The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is infamous for stacking charges on defendants and arresting individuals for seemingly minor possessions. However, when it comes to its own agents, there appears to be an endless level of leniency. In 2012, DEA carried out a raid on a home and arrested a group of young people who were smoking marijuana. One was Daniel Chong. Despite the minor violation, Chong was arrested and interrogated. He was told that he would be released but DEA agents simply forgot about him and left him in a cell for five days without food or water. At one point, as the 23-year-old cried and begged for help, someone with the DEA came in and turned off the light in his cell to leave him in the dark. He was given no food or water. Someone was charged, right? Someone was fired, right? No, the DEA has decided that a few reprimands and short suspensions is fine for starving and almost killing Chong.
I earlier wrote a column on how the U.S. government seems to be gradually adopting the legal standards of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. This case seem to fit that storyline all too neatly.
Even the Justice Department has questioned “the DEA’s failure to impose significant discipline on these employees.”
Chong was never charged with a crime and ultimately received a $4.1-million settlement.
The three DEA agents and supervisor responsible will continue to work for the government even though they almost killed Chong who was hospitalized for days after his ordeal. Four reprimands were issued and the supervisor was given a seven-day suspension. Case closed.
Source: LA Times
False equivalencies do not make good arguments.
What is the difference between patient neglect in a nursing home here in the US versus the UK?
Well, in the US, the nursing home gets sued, etc. In the UK, it’s government run health care. Is the DMV responsive to consumer complaints here in the US?
We’ve seen stories on the blog of government lack of accountability, and the law not applying to federal employees. If we put healthcare under government purview, does anyone honestly believe the result will magically be different?
fiver
I’m guessing a few things.
So, for nurses: loss of professional license, the possibility of personally paying defense costs and the judgment, and a prosecution dedicated to imprisonment.
Right, you’re guessing. None of this actually occurred in the instances identified.
Sure, real comparable.
Neglect has to be comparable before we should be against it? What a peculiar belief.
To summarize:
First you invent the comparison, then you apply an unjustifiable standard.
A process like this seems stolen from the very worst of the legal system you criticize.
Presicely Fiver.
I’m guessing a few things.
A nurse is a professional and required to hold a license and uphold professional standards. She’s likely to face an investigation by her licensing board and could be subject to removal of her license.
A nurse is also subject to civil liability. If he is covered under his own or his employer’s insurance, they’ll pick up defense costs and indemnify him to the limits of the policy. But that’s only for negligent conduct. If the conduct is intentional, and pleaded that way, he’ll have to pay his own defense costs, pay punitive and compensatory damages and will not be indemnified. The judgment will also not be dischargeable in bankruptcy.
A nurse can also be subject to criminal liability. And, unlike police, the investigation will be conducted by disinterested investigators not her buddies from work. (Although I’m guessing fellow nurses might not look at patient abuse as sympathetically as fellow cops might look at prisoner abuse). If prosecuted, she won’t be facing a colleague from work, she’ll be facing a motivated, disinterested lawyer who wants to put her in jail.
So, for nurses: loss of professional license, the possibility of personally paying defense costs and the judgment, and a prosecution dedicated to imprisonment.
For DEA agents: at worst, a week off.
Sure, real comparable.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-deputies-jail-abuse-arrests-20131209-story.html
More than a dozen current and former “sworn officers” from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are expected to be arrested as part of a wide-ranging investigation into allegations of abuse and misconduct inside the county’s jails, according to sources familiar with the arrests.
At least three people — including a lieutenant, a sergeant and a deputy — were taken into custody by FBI agents as part of a federal obstruction of justice probe into how sheriff’s officials handled an FBI informant at the center of the jail investigation, one source familiar with the probe said.
The U.S. attorney’s office put out a news release Monday morning saying that “criminal corruption and civil rights” charges would be announced in the afternoon against members of a local law enforcement agency.
************************
This may be progress.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-jails-sg-storygallery.html
Again, sadly no lack of examples of abuse on our jails.
“Pennywise and pound foolish.”
Abraham Lincoln illegally suspended Habeas Corpus and proceeded to conduct his unconstitutional “Reign of Terror” for which he should have been impeached and convicted, per the Constitution, as the duty of the Congress and Senate, in which those institutions were derelict.
USC had is titles and championships rescinded and vacated for rules violations.
The 18th Amendment, egregious and unconstitutional, was rescinded.
In this “drug” arrest, we concern ourselves with one person out of 300 million.
We concern ourselves with drug use
(a natural right and constitutional freedom – drug use laws are unconstitutional).
