Save the Holy Headland: Officer Roland Clark

Sunday, 22 January 2017

Harold Hempstead - Darren Rainey Murder Evidence, Dade C.I. 23 June 2012: Caged Crusader’s Witness Statement to US Department of Justice, Miami-Dade State Attorney, 5.5.2016

Jeremy Schanche reads a sworn statement by Harold Hempstead describing Darren Rainey’s murder by Officer Roland Clark.

On 23 June 2012, a black Muslim convict was tortured to death at Dade C.I. in Florida. He was locked into a specially rigged shower stall for almost two hours, in temperatures of up to 183 Fahrenheit. When he was eventually found, most of the skin had peeled away from his dead body. An inmate was later ordered to throw the skin into the trash. This brutal murder was covered up by guards and other authorities, until inmates, including Harold Hempstead, succeeded in finally contacting the Miami Herald newspaper, which broke the story.

Although the U.S. Constitution guarantees free speech, the reality of life in the Florida Department of Corrections, like its counterparts in many other American states, is different. Inmates who merely file complaint forms, let alone talk to the press, can expect brutal retaliation from certain of the guards. Inmates who stand up and blow the whistle on brutality, abuse and corruption are taking a great risk to their own safety, in a penal system that has degenerated into routine brutality, systematic starvation, and regular torture and murder.

This film should never have been made. People should not be steamed to death in locked showers, screaming for mercy, dying alone in terror and agony. USA is not the only nation to conceal horrors such as this, but the USA has a Constitution, a blueprint for justice, democracy and the rule of law – not all nations have such a thing. Furthermore, the USA is a vital element of western culture and civilization. For this nation to live up to its promise, its meaning and its true identity, something must change.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the Russian author of such books as Crime and Punishment said “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” For ‘America’ to ever be ‘Great’ it’s going to have to take a radically different approach to the treatment of those it locks up and takes into its power.

This film has been made in an attempt to publicize the evidence of the prisoner, witness and whistle-blower Harold Hempstead who is endangering his own safety to bring justice for the murder of a mentally disturbed black Muslim man, Darren Rainey. On 7th November 2016, the prisoner Daniel Geiger died in the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections. He is mentioned in the film as the inmate for whom the ‘shower-treatment’ was originally devised. Daniel Geiger was put in the special shower on more than one occasion. He was also systematically starved. Regular food-deprivation was part of the regime at Dade Correctional Institution and Harold Hempstead is convinced that is has contributed to more than one death.

Records show that this prisoner’s weight at the start of his detention was 179lbs, which is just over 12 ¾ stone. However, when New Yorker journalist Eyal Press spoke to Daniel Geiger’s mother, Mrs Debra Geiger, she reported that in 2012, her son had told her that his weight was down to 105lbs (7 ½ stone).

Whatever crimes a man may have committed, the Constitution, the foundation document of the nation, requires, in the name of the people, that convicts shall be treated according to lawfully encoded standards of justice and welfare, with recourse to legal redress of grievance and the free speech to do so. While the rights of the convict are obviously considerably fewer than those of the free citizen, they are, nonetheless, clearly defined and enshrined in law, and should, when circumstances deem it necessary, be vigorously protected by we, the people.

Notes:

1. ‘Affiant’ means the author of an affidavit or witness-statement – which in this case is Harold Hempstead.

2. ‘C.I.’ stands for ‘Correctional Institution’ or prison.

Here’s the interview I did with Harold Hempstead in summer 2016 for my paper, The Limpet:

https://savetheholyheadland.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/harold-hempstead-murder-witness-talks.html

The first of numerous articles from the Miami Herald newspaper on the murder of Darren Rainey and conditions in the Florida Department of Corrections:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article1964620.html

An in-depth look at Florida’s mistreatment of mentally-ill prisoners:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/the-torturing-of-mentally-ill-prisoners

