Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Maine Criminalizes Mental Illness


A RECENT REQUEST to Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill :

Hi, everyone. My name is Steve Lewicki and I am the Coordinator of the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition. We've got a desperate situation in Maine with correctional officers working at the state psychiatric hospital using Tasers, pepper spray, and force on patients. There is also a bill to transfer 30 people who have been deemed incompetent to stand trial or not responsible for their crimes to the state's max prison. Is there anyone that can advise me on strategies to improve and/or prevent this?
_____
Below is a video that demonstrates the issues that Mr. Lewicki describes in Maine: "Mentally Ill in Prisons" at YouTube http://youtu.be/9MOTKHlhKeY . If you have suggestions for Mr. Lewicki, please post them as comments here, or TRY to email me at MaryLovesJustice@gmail.com . Emails and phone messages not answered within 24 hours were not actually received. (I am censored. Municipalities are under contracts with private prisons and jails to keep them at a certain occupancy.) If you have influence over Maine, please address these inhumane, immoral conditions. WHY on earth are correctional officers working in mental hospitals? Why are mental hospital inpatients being treated like prisoners in War on Terror camps and controlled with Tasers, pepper spray, and FORCE instead of having compassionate, skilled hospital staff who use tranquilizers, straight jackets, and rubber rooms? Why are mental patients who were found to be incompetent to stand trial being imprisoned instead of hospitalized in Maine?

Can you help with this situation, Governor Paul LePage?



Can you address these issues, Mr. Joseph Pointe, Commissioner of the Department of Corrections in Maine?
http://www.maine.gov/corrections/admin/index.htm



 Can you help your institutionalized mentally ill patients and inmates in Maine, Mr. Romney?


Is there something you can do about brutality to the mentally dysfunctional citizens in Maine, Senators?

  1. Angus King

    Angus King

    Susan Collins

    Susan Collins

The United States Department of Justice is responsible for protecting the rights of disabled Americans and all institutionalized persons. Will you address the abuses against the mentally ill in Maine hospitals and prisons, Attorney General Eric Holder?

Department of Justice Main Switchboard
202-514-2000
Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line 202-353-1555
To call component officials, see the Directory of Department Officials



Why are hospitalized mental patients being TASERED, sprayed with pepper spray, and strong-armed into submission by prison guards? Are dogs treated that badly in Maine's kennels? Does "maximum security" mean SOLITARY CONFINEMENT TORTURE? Does the law permit Maine's most vulnerable citizens to be denied trials and committed to PRISONS? Only 60% of the nation's incarcerated mental patients receive psychiatric treatment behind bars. 
The budget for National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2013 was $639.7 billion. Please consider using part of those funds to provide substantial mental hospital space in Maine and every state, plus make assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) programs available for mental patients exiting jails and hospitals. Especially after the recent Navy Yard killings, American officials must realize that removing barriers to timely treatment for mental illness is providing "national defense."
We recognize that municipalities may have contracts with private prison owners to keep their facilities filled to a certain capacity, as reported by "Think Progress" at  http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/09/20/2658701/private-prison-firms-quotas-cells-coffers/ , but the mentally ill must not be reduced to prison commodities. Decision makers over Maine and the USA, please do unto others as you would have them do to you and your sick or addicted family members. Please do not Taser, pepper spray, and brutalize the mentally ill, and do not continue to sentence acute mental patients to prison without trials. We live in the 21st century, not the Middle Ages. Justice Clarence Thomas has a sick nephew, and Vice President Joe Biden has a niece who causes him concern. Every family has someone who is mentally ill, a condition affecting one in five Americans to some degree.

Please give ASSISTANCE TO THE INCARCERATED MENTALLY ILL in the State of Maine and throughout America. Officials over justice in Maine should contact Prisoner Advocacy Coalition and advise Mr. Lewicki of appropriate actions that will be taken in connection with his request.

Mentally Ill in Prison, a video by nstephenson2



Note: The narrator of the film showed a picture of Larry Neal and misrepresented him as being another mentally ill man who was arrested for child support and killed while in custody. Larry Neal was actually secretly arrested for 18 days and murdered in Memphis Shelby County Jail in 2003 by means that have not been disclosed.

Mary Neal
Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill
http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/aimi

Wrongful Death of Larry Neal
http://WrongfulDeathofLarryNeal.com

Dog Justice for Mentally Ill
http://DogJusticeforMentallyIll.blogspot.com
Eleven links, seven photographs, and one video are in this article.


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Sunday, September 1, 2013

Police Killings of White vs. Black Mental Patients


Ethan Saylor, a mentally handicapped man, was killed inside a movie theater in January while wearing police handcuffs. The official cause of death was asphyxiation, and an autopsy revealed that the man suffered from a fractured throat cartilage caused by force of some kind, like a direct blow or manual strangulation. The cause of death was homicide.

Ethan loved the movie and clapped at its end. He wanted to see it again and refused to leave. Police were called. Ethan's caretaker explained that they lacked the money to purchase more tickets and asked police to please wait it out. Touching Ethan would make him "freak out."

