Kalief, you recall, was the young man who took his own life last June after being wrongly imprisoned at the age of 16 for over three years, beaten, starved, put into isolation for two of those three years, and driven into mental illness which he was the first to say. He told The New Yorker:
“People tell me because I have this case against the city I’m all right. But I’m not all right. I’m messed up. I know that I might see some money from this case, but that’s not going to help me mentally. I’m mentally scarred right now. That’s how I feel. Because there are certain things that changed about me and they might not go back.”
Kalief Browder
His lawyer Paul Prestia told The Los Angeles Times:
“I think what caused the suicide was his incarceration and those hundreds and hundreds of nights in solitary confinement, where there were mice crawling up his sheets in that little cell… Being starved, and not being taken to the shower for two weeks at a time… those were direct contributing factors. … That was the pain and sadness that he had to deal with every day, and I think it was too much for him.”
So when
Hillary Clinton told Black Lives Matter last week "I don't believe you change hearts, I believe you change laws," she was cutting to the chase. Clinton reminded BLM that when Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights Movement, when the power structure started asking him what he wanted, he "had a plan ready to go.” The plan involved concrete legislation which became the civil rights laws.
BLM proposals are shaping up, and now include independently investigating and prosecuting police misconduct, requiring officers to wear body cameras, ending the police use of military equipment. But in New York a golden opportunity exists to ensure there are no more Kalief Browders, youth, vastly disproportionately Black and minority, who are kept in jail for long periods of time awaiting trial because they can't make bail. Browder was charged with stealing a backpack. The charges were dismissed at his release and Browder unfailingly maintained his innocence. He spoke eloquently on the Rosie O'Donnell Show and on HuffPo Live about the many youth being held to await trial on Rikers Island Jail in the city, many of whom Browder came to believe were innocent, but still were being punished before being convicted of a single thing. Life is a daily fight for survivla on Rikers Island, which has been called "the worst place on Earth."
The New York Times recently wrote on the story of an older pre-trial prisoner who was badly beaten by gang members after failing to get off the communal phone fast enough. In Browder's case, beatings and brutality were caught on surveillance cameras and published at The New Yorker website.
Tyrone Tomlin at St. John’s Park in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, where he was arrested last November before being held at Rikers Island because he couldn’t pay bail.
In answer to Hillary's challenge, BLM could do a slam-dunk: Demand that the New York State Legislature adopt Washington DC's laws and process for pre-trial prisoners, a topic which HBO host John Oliver did a pretty good analysis of despite Oliver's comic tone.
The slam-dunk is that no new ground need be broken. DC's laws work and it has a higher court appearance rate on the part of suspects awaiting trial than most cities which employ a bail system, which New York Times reporter Nick Pinto correctly identifies as the heart of the problem. Rather than half-measures like New York's new bail fund for prisoners who can't afford it, admit the system is beyond repair and needs to be chucked all together.
BLM could say to state reps: See what DC is doing? We want you to do that. Whereever it says District of Columbia, just plug in New York, and pass it. And start closing these hellish pre-trial detention centers, like Rikers Island, once and for all. Now that would be an accomplishment for BLM.
If a prisoner can be determmined to not be a danger to the community, or a flight risk, which are the requirements for being granted bail, then there is no reason he or she should be awaiting trial in what by all accounts sounds like a real-life Dante's Inferno. Screams in the night, constant fear of attack, mice, rats, sadistic clubs which include both guards and inmates.
BLM has the ground troops to visit every New York state legislator. They can do this. Come on, BLM, what are you waiting for? Best of all, we can put Kalief's name on it. And BLM can make what happened to Kalief not to have happened in vain.
If anyone has contacts with BLM please pass along this diary.