The parents of a woman who was beaten to death at a county jail last year are suing the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, alleging failures by several of its leaders and deputies allowed her to be killed by her cellmate.
Chief among the failures, the lawsuit says: Deputies gave Kaushal Niroula, who was transgender, a sex offender cellmate with a violent past.
The new filing adds to the cascade of similar suits over inmate deaths that have been recently against the department, which is also being investigated by the state attorney general over the deaths and other allegations of misconduct and civil rights violations.
A record 18 inmates died in the jails in 2022.
The suit states that the department acted negligently and in violation of both the constitution and state law by allowing Niroula to be housed in a cell with Ronald Sanchez, a man who was a convicted sex offender and had a history of violent behavior. The sheriff’s department manages all jails in Riverside County.
The suit states that sheriff’s personnel knew Sanchez posed an imminent threat to Niroula, who was particularly vulnerable because she was transgender and HIV-positive, and yet the sheriff’s department allowed the two to be housed together at the Cois Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta.
Murrieta is very much part of an island of conservativism in the rest of California. It's very much a green grass, "whites only" kind of place. Oodles of Mormons. Not exactly friendly to LGBTQ folk.
I lived there. I went to high school there. It was where I voted for the first time.
I remember in high school thinking a girl was cute and she invited me over on a Sunday morning. She picked me up for what I thought was going to be a day of just hanging out at her place - but instead, she dragged me to her Mormon church. The preacher spoke out about how proud they were that they were able to pass Prop 8 (which banned gay marriage in California), how hard they fought for it, and how evil LGBTQ folk were. I was disgusted, but at the time I couldn't drive (and thus couldn't leave). When I finally escaped, I made a point to never talk to that girl again.
Public Counsel, the nonprofit group that filed the lawsuit on behalf of Temecula students, parents and teachers, claims the policy has been used by school board members to stop teaching "any concepts that conflict with their ideological viewpoints, including the history of the LGBTQ rights movement and the existence of racism in today's society."
Temecula is full of bigots, all hiding under their mask. But when you live there, you see the mask slip.
“Arkansas State Police policy on PIT Maneuvers allows for officers to utilize this use of force, when it’s objectively reasonable based on the circumstances.” right so whenever they want without accountability
Many comments here are complaining about Manchin without taking the time to consider the political acrobatics necessary to win a statewide office in West Virginia as a Democrat. Yes, he’s been a pain in the ass but a Republican in that seat would be much, much worse. If nothing else, he’s a point towards control of the chamber. Sinema is a different story because she ran as being more progressive than she ended up being and because Kelly is proof positive that an actual Democrat could have won on Arizona. Manchin has never shied away from what he stands for and is probably the only person who could keep the seat blue. So yeah, hate his politics all you want but recognize that him leaving the party would be a terrible thing.
IMO the difference between Manchin and MOST GOP Congress members is that since he’s wearing a blue tie, he’s allowed to do things that are commonly believed, but against the GOP groupthink. Outside of the “freedom” caucus and the political stunts and cultural war red herrings, I’d reckon Manchin agrees with more Republicans than Democrats.
Agreeing with is not the same as voting or publicly campaigning for. These are all things that happen within the political theater, where of course it’s hyper divided.
If you had a conversation with Manchin or many a Republican, you’d most likely find they agreed on most things, but since they’re both bound by playing a political game the outcomes are vastly different.
Have you actually read my first comment? Who said anything about prioritization? The only thing I’m arguing is that outside of the political theater and political tribalism that causes all politicians to act and vote for things that aren’t aligned with their own beliefs, that Manchin agrees more with republicans than your average Democrat.
You’re reading a lot into my comments, but not disputing any actual points.
Seriously. I get being frustrated with him and wishing for someone better, but that’s just not realistic. There are pathways to reduce his power by supporting candidates that can flip a seat in other states, but his seat is only ever likely to get more red.
I’m a politics junkie and have seen many posts like this on Reddit. If anything I’d say up to now the fediverse has been farther left leaning in my experience.
That Republican in a blue suit has stopped a lot of terrible decisions and enabled us to make strides in improving our country. We would be a hell of a lot worse off without him.
"Robert Carlyle Byrd served as a United States senator from West Virginia for over 51 years, from 1959 until his death in 2010. A Democrat, Byrd also served as a U.S. representative for six years, from 1953 until 1959. He remains the longest-serving U.S. Senator in history"
Braxton assumed office by default in 2020 when he filed for office and no one else, including the incumbent, did the same.
The defendants, listed as former mayor Haywood “Woody” Stokes III and his town council, held a secret, special election, preventing Braxton from appointing his town council. During their special election, the previous town council re-elected themselves, and ultimately reappointed the previous town mayor.
