Yesterday I learned my youngest son is in jail again. The crime is old, something he thought had been resolved. One of those cascading affairs that traps the young and poor of our nation. A minor crime that causes suspension of the driver's license and involves fines. You need to drive to get to work to earn money to pay the fine but that's against another law. Etc.
Tonight Levi is at a privately run institution near Austin. He tells his brother the place ain't so bad and he wants to stay until the matter is cleared up.
Last week he fought for his life in a Harris County jail. Gang related shit (he's not a member but the others were).
Another day he woke to find his cell mate hanging, suspended by the neck on his own shoe strings. He called the guards. They hustled him out of the cell, not bothering to get the other kid down until the rest of the inmates were "secured". He figures he was dead by the time they cut him down.
My son is one of over two million, trapped in the underbelly of this country.
Tell me once again so I don't forget how great America is.
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I can definitively say that no inmate in Harris County has attempted to hang himself with shoe laces in the downtown jails for years. Every Control Center has a "cut-down" tool for emergencies and rescuing an individual takes priority over everything else.
ReplyDelete30 seconds on Google and I found this. So it wasn't shoe strings but a t-shirt and the guy isn't dead but instead in a coma.
ReplyDeleteFor the record. This is second hand information, delivered through another son of mine that has seen and talked to Levi personally. Levi says he and the other inmates were evacuated from the cell and locked in another cell before the hanging man was tended to.
ReplyDeleteAnd the rope was made from a bed sheet, not a t-shirt.
"William" is definitively a member of the Harris county law enforcement community. The comment reeks of bacon.
ReplyDelete