Audio By Carbonatix
DARTH RYAN
The Lumley Vampire, the
underground newsletter purportedly run by current and former Arizona
Department of Corrections employees, knows who killed 48-year-old
Marcia Powell. That’s the woman who recently died after at least
four hours baking outside in the Arizona sun, while confined to a wire
cage at Perryville Prison in Goodyear.
More specifically, the Lumley Vampire knows who gave the order to
pull the plug on Powell’s life-support after she was taken to West
Valley Hospital: Interim ADC Director Charles Ryan.
That Ryan made this call is an inconvenient fact that many of the
news articles and columns covering Powell’s demise have avoided.
Indeed, ADC’s own press release on the event obfuscates this fact. It
notes that while “transferring Powell to a detention unit, she was
placed in an outside, uncovered, chain-link holding cell at 11 a.m.
Tuesday.” The statement goes on to relate that Powell collapsed at 2:40
p.m., and was taken to the hospital at 3:12 p.m.
“She was pronounced dead at 12:42 a.m. Wednesday,” says the press
release. But in a letter the Lumley Vampire has posted on its front
page, an anonymous, retired corrections officer notes the reality of
the situation.
“Marcia Powell was alive when she left Perryville Prison for the
last time,” observes the retired officer. “She died when Vader pulled
her plug at the hospital.”
“Vader,” as in “Darth Vader,” is what Ryan is commonly called
by commenters on the Vampire. That handle goes back to the days when
Ryan was deputy to ADC Director Terry Stewart, who was known as
“The Emperor” during his reign from December 1995 to November
2002.
Ryan was named interim director of the ADC on January 30 by Governor
Jan Brewer. This was after ADC Director Dora Schriro
resigned her post to join her old boss, Homeland Security czar and
ex-Governor Janet Napolitano, in D.C.
According to Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman, Ryan is still
“interim director,” though Ryan lists himself as the “director” on the
ADC’s Web site. Senseman explained via e-mail that Ryan would have to
be okayed by the state Senate, assuming the governor submits his name
for confirmation.
Perhaps Ryan’s desire to be confirmed in his position explains the
relative swiftness in which he has thrown underlings to the wolves.
Ryan announced to the press that a “criminal investigation” is under
way into the incident, and that three ADC employees, including a deputy
warden, a captain, and a lieutenant have been suspended pending the
outcome.
“The death of Marcia Powell is a tragedy and a failure,” said Ryan
in the department’s press release. “The purpose of the investigation is
to determine whether there was negligence and to remedy our
failures.”
Ryan then expressed “condolences to Ms. Powell’s family and loved
ones.” But where was the next of kin when Ryan gave the order to
suspend life support? And how hard did Ryan try to locate that next of
kin, when Powell’s plug was pulled hours after she had been admitted to
the hospital?
A spokesman for ADC’s media relations office acknowledged that
Ryan made the decision to suspend Powell’s life support, and
promised to get back to me with details as to why. As this column went
to press, I had not received that follow-up call.
Powell, who had a history of mental illness and drug dependency, was
serving a 27-month stint for prostitution when she died. Although many
have noted that Valley dog deaths often receive more public
concern and media scrutiny than the deaths of prison inmates such as
Powell, I can report that more than one individual is looking to take
custody of Powell’s remains for a memorial service of some kind. These
include Phoenix criminal defense advocate Jameson Johnson, attorney
and prison reform advocate Donna Hamm, and members of a local
Quaker church.
(The county medical examiner has performed an autopsy but has yet to
issue a report on Powell’s death.)
Hopefully, Powell will find the repose she did not find in life. But
in the wake of her death, there needs to be an investigation into
Ryan’s actions as well as those lower on the prison staff food chain.
Already, as I detailed in a column item a couple of months back, Ryan comes to his interim
post with a tremendous amount of baggage.
Ryan’s own bio on the ADC Web site touts that he was “assistant
program manager for the Department of Justice overseeing the Iraqi
Prison System for almost four years.” Ryan was contracted by the
DOJ to help rebuild Iraqi prisons, one of those being the notorious Abu
Ghraib prison, the subject of an embarrassing scandal involving the
torture and humiliation of prisoners that was revealed by the New
Yorker magazine and 60 Minutes in 2004.