Hm… I think I’m more shocked by people not realizing they have a right to vote. Secret cabals, nepotism, corruption, etc. in politics are more like “water is wet”, or “creek water may be full of dung”.
It sucks to slog through voter suppression efforts every day online and then find an entire town being suppressed. THIS… THIS…THIS… POST is the cumulative result of the efforts of ANYONE who tells SOMEONE else to withhold their vote for a political stance. You ARE a vote suppressionist! 👈👈👈
If you are online supporting the idea of withholding ones vote in order to advance a political agenda, you are enacting voter suppression. Layed out pretty simply for you.
No, I was being funny… but now I’ll be crystal clear:
IF you were referring to a generic group, THEN say so and we’re fine, but you could have made it more clear.
IF you were accusing me of being a vote suppressionist, THEN explain precisely what lead you to that idea, and we can see where the misunderstanding came from.
ELSE, I will assume you’re not discussing in good faith (trolling as you say) and hit the block button.
You replied to jarfil with the words “this post”, it isn’t clear if “this post” refers to jarfil’s comment or to the article itself. Also, the use of “You” leads the reader to imply that the “You” is jarfil, rather than “You” meaning ‘anyone who tells someone to withhold their vote for a political stance’.
(rant)I’ve kept this nick since back in the 1990s, when I had to spell it over the phone while creating an account, because client support said “Oh, like Garfield?” and I found it funny… since I also liked cats, the comic strip, hated Mondays, and loved lasagna… a couple decades later Google decided that “Did you mean: jar file”, and since becoming a brony, the full jar thing has become a very unfortunate coincidence. But I refuse to change it, I was there first!..
Withholding votes no, but IMO the American voting system (at least at a national level) seems pretty broken to me. FPTP, the weird bias to rural areas etc.
Really it should be changed so that it doesn’t always result in this eternal standoff between the two major parties.
Ireland, Australia and New Zealand dumped FPTP and were better for it. It’s just that the US has this kind of romantic idealism about the original founders, as if they were always right and their ideas still hold as much merit in this day and age of voter influencing through digital means, so I don’t really see it happening there. But it should, in my opinion.
Right now it seems like every major election is choosing between bad and worse there and voting for an outsider is just a lost vote.
In that sense I can understand the reluctance of voters to actually show up. Especially in states that aren’t swing states.
The common thread with any definition of voter suppression is that it reduces voting. Being encouraged to vote and in such a way as to increase its power is as close to the opposite of voter suppression as you can get.
Call it something else if you like, but it ain’t voter suppression.
If they are an incorporated plece, and they get the whole shebang of taxes, funding, elections, etc., then they need someone to run it, or a “government”.
Guess it sometimes could be hard to tell, with all the varying rules, but people who live there… are there places in the “deep US”, where people live in anarchy?
(sometimes it might also be the case where an incorporated town, through depopulation, ends up with nobody willing to act as mayor, but that’s different)
I might be wrong, but it seems to me like unincorporated places would depend on county level, or some larger place, good boys telling you what to do. I’m guessing it also comes with a budget, taken out of the residents taxes, for stuff like services, police… elected official’s pay… and similar.
At a population of 133, it sounds more like a HOA, but dunno.
I don’t think that the punishment meets the crime. No one deserves to be treated inhumanely in prison. No matter how mislead this person is, that’s a terrible outcome.
I can agree in principle. However, I can make exceptions for when people who vote for policies that promote and encourage discrimination experience the fruits of their labor first-hand.
Well, if it were extrajudicial I would agree. Leopards ate her face. But this is our country’s judicial system. It isn’t wholly owned by the far right (though it’s wildly close).
Precisely this. I tend to extend the tolerance paradox to violence, sometimes people have never been punched in the face and it shows. Just like tolerance of intolerance only allows intolerance to spread and shit all over everything, so does pacifism in the face of violence. I don’t want her to be hurt, but she supported a system and society that sees violence against trans as a core value and she doesn’t get to shocked Pikachu when she reaps the fruits of her labors.
Then you have no principle with which to agree. You can’t be a fair weather ethicist. You either believe in human rights for ALL, including pieces of shit, or you don’t believe in them for ANYONE.
“Message to my enemies: when the revolution comes you’re not just gonna get the wall, Buddy, you’re gonna get four walls, a roof, clean clothes, good food, education, and quality health care, because that’s what every human being alive deserves.”
I’m sorry, do you want bad things to happen to trans people? Yeah, she’s an insurrectionist, no, that doesn’t mean she should get put in harm’s way as part of her sentencing. Find your fucking heart.
