Detainee Abuse in NYC?

Tapes Show Abuse of 9/11 Detainees

Hundreds of videotapes that federal prison officials had claimed were destroyed show that foreign nationals held at a New York detention facility after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were victims of physical and verbal abuse by guards, the Justice Department's inspector general said yesterday.

An investigation by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that officials at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, N.Y., which is run by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, improperly taped meetings between detainees and their lawyers, and used excessive strip searches and restraints to punish those in confinement.

The report concluded that as many as 20 guards were involved in the abuse, which included slamming prisoners against walls and painfully twisting their arms and hands. Fine recommended discipline for 10 employees and counseling for two others who remain employed by the federal prison system. He also said the government should notify the employers of four former guards about their conduct.

"Some officers slammed and bounced 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 said. "We determined that the way these MDC staff members handled some detainees was, in many respects, unprofessional, inappropriate and in violation of BOP policy."

These people were brought in on immigration violations and had committed and were charged with no crime.

A federal dragnet after the Sept. 11 attacks resulted in the detention of more than 1,200 foreign nationals, including 762 people who were the focus of Fine's original probe. Most were of Arab or South Asian descent and were held on immigration violations under a directive from Attorney General John D. Ashcroft while authorities attempted to determine whether they were connected to the attack or to terrorist groups. None was ever charged with terrorism-related crimes, however.

Nothing they did deserved this. Even legitimate prisoners should be free from deliberate abuse. This whole thing is ugly.

One focus of the report was an American flag T-shirt that hung from a wall at the MDC with the slogan, "These colors don't run." Four corrections employees told investigators that the shirt, which hung in a prisoner receiving area for months, was covered with bloodstains, including some that appeared to have come from detainees being slammed into the wall.

The symbolism is overwhelming.

Many of the incidents of abuse were confirmed when investigators viewed more than 300 videotapes recorded from October to November 2001 that showed detainees being moved around the facility and within their cells, investigators said. Corrections officers who had been interviewed earlier had denied that many of the incidents occurred. MDC Warden Michael Zenk and other officials repeatedly told Fine's investigators that the videotapes had been destroyed as part of a recycling policy, the report said.

The tapes eventually located in August had not been included on inventory sheets provided by the prison and were held in a storage room that also had not been disclosed to investigators, the report said. Many tapes from the period are still missing, and there are unexplained gaps the ones that were found, the report shows.

Many detainees also told investigators that, in the month before the installation of the camera system in October 2001, jail conditions and abuse had been much worse, the report noted. The cameras were installed in part to protect jail officers from unwarranted allegations, Fine said.

"If the camera wasn't on, I would have bashed your face," one detainee was allegedly told by a guard. "The camera is your best friend."

[...]

One lieutenant told another that "slamming detainees against the wall was all part of being in jail and not to worry about it," the report said.

Another MDC officer said in an affidavit that "there were some lieutenants . . . who would [rein] in an officer for bouncing a detainee against the wall, but there were probably other lieutenants who would let it slide."

During two incidents captured on videotape, the report said, "we observed officers escort detainees down a hall at a brisk pace and ram them into a wall without slowing down before impact." In the numerous "slamming" incidents recorded on tape, the report said, there was no evidence that the detainees had provoked or attacked the guards.

[...]

The report found two incidents in which inmates were locked in restraints for more than seven hours despite no signs of resistance.

*sigh*

This isn't what America is about and these assholes should be summarily fired and tried for assault. This lieutenant seems to have gotten the idea of incarcerated, sentenced prisoner mixed up with minor immigration violator detainee. Sure, life in jails is rough but that life is reserved for people who have been convicted of a crime and jailed. The label of "detainee" alone refutes the idea that these people should have tasted the jail life.

At this point, these of course remain "allegations" but that isn't any consolation. Given the breadth and length of the domestic anti-terrorism response, I don't doubt at all that incidents like this have ocurred.

On more than 40 occasions, the report found, MDC staff members recorded detainees' visits with their attorneys using video cameras set up on tripods outside visiting rooms. The tapes routinely captured "significant portions" of conversations between the detainees and legal counsel. In some cases, detainees were instructed not to speak in Arabic or to speak in English because they were being taped.

Such taping is a violation of federal regulations, Fine's investigation found. Prisons rules permit videotaping, but not audiotaping, of attorney visits.

Zenk, the prison warden, told investigators that the cameras were moved farther from the visiting room after an attorney complained in November 2001. But the report says that "as late as February 2002, conversations between detainees and their attorneys are still audible on many of the tapes."

Although the taping "potentially stifled detainees' open and free communications with legal counsel," the report noted that some of the recordings include allegations of physical and verbal abuse that were consistent with the allegations being probed.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

This either has to go one of two ways: either the staff attorney was unaware of this taping or the attorney believed it was OK to tape these converstations. Neither of these possibilities is desirable. I strongly support attorney-client privilege and confidentiality and this is significant violation of that. Just embarassing.

I have to echo the comments by Hoffmania!

Being an American is something I'm still proud of, despite all this embarrassing, deceitful, dishonest, monolithic, pre-emptive, crackheaded, abhorrent behavior that has become the trademark of the USA in the eyes of the rest of the world (and for that matter, about half of America). I just wanted to say that if I wake up tomorrow and it WAS a bad dream.

I'd add hypocritical to the list.

Additional reporting by Reuters:

"We did not find that the detainees were brutally beaten," the report said.

Yeah, they'll sleep better knowing that.

Posted by Drizzten at December 19, 2003 09:36 AM