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Demetrius Bailiey, Steve Kennedy and Aubrey Tillman
share the dubious distinction of having been savagely beaten by
guards at the state prison at Frackville in East Central
Pennsylvania.
These men were each assaulted by
large gangs of guards behaving like
undisciplined jackals.
In each case ranking officers supervised
the beatings or were at least present.
In the case of Steve
Kennedy the prison superintendent was either present or nearby.
These three men are only the recent victims of an explosion of unrestrained abuse at the prison. Any prisoner may fall victim to the violence. The assaults appear to reflect the brutal policies of the prison's administration and the unwritten attitude of the whole Department of Imprisonment under the direction of Jeffrey Beard. It took the FBI to finally curtail a simmilar spate of assaults at the state prison at Dallas near Scranton, Pennsylvania. Maybe that's what will be required at Frackville. Not only are the prisoners viciously assaulted, usually while they're handcuffed, but the crimes are systematically covered up by the very people who should be enforcing the law. In preparation of this report, I personally investigated the assaults. All of the allegations appear credible. Videotape seems to exist of some of them. The tape is kept concealed to protect the guards. I tried to involve the Department of Imprisonment by making several calls to central office. First I called about the Kennedy case and later about other cases. Finally, a flunky in the so-called Office of Professional Responsibility, told me they didn't know anything about the beating. The Office of Professional Responsibility is supposed to be the internal affairs people who police abuses by the prison staff. Instead, they've become an obstruction of justice. Of course cover-up is "business as usual" with the Department of Imprisonment. Lying is the usual practice at the Frackville prison and, indeed, for the whole department. It would be pure folly to accept anything told to anybody by the Pennsylvania Department of "Corrections." In the same way, the department habitually hides the misdeeds, crimes and abuses of the staff. When staff misconduct is exposed, the department spends huge sums of money to defend and justify the abuses. The money for these deceptions is our tax money used to shield "public servants." After receiving VERY detailed documentation from Demetrius Bailiey, I thought I'd try to get the Pennsylvania State Police to do their job. We have frequently berated the Pennsylvania State cops for their perverse and criminal habits. Nonetheless, it's their legal obligation to investigate and prosecute crimes such as assaults on state property. I started by trying to telephone the captain in charge of the cop substation in Reading, Pennsylvania. That's where crimes by Frackville prison guards should be reported and investigated. I got the run-around. They obviously had no interest in my report and no interest in investigating crimes by their buddies, the prison guards. The captain wasn't even available. Why wasn't he on the job? I telephoned the office of the chief-state-cop, Colonel Jeffrey B. Miller, at the Harrisburg state headquarters. There was no answer! It was mid-morning on a Monday and there was no answer in boss-cop's office. When do these guys work? Ever? No captain available, no colonel available! Is it any wonder that the state cops are more like the Mafia than the law? I tried to talk to others at headquarters and was finally shunted to a Captain Lynn Hess. This fellow was supposedly the "Executive Officer to the Commissioner." I took him to be a kind of professional apologist, but at least he was on the job. Captain Rivera in Reading was a mere phantom. Mr. Hess was very interested in who I was and where I lived, but he didn't care who the victims were, or who the guards were who'd done the assaults. I knew instantly that I was in line for cooing with deception. The state cop apologist adroitly fed me a terrific cock-and-bull story. They must send these guys to school to bail the bunk like that. Little did he know that I've been lied to by the best of them. I'm hard to fool. Mr. Hess excused the state cops for not investigating the prison assaults. He was very good and very professional, just utterly unbelievable. His excuse was that the Department of Imprisonment does the investigations, not the cops. I understood him to say that if a prisoner makes a criminal report of having been assaulted by guards, the state cops simply boomeranged the complaint back to the prison. The cops pretend to want the foxes to safeguard the chicken coop. Apparently, in spite of their duty, the state cops systematically ignore prisoners' criminal complaints. Regardless of what Captain Lynn Hess expected me to believe, the law is really quite different. The law is that whenever a crime is reported to state cops, by anyone, the state cops are legally obliged to investigate the allegation. If you were assaulted on state ground and reported it to the state cops, would you expect to have your complaint given to prison guards to be "investigated?" No sane and sincere person would honestly expect the prison to actually investigate its own. The Department of Imprisonment has a regulation called DC ADM 004, Criminal Violations. It specifically provides that every prisoner has a "right to make a criminal complaint for any criminal act threatened or committed against him/her by anyone." The regulation indicates that a prisoner may "exercise his/her right to communicate with the District Attorney or PSP [Pennsylvania State Police]" and that prison officials "shall promptly forward the communication" to the state cops. If someone were to believe this regulation, it would appear that cover ups were impossible; the state cops would be there to enforce the laws. The reality is very different. Just ask the prisoner victims what they think. The cover up of the prisoners' assaults clearly involved the complicity of state cops. The prison administration relied on the fact that the state cops would do nothing. The guards were free to commit any abuse they pleased. It appears that we'll have to send these cases to the FBI and/or the federal courts. Who else is there to turn to? To the extent that we have an agenda about these beatings, it is to have them stopped. They serve no purpose except to further brutalize our already very violent society. It might be nice to prosecute 20 or 30 of the most vicious guards and do to them what they would be done to a prisoner if the tables were turned. Then again, we're not nearly as vindictive as the legal industry is. Perhaps the best punishment would be to fire the thugs.
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