Yes, and there’s an irony to it. That doesn’t change that it’s cruel and absolutely not something that should be happening even to the worst people out there, regardless of how much we hate them or if it’s exactly what they were pushing to make even worse.
Are trans rights human rights or not? You think it’s fine for a trans women to be raped and murdered in a men’s prison because her politics are shit? Well, thanks for letting us know where you stand.
No one deserves to be raped and murdered in prison. The justice system is far from perfect but we don’t sentence people to be raped and then murdered. We do rarely sentence people to death, but not by vigilante shanking or beating.
What’s so bad about siding with the “prisoners”? Not with the “criminals” mind you, just the “prisoners”.
In many countries, prisons have the mandate to “reeducate and reinsert into society”, and while privation of liberty is a punishment in itself, it’s intended only as a way to turn criminals too dangerous to let loose, into upstanding citizens once they do their time.
Prisoners can be “citizens in the making”, not just “criminals thrown in a hole”. That might be the first point to try to get through.
I’m saying people will say absurd things like “so you think it’s okay to murder people?” I have genuinely had people ask me that when I complained about our inhumane prison system.
I know what you mean, we have a “reeducate and reinsert” penal system in Spain, and some people keep asking for the death penalty for murderers. Dead people can’t become a member of society! 🙄
It’s just the Overton window, we have it still towards the side of reeducation, but some people keep trying to push it towards punishment. In the US, it’s already leaning towards punishment… and those people you mention, are the ones pushing it… so if you want that to change, you need to push it the other way.
Something like “so you think throwing people away is a good use of resources?”. Follow up with a joke about Soylent Green, or something, to make it look less confrontational… but ultimately it needs to be something farther away than your actual position, just like they do 🤷
Exactly, a significant portion of people aren’t able to argue about this in good faith and need to be walked through this long list of deep ethics questions in order to sorta meet the right answer.
What’s neat about this is it’s not going to help any children, they know it won’t help any children, and they don’t want it to. It’s an excuse to put more people in prison for longer because a Fucking Lot of people make money every time someone goes to prison. It’s an excuse to boost police budgets that are already inflated, and to erode our civil liberties even further than they already have. We joke that we’re losing the drug war and we regular citizens are, but not to drugs. The drug war is a proxy war that the moneyed establishment is waging against the working class. That’s who’s winning the drug war that we’re losing, and losing so many of our loved ones to.
Pretty sure they’re arguing that charging parents won’t help children. We have a fentanyl problem so severe that children are dying at unprecedented rates, because the drug is so deadly is only takes an amount equivalent to the weight of a mosquito to be lethal.
And we are choosing to address that problem, as we have for 40 years, through stricter prison sentencing, which has never improved or otherwise addressed the root causes of addiction. Punishing addicts makes everyone feel better, because…children dying is fucking devastating and we need someone held accountable, and the parents do bear at least some responsibility.
But just because it makes us feel better doesn’t mean it is effective.
Detectives testified that when Waite found her daughter unresponsive she rushed to a pharmacy to buy naloxone, a drug used to reverse an opioid overdose. The couple did not call 911 until hours later when Allison started having trouble breathing.
These parents made a pretty disgusting choice, but they did it because they thought they had a chance of keeping their child. If we could set aside our impotent outrage and acknowledge that offering support and oversight to parents in these situations, rather than the heavy hammer of “justice”, this little girl might still be alive. Our appetite for vengeance would be unsated, but we would save more children and help people improve their lives.
There are many other things that need doing–many, many things–to make a dent in America’s drug epidemic, and headlines like this are frustrating because we keep pulling out the same useless tool.
You know those visual gags about someone about to engage in a duel choosing between an assortment of weapons and they pick something silly like a banana? This is the banana, and the joke is so, so old.
If you assume both scenarios are identical, then yes. It’s a really bad assumption, because…they’re completely different substances with completely different characteristics (and just completely different scenarios), but if you make it anyway I would agree with you.
We are choosing to address drunk driving, as we have for years, through stricter prison sentencing, which has never improved or otherwise addressed the root causes of drunk driving. Punishing drunk drivers makes everyone feel better, because…children dying is fucking devastating and we need someone held accountable, and drunk drivers do bear at least some responsibility. But just because it makes us feel better doesn’t mean it is effective.
There are many other things that need doing–many, many things–to make a dent in drunk driving, and we keep pulling out the same useless tool.
They aren’t completely different, they have in common a direct link to harming bystanders. And usually we punish people who cause harm to bystanders.
