NPR LOOKS AT THE AB AND OTHER PRISON GANGS
Prison gangs—in particular white prison gangs— are in the spotlight in the wake of the murder of two Texas prosecutors and a prosecutor’s wife, whom it is suspected were targeted and killed by associates of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.
Then there was the murder last month of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements, who was gunned down at the front door of his home, reportedly by white supremacist prison gang member, Even Ebel, who in turn was killed in a shoot out with police a few days after Clements’ murder. Two more white supremacist prison gangsters are also implicated.
Prison gangs have long been a fundamental fact of life inside California state lock-ups where many of the most famous prison gangs were formed—the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Guerrilla Family, the northern California-based, La Nuestra Familia, and, of course, the EME, the Mexican Mafia.
LA County’s jails, too, are largely controlled by emissaries of the EME.
This week, NPR has an interesting series on the White Supremacist prison gang suspected in the Texas and Colorado killings, and on prison gangs in general.
The first segment is an informative conversation with NPR investigative correspondant Laura Sullivan who has been reporting on prisons, including prison gangs, for years. Sullivan explains how and why people get involved with the gangs inside lock-ups.
The second segment on Talk of the Nation features two former inmates, and several experts, including my pal Dr. Jorja Leap, an Adjunct Professor of social welfare at UCLA, and author of “Jumped In: What Gangs Taught Me about Violence, Drugs, Love and Redemption.” Jorja describes how the gangs impose order on the otherwise chaotic prison environment, and how, despite every effort on the part of prison officials to crack down, and to isolate shot callers, the gangs still manage to run thriving money making endeavors, both inside and outside.
Listen in. They’re both good shows.
SHASTA COUNTY PROBATION TAKES SMALL BUT REAL STEPS WITH REALIGNMENT STRATEGIES
Beyond the noisy criticism of California’s prison realignment, some counties are quietly making progress—like Shasta county, as outlined in this editorial in the Redding Record Searchlight.
Meanwhile, America’s largest private prison corporation is doing so swimmingly it just issued its stockholders a nice healthy dividend, reports Market Wired.
DEATHS IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY JAIL: A CLOSER LOOK
A few weeks ago we linked to the report by San Diego City Beat’s Dave Maass about the fact that the state’s most lethal jail (per capita) is San Diego County’s lock-up, which had 60 deaths between 2007 and 2012.
This week Maass and City Beat look more closely at some of those cases.
Here’s a clip:
Tommy Tucker, a 35-year-old, obese inmate in a psychiatric unit at the San Diego Central Jail, spun those wheels on Feb. 22, 2009, and lost his life. His act of defiance: attempting to take a cup of hot water back to his cell while the unit was in lockdown. Within minutes, the perfect storm of brutality—pepper spray, a misplaced chokehold and being handcuffed, facedown on the floor—resulted in his death.
As CityBeat reported in the first installment of its investigative series, “60 Dead Inmates,” San Diego County has the highest mortality rate among California largest jail systems based on data from 2007 to 2012. Tucker was one of 12 deaths in San Diego jail custody in 2009, the highest number of deaths in a single year recorded by the five-facility system during that period.
The official cause of Tucker’s death was anoxic encephalopathy—brain damage due to oxygen starvation. What makes Tucker’s death unique is the secrecy surrounding it.
Tucker’s family in Alabama didn’t know he’d died violently. They were informed through an organ-donation service, which originally had received false information that Tucker died from a traumatic brain injury. It wasn’t until another inmate contacted Tucker’s girlfriend that the family began to suspect foul play. A full 17 months passed before they received the medical examiner’s report. When they read it was a homicide, they hired a lawyer.
“They had no idea,” Alabama-based attorney Stan Morris tells CityBeat. “They weren’t told, ‘Six of the guards jumped your brother and put a carotid hold on him, and then they did this, that and the other.’ They just said he died.”
PHOTO COURTESY of Wikimedia Commons