Sheriff Joe Arpaio Forces Woman to Give Birth While Shackled

[hsteele]

Video: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Forces Woman to Give Birth While Shackled

by Mariela Rosario | 11.18.2009 | 3:17pm | 13 Comments

The news team for Telemundo 52 recently reported on Alma Minerva Chacon, a women who was terrorized by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Unfortunately, she is just the latest in a long line of Latinos who have suffered at the hands of the ruthless Sheriff whose personal goal is to rid Arizona of all "illegals" and just maybe, all Latinos. Arpaio has repeatedly stated that he is breaking no laws and just enforcing the constitution by arresting more than 600 Latinos a year. But the problem with his tactics is that less than half of those arrested are even in this country illegally.

The most recent atrocity committed by the self-proclaimed "America's Toughest Sheriff" involves a woman who was detained while 9-months pregnant. Alma Minerva Chacon's case has been receiving media attention due to the brutality with which she was treated. The very same night of her arrest, Chacon went into labor and found herself afraid and alone, being rushed to a local hospital with her hands and legs chained in shackles.

Once she reached the hospital, nurses repeatedly begged the Sheriff's staff to allow them to unchain the mother, but they refused and Chacon was forced to give birth while still shackled to the bed. At one point, the nurse asked for them to release her so that she could be escorted to the bathroom for a urinalysis, but even that request was denied. But the worst came once Chacon gave birth to her baby girl.

Still chained to the bed, Arpaio's police staff refused to allow Chacon to hold her newborn baby and then warned her that if no one came to pick up the child within 72 hours, she would be turned over into state custody. Telemundo 52 sat down with Chacon and let her tell her side of the story. Check out the interview below and if you don't support Sheriff Arpaio's barbaric practices sign the petition at www.SheriffJoeMustGo.com:

[katy_kay]

From some of what I'm reading his under investigation again.  Also rules were recently changed that limited local law enforcement from targetting minor offenses and forcing deportation. 

http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2009/07/06/daily79.html

 

[survivorinohio]

I have read terrible things about Sheriff Joe and his deputies.

http://www.arpaio.com/

[tericared]

I signed  the petition....I retrieved this from that site...

 

America's Voice believes that Joe's latest publicity stunt crosses the line.

Apparently, so does the House Judiciary Committee. They’ve written a public letter to the Attorney General and head of the Department of Homeland Security calling for an investigation into Arpaio’s tactics.

[All4OneN1forAll]

That poor woman, that is just plain horrid. How could he do that to another human being? I can't believe that man is still sheriff. Aren't there laws prohibiting that kind of treatment? People in law enforcement that commit horrible acts like that are the reason so many have bad opinions on any type of law enforcement officers. One bad apple spoils the bunch.

[stormcris]

I think this is horrible and he should have his badge taken now. He is there to serve and protect not to wage his war as he sees fit.

[survivorinohio]

I know people are link shy so I am gonna paste a few highlights of sheriff Joe:

BLOOD ON ARPAIO'S HANDS

Imagine you are the mother of a mentally handicapped thirty-three-year-old-man.  Your son functions on the level of a twelve-year-old boy.  His disability often causes him to act erratically, but you still hope that one day, he can lead a normal life.  One night in August, 2001, he is arrested on a misdemeanor loitering charge when he begins acting strangely in a convenience store.  When officers arrive to arrest him, he is clinging to the store's coffee machine and won't let go.  Four officers forcibly remove him from the store, handcuff him, and throw him to the ground to be hogtied. The force seems excessive, since your son is disabled and only weighs about a hundred and thirty pounds. A few minutes later, his limbs bound behind his tiny frame, officers load him into the squad car to take him away.  Before they pull away, your son asks you, like a little kid:

"Mom, will you ride in the car with me?"

"I can't," you tell him, "the police won't let me." 

You figure that the police will probably hold your son overnight, and you head home to get some rest. 

Two hours later, your son is dead.

When Charles Agster arrives at Madison Street Jail, he is confused, as is typical of his condition.  He tries to wriggle underneath a bench, and although he is still hogtied, three or more officers and a sheriff's deputy jump on him, punch him, and knee him in the side.  One officer grips his face, pressing upward toward his chin. Although he is now unresponsive, the officers drag him, face down, into the Intake area and strap him into a restraint chair.  They place a spit-hood over his head, encasing him in darkness.  Minutes later, he stops breathing.  The original autopsy lists "positional asphyxia due to restraint" as his cause of death. 