So if you have a specific difference in mind that justifies lenience towards opiate addicts who harm bystanders but does not also apply to alcoholics who do the same, then you should spell it out.
Both of you are trying to argue that opiate addicts deserve more leniency than other types of addicts, but I don’t think you’ve made your point well at all.
It’s not “leniency.” You’re still acting like there’s one available response and you either slide it up or slide it down, but that’s transparently untrue. This concept is at the core of this entire discussion and the fact you keep ignoring it indicates you’re here to troll, not engage.
I could’ve sworn you were arguing against the “heavy hammer of justice”. But if you aren’t actually calling for leniency then we agree: these particular parents deserve to be charged, and addicts of all types deserve more systemic support.
No, absolutely not. The difference there is that their choices hurt someone else, driving drunk isn’t inherent to alcoholism, and alcohol isn’t regulated like other drugs so it doesn’t have the same issues with getting help when you need it, dirty supply lines and market pressure to make it as strong as possible.
The choices of those parents also hurt someone else. Accidentally poisoning children is not inherent to opiate addiction - in fact, it is less common than accidentally killing a pedestrian while DUI. And there are resources for both alcoholics and opiate addicts, usually under the same roof.
Yes I absolutely am, because it won’t help kids any at all. This model we follow where we wait until someone dies and then swoop in, designate someone else to be responsible and then hurt that person as much as possible just doesn’t work. In fifty years it has not helped one addict get clean, it hasn’t prevented one person becoming an addict, and it hadn’t stopped one overdose death. We’ve doubled down so hard on this that there are people doing life for simple possession of marijuana. If this was a good idea that worked it would have had some measurable impact by now, but the numbers say that things are getting exponentially worse. I’ve buried 5 close friends and family members due to addiction. I’m sick of doing the same stupid thing over and over again and then when it inevitably doesn’t work just doubling down again.
That’s not a neighborhood that banned cars. That’s a neighborhood that was literally constructed to not accept cars inside it, which is a much bigger victory IMO. If the red tape the US has can be cut through like this more often in more places, we could reverse car-centrism in very big ways.
Somehow I expected this to be outside of the Phoenix area; like, on its own. It looks more like an excuse for a high-density living concept, and going “no cars” means not having to set aside any space for parking; you just pack more people into the same area to make more money (~$27,000/yr for a 950SF, 2 BR apartment, if you’re curious; you can’t buy here). It’s literally an apartment complex that takes up a single “block” in Tempe. I guess it will depend on how happy you are with the shops they can attract to a community with only 1500-2000 people and no parking for outside customers.
That’s a very good observation I overlooked: if no useful business opens up nearby then it’s gonna potentially suck living there. From what I’ve heard, though. There is public transit located nearby, which hopefully widens that area of utility more for those trying out the space.
Here, though there’s more than just public transit - there’s a huge shopping mall/complex just half a mile north of this area. That’s a very reasonable walking distance for nearly everyone, especially given how flat this area is. Of course, you still have to navigate 3-4 multi-lane highway crossings, but at least it’s close.
Out of curiosity, I googled how many people it takes to support a single grocery store, and the top 5-6 links appeared to suggest between 3500 and 5000 people are needed. That sounds pretty close to my town, though we have a couple of monster stores so we may be closer to 8000:1. Restaurants and bars are going to be similarly constrained, though, so the diversity of options in such a small apartment complex will probably stay on the lean side (again, given little or no on-site parking and a generally car-centric city surrounding the area).
I tried looking into why would they call the “shaken baby syndrome” “junk science”, since it’s a very real thing accepted by all the reliable sources I could google. I had to read into their linked sources to understand what part exactly is “junk”.
So just to clarify, it’s not that the “shaken baby syndrome” isn’t real. It is. The “junk” is the part in which scientists identified three symptoms (“bleeding between the tissue layers covering the brain, swelling on the brain, and bleeding at the back of the eyes”) that happen from shaken baby syndrome, and some forensic practitioners read that as a bi-directionally exclusive relationship: if the three symptoms occur, it must be shaken baby syndrome. There isn’t enough evidence to support that other issues couldn’t cause the same symptoms, and using that triad as proof of abuse is controversial.
But shaken baby syndrome is very real, and it causes those three symptoms. The wording of this article (including the subheading) repeatedly seems to imply otherwise, which spreads dangerous misinformation that reads as “shaken baby syndrome is a myth” and that “physically abusing children doesn’t cause shaken baby syndrome”. That is “junk journalism”.
It is junk science in that assuming any physical damage that matches the three symptoms to a baby was intentional and that the way that it is regularly used in courts has the same assumption of intent. The whole shaken baby syndrome is tied up with the assumption of intent in the context of courts enough to make it junk science in the same way that failing a stress detector means someone is lying.
