" of being captured, held and interrogated by the US military (and its contractors?), and that further, "non-resident aliens" such as the plaintiffs in this case, even if held on US property, are not "persons" under the meaning of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act -- or any other, for that matter -- and therefore have no standing to sue in any case.

Dred Scott meet Shafiq Rasul, et al.

In fact, this ruling is so shocking and outrageous -- and so deeply antithetical to everything Americans say they believe in with regard to Justice -- that it will probably stand right there with the Dred Scott ruling as one of the worst in our nation's history.

Yet surprisingly, there's been very little outcry about this ruling. Perhaps it's the shock. Perhaps it's the fact that the Supreme Court simply let stand a lower court ruling rather than ruling its own self. Perhaps it's because the plaintiffs have been repatriated to Britain and are not now under American authority and so are not now subject to the tortures they experienced while in custody in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Perhaps it's because the implications of this ruling are just too terrible to contemplate.

Of course, it could be something else.

The plaintiffs, after all, are no strangers to Americans who have been following the torturous trails of our Gulags and the sufferings of their captives.

In fact, Shafiq Rasul is one of the primary litigants who has been actively pursuing justice in American courts for their unjustified captivity and horrible treatment while in American custody, with some success. See Rasul v Bush. In this case, the plaintiffs failed, somewhat spectacularly, but one can be pretty sure they'll try again.

The Road to Guantanamo is one of several lengthy news segments and documentary films made over the years concerning Shafiq Rasul and his fellow plaintiffs. The embed below is the entire, more than hour-long documentary that was first shown on Channel 4 in Britain, should anyone care to review.



In another, more recent news segment, Rasul and Ruhal Ahmed, once held at Guantanamo, reunite with one of their guards at the camp. The guard, Brandon Neely, offers what appears to be a very sincere apology to the former captives for their treatment in custody.

Part 1


Part 2


The United States has got a long way to go before the nation's institutional commitment to resolution is anywhere near that of the individuals, such as Shafiq Rasul, involved.

And rulings like that of Rasul v Myers, et al are definite impediments on that path.

For further review, Torturing Democracy is more than worth the time.

There is so much that we need to get right.

They still won't call it Torture

[From: http://mcncirce.com/history1.html  ]

The "Torture Memos" were released last Thursday, April 16 -- some wags said as a distraction from the Teabaggery -- and  brilliant minds all over the blogosphere went to work. The ACLU, of course, got its props for forcing the release of these memos that describe in excruciating, ugly detail just what is permitted to be done to American captives in the Great and Global War On Terror, and the efficacious results of said practices. Very Medieval.

All the witches confessed, don't forget.

The picture shows, among other common practices, what's called the strappado. As viewers of "24" will know, it is how you hold terrorists captured on the field of battle, and -- when necessary -- it's what you do to anybody else at all who crosses you or who might have "information" that must be extracted.

It's also called Palestinian Hanging because it is what the Israelis do (or are said to do) to the Arab captives they hold, routinely. It was commonly used at Abu Ghraib and at the other prisons run by Americans in the Great and Global War On Terror, and -- not to play favorites here -- it is a commonly used "technique" by all of our many enemies as well.

It is torture, plain and simple, common as dirt, and quite likely as widespread now as it was at any previous era in history.

Also shown in the picture is the Famous Waterboard. Which -- according to reports -- was used hundreds of times on American captives in the Great and Global War On Terror; it is the same torture for which American service personnel were courtmartialed during the Vietnam War and during the Philippines Insurrection. Japanese prisoners were sentenced to death for doing it to American prisoners of war during WWII.

And yet, still, even now, Our Major Mass Media will not call it -- or anything else done by our various services and their contractors -- torture.

It's the most amazing thing.

This is how the New York Times refers to waterboarding captives hundreds of times:

C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported.

And this infuriates me. The whole world calls it torture, not just "top Obama administration officials" (like the President himself, e.g.), but the New York Times, in its wisdom, will not call it torture, nor, apparenly, will any other mainstream mass media outlet.

