http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/05/1382696/-DEA-agents-left-student-in-cell-for-5-days-without-food-or-water-barely-punished?detail=email
The LA Times is reporting on Daniel Chong, a 23-year-old UC San Diego engineering student who was arrested in part of a 2012 DEA "sweep" of his friend's house. He had gone to his friend's house to smoke marijuana.
After an interrogation, he was told he would be released.
But the agents responsible forgot about him, according to a Department of Justice Office of Inspector General report last summer, leaving him to drink his own urine to stave off dehydration.
Mr. Chong was left, handcuffed behind his back, in a windowless cell with no bathroom.
Midway through the ordeal someone turned off the light in his cell, leaving him in darkness.
When he was finally discovered he was delirious, with serious respiratory and breathing problems. He was hospitalized for four days, and he and his lawyers said at a news conference last summer that he underwent intensive therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. The department paid Chong a $4.1-million settlement.
aside from the dereliction of duty and the atrocity of his treatment while in custody these exorbitant payoffs for enforcement screw ups come to much more than training and a better vetting program of those charged with protect and serving which some seem to not recognize as relevant during in custody or incarceration latest incidents reinforce the need for a total revamping nationwide some places we don't here this happening doesn't mean it doesn't. places under grip of people like sheriff Arpaio who knows how many bodies might be buried in AZ?
Did "heads roll" over this criminally negligent violation?
The board issued four reprimands to DEA agents and a suspension without pay for five days to another. The supervisor in charge at the time was given a seven-day suspension.
It's this type of lack of oversight that lead to Michele Leonhart resigning from her position as head of the DEA.
During an appearance before the House Oversight Committee on April 14, Leonhart faced aggressive questioning over the punishment imposed on agents who were found to be engaging in “sex parties” in Colombia with prostitutes that were funded by drug cartels. Expressing displeasure that the agents were given suspensions of between two and 10 days and did not lose their positions or security clearance, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina asked, “What would it take to get fired at the DEA? The DEA agents I used to work with were worried about using their cars to pick up dry-cleaning.”
we suffer these kinds of treatment by those i was raised up to see as the ones to go to when in danger only later still a kid to find out there is no officer friendly on every corner there are good officers but they are muddied by association and that so called blue wall of silence which totally ignores and breaks and dishonors the oath taken to serve and protect but mostly because we have relinquished our power of law enforcement culpability or have we ever really had it??? we need to stand up and and find what we so sorely need and not wait until it's in our living rooms before we make any noise. recognize yep greatest country in the world./s
btw we also have a republican led oversight committee that has yet to investigate the crimes of their own.