Yes, shaking a baby causes those injuries. So can seizures. Which makes this not junk journalism, as they even quoted a recent ruling that literally called it junk science.
Last month, an appeals court in New Jersey ruled that the theory was “junk science” and “scientifically unreliable”.
You are just repeating the same thing I said: that other things can cause the same injuries, and assuming that the triad of symptoms mean abuse is the part that is junk science. Not the existence of shaken baby syndrome, which is real.
But that’s not what the article says, over and over again. I really thought this was unnecessary, but anyway, here we go. Here are the quotes that I find problematic because of their wording:
Robert Roberson was sentenced in 2003 for killing toddler on basis of shaken baby syndrome, now ruled as ‘scientifically unreliable’
The “shaken baby syndrome” itself is not “scientifically unreliable”. Using it as proof of abuse is. But the shaken baby syndrome is real and scientifically proven to happen. This wording seems to imply the former, not the later.
[…] having been sent to death row on the basis of “shaken baby syndrome”, a child abuse theory that has been widely debunked as junk science, […]
The “shaken baby syndrome” has not been “debunked as junk science”. It’s only been debunked as proof of abuse. But, again, child abuse does indeed cause “shaken baby syndrome”, that’s not a debunked theory. Once again, the wording seems to imply the former, not the later.
Leading scientists have questioned the reliability of shaken baby syndrome, both as a medical diagnosis and as a forensic tool in criminal prosecutions […]
It’s been questioned as a forensic tool, not as a medical diagnosis. As much as I look for proof that says otherwise, I can’t find anything. It’s a real, unrefuted medical diagnosis. I’ve read the links they quote, and again, they focus on using it as forensic evidence of abuse. Nothing about it not being a real medical diagnosis. This wording doesn’t just imply, it’s straight up saying that it’s not a real or valid medical diagnosis. which is not true.
Last month, an appeals court in New Jersey ruled that the theory was “junk science” and “scientifically unreliable”.
Yeah, the quote mentioned by snooggums, again, implies that the whole “shaken baby syndrome” is junk science. But I actually read that document before my other post, and you don’t have to read too much to find out that the meaning is exactly the one I mentioned. From page 3, literally the first sentence of the text:
In these appeals, we consider the scientific reliability of expert testimony that shaking alone can cause the injuries associated with shaken baby syndrome [emphasis mine]
So once again, this article is giving the idea that the whole diagnosis is a debunked myth, but that’s not what the court document says. It just says that the symptoms are an unreliable proof of abuse, since other causes can create the same symptoms.
I don’t know if someone (maybe the author, maybe the editor) didn’t really understand what has been debunked exactly, or whether they are bad at writing, but the way it’s worded spreads dangerous misinformation about health issues in children. Over and over again, it dismisses the entire “shaken baby syndrome” as junk science, instead of specifying that “its use as evidence of abuse” is what has been debunked.
I think we all know that more guns mean more gun deaths. The stats are pretty clear as a whole.
It is a pretty small group of people that actually own guns to make them safer. Majority it is to feel safer while making them and everyone around them less safe. That is my big issue with guns. Not gun ownership itself… just nutty ownership.
Criminals already don’t follow the law; that’s why they’re considered criminals. Why would those who need weapons care about or follow gun control laws? How’s that working out for the war on drugs in the US?
There are other self-defense options as well. Lethal firearms could be entirely replaced by non-lethal. If you actually need it for defense, you can still defend yourself with it, but you’re going to have a hard time using it for murder now.
You could argue that this would increase the amount of defender deaths because they couldn’t neutralize the threat 100%, but it would drastically lower lethal firearm related crimes. Gotta weigh the options.
I’m all for self defense at a distance, I don’t want to have to risk a scuffle. If someone invades my home in the night, I don’t want to have to fight them. I want them stopped asap with as little force as possible for the safety of everyone, including the invader.
This is the logical outcome of a certain party both pushing an identity of male-dominance based on toxicly masculine characteristics, and who also cozies up to White Supremacist orgs like the Proud Boys.
The GOP is and has always been a fertile recruiting ground for white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, and the “manosphere” has accelerated the spread of their core rhetoric (which includes Holocaust denialism) geometrically.
In France, for example, the country riots when they raise tuition a few percent, or if they raise retirement age 2 years. There is no such widespread pushback in the US for issues of far greater concern, because as you said, you’ve been trained to understand that your protest may be deemed illegal. Your FTFY can be summarised into “we’ve been trained”
U.S. News
Top