Since the Torture Memos implicate all sorts of people, including an array of Busheviks, sitting judges, CIA operatives, contractors and mercenaries, medical and legal professionals, and on and on, could it be that the NYT's interconnections with all those interests, all of whom might suffer irreparable harm if the Times took to calling these "techniques" what they are -- ie: Torture -- prevents the Times from using the correct term for fear that people they know and people like them might wind up before a tribunal somewhere?

I don't know.

All I know is that the continued refusal of the major mass media in this country to call a thing "torture" -- unless it is being done by our many enemies (under those circumstances, they have no problem using the right terminology) helps keep Americans befuddled and confused and deeply ambivalent about what's been done and what is being done in their names.

Euphemistically speaking...

David Bromwich in the New York Review of Books writes on the topic of "Euphemism and American Violence".

It's become almost a joke that American mass media will not under any circumstances call the torture of captives in American control "torture."

There's a story in today's New York Times filled with euphemisms for torture, so much so, it comes across as a gag.

... harsh interrogation methods ...the methods ...some legal experts have condemned as illegal torture ...harsh techniques ... waterboarding and other physical pressure ...the harsh techniques ...coercive interrogation ...coercive interrogation methods ... the harshest methods ...interrogation methods ...so-called enhanced interrogation techniques ...the harshest methods...

Bromwich quotes Orwell:

Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

And in our own country, the major mass media -- every last one of them -- follows the lead of the New York Times and comes up with ever more baroque phraseology to avoid calling what our government does to its captives, "torture."

Like what the military did to the captives it held in Iraq who supposedly provided the information accusing Iran of hosting Hezbollah training camps for the Iraqi Shia resistance.

More at Chris Floyd's place where he blasts the Michael Gordon propaganda piece in the NYT the other day::

Gordon's latest is a classic of this sinister genre. He dutifully stovepipes claims by the usual unnamed "American officials" who tell him that Iranian agents have revealed that Hezbollah is training anti-American Iraqi Shiites inside Iran. This information, we are told, comes from "interrogations" of four Shiite militia members who were captured by American forces last year.

In other words, four Shiites who have been subjected to George W. Bush's beloved (and personally approved) "harsh interrogation techniques" for an entire year have -- surprise, surprise! -- told American officials exactly what they want to hear: that Iran is training Iraqi insurgents to kill Americans. Or to speak plainly and with no addition: four men have been tortured into confessions that serve the Bush Faction's militarist agenda.

Stop! You're torturing me!

In addition to the outstanding series of anti-torture posts at Digby's Hulaballoo, Chris Floyd's Empire Burlesque, and Scott Horton's No Comment at Harper's, I'd like to acknowledge ondelette's efforts at Humanity Against Crimes.

This topic, of course, is no fun for most people, and those who find joy in it really need to get some help. Ondelette has been trying to put some historical as well as moral focus on the topic of torture in western society, and the research alone is a disheartening and often appalling trek through some of the worst aspects of human existence.

As he points out, we (as in The West) have been down this road before; it has led to destruction and disaster more than once. If we want to retrieve our humanity one of the primary goals must be to end torture permanently, and I would add, to "re-educate" those who believe Torture Works.

Torture? What torture?

Digby, dday, and tristero over at Hullabaloo have been doing yeoman work flogging (er...) the torture issue with some of the most compelling and definitive posts anywhere.

Chris Floyd over at his Empire Burlesque likewise.

Scott Horton all but burned himself out on it over at Harpers.

And still most of our leading media outlets cannot bring themselves to call what our government does to its captives "torture," except by indirection or reference to what "some people say."

Most Americans, apparently, don't much care what happens to the captives in any case, any more than most good upstanding Americans cared what happened to captive Native Peoples or slaves when time was.

Captives, almost by definition, aren't really human, are they? So what happens to them, whether it works to stop the ticking time bomb or not, is of no particular consequence. As long as we don't see it or hear it, let our government or its contractors torture away.

Because our Congress won't hold the Bushevik regime to account through Constitutional means, those who are working against torture have to employ other mechanisms such as defunding the mercenaries and contractors, some of whom have been implementing the torture regime so as to provide some means of plausible deniability to the government. But even that is a long shot.

Until and unless the torture regime is stopped, however, and those responsible held to the strictest account, our nation's moral standing will be no higher than the dirt on which we walk.

Was there ever an empire so determined to self-immolate?