PRISONERS SUE DOC FOR EXCESSIVE GASSING
Lawyers for Florida Chemical Agent Lawsuit
Cassandra Capobianco
Attorney at Law
Florida Institutional Legal Services
1010-B NW 8th Avenue
Gainesville, Florida 32601
(352) 375-2494 (phone)
(352) 271-4366 (fax)
cjcfils@bellsouth.net
"A few years ago, in Florida, the new warden of the high security state prison, James Crosby, ordered an end to the videoing of ‘use of force operations.’ So we have no tapes to show how prison guards use pepper spray to punish prisoners.
But we do have the lawsuit describing how men were doused in pepper spray and then left to cook in the burning fog of chemicals. Photographs taken by their lawyers show one man has a huge patch of raw skin over his hip. Another is covered in an angry rash across his neck, back and arms. A third has deep burns on his buttocks.
‘They usually use fire extinguishers size canisters of pepper spray,’ lawyer Christopher Jones explained. ‘We have had prisoners who have had second degree burns all over their bodies.
‘The tell-tale sign is they turn off the ventilation fans in the unit. Prisoners report that cardboard is shoved in the crack of the door to make sure it’s really air-tight.’
And why were they sprayed? According to the official prison reports, their infringements included banging on the cell door and refusing medication. From the same Florida prison we also have photographs of Frank Valdes – autopsy pictures. Realistically, he had little chance of ever getting out of prison alive. He was on Death Row for killing a prison officer. He had time to reconcile himself to the Electric Chair – he didn’t expect to be beaten to death."~From " Torture Inc: America's Brutal Prisons" by Deborah Davies, a reporter for Channel 4 Dispatches. Her investigation, Torture: America’s Brutal Prisons, was shown on UK Channel 4 on Wednesday, March 2, at 11.05pm. You can see the full film onsite.
We've been seeking help to stop the excessive use of 'pepperspray for years. Nobody in the department has listened and the spraying goes on. Worse, errant guards have taken the warnings on the cans as directions to additional injury. Where the directions say, shower immediately, showers are often denied for days. Where the directions say, use cold water, sprayed prisoners' burns are intensified with hot water. A DOC nurse reported, "When I ask officers how the burns got this bad, invariably they respond, "I got the faucets mixed up."
Kay Lee
Kay Lee holds up envelope of inmate's burnt skin
at
Orlando Prison Cruelty Conference.
Here is the actual wording of the lawsuit:
EXCESSIVE CHEMICAL AGENTS LITIGATION
Here are pictures of peppersprayed inmates:
THE RESULTS OF EXCESSIVE SPRAYING
LOLITS' REPORT
"Last Fri. three other LOLITS and myself went to Tallahassee for the Press Conference for the announcement of the largest Lawsuit against the FL DOC for the abuse and gassing in our prison system, primarily at FSP but also other facilities. Every Florida newspaper and TV Station was there.
The press conference was in St Pete, Orlando, Ft. Myers, Miami Herald Sun Sentinal --- we were all so pleased to be there. We spoke to the reporters about what is happening in our system. They had no idea what was happening in the FLA DOC.
This is what we do best -- let the public know what is going on -- we must make a change -- the fight must go on."
Prisoners sue Florida over the use of pepper spray, tear gas
Claiming they were ''sadistically'' tortured with chemical agents, 22 inmates in Florida's prison system sued the state Friday to stop guards from using pepper spray and tear gas on prisoners in locked cells.
The full article will be available on the Web for a limited time:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6756476.htm
(c) 2003 The Miami Herald and wire service sources.
Inmates Sue Florida Over Pepper Spray, Tear Gas Torture
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,97214,00.html
Friday , September 12, 2003
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Twenty-two inmates sued the state of Florida on Friday, saying it allowed prison guards to torture them in their cells by spraying them with pepper spray and tear gas.
In their federal lawsuit filed in Fort Myers, the inmates said the use of chemical agents by prison guards has skyrocketed. They claim the practice violates the ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment (search) of the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit seeks class-action status.
Department of Corrections Secretary James Crosby (search) called the use of chemical agents an accepted practice that has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The department has detailed rules to ensure proper use of chemical agents, which include a medical review of inmates who are sprayed, he said.
"I am committed to the safety of our correctional officers and my legal counsel will aggressively defend our practices," Crosby said.
Lisa White Shirley, an attorney with the Florida Institutional Legal Services (search), which is representing the inmates, said the department encouraged the use of pepper spray and tear gas. Since the inmates are sprayed in their cells, they generally don't pose a danger and spraying them is done to retaliate, punish or intimidate, she said.
She said that after they are sprayed, inmates often are not allowed to shower, and the chemicals blister and burn their skin.
"The prisoner is trapped in the cell, burning and gasping for air," Shirley said.
