When we last left off with “Alfonso Trujillo,” the man with the injured knee who was an inmate in Men’s Central Jail, he had been examined the first week of April at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, and was waiting to for his next appointment, which was to have been in two weeks.
During his original trip to the hospital, the doctor told Al he would need to return in a week or two for an MRI, at which point, if the knee had not improved, he would require surgery.
Al injured his knee, if you’ll remember, trying to climb down from his top bunk in one of the jail’s triple bunk cells. The upper bunks provided no proper way to descend, and one sleepy morning he slipped on the loose sheet of the bed belonging to the bunkmate below him and landed hard. In the fall, Al jammed up his knee quite badly, perhaps tearing something. The exact diagnosis was as yet unclear.
When he came back to Men’s Central Jail from his April 3 hospital visit, he was put in the jail’s medical unit where, incredibly, the staff again gave Al and his swollen knee, a top bunk.
After the the ACLU held a press conference on April 14, to insist that Men’s Central—CJ—was dangerous and should be shut down, one apparent side-effect of the press attention was that the staff nervously moved Al and his knee to a lower bunk—all of which I wrote about here.
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Now let us fast forward to this week. Between his trip to the hospital and now, Al had been walking with the aid of crutches in the hope that the injury might heal. Unfortunately, his knee had gotten worse, he said disconsolately in a phone call. There was increased swelling, he could feel fluid in the knee, and he continued to have pain. By this time, Al had resigned himself to the surgery.
When a friend of his, Ophelia, who is also a friend of mine, went to visit him last week, she became concerned. “He’s really hurting,” she told me. “He tried not to show it, because he’s like that. You know. But he couldn’t hide it. He looks bad.”
There was another problem. A full month had passed since his hospital visit with no word of a new visit being scheduled. Al worried that somehow the staff had forgotten that he needed a follow up, and likely a knee operation.
At least that’s what he told me on Sunday. “I don’t know what I should do,” he said. “If you tell the staff you’re injured, they pretty much think you’re making it up to get out of something.”
On Tuesday of this week Al called again. “I’m not in the medical floor any more,” he said. “They moved me to general pop.” General population.
“Are you better?”
No he said, he wasn’t.
Here is what he said had occurred. On Monday, one of the staff asked all the inmates using crutches to come out of their cells and line up in the hall.
“Then this guy sat there with his lap top and asked each of us to walk down the hall in front of him. I guess he was a doctor. But he didn’t examine us or nothing.”
Al walked and….he was told that he was well enough to be transferred to the main line.
So that was it. No more medical. And, unless someone saw fit to intervene, Al feared, no more surgery.
Welcome to triage, LA County Jail-style.
TO BE CONTINUED……
Have all of the jail staff line up and demonstrate the use of their brains. Those without any can go to the psycho hospital.
Even though many of these people at the LA County jail haven’t gone to trial or are in the process of court proceedings, and are therefore presumed innocent until proven guilty, the jailers and other staff consider everyone locked up at this Siberia as guilty subhumans.
So every mandated order or ruling to provide care and treatment for the inmates, both mental and physical is implemented with rancor and spite and a minimum of human decency. That is the culture at the LA County Jail and it will continue to be the culture there until the whole system is demolished for good.
But with the lack of money and will to get the job done I suspect that it will take a major disaster, probably based on extreme violence and depravity, before enough public outrage and shame is forthcoming.
“Mandated orders” strictly speaking are implemented with animus and spleen by the jailers, who even themselves loathe being there.
No mention of Robber Barons,the prison industrial complex, and xenophobes being responsible for all the evils of society? The comment section is lacking it’s usual zeal. 🙁
For heavens sakes, tomorrows Mothers Day, and I want all you rascals, scamps, curs, good-for-nothings, knaves, varlets, snakes in the grass, bounders, reprobates, hellions, rapscallions, evil-doers, and mischief-makers to wish Ms Celeste Fremon a Happy Mothers Day. Show some respectability around here gentlemen… and I use that term loosely!
Happy Mother’s Day, Celeste!!!!!
At the risk of being grouped in Irv’s blanket profile: Happy Mother’s Day, Celeste.
I was going to do it anyway, without Irv’s suggestion. Also, he didn’t include me in his list.