cerise’s Reviews > The Coroner's Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence > Status Update

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."