But I wanted to share this one.
Because it’s easy for those of us removed from such everyday experiences to overlook that in many places in the United States, many people, in many circumstances, are routinely — not exceptionally, but in the ordinary course of business — treated with contempt or a reckless disregard for their humanity.
Where are you, anti-abortion activists motivating by “protecting our most vulnerable”? Where are you, police and justice officials charged with serving and protecting?
This story is unfathomable to me. How a schizophrenic person doing what such a person might if upset or uncomprehending when forcibly taken to a hospital (pull hair of staff person), winds up in jail for that before they get medical care. Like if a car crash victim were semi-delirious and struck out at the EMT who touched them, we would stop care and put them in jail.
In our divided country, isn’t this a type of abomination we can all agree shouldn’t persist for one more day?
Worse — not that anyone deserves this: It’s jail. Not prison. It’s pre-trial detention. That means it’s you. It’s me. It’s any citizen or visitor or resident.
You get an arraignment handled by a lawyer. You aren’t guilty of a crime. If you’re detained instead of bailed or released, it’s one of the situations where our society owes the highest possible duty of care, because you are a person with full rights and no conviction rendered completely dependent on the state, perhaps through no fault of your own.
And how can the people who work in such a facility tolerate it? How can they have no common sense? And worst of all, how can courts and oversight officials deem them in longstanding violation and yet nothing is done about it?
How can you come in to work every day and just do nothing about it? How is decency thwarted, and indifference empowered?
I think in the communities where I’ve lived, even in the roughest neighborhood, if even a distressed dog were seen treated as this man was, outraged neighbors would immediately intervene.
Maybe some of us folks working on bringing about AGI nirvana or robot pizza makers or enhanced running shoes so weekend joggers can get 2% better times can help figure out systems, methods, and technology to monitor for basic institutional failures and systemic abuse.
We really don’t deserve nice things, and should be absolutely ashamed of ourselves, as long as mentally ill people and other vulnerable folks under the care of the state are allowed to die while in a medieval dungeon.
If we want to run a police state that incarcerates more than anyone else in the world, we need to pay for what it takes to train police and corrections officers and faculty managers to live up to the Declaration of Independence. Or else just keep your tax money in your pocket but then leave people alone already.