
Kalief Browder, 1993–2015 - aaronbrethorst
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/kalief-browder-1993-2015
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briandear
How anyone would remotely compare this to Michael Brown is beyond dumb.
Michael Brown was fighting a cop, taking his gun in a street fight. This kid
was already in jail when the abuse happened. This is night and day different.
Just suggesting a connection is highly racist. The only common denominator was
race. That's it. Michael Brown was a vicious thug who robbed a store and
attempted to kill a cop with his own gun. Kalief was a kid who was subject to
systematic violations of his constitutional rights while in jail. I suppose
that the guards beating him weren't obviously white so it made a politically
advantageous racism accusation less viable and thus less worthy of national
indignation. It didn't have the profit potential of a racism accusation.

How Michael Brown makes national headlines and inspires riots and this kid
doesn't is a mystery. Where was Al Sharpton for this kid? This whole business
is disgusting. This story should be on every TV in America. It has it all:
mental illness, injustice and policy failures.

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tzs
I've never really understood how jails for people accused but not yet
convicted are allowed to be horrible places. They should be required to be
similar to the accommodations provided to jurors who are sequestered, with the
necessary allowances for the fact that the people are in fact prisoners and
some may need to be kept isolated for the safety of the other prisoners.

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aakilfernandes
This story is such a tragic indictment of our justice system. RIP Kalief. I
can only hope something good comes out of the horror you lived through.

~~~
reagency
"Indictment" is a funny word choice. That's exactly what is missing in law
enforcement misconduct.

~~~
monsterix
I just feel helpless about this country. I go to these shopping malls and
night clubs and see droves of people unconcerned or even aware about the
apathy that this country has been fostering. We're no longer a role model of a
democracy we enshrined in our pitch last century. Sometimes I feel we're no
less bad than North Korea, except for the ton of money floating around that
lets a section of people off the hook. Or political power.

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bjwbell
He seemed to have beat the system but I guess in the end it won.

My dad very recently won a police brutality case with a settlement of ~100k.
Technically it's not winning since they settled. After medical (even with
insurance medical expenses come out of the settlement) and lawyer fees he'll
receive ~5k.

He says it doesn't feel like he won. Even though to me and most others it
looks that way.

~~~
reagency
He didn't win at all. The hospital won.

~~~
xahrepap
Hospitals won either way. It was the insurance companies that won.

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sschueller
This is at home, not some far off place in the mid east.

Maybe Abu Ghraib was not a few bad apples but instead an insight on how
prisons are run in the US.

The entire prison system needs to be fixed and things like prison rape should
be the last thing we think of when talking about prisons. It should be a
rarity and not normal part of prison.

------
jwise0
Discussed previously on HN (before his death) --
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8403451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8403451)

------
mikenotlikeit
The police and the government pretty much getting away with anything now days.
Their attitude is fuck the constitution. In any case, what exactly is a speedy
trial? 10 years sounds speedy to us, what the fuck are you complaining about?
The prosecutors are more worried about the conviction rate than whether the
right person is jailed. Are you sure you don't want to please guilty and be
release for time already served?

There have been several news articles and in fact one discussed here in the
last week or so about how if you have too much cash the police can just take
it. It qualifies as civil forfeiture. No bother about the 4th amendment. You
must be guilty of something if you carry that much cash.

Reference the following from the lawyer Greenwald:

[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/29/denny-
hastert-...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/29/denny-hastert-
highly-unsympathetic-face-americas-criminalization-pathology)

When a country has a higher portion of their population in prison than any
other country, then it is obviously the least free country. Crimes should be
objective, not subjective. Law Enforcers seem to have free reign to persecute,
harass and jail people at will. Does it really matter when some poor black or
brown kid is involved? The country was founded on slavery. The way to maintain
the slave population is to have subjective laws where they can pretty much
lock anybody up that they want. They obviously like locking up black and brown
people. It makes it easier to identify the slave laborers.

Think about this. The US has a higher proportion of the population locked up
than either Russia or China. Snowden had to ask political asylum in Russia.

What the fuck exactly are you expecting? The US is undoubtedly the land of the
jailed.

What can we as tech people do to fix this?

Also, note how one way to keep a government in check is via the guns and the
police departments have been stock piling weapons and tons of ammunition to
keep them poor people in line.

Voters can't and won't do much about it. For the reason see the ted talk by
Lawrence Lessig discussing lesterland. Less than 150 super rich individuals
contribute something like 60% of the super pac money. The people that run the
in elections have already been screened and approved up by these super rich
fucks.

Also, to keep everybody in check, there is super surveillance in place because
of the alleged terrorists. While osama burned us on 911 by taking down the
twin towers, what US citizens have done to the US government is far, far
worse. The only way to truly combat terrorism is to treat every single citizen
like a terrorists and they most definitely will not qualify a country as the
land of the free.

Read 1984, things today seem worse than portrayed in the book.

So, I ask again, who really gives a fuck about a poor black or brown kid when
those rich fucks needs some slave labor working for 10 cents an hour in a
private prison?