“Next thing I know, there are I think three or four cops holding Ethan, trying to put him in handcuffs,” the aide told authorities, according to Sheriff’s Department documents. “I heard Ethan screaming, saying ‘ouch,’ ‘don’t touch me,’ ‘get off’ and crying. Next thing I hear is nothing.”

“Mommy! It hurt!” were Ethan Saylor's last words.

The police officers who killed him are still on the job.  Huff Post reports:
(Aug. 27, 2013) An internal investigation into the incident, conducted by the Sheriff's Office, saw Lt. Scott Jewell, Sgt. Rich Rochford and Deputy First Class James Harris cleared of wrongdoing. An earlier criminal investigation, which was also conducted by the Sheriff's Office, resulted in no charges against the officers.

How Killing White Mental Patients Differs from Killing Black Ones

Ethan Saylor, who police murdered over a movie ticket, Kelly Thomas, who police murdered for vagrancy, and Tim Sauders, who jailers murdered on a restraint table where he was abandoned for four days, were all Caucasians. They and other Caucasians were killed like black people with brain dysfunctions are, but their families' treatment after the murders significantly differs from the experience of some black survivors. The media reported the circumstances of these men's wrongful deaths, and accountability was demanded. Ethan's death is being examined by the U.S. Justice Department. 

All the Caucasian families named above were or likely will be awarded damages for the police murders. None of the families were censored, gangstalked, and financially persecuted for communicating about the deaths of their disabled relatives. No police went to the homes of Ethan, Kelly, and Tim and warned their families not to report crimes done to silence them. Survivors were not threatened by police with Tasering and arrests for complaining about the murders. Their homes were not burglarized to remove evidence related to the murders and denial of due process of law. None of these men's elderly relatives were sexually assaulted on their hospital beds as punishment for seeking justice in court. Nobody sprayed a chemtrail "x" over their rooftops. No one outlined their yards in paint and ordered helicopters to stand still over their rooftops for 30 minutes as harassment. They are not victimized by malicious prosecution. These families' phone calls and Internet usage are not blocked to prevent the world from knowing about their suppression - because they are Caucasians.

Caucasian families' cries for justice when police kill their disabled relatives are not ignored by every human and civil rights organization or suppressed by the media and law enforcement agencies, because the murders are not covered-up by the U.S. Justice Department. White survivors do not endure harsh tactics to elicit their silence. They are not faced with the possibility of having to take the murders and their own victimization before the United Nations as a last resort in the search for justice. All of these circumstances befell Larry Neal's family, because we are black.

Ethan Saylor, Kelly Thomas, and Tim Souders were Caucasians. They were murdered like Larry Neal was under the color of law. Larry was secretly arrested and held 18 days without his heart and psychiatric medications until he was murdered by that deprivation or by Taser or by restraint device or by brutality, but he was black. In America, that makes all the difference in how police murders are handled, even with blacks in positions of government responsibility. That is because most Negroes in decision making positions work for white supremacist globalists who consider it ridiculous to answer for any black person's wrongful death, particularly one who is mentally disabled. They have no respect whatsoever for anyone's humanity, but with blacks, they are not afraid to show it.

The petition for justice for Ethan Saylor, at the third link below, now has over 330k signatures. Obviously, it was not sabotaged like my petitions for justice for Larry Neal were. After signers and I noticed signatures being removed from Larry's petition, I asked people to record the number by their names and check back to see if the number stayed the same. If the number by signers' names goes lower, it means that signatures of persons who signed before that person were removed. After that, ALL the numbers on Larry's petition were removed at http://www.petitiononline.com/Neal/petition.html . Many people also reported that their signatures were prevented.

What Needs to Change

Families of mentally challenged people of every race and everyone who cares about their human rights must band together. Survivors of white police violence victims are treated better than survivors of black victims, but at the end of the day, they all have dead love ones. Families with members who suffer from schizophrenia, Downs syndrome, dementia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, Autism, and other brain issues must realize that whether black, white or other, their loved ones are at greater risk for incarceration, brutality, and police murder. None of our mentally challenged relatives and neighbors are safe as long as news about their deaths is stifled and police officers and jail guards are protected after wrongful deaths. It is time for everyone to unite and give Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill.

In the United States of America, a country that reportedly goes to war for the sake of "human rights," there is a blaring need to give at least DOG JUSTICE to the mentally ill. Read more in the seven(7) links below:

Wrongful Death of Larry Neal
http://WrongfulDeathofLarryNeal.com


Death of Tim Souders - 60 Minutes - CBS News: Mentally Ill in Prison (article and documentary)

Kelly Thomas, Homeless Man, Dies After Beating by Five Orange County Policemen (article and video)
http://reason.com/blog/2011/07/29/homeless-man-dies-after-being


A farewell kiss for Ethan Saylor. 

Dog Justice for the Mentally Ill
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