This week, the Washington Post’s The Fix posted an interview with Georgetown University law professor Paul Butler, former federal prosecutor whose new book, Chokehold: Policing Black Me, will be out next year. The topic: “Why did Cleveland sue Tamir Rice’s family? And why is a Chicago officer suing the estate of a teen he killed?” This is not a joke. To explain:
This month alone, the City of Cleveland filed suit against the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old shot and killed by police who a grand jury declined to indict in December. The suit sought to collect $500 in unpaid emergency medical bills incurred after Rice was shot in a city park and transported to a hospital. After public criticism of the suit reached a fever pitch, the city dropped the claim.
In addition to that, a police officer in Chicago who shot and killed a mentally ill teen and his unarmed neighbor filed suit against the teen's estate, claiming that the ensuing publicity had caused the officer permanent trauma.
Says Professor Butler:
Cleveland acted callously, which is the way poor people of color get treated by the government all the time. Look at how Michigan officials allowed the residents of Flint to drink poisoned water – water the officials wouldn’t even drink themselves.
The Chicago cop is using the court system to have a temper tantrum. Legally, he has no case. Sometimes people use the court system to tell their side of the story. The role of an effective lawyer includes advising a client when a lawsuit is not in his best interest. Officer [Robert] Rialmo’s lawyer failed him in this regard.
Indeed, in Flint (as we’ve noted before), lawsuits by poisoned residents are going to be difficult. Continues Professor Butler:
In general, however, the law is not especially friendly to poor people. It’s easier, for example, for Flint to go after people who don’t pay their water bill than for Flint residents to sue government officials for giving them poisoned water.
And low-income folks don’t have nearly as many protections against lawsuits as do the police. Often, they can’t afford lawyers to defend them when they get sued.
Now imagine you are one of 2,000 migrant mothers or children held in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Dilley Texas, and subject to inhuman prison-like conditions by the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs it. As journalist Antony Loewenstein (author of “Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe”) notes in a New York Times op ed today, CCA, “America’s largest private prison and detention company," has a “long history of ignoring detainee safety and federal laws.” It has also “lobbied politicians to keep more people behind bars rather than deporting them” since “Congress requires that at least 34,000 people be housed daily in detention centers — a so-called detention bed mandate. … This can often lead companies to skimp on services [like] mental health care, outdoor activities and healthy food.”
According to Clara Long, researcher with the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch, “Families with children, including very young children, have told us they were kept for prolonged periods in very cold rooms, given inadequate or inappropriate food, and denied medical care while in Border Patrol custody. Many of these women and children are fleeing violence, persecution and abuse in their home countries.”
The Times quotes Yancy Maricela Mejia Guerra, a detainee from Central America, who said, "People who say this is not a prison are lying … It’s a prison for us and a prison for our children, but none of us are criminals.”
Notes Human Rights First,
A female asylum seeker's best hope of protection is in having a lawyer to represent her in immigration court proceedings. Yet it is much more difficult for immigrants to secure legal counsel when they are held in immigration detention. Without an attorney, a mother has almost no chance of receiving asylum. According to recent TRAC data, 98.5 percent of lawyer-less women with children were deported, even when the government had determined they had a credible fear of persecution if returned home. With a lawyer, their ability to prove their cases increases significantly.
At the Dilley facility today, Human Rights First legal experts met many mothers and children who do not have legal representation and, given their detention, will have great difficulty securing counsel.
Clearly, something’s very wrong with this picture.
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