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Dead Until Proven Innocent
Over the past 24 months, 21 inmates have died while in the custody of Broward Sheriff’s Office detention officers. That average is almost one inmate killed each month. Just last month, another inmate stomped and beat 29-year-old Janard Geffrard to death.
January Geffrard’s family members complained that while he was incarcerated, they accused and killed him because he was gay.
Geffarad’s 35-year-old cellmate, Kevin Barnes, subjected him to bullying and then fatally beat him. Detention deputies did not intervene while Barnes beat Geffrard for 21 minutes. The perpetrators are yet to be disciplined by their superiors.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office top brass claim they sent a detention deputy and detention technician home on paid vacation.
“In an all-male facility, most inmates are awaiting trial or sentencing or are serving terms of less than one year.”
Negligence And Dereliction of Duty.
The Broward County Public Defender, Gordon Weekes, reported that even though the attack was captured on video, no deputies intervened to prevent Geffarad’s death.
Weekes is requesting equal protection for the inmates at the Broward jail facility. —regardless of race, sexual orientation, or any other person who falls under the status of a protected class or person in the county’s care.
Public Defender Gordon Weeke’s memo clarified that the staff on duty were negligent and derelict.
Weekes added that “Video surveillance should protect inmates from the brutality of beating or to reduce the likelihood of injury.”
Gordon Weekes said in his letter to BSO Greg Tony that staff and deputies should protect inmates from violent people in detention.
Because of the severe incidents of bullying, beatings, and killings in Broward jail, the NAACP called for a DOJ investigation.
There are complaints of widespread bullying and attacks on the incarcerated waiting to go on trial. They end up dead while waiting to see a judge. Some detention deputies use other inmates to carry out corporal punishment on other inmates. Or look the other way because they think it’s a sport.
Many of the accused are checking into jails alive, but they leave dead. They go in vertically but leave horizontally.
Jails and prisons across America are becoming places where inmates are more likely to get killed than soldiers stationed in some of the most dangerous war zones worldwide.
The safest inmates are the ones on death row. It is widespread across the states — jails are where the accused go to die.
Before their trial, many of the accused have died while in custody.
Clinton Franklin is a formally trained Computer Scientist and a writer at heart. Clinton is an avid observer of nature and a lover of people and diverse cultures. He adheres to the adage, “Think globally, but act locally.”
It is crucial to be forward-thinking but not a forward person. “Be kind to everyone you meet because each carries his heavy burden…” Plato.
Embrace the three Constants: Change, Justice, and Rightness.
The thought police are busy at work trying to suppress free speech — if allowed their march to madness — they will arrest your very thoughts.
