Trapped in Detention Cell for Four Days

[Ben]

How does this happen? Even if windowless, you would think someone would hear him screaming at some point. I don't know how detention facilities like this work, but it seems it would be common sense for unoccupied cells to just be left open, especially if windowless.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/07/31/student-left-in-dea-cell-to-get-4-million-from-us/?test=latestnews

[Levant]

If all victims of the war on drugs got 4.1 million dollars, maybe the government could decide it isn't worth fighting.

[vaskidmark]

This is not all that uncommon.  Holding cells are not always next to/near places where people tend to be.  Many of them are closets that were intended to hold someone for a very short period of time and thus not even equipped with a commode and sink.  My recollection is that a person is more likely to be "abandoned" in courthouse holding cells than in ones in jails or police stations - if only because there are people moving about near the holding cells in jails/police stations, while courthouses get shut up at night and over weekends.

Only very recently has the War on Some Things progressed to the point where detainees are taken to a Task Force administrative area for processing instead of to a jail.  This seems to have come about because of turf guarding by both sides - the jails do not want their limited resource of holding cells taken up by someone who administratively "belongs" to some other agency, and Task Forces seem to want to exercise total control over the people they detain in order to leverage the process in favor of the goals of the War on whatever they were formed to combat.  (Put a detainee in a jail holding cell and you lose much of the ability to ignore or trample on civil/constitutional rights.)

The problem is that these Task Force administrative areas are not always staffed 24/7, and there are no staff designated to regularly and periodically check on the physical status of detainees.  To be quite blunt, it often is known only to the person putting someone in one of these holding cells that the person is there.  While they will never admit it, I've go a fiver that says that was what happened.

The DEA introduced national detention standards as a result of the ordeal involving Daniel Chong, including daily inspections and a requirement for cameras in cells

In other words, the bare minimum standards for police stations, jails, and prisons.

I'm not sure I would have agreed to settle the suit, both because I am pretty sure a jury would be quite outraged and because not a single head seems to have rolled.  Yeah, new "standards" were put in place - that should have been there all along.  Can you say "gross negligence"?  I knew you could, and I'm pretty sure a jury would have been able to as well.

stay safe.

[Perd Hapley]

Never mind.

[RevDisk]

Eh, remove the near total immunity from criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits for government employees and the situation will sort itself out.

[HankB]

Eh, remove the near total immunity from criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits for government employees and the situation will sort itself out.

^^^^^^
This

[Waitone]

This kind of crap will cease suddenly when those responsible pay a high and personal price for their action, or lack thereof.    A contingency lawyer has a vested interest in taking the money and running.  I think he could have gotten a lot more.

[geronimotwo]

dang, a million a day.  do they do sleepovers on the weekend?

[MechAg94]

dang, a million a day.  do they do sleepovers on the weekend?

They might but it appears to be BYOB.   

[vaskidmark]

dang, a million a day.  do they do sleepovers on the weekend?

Trouble is, you would be getting your own money back.  It's just an unscheduled expenditure of tax dollars.  DEA can make up the amount in less than a day by seizing cash without having to arrest the person who had the cash, or going to court to meet some absurd "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard.

And until you get sufficiently PO'd to stop throwing tax dollars at someone's wounded rights and feelings this crap will continue.  That, or until heads start rolling when a 42 USC § 1983 violation is changed from a civil action to a crime.

stay safe.

[HankB]

Trouble is, you would be getting your own money back.  It's just an unscheduled expenditure of tax dollars. . . . And until you get sufficiently PO'd to stop throwing tax dollars at someone's wounded rights and feelings this crap will continue . . .

I remember a story about some guy who won a large judgement against a relatively small town for some cr@p the local LEOs pulled on him. Forget the details, but remember a reporter asking him if he felt guilty that the local taxpayers were going to be on the hook for the judgement.

He said not at all, with words to the effect that they're on the hook because they voted the wrong people into office, and when their taxes go up, they'll learn that there are REAL consequences to bad voting choices.