Harold Hempstead Caged Crusader Wordpress dot
com – Darren Rainey, black Muslim tortured/killed by Florida prison guards – Harold
Hempstead, white Christian risks life to bear witness to the crime… Please see the new
site dedicated to the work of Harold Hempstead who is a major whistle-blower on
the grave human rights violations in the Florida Department of Corrections and
the murder of Darren Rainey.
This story is so murky and entangled it’s hard
to know where to begin. I’ll try to
summarize for those of you who are not familiar with these events. Harold Hempstead was illegally recruited by
Florida police at the age of 13, for confidential operations. He was involved in a great deal of danger and
a world of corruption, from a young and impressionable age. Having witnessed predatory activity of
police, he tried to expose certain crimes committed by officers. He was set up to be killed more than once by
police and eventually found himself accused of dealing in stolen goods and
organizing a ring of burglars to rob vacant houses. All the actual robbers were given a deal
whereby if they agreed to testify against Harold, they would not receive
custodial sentences. The prosecutors
also tried to pressure his sister into testifying against him, with threats of
framing her on similar charges. All the
robbers testified against Harold.
Various police detectives also testified against him – all of whom knew
that he was working for police, three of whom had personally employed him.
The (impartial) judge Brandt Downey III
sentenced Harold to 165 (one hundred and sixty-five) years in jail, without
parole, adding “you are a despicable human being. I hope you die in jail..”
Nearly eighteen years later, Harold Hempstead
has managed to survive the deadly gulag that is the Florida Department of
Corrections. He’s survived countless
transfers to an endless series of different prisons, where Florida’s one
hundred thousand inmates are housed, many of them in years-long solitary
confinement. He’s survived regimes where
convicts would be woken in the middle of the night with barked orders to stand
on a pair of footprints painted on the cell floor, or immediately get drenched
in tear-gas and other toxic chemical-sprays that have killed many inmates. He’s survived, so far, a system in which last
year 366 inmates died in suspicious circumstances. And he survived Dade.
Dade Correctional Institution is where Darren
Rainey was housed, in the Transitional Care Unit, or mental hospital within the
prison. This is a place so far gone in
sadism, tyranny and dysfunction that new arrivals were greeted by a
representative of the State of Florida telling them “welcome to Auschwitz,” and
they meant what they said. Inmates were
systematically starved, leading to multiple deaths. Inmates were bullied into attacking and
raping each other by sadistic guards who seemed to know no bounds of
humanity. People were handcuffed and
foot-cuffed before being kicked senseless by half a dozen burly guards. Every manner of physical, sexual and psychological
barbarity was practiced by these guards, whom the state was paying to protect
these disturbed and tormented souls who had done wrong and fallen into the hands
of the state. Well, ostensibly they’d
done wrong, but in at least one case, they were innocent people who should
never even have been in prison at all.
It was here in the ‘hospital’ that guards
started using a specially hooked-up shower with two water inlets – a normal one
and one from a sink that was hot enough to boil noodles with. The staff had been using this water-supply to
cook their snack-lunches. After it was
converted into a torture chamber in early 2012, five inmates were subjected to
extreme temperatures for extended periods until they begged for mercy and were
eventually let out with a promise of ‘good behaviour.’ The fifth inmate was dead when the shower
door was opened and he’d lost most of his skin in the 183° water. Harold Hempstead witnessed Darren Rainey
being taken to the shower, heard the agonizing screams and cries for mercy,
heard the thump of Rainey’s body collapsing and blocking the shower-drain and
saw the guards carry his disfigured corpse right past his cell.
These nightmarish events so traumatised and
galvanized Harold Hempstead, a devout Christian, that he set his mind to witnessing
the truth of what happened to Darren Rainey.
Despite the authorities sordid attempts at a cover-up and at
considerable ongoing risk to his own safety, Harold finally succeeded in
revealing the Darren Rainey murder to the Miami Herald newspaper who published
it.
Since this time, the story has had very modest
coverage in USA and virtually none internationally, outside the DIY
blogosphere. The Miami Herald have
however published a series of excellent articles on FDC, as has Eyal Press in
the New Yorker. Four and a half years
later though there has been no conclusion to the official enquiries by Florida
authorities into the Rainey murder. This
is outrageous.
Meantime, Harold Hempstead and other inmates
continue to talk to the press from time to time and they are suffering
extremely serious reprisals for it.
Harold has been deprived of his vitally needed medicines, had his
operation for a broken wrist cancelled, his mail violated and stolen, legal
papers removed and been housed with a series of convicted murderers who are
also currently abusing spice and other drugs and getting into psychotic states
in the cell with him. This is all set up
as retaliation and is the policy of Florida Department of Corrections.
Rather than let his voice be stifled by fear,
Harold has put out a stream of sworn statements, addressed to the Department of
Justice, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Dade County State Attorney and
the media and human rights organizations.
These statements are meticulously detailed accounts of the various crises
in the Department, from murder to disabled abuse, from sexual predation of
child prison visitors to the prevalence of razors, drugs etc. in the
prisons.
Because of the risks to himself that he is
taking to seek justice over the murder of Darren Rainey, we’ve got up a
petition to demand that the guards and the prison-authorities stop persecuting
Harold Hempstead for practicing Free Speech, as enshrined in the U.S.
Constitution and international law.
Harold is standing up for the rights of those
who have no voice. Will you join
us? Please take a moment to sign the
petition for Harold’s safety. There’s
also a petition for justice for Darren Rainey – and the brand-new website dedicated to this cause – Harold Hempstead
Caged Crusader Wordpress dot Com. You
hear a lot of talk about America these days – here’s a way you can actually do
something to help – follow this campaign and spread our message. Justice is for everyone because all lives
matter.
And here's the Petition for Justice for Darren Rainey
Odetta – Another Man Done Gone
Rev. F.D Kirkpatrick with James Collier and Pete Seeger-
Everybody's Got a Right To Live
Everybody's Got a Right To Live
Wailers – One Love
Here's some flyers to print out, cut up and give out -
tell others about these petitions:
https://helpmybrotherharoldhempstead.wordpress.com/
https://wobblywarrior.wordpress.com/
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/the-torturing-of-mentally-ill-prisoners
http://www.miamiherald.com/search/?cx=partner-pub-7642884967523832%3A9709061890&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&q=harold+hempstead&sa=Search#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=harold%20hempstead&gsc.page=1
....because Darren Rainey's life matters.............
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