In response to questions raised about those contracted by the DOJ to
help with Iraqi prisons, the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General
investigated how Ryan and others, such as Ryan’s former superior and
ADC director Terry Stewart, were hired. The OIG reported that Ryan and
other contractors said they did not have access to the part of the
prison controlled by the U.S. military. Ryan and two other contractors
“denied witnessing any acts of abuse at Abu Ghraib and said they were
unaware of the abuse until it became public.”
Ultimately, Inspector General Glenn Fine maintained, “The
OIG’s review uncovered no connection between the [contractors] and the
abuses at Abu Ghraib.”
Still, Ryan’s link to Abu Ghraib leaves an unsavory aftertaste, even
if he was not implicated in any wrongdoing. It’s not the only
disturbing element in Ryan’s past. In an academic article penned by
writer Joan Dayan for the collection History, Memory and the
Law, Ryan waxed poetic about the prison industry’s mastering what
he referred to as “chain gang technology.”
At the time of Ryan’s appointment, Donna Hamm, of Arizona’s Middle
Ground Prison Reform, referred to Ryan as “a very hard-line cop that’s
not necessarily very well-versed in corrections, human corrections.”
Hamm recently wrote Governor Brewer requesting that Brewer “intervene
in this matter at once” and not allow Ryan and the ADC to conduct its
own investigation Powell’s death.
Hamm has informed me that she has since spoken to Ryan, and that he
assured her the ADC had no record of next of kin, and “that the doctors
were consistent in their belief that Ms. Powell could not recover brain
activity.” However, Hamm still has concerns about Powell’s death.
My question is, given Ryan’s record, his link to Abu Ghraib, his
comments on chain gangs, and now Powell’s death on his consent, should
he ever get to be more than interim director of the department he
already thinks he’s director of?
CRIMINAL INTENT
Sheriff Joe Arpaio is fond of telling members of the
Fourth Estate that neither he nor his brown-shirted minions
racially profile anyone. This, despite the facts that the Department
of Justice is all over him like a sweaty polo shirt and the
ACLU is suing him regarding just this very matter.
At the mere mention of it, Arpaio practically jumps up and down like
a little boy whose mommy has deprived him of a pack of Jolly
Ranchers.
His deputy dawgs are even worse than he is at refuting the charge of
racial profiling. Anyone remember MCSO Sergeant Brett Palmer in
April telling the sheriff’s critics to “Shut up!” during a press
conference on the subject?
“Any insinuation of racial profiling against any deputy sheriff of
this office,” Palmer said at a media event supposedly staged by
deputies without any help from Arpaio’s massive PR machine, “I
take that personally as an insult, and that pisses me off.”
Interestingly, Palmer was present during a recent drop-house raid in
central Phoenix that netted 26 people, so he can take it as personally
as he wants. Because when he and his fellow goons were zip-tying those
in the drop house, they also zip-tied and detained (for more than an
hour) 12-year-old Fili Gaucin, an American citizen, and his dad,
also named Fili Gaucin, a permanent resident. They both live in the
home adjacent to the drop house.
Essentially, the property is a duplex, with separate tenants and
separate entranceways. The Gaucin family has lived there for about a
year. Fili’s mom, Cecilia, is an American citizen, too, born and raised
in Phoenix. She works at Bose Corporation during the day. Her husband
works at night as a singer in a Latin band. He was home cooking pork
chops when the deputies knocked on the door around 12:30 p.m.
The elder Gaucin let the deputies in to search the house. After
going through all the rooms, they told him to come outside and asked
whether he knew what was going on. Like most people who live near drop
houses, he had no idea what was occurring next door. But that didn’t
matter to the MCSO. Even though Papa Gaucin had his green card on him,
the MCSO zip-tied his hands behind his back and made him sit on the
ground with suspects the deputies were removing from the drop
house.
With one legal resident in custody, the MCSO decided to go for an
American citizen, the junior Gaucin, who had been watching TV when the
MCSO searched the home earlier and found nothing.
They zip-tied the boy’s hands behind his back, and made him sit next
to his father. Fili Junior says that’s when he got scared. He said
there were men in body armor, with high-powered rifles and even
something he and his dad identified as a bazooka.
“I was curious,” said Fili. “Was there gonna be a gunfight or
something? What were they trying to do, [start] WWIII?”
Papa Gaucin said he was worried about his son having to see the MCSO
raid, and he felt bad that he could not prevent his son from being
zip-tied.