George Mallinckrodt is a psychotherapist and outspoken advocate for the mentally ill, who has written a book about his experiences working at Dade C.I. Its central focus is the killing of Darren Rainey and it’s entitled Getting Away With Murder:

http://georgemallinckrodt.com/

The blog of Harold Hempstead’s sister and advocate, Windy Hempstead:

https://helpmybrotherharoldhempstead.wordpress.com/

Many articles on Darren Rainey, Harold Hempstead, FDC and more here:

https://wobblywarrior.wordpress.com/

Finally, here’s the written text of Harold Hempstead’s sworn affidavit of 5^th May, 2016, the document read in the film, which describes the torture and murder of Darren Rainey that guards and officials tried to conceal. Convict-whistle-blowers are taking an enormous risk by witnessing the truth and protecting society’s most vulnerable members. Please help their work by reading and sharing the evidence. Thank you and stay free.

https://savetheholyheadland.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/harold-hempstead-evidence-darren-rainey.html

Update: 25.1.2017: Over the last couple of days I've been sending out the following email to various people. It reached them all except The Tribune which was bought out and closed and Al Jazeera, who's contact form wasn't working.

Public Message To: Ms Vanita Gupta, Assistant U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division; Katherine Fernandez Rundle, State Attorney, Miami-Dade County, Florida; FBI (Case Agent); Miami-Dade Police Department (Case Detective); Dade County Medical Examiner; ACLU of Florida (Dr. Howard Simon); Stop Prison Abuse Now (Steven Wetstein); Florida Legal Services (Peter Sleasman); Disability Rights Florida (Molly Paris); Florida Justice Institute (Randall Berg); Forgotten Majority; National Action Network (Rev. Al Sharpton); Rainbow Push Coalition (Rev. Jesse Jackson); National Domestic Workers Alliance (Alicia Garza); Black Alliance (Opal Tometi); Nation of Islam (Louis Farrakhan); Miami Herald Newspaper (Julie Brown); CBS4 Miami (Michelle Gillen); WTVT Fox 13 Tampa (Craig Patrick); New Yorker Magazine (Eyal Press); Windy Hempstead; Susan Chandler; George Mallinckrodt.

C.C.: Antonia Farzan, Miami New Times; St.Petersburg Times; Orlando Sentinel; South Florida Sun Sentinel; The Tampa Tribune; The Florida Times-Union; The Palm Beach Post; Sarasota Herald-Tribune; The News Journal; Florida Today; Gainsville Sun; New York Times; Washington Post; Russia Today; Al Jazeera; Black Lives Matter; The London Times; The Guardian; The Independent; Reprieve; Amnesty International; Big Issue; Fulham Football Club, London; Florida Tourist Board; etc.

Brothers and Sisters,

You are receiving this message because your names appear on Harold Hempstead's affidavit of 5th May, 2016, detailing the murder of Darren Rainey at Dade Correctional Institution on 23rd June, 2012. Since Mr Hempstead wanted you to receive the written evidence, I thought it might be useful to have it in video form too.

I am not aware of the current progress of the investigation into Mr Rainey's killing, four and a half years ago, but I feel that since the slaughter was initially concealed by the authorities, it is appropriate now to compensate for this by giving the event some more publicity.

You may be wondering why Mr Rainey's death is a matter of concern to a foreigner - after all, Darren Rainey was a black-Muslim, a drug-user, mentally-disturbed and poor. Well, I don't want a world where people are boiled to death in showers - I want a world of wisdom and compassion.

With thanks to all who are genuinely working for justice.

Good wishes, Jeremy Sch@nche

Newlyn, Kernow, Great Britain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHdVztdD10k

Tuesday, 6 December 2016

DANIEL GEIGER STARVED REPEATEDLY TORTURED BY FDC – DEAD IN CUSTODY - 7 NOVEMBER 2016

DANIEL

GEIGER

STARVED AND REPEATEDLY TORTURED BY FDC – DEAD IN CUSTODY –

7 Nov. 2016

I first heard about Daniel Geiger from Harold Hempstead, the ‘Caged Crusader’ of Florida. He made a strong impression in my mind. Daniel Geiger was the first one to be tortured at Dade – or at least, I should say, the first one to be tortured in the special shower.

Dade Correctional Institution in Florida, USA, has within its wire perimeter a ‘mental hospital’ known as the Transitional Care Unit. In this hospital within a prison, human rights abuses including starvation, and torture have been practiced systematically, as witnessed and testified to by various people, including former prison-psychotherapist George Mallinckrodt who worked at the’ TCU’.