According to the lawsuit, chemical agents are now the most common use of force in Florida prisons. In 2000, they were used 1,455 times, about 40 percent of all instances guards used force that year. Last year, they were used more than 1,800 times and represented more than half of all instances of use of force, the suit says.
Suit claims prisoners tortured by officers
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/09/13/State/Suit_claims_prisoners.shtml
© St. Petersburg Times, published 2003-09-13 09:00:00 Etc/GMTTALLAHASSEE - A group of prison inmates filed suit Friday, accusing state correctional officers of "maliciously and sadistically" dousing them with pepper spray and tear gas while they sat in their locked cells.
The 22 inmates at four prisons claimed the sprayings, over a two-year period, were in violation of their constitutional rights and state policies, and for no more than shouting from a cell or making faces at an employee in some cases. They said they were sprayed even though they suffer from mental or physical illness - a violation, they say, of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Myers by two inmate advocacy groups, the Florida Justice Institute in Miami and Florida Institutional Legal Services in Gainesville. Named as defendants were Corrections Secretary James Crosby; the agency's inspector general, Gerald Abdul-Wasi; and four wardens.
"Prisoners are being tortured here in Florida," said Lisa White Shirley, an attorney who filed the lawsuit. "Secretary Crosby knows that and encourages it. He encourages a culture of abuse in Florida prisons."
Crosby, who was appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush in January to oversee the nation's third-largest prison system, denied the charges, but endorses the use of chemical sprays as an alternative to physical confrontations between guards and inmates.
"We found that by using chemical sprays, where there is not person-to-person contact, while that causes discomfort and irritation, we have not seen where it causes significant injury to either the inmate or the officer," Crosby said in an interview.
Crosby said no inmates are sprayed unless authorized by prison medical experts and that most uses of force by guards are recorded by stationary wall-mounted TV cameras that run continuously.
Crosby said the use of close, hand-held cameras during spraying incidents is avoided in most cases because it affects inmates' behavior.
The use of chemicals has been rising in Florida prisons for the past four years, following one of the most shocking incidents in the system's history.
It was Crosby who, as warden of Florida State Prison, advocated installation of closed-circuit TV cameras and use of chemical agents. Those changes followed the 1999 case in which death row inmate Frank Valdes was killed during a violent exchange with guards who forcibly removed him from his Florida State Prison cell.
After three officers were acquitted of second-degree murder charges in Valdes' death, state prosecutors dropped charges against five other guards.
The Department of Corrections has a lengthy section of rules governing use of force, including chemicals.
"Chemical agents shall never be used to punish an inmate," the DOC code says. If an inmate continues to be disruptive after a warning, "staff are authorized to administer chemical agents in no more than three one-second bursts."
Inmate lawyers say every request from guards to use spray on prisoners has been approved by Crosby's staff.
"This is not the first time that allegations of this nature have been made, and each and every time they all have been shown to be false," Crosby said. If any inmates suffer severe blisters or other injuries from chemical spray, Crosby said, it is because they refused to immediately take a shower as state prison policies require.
Inmate lawyers said no prisoner would refuse to wash off the chemicals.
One inmate who is suing the state, claiming he was wrongly attacked, is Curt Massie, 44. He is serving 13 years for the attempted murder of his girlfriend in Largo in 1996. Massie slit her throat with a razor knife. The woman survived.
At a news conference, inmate lawyers displayed oversized photographs of Massie's legs, turned crimson from what they called "severe chemical burns and severe allergic reactions" after the spraying incident at Florida State Prison in Starke in October 2000.
The lawsuit, which seeks class action status, alleges Massie was doused with chemicals when he made a "funny face" behind a prison nurse's back.
"A guard saw it and didn't like it," Shirley said. "So instead of dealing with it properly, they came with chemical agents and they sprayed him until he couldn't breathe."
The lawsuit accuses guards of spraying Sylvester Butler, an inmate at Santa Rosa Correctional, at least 17 times for calling out from his cell, speaking to prisoners in nearby cells, filing grievances against staff members and for unspecified behavior in his cell "that might warrant a disciplinary report but not the use of force."
Butler "has a history of psychiatric problems and is borderline developmentally disabled," the lawsuit states.
"I'm not aware of any situations where that occurred, and it would be absolutely contrary to our policy" to use chemical sprays on inmates with mental illnesses, Crosby said. "And I'm not aware of any investigations that have shown that to be true."- Steve Bousquet can be reached at bousquet@sptimes.com
UPDATE ON FLORIDA'S CHEMICAL AGENT LAWSUIT
This suit made the front page in Norway!
Innlagt etter politiets pepperspraytest
http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=79422
HEALTH HAZARDS OF CHEMICAL AGENTS
ARTICLE: Better policy for prisons