We live, to this day, with Lincoln’s “Reign of Terror” and its illegal effects, not the least of which are the transgressions of contemporary jurists and the eminently unconstitutional, resultant and consequent “settled,” “case” and “precedent” law.
“Pennywise and pound foolish.”
R H Stoll
I stated, earlier in the thread, that I only have a vague recollection of either reading about this story or seeing some sort of report about it on television. My remarks were just that. Remarks. Possible explanations for what might, just might, have transpired in this unfortunate calamity of errors. It almost cost this young man his life. Of course people should be watched and monitored when they are in custody. No doubt about it. There is a duty owed to anyone in custody. Do you make the same argument for the safety of those who are incarcerated, long term, who must survive the very common, countless attacks, on a daily basis? It is no secret various physical attacks occur, many sexual, within the walls of our country’s prisons. There is a duty to protect the lives and safety of those individuals, yet those attacks occur with impunity. Ever hear of those guards or prison personnel being held accountable? If so, only very, very rarely.
bam bam – there are roughly 20 inmates (minimum for every guard) in a prison. As a guard you cannot be everywhere at once. Inmates spend 24/7 figuring ways to get around guards and the system while the guard is there 8/5.
I do not want to change the subject,
And yet you are trying to change it from neglect to whistleblowers.
which subject by the way?
Let’s see what would happen if some nurse “forgot” about her patient for five days.
Rick, nope, not buying it. You’re stretching. I do not want to change the subject, which subject by the way? There are a couple of them being discussed here.
I. Annie
Rick, I do not defend abuse and neglect of patients,
You did. I and others pointed out neglect and you made excuses. Now you’re deflecting with some other irrelevant facts, as if some other action changes what you wrote here and now. Meanwhile you’re the first to criticize police.
You have NO idea what happens to nurse, cop and government whistleblowers.
You’re flailing in an effort to change the subject.
Without seeing what the detention area was and its equipment or procedures actually were it is difficult for me to do other than speculation as to what occurred while this man was in custody so I must assume it was a temporary holding cell.
Generally it is not advisable to leave prisoners in handcuffs after they are placed into a holding cell. A restraint chair would be better if they were trying to harm themselves or others. One of the reasons for leaving people for extended periods in handcuffs is they might be injured by the cuffs or if they flip out they can injure themselves in a fall. I don’t know if the victim was or was not acting out physically.
The next is there MUST be a procedure and if so it MUST be followed where inmates are checked at least every 10 minutes or most 15. No prisoner should be allowed in a holding cell in an area that is not staffed. That is a recipe for disaster.
My suspicion is that there was not the intent on behalf of the agents to hold a person in such a tortuous manner. It was that they recklessly disregarded standard procedures within the realm of detention. Surprisingly this was not charge under a reckless endangerment type of crime. In my view the discipline levied is very week., The civil judgment was reasonable however.
http://youtu.be/Waohv7MZ4mE
It’s long, but when you have time, watch it. This is what happens to cop whistleblowers.
Rick, I do not defend abuse and neglect of patients, as I said, I was a nurse whistleblower who paid dearly for blowing the whistle on nursing home abuse and the falsifying of nursing records documenting that abuse. Five years out of my life and my health down the drain because of it. You have NO idea what happens to nurse, cop and government whistleblowers. Do you?
Bambam’s comments leave me almost speachless. “MISTAKE AND ACCIDENT;” Come on. You really believe that? What about procedures? Wasn’t he booked and registered? Who brought him to his cellar and ‘forgot’ about him? Apparently he had no neighbouring cells occupied, generating traffic in the jailhouse, so the argument about deafening noice goes nowhere. How about the guy who turned off the light? Did he check about the juridical state of the prisoner, when he would go before a judge, that kind of thing? At the very least someone should be held responsible for the lack of tracking incoming suspects.
R H Stoll – I get the feeling this is a case where they were using someone else’s cells so they forget they were in charge of the prisoner.
Paul, we live in the U.S., not the UK. Hence my sentence “This is the U.S., not the UK”. I’m sorry you seem incapable of understanding the most simple of sentences.
What other so-called law enforcement agencies in the USA have access to, and use, unmonitored and unaccountable detention facilities? This sounds like an episode from Tales of the CIA’s Extraordinary Rendition & Black Torture Sites, Quarterly.
Secondly if the patient refuses to eat and refuses a G Tube for feeding we do not FORCE food upon them.
This was not the circumstance. So it just goes to show how many of those criticizing police are willing to defend similar neglectful acts depending on whose ox is being gored.
It’s not like in our nation’s PDs where cops get away with almost everything. No comparison.