Daniel Geiger { J42951} was a severely disturbed prisoner who was not getting the medical help he desperately needed. His state was such that he never stopped yelling. He had already been subjected to the guard’s ‘Three Point Conversion’ game, whereby a prisoner is deprived of lunch and dinner for three days. Some prisoners were only being fed two days a week under this regime, which the guards themselves dubbed ‘Auschwitz’. A fellow prisoner played a vital role in publicizing this information and I will be quoting from the evidence submitted by Harold Hempstead in this article.

Daniel Geiger was the person for whom the ‘shower-treatment’ was invented. This is the same shower-treatment that killed Darren Rainey, another severely disturbed convict in care of the Transitional Care Unit.

These bare facts about Daniel Geiger were taken from the Florida Department of Corrections (F.D.C.) website:

Name: Daniel Marcus Geiger; D.C. number: J42951; race: white; sex: male; hair-color: brown; eye-color: blue; height: 5'11''; weight: 125; release date: DECEASED; birth date: 04/15/1976; custody: close.

Current prison sentence history: Offense date: 12/26/2009; Offense: L/L MOLEST V <12 12="" 18="" date:="" entence="" nbsp="" off="" sentence="" span="">11/16/2010; County: DUVAL; Case number: 1001487; Prison sentence length: 25Y 0M 0D

Incarceration history: Date In-custody: 01/06/2011; Date Out-of-Custody: 11/07/2016.

Because Daniel Geiger was convicted of a sexual offence against a minor, the FDC website refers you to Florida’s list of Sexual Offenders and Predators (which gives the information that Daniel Geiger’s weight was 179 lbs.) Daniel Geiger was convicted under Florida Statute 800.04 which means that he either touched, or forced or enticed a child to touch him in a sexual manner. Here’s the relevant section of the statute:

“(5) LEWD OR LASCIVIOUS MOLESTATION.—

(a) A person who intentionally touches in a lewd or lascivious manner the breasts, genitals, genital area, or buttocks, or the clothing covering them, of a person less than 16 years of age, or forces or entices a person under 16 years of age to so touch the perpetrator, commits lewd or lascivious molestation.

(b) An offender 18 years of age or older who commits lewd or lascivious molestation against a victim less than 12 years of age commits a life felony, punishable as provided in s. 775.082(3)(a)4.”

If we assume that Daniel Geiger was given a fair trial and found guilty on good evidence, which I have no reason to doubt, then it was of course right that he was detained as a ward of the state. I have no problem with the state of Florida locking up child-molesters for long periods of time. I know nothing of his case, only the charge and the resulting detention.

Another source of information we have about Daniel Geiger is his photograph. The human face holds a wealth of information as its purpose is to communicate. When I look at the photograph of Daniel Geiger I see a man tormented and suffering a private hell. There’s a story in that face and it’s not a happy one. One side of his face looks like he’s trying to be tough, while the other looks like nothing other than an extremely unhappy child. It’s hard to look into the face of Daniel Geiger and feel nothing. It seems he was a deeply disturbed person, convicted of a terrible crime and sent down for a quarter of a century. In a house for the criminally insane, he was known as the most troubled.

Let’s now quote from a sworn affidavit by Harold Hempstead, who was working as a prisoner/orderly in the TCU at Dade prison in Florida when the tortures and murder occurred...... (This document was signed on 5^th May 2016 and was published on the Save The Holy Headland blogspot on 22^nd May under the title ‘Harold Hempstead Evidence Darren Rainey Florida Shower Murder Dade Correctional Institution 23 June 2012’. I have substituted the letter Z for the name of a convict. This affidavit perfectly describes the murder of Darren Rainey in state custody and is a vital piece of evidence that should be widely read – not least by the U.S. Department of Justice and the other arms of law-enforcement which are failing to take effective action to bring justice in this case.)

“The Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) houses some of their most severe mentally disabled inmates in the Dade Correctional Institution Transitional Care Unit (TCU). The Westside TCU has 3 wings and 12 showers. The shower in Wing J3 next to Cell 201 was the only shower with 2 showerheads in it prior to June 26, 2012. The showerhead on the sidewall of that shower was a PVC pipe in the wall that was hooked to a PVC pipe in the closet next to the shower. That PVC pipe was connected to a hose which was connected to a commercial sink. The commercial sink had hot and cold water knobs. The hot water knob was marked “H” for “hot” and color coded red; the cold water knob was mark “C” for “cold” and color coded blue. The construction of this shower, and the fact that the temperature in this shower exceeded 180 degrees violated the environmental health and safety manual.