Videotape of the incident shows guards trying to resuscitate Agster, but he's already brain dead. A 2002 Amnesty International report expresses concern "that the degree of force used against Agster was grossly disproportionate to any threat posed by him." 

Forty-year-old Brian Crenshaw was  serving a short sentence for shoplifting.  Although Crenshaw had been in and out of jail for years and had a drug problem, he had never been accused of a violent crime.  He was also legally blind.  After an altercation with officers, Crenshaw reported injuries to jail medical personnel. His eye and nose were sutured, and his vitals were taken. Crenshaw stated that he was pushed to the wall, punched and kicked by officers.  Apparently, the struggle ensued when Crenshaw refused to show his ID in a lunch line. Due to the altercation, Crenshaw was placed in lockdown.

For the next six days, nobody entered or left his cell. On March 14, Crenshaw was found unconscious next to his bunk.  He had a broken neck, several broken toes, and extensive internal injuries.  He was comatose, his intestines had ruptured, and his vertebrae needed to be straightened with a halo. Doctors told Crenshaw's mother that his internal injuries were so severe they had to surgically open his stomach to relieve swelling. The sheriff's office asserts that Crenshaw's struggle with guards did not cause the injuries that led to his death.  Despite the severity of Crenshaw's injuries, the sheriff's office maintains that these injuries were incurred when he fell from his bunk. 

On a CBS 5 program after the incident, interviewer Chris Hayes asks Arpaio, "Is it possible your guards beat Brian Crenshaw to death?

"Is it possible?" Arpaio sneers. After an uncomfortable pause, he continues, "No, they did not, they did not, and if that's what your critics, or that you're insinuating we went into that cell block and beat him up and threw him to the floor is ridiculous. We did a thorough investigation on that. The man fell off a bunk."

Crenshaw's bunk was 4'2" high, about a foot shorter than a child's bunk bed , or as Chris Hayes pointed out in his investigation, a little taller than a desk. 

2 more:

In early June, 1996, Scott Norberg refused to cooperate with guards at Madison Street Jail. Nine detention officers entered the cell, forced him to his stomach, and restrained his legs by sitting on them. At some point in the struggle, officers decided to place Norberg in the restraint chair.  Even in Maricopa County jails, the chair is seldom used.  One officer stated that the chair was used about three times a year. It stands to reason that use of the restraint chair would be strictly limited to the most necessary cases, since its employment is often lethal. However, the Sheriff's Office provides no specific details as to who ordered Norberg be placed in the chair, or to what degree his combativeness was a threat to officers' safety.

Norberg had been arrested after wandering around Mesa, disoriented. He talked nonsense to the officers that approached him, and punched one of them in the head as he was being arrested. When an officer told him to shut up, he dropped dramatically to one knee, begging for forgiveness. Norberg had just been released from the hospital. He had been admitted for dehydration and abnormally low blood-sugar, telltale signs that he'd gone on a dangerous drug-binge and had been up for days on speed. Upon release from the hospital, he went to his former in-laws' house to ask for a blessing. They suggested he seek out a Mormon bishop. Norberg wandered around, aimlessly searching for the bishop. Norberg was acting strangely, and at one point began chasing two girls. He was weak, disoriented, and crashing hard.

Norberg had drug problems. He had also been an Eagle Scout, a high school football star, and a missionary in Venezuela with the Mormon church. Norberg made no excuses for his drug problems, and he still had hope that he could get better. "On the surface, my self-portrait may now be muddled and marred," he writes in a birthday letter to his father, "But underneath await the colors of a masterpiece. Beneath crude rock, a 'David' is still breathing."

Detention Officer Kimberly Walsh held a towel around Norberg's mouth while he was in the chair, in order to keep him from spitting.  When asked about specific training regarding safely placing combative inmates in the chair, she responded, "Training? The way I learned was by the first time doing it. They tell you what to do." Phoenix police officer John Courey was at Madison the afternoon that the struggle took place, and he recalls hearing an officer shout "How (do) you like (it), you think you're a fucking tough guy?" Courey says he heard it repeatedly, "Something to that effect, several times."  As Norberg was beaten, he cried out, "What did I do?" and "Please have patience."

