Status Updates From The Coroner's Silence: Deat...

I wrote this book because I am a perpetual optimist.

"In 2021 Castle published a fifteen-part story
on the history of organized deputy gangs, documenting the legacy of
groups such as the “Lynwood Vikings,” “Regulators,” and “Compton
Executioners” who have been terrorizing, punishing, and killing people
within jail and throughout Los Angeles County since before the end
of legal racial segregation."

"Through the leadership of commissioner Sean Kennedy, the COC
helped advance the county’s first investigation into sheriff deputy gangs
inside the ranks of LASD, building on the work of local investigative
journalist Cerise Castle. "

Cullors’s work “STAINDED: An Intimate Portrayal of State Violence” was inspired by her brother’s violent encounter with LASD & showed lie in the distinction between police brutality inside and outside of carceral spaces... DPN became anchor organization for Coalition to End Sheriff Violence—a local movement that fought & won civilian oversight of LASD. efforts resulted in the creation of LA's 1st COC in January 2016

Dignity and Power Now (DPN), founded by Patrisse Cullors in Los Angeles, has been widely recognized as a beacon of transformative justice that has implemented participatory decision-making methods. The organization was set into motion by a performance art piece created by Cullors following a 2011 class action lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against the LASD for prison abuse inside a county jail.

These cases suggested that death investigators were abusing the
undetermined death classification, using it to cover the inhumane conditions inside.

We also learned that several
suicide deaths showed signs of recent physical violence on the bodies.

2009-2018 we found 260 reported deaths inside LA Co jails.Violence & the repression of inmates appeared to have a collateral effect on those who allegedly took their own lives. We discovered that suicide was 2nd leading cause of death over this 9yr period w/ 35 of 46 cases occurring before the person stood trial. In 2009, the most lethal year during our study, there were 4 suicides every 6 months.

If we think across the distance between ourselves and the victims of
police violence, suicide becomes much more than another person’s death;
it becomes a type of self-immolation.

Much like inquests into dead enslaved people, "the investigators who wrote Kenneth Adcock’s autopsy made no effort to consider possible connections between his death and the very program he was laboring for when he died."

Lawmakers
and the public more generally have been reluctant to imagine police as
a threat to public safety, even though state-sanctioned terror has long
threatened the health and security of Black people and other politically
vulnerable groups.

Clinton’s Crime Bill authorized DOJ to investigate police departments with an established pattern-or-practice of police misconduct & lethal violence that violates constitutional and fed rights. DOJ wasn't given power to investigate individual cases of police violence. Didn't offer standards for police use of force or resources & guidelines for establishing nat'l database to monitor police violence & in-custody death

Police power was also expanded by President Johnson with the 1968
Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. The act brought even
more resources to local law enforcement offices through block grants.

Local police during this time acquired military-grade weapons to sup-
press leaders of the Black Power movement

Mvmt for Black freedom grew stronger during middle of 20th century, fueled by int'l outrage over the lynching of Black veterans and widespread anxiety about potential race conflicts, liberals took action to institute a law-and-order agenda. Their goal was to construct police & carceral systems capable of quelling white racial violence & implementing stricter measures to address racial biases w/in the crimjust system

Alex Piquero opined re: faulty death reporting: "pointed
to police departments around the country, particularly those serving
small communities, that report in-custody deaths in good faith and see
deaths under their watch as a tragedy and failure of justice." Keel disagrees, "stems from a commitment to a much older tradition where violence maintains the local power of police, racial hierarchies, and calculated chaos"

Remaining reports were eventually released heavily redacted following media coverage of the initial 58 autopsies

MCJ: "DME-C gave them fifty-six records, but according to data provided by Reuters there were 260 deaths inside the county jail during the ten-year period they requested—meaning there were 204 undisclosed records."

Reuters found that there were 7,571 deaths across
523 jails between 2008 and 2019. Just over 65 percent of these deaths
happened while the person was awaiting trial, which meant they died
before having the opportunity to defend their innocence or plead guilty
to the charges brought against them.

The death ledger we assembled was staggering. Between January 1,
2000, and December 31, 2020, there were 32,104 in-custody deaths on
the streets of the US

studies have found that underreporting was most
common in cases not involving firearms and occurred more frequently
in counties with a large low-income population.27

Harvard study found that fewer than half of law enforcement–related killings were reported during this 1year period. They also discovered that police accountability for death in custody was effectively erased by law enforcement and medical examiners-coroners by incorrectly labeling the cause of death as “natural,” “accidental,” or “undetermined.”

Numerous studies have shown that police routinely underreport the number of people they kill, which significantly limits what government datasets can tell us about dying in custody.

Federal databases fail to track deaths at the hands of police and in custody

Dying in custody remains a silent crisis because record of the loss has
been fragmented by design.

Only fourteen states in the US allow unconditional public access
to autopsy reports.