Ofc. Roland Clark was assigned to work wing J3 on the 4:00pm till 12:00am shift. Part of Ofc. Clark’s work assignment was showering 2 to 4 dozen inmate patients every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Ofc. Clark had approximately 20 months experience with showering inmate patients prior to January 2012.

In or around January 2012, inmate Daniel Geiger (J42951) was moved into Wing J3. Geiger was considered to be the loudest inmate in the TCU. Geigers’ schizophrenia caused him to yell and make noise constantly. His presence in Wing J3 made it hard for other inmates to live and sleep in Wing J3. Geiger’s constant yelling also caused Ofc. Clark to get in trouble with his superiors because of the constant noise coming from his wing (J3).

In or around January 2012, inmate Z told Ofc. Clark that Geiger would stop yelling if Geiger was placed in the shower next to J3-201, and the water was turned on full hot. Z told Ofc. Clark to tell Geiger that the only way he could get out the shower was to stop yelling, and making noise and to stay quiet once he was taken out the shower. Ofc. Clark tried Z’s recommendation and it worked.

When Ofc. Clark seen that the shower treatment worked as a punishing devise, he from thereforth used it on the most severe mentally disabled inmates in the TCU that refused to comply with his orders.”

It is made chillingly clear in this excerpt from Harold Hempstead’s affidavit, that the unit where Daniel Geiger was incarcerated, ostensibly a refuge of help for the most disturbed of the inmates, had degenerated into a place of casual brutality, torture and murder.

In June 2016 I published an interview I’d conducted with Harold Hempstead entitled ‘Harold Hempstead, Murder Witness Talks To The Limpet’. In this, as elsewhere, he mentions the guards’ systematic practice of starving inmates, which he believes contributed to the deaths of more than one prisoner. Unlike a typical British prison, where meals are usually taken in communal areas, many American inmates are fed in their cells. This makes it very easy, in a criminally under-regulated penal system, for the guards to simply withhold meals from the particular inmates they select for starvation. Daniel Geiger was one such selected to starve. Records show his weight at the start of his detention as being 179lbs, which is just over 12 ¾ stone. However, when New Yorker journalist Eyal Press spoke to Daniel Geiger’s mother, Mrs Debra Geiger, she reported that in 2012, her son had told her that his weight was down to 105lbs (7 ½ stone). Between then and November 2016, when he died in the custody of the state of Florida, he only managed to gain another 20lbs in weight. Mrs Geiger also reported that she’d not been permitted to visit or telephone her son for four years and that he had been given medication to which he was allergic. On finally setting eyes on him in February 2016, she described the skeletal figure as being “at death’s door.” Within nine months he had passed through that door.

Tragically, Debra Geiger found her son changed almost beyond recognition. Daniel however was so far gone at that point that he failed to recognize his own mother altogether. Another journalist tells of a different side of him though, describing him as lucid in conversation, even when apparently undergoing a breakdown. Her conclusion was that he was bipolar. It makes perfect sense that a man who would act in an apparently psychotic manner towards the guards who tormented him, was still capable of rational interaction when approached with some degree of humanity.

Whatever the exact nature of Daniel Geiger’s mental and emotional condition, he was a ward of the state and therefore in law, the care of his health was the responsibility of the state.

The neglect that kept Daniel Geiger on a regime of dangerously miss-prescribed medication, the deliberate, long-term starvation, the repeated torture in a chamber of super-heated steam that finally killed another prisoner – this was how the Florida Department of Corrections discharged its duty of care towards one of its most disturbed inmates. Daniel Geiger died on 7^th November 2016.

From Craig Patrick's Money, Power, Politics:
With footage from a prison interview with Harold Hempstead,
discussing Florida prison guard's practice of starving the inmates,
plus the murder of Darren Rainey

Democracy Now! May 11, 2016 -
Whistleblower Exposes Abuse of Mentally Ill in Florida Prison