After an hour on the ground in restraints, the MCSO finally cut them
loose without explanation. Before that happened, a worried and angry
Cecilia Gaucin arrived home and began haranguing the deputies
about her son and husband.
“I told them, ‘Why don’t you look at his green card? My son was born
here. He doesn’t even know any Spanish,'” she said.
The Gaucins feel that things would have been different had they not
been Hispanic. And I have to agree. I can understand questioning
someone about what’s going on with their neighbors, but the Gaucins
aren’t the landlords. They rent. They’re a regular working-class
family. And if they’d been Anglo, there’s not a doubt in my mind that
the MCSO would not have detained and zip-tied them.
To be sure, the Gaucins’ experience isn’t the only example of the
MCSO’s racial profiling ways, just the most recent. Essentially, the
MCSO’s M.O. is to arrest anyone with brown skin and ask questions
later.
The same thing happened to American citizen Julio Mora, when
he and his permanent-resident dad were zip-tied and held for three
hours during the MCSO’s February raid on HMI Landscaping in
Phoenix. Mora, 19, was taking his dad to work when he and his father
were stopped and wrongfully arrested. Even though Mora’s father was 66
years old and diabetic, the deputies would not let him relieve himself.
He was eventually allowed to urinate next to a nearby vehicle.
Mora testified about the incident at the House Judiciary
Committee hearing in April. Stories like his and Fili Gaucin’s are
repeated almost daily. That’s your MCSO at work.
For those who argue that such detainment or arrest is no big deal, I
suggest a little experiment: Zip-tie Sheriff Joe’s hands and those of
his lapdog Brett Palmer behind their backs, sit them on the ground and
ignore them for one to three hours. At least these two ofays with
badges will have the satisfaction of knowing they weren’t
racially profiled.
JOE’S SLOP
Recently, Sheriff Joe declared the jail lockdowns caused by massive
hunger strikes ongoing in his vast incarceration complex to be over.
The MCSO issued a press release on the matter, stating that, “Effective
today, May 22, 2009, the Maricopa County jails that have been on
indefinite lockdown [sic] will be lifted by Sheriff Arpaio.”
Though reading MCSO press releases is a little like reading between
the lines of Pravda back in the day, this one admits Arpaio’s
putting an end to the lockdown even though the hunger strike is not
over.
“During the past week [the] number of inmates refusing to eat ranged
from 1,800 to just a handful last night,” notes the statement, which
quotes Joe as promising, “If the hunger strike comes back and the
threats resume, the lockdown will be re-instituted.”
What exactly is a “handful” to the MCSO? Of 1,800 men, would that
mean 50, 100, 200? Whatever it is, Arpaio seems to recognize that a
handful could multiply quickly in the wake of this announcement.
Yet Arpaio promised the Arizona Republic earlier in
the week, “[The] lockdown will continue until they start eating again.”
Maybe the self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in the universe meant to
say, “until they, er, mostly start eating again.”
The press release ends in typical Arpaio bluster, with a swipe at
the ACLU’s recent denunciation of the lockdown as a violation of
prisoners’ First Amendment rights
“In case people don’t know, I run the jails, not the inmates or my
critics,” harrumphs Arpaio
“If you have to state publicly that you’re in charge, that means
you’re not in charge,” chuckled Phoenix civil rights activist
Salvador Reza of the group Puente, after he was read the
release. Reza said he and his colleagues organized seven candlelight
vigils in support of the strike, beginning the first week in May, when
they began to hear news of the fasting from relatives of prisoners.
The vigils have mostly taken place outside Joe’s jails, but
recently, one was held at the Macehualli Day Labor Center, near
25th Street and Bell Road. Reza said 40 families came forward to tell
how they’d not been able to check on their loved ones via phone or
visits.
Asked whether he thought the hunger strike was losing steam, Reza
said it was too soon to tell and suggested the inmates might next
boycott the sheriff’s canteen system, which sells candy bars, potato
chips, and other items to prisoners at inflated prices, with money
deducted from prisoners’ jail accounts.
“Arpaio hasn’t changed anything,” observed Reza. “And unless Arpaio
changes the way he treats human beings, he’ll probably get more
resistance.”
Reza said he was planning another vigil, with the time and location
to be announced.
“Never in my life have I ever heard of a peaceful action of this
size inside of a jail,” Reza noted, adding, “I guess Joe can’t scare
all of the people all of the time.”
