STORIES OF POLICE brutality in the King County Jail during WTO week are slowly finding their way from the rumor mill to attorneys' desks. This is due, in part, to some dedicated activists from the UW chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild. On Saturday December 4, second-year UW law student Tara Herivel, 29, organized a group of 15 NLG members to hit the streets and collect stories of people's accounts of jail mistreatment. Armed with a two- page questionnaire and video cameras, Herivel and her colleagues set up tables outside the county jail and took "declarations." Herivel says the stories are chilling: people being dragged around by their hair, shackled and beaten; women pinned down and stripped; point-blank blasts of pepper spray in the eyes; denial of lawyers, phones, food, and medication. Herivel says her group has collected nearly 300 reports of brutality, and she's funneling the accounts to "socially minded attorneys who are poised for action."
The accounts Herivel heard, she says, were backed up by the wounds she saw -- bruised wrists, welts, missing hair. Furthermore, specifics from individual stories jelled with details from other people's stories. Indeed, the stories of lack of access to lawyers and descriptions of verbal and physical assaults by hostile guards -- who felt empowered by the mayor's call for "martial law" -- were consistent during our reporting as well.
Stranger Personals
The Stranger interviewed several WTO protesters who were held in King County Jail, including 38-year-old Clare Corcoran, who says jail guards smashed her face against the concrete floor, bloodying her nose. "When I hit the concrete, my nose made a crunching sound. I was in shock, and I stopped yelling. There was a pool of blood on the floor," she says. (Harborview records show that Corcoran was admitted on Friday December 3 for face wounds. The prisoner in the cell kitty-corner from Corcoran's, Claire Chasteen, a 22-year-old from Portland, reports that she heard Corcoran's screams, and saw her emerge from her cell with a bloodied face.) We also reviewed videotaped testimony from prisoners like 30-year-old Franchezka Zamora from Los Angeles, who was denied water, food, and access to an attorney for 24 hours, and has bruised hands from mistreatment. King County Interim Jail Director Steve Thompson did not return our phone calls.
The following account (from an interview we conducted) is one of the most disturbing jail stories we heard. The protester/prisoner was afraid to use her name, and is identified here by her inmate number.
Prisoner 199055-987
At around 3:00 a.m. on Thursday, December 2, King County Jail prisoner 987 thought she was about to be raped. Three female guards had thrown her on the concrete ground of her 10th-floor cell, asked her if she was ready to cooperate, and tore off all her clothes. The 24-year-old prisoner says she was part of a prison solidarity group that six women had formed earlier in the day -- demanding legal representation, refusing to tell the guards their real names, and locking their arms in an attempt to stay together in their cell. Eventually, four guards succeeded in pulling 987 out of the cell early on Thursday morning, strapping her into a wheelchair-like restrainer and carting her upstairs to the "Separated and Classified" section, where they proceeded to violently undress her.
The guards, 987 says, were eerily quiet as they held her, nude, with her legs bent at the knees, pulled up to her buttocks. Her arms were pulled behind her back to her shoulder blades. "I don't know how long I was held down, but it was long enough for me to wonder if they were going to rape me." During the entire episode, the 24-year-old says, the guards did not tell her what they wanted her to do, as she repeated, "I'm non-violent. I want to see my lawyer." Eventually, she was left alone with a pile of blue prison clothes. Shocked, she cried for hours. 987, who lives in Washington, D.C., says she was denied access to her lawyer for 56 hours, and was ultimately released early Sunday morning without charges. She was originally arrested at Westlake Center on Wednesday morning, December 1, for "failing to disperse." During her time in jail, guards told 987's attorneys that she had been violent -- a charge she denies. She's currently seeking legal recourse through the ACLU.
When 987 got her clothes back, she found that her pants had been ripped off so forcefully, her belt loop was torn.
-- Ingrid Polston contributed to this report.
Commenting was not available when this article was originally published.
Says when I first went to sentented to jail and paddling I was 25 years old. I remember me being taken from my cell and the gaurds handcuffing me and taking me down the elevator and to a room were a frame was in the middle of the room. They put my hands on the top of the frame in little hand cuffs and they shackeled my feet to the bottom and then the gaurd that was going to paddle me but something like a cloth with a hole so that my bare butt was only out and then the other officers that were in the room said to me now put your head here and when the first paddle comes there will be an officer holding your head so that it does not bounce back after the first time you get the paddle. You can cry all you want because we know that this will hurt you alot but you are to resevice 10 paddles now and 10 next week. Now are you ready for the first 10 of you paddlings and I took a deep breath and said yes. The officer that would tell the officer when to paddle told me that I would hear him say now and that is when the paddle would hit me. I took a big breath and the I heard the officer say now and smack went the paddle. Tears started to come and I said ouch and then I heard now and smack and I cried and then again now and smack and I yelled and then now and smack now smack now smackand then the last to paddles came and the un hooked me from the frame and took me back to my cell. The next week I got 10 more paddles on the frame in the same room and now because of this I have a mental disability
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