Walsh says she told officers that Norberg was turning purple. When they didn't respond, she said that she didn't think he was breathing.  According to Walsh, Officer Martin Spidell spun around and said, "Who gives a fuck?" Scott yelled, "Oh God, please help me!" On the television news program 20/20, an inmate remembers asking officers, "What are you still beating on him for?  He's already dead."  After guards ignored signs that they were suffocating Norberg, he died of positional asphyxia.  Before he expired, officers had tased him more than twenty times.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A few months before Norberg died at the hands of Arpaio's guards, paraplegic Richard Post was drinking at an Irish Pub called O'Connor's. It was St. Patrick's Day, and Mike Tyson had just defeated English heavyweight Frank Bruno. A musician was just finishing a song, and Post wheeled over to him and let him know the results of the fight. Thinking that the Irish-American occupants of the pub would be pleased to hear that the Englishman had been knocked out, the musician announced the results to the crowd.  Some people cheered. Others booed.

In an hour, Post finished two drinks. An older gentleman approached him and asked, "Why don't you get the hell out of here?"

"Why?" Post replied, "Did you bet on the Englishman?"

The older gentleman informed Post that he was calling the police. Post shrugged and didn't think much of it. What he didn't know was that the older man was James O'Connor, owner of the pub. O'Connor, who had been drinking, went behind the bar and called the police.

Post wasn't sure what to make of what he'd been told. He wasn't sure whether or not he was serious. But, he figured if the cops were on their way, he'd better stay where he was.  After all, he had been drinking, and he didn't want to get pulled over. When the cops arrived, O'Connor informed the two officers that Post had called him "a Protestant and an Englishman." He later denied claims that he told officers Post was extremely intoxicated, and insisted that Post wasn't drunk.

The officers gave Post a choice: he could take a cab, or they would take him to jail. Post told officers he would wheel home. Then they searched him and arrested him after finding 1.1 grams ofmarijuana in his backpack. The videotape of Post being taken to jail shows that he is lucid and cooperative. The tape also shows Post explaining to authorities that he has a urine bag attached to his ankle, and the bag is full. Unless it is emptied and an internal catheter is supplied, he won't be able to urinate. His bladder aches.

"This is a jail, not a hospital," he was told.

Before an officer locks Post into his cell, he tells him, "There's a big difference between what you need and what you get in here. Don't be a baby."

As the pain in Post's bladder accelerated, panic set in. Paraplegics are susceptible to kidney disease from infrequent urination and unsanitary conditions. He manually emptied the urine bag, desperate for some kind of relief. He banged on the cell door, yelling that he needed a catheter. Finally, Post wheeled over to the toilet, tossed in a roll of toilet paper, and started flushing. Before long, the toilet was overflowing. Post figured that if he could create a big enough ruckus, he could attract a number of guards. Hopefully, one of them would sense his distress and help him.

Sergeant Steve Kenner finally responded, but he didn't give Post a catheter. He put him in a restraint chair. Post asked Kenner for a prescribed gel pad that went on his wheelchair. Without it, he explained, he could develop sores that would require surgery. Finally, a nurse arrived and determined that Post needed the pad. They briefly removed the restraints and shoved the pad halfway underneath him. Then, Kenner tightened the restraints, pulling the straps so tightly that they compressed Post's spine. They left him in the restraint chair like that for six hours. Sores developed on Post's anus that did, in fact, require surgery. In the days following the incident, Post developed a numbness in his left hand. His arms shriveled.

He is now a quadriplegic. Doctors determined that the injuries Post incurred while he was detained are the cause.

[lovetocook64]

Quoting stormcris:

I think this is horrible and he should have his badge taken now. He is there to serve and protect not to wage his war as he sees fit.

exactly

[siren_sexy]

that's terrible. and it makes me very sad.

[tericared]

Link shy....that is a new one,,,,but so true. 

[mommibee]

This is extremely terrible.  It is just another example of overzealous law enforcement and fascism at its greatest.  There are so many power hungry cops and other people in power who abuse there job to PROTECT and serve.  This saddens and angers me in a way that I can't even begin to describe.