UC San Diego Student's Life Ruined by DEA after they forgot about him for 5 days!

[Lucille]

Is that in the story?

Not sure if this one reported it, but I read it on reason yesterday:

Chong said he could hear DEA employees and people in neighboring cells. He screamed to let them know he was there, but no one replied. He kicked the door, but no one came to get him.

ETA: Thor beat me by 3 min.!

 

[Danke]

Just a few bad apples.

They said they're sorry!

 

[dannno]

I was recently locked in a cell by goons like this (not drug war goons, just generic goons) for part of one day, all of another, and part of a third with no food and no water. There was a toilet-sink thing in the cell but they turned off the water to it. Not even close to as bad as this, but still, I wonder if anything bad was happening to my kidneys by the end. It was around 50 hours in total. Probably not, I felt fine, had a nice hard run across town once they finally tired of caging me.

Wow!! Glad you are ok..

 

[alucard13mmfmj]

a lot of people smoke weed in UCSD. the first place i lived at, 3 of my housemates smoked weed.

i tried weed 2-3 times.. but i never really understand why people smoke it. makes my mouth dry, makes me dizzy and want to sleep, makes me a little bit disoriented.

 

[kuckfeynes]

He's lucky to be alive. Another 24 hours and he probably would have been a statistical "suicide"...

 

[speciallyblend]

out of everything in op..this is what you decide to post about..grammar. Are you an english teacher?

yeah i hear ya, bad grammar doesn't cuase you to have to drink your own pee or held in isoaltion. grammar nazi's crack me up. kinda of a hugeeeeeeee leap to compare the 2, maybe he wants to start arresting folks for bad grammerssssss hehe, cuff'em danno. all the typos are for the grammar and speeling nazi's. kinda like pissing off grammar nazxi's for fun .

 

[kcchiefs6465]

yeah i hear ya, bad grammar doesn't cuase you to have to drink your own pee or held in isoaltion. grammar nazi's crack me up. kinda of a hugeeeeeeee leap to compare the 2, maybe he wants to start arresting folks for bad grammerssssss hehe, cuff'em danno. all the typos are for the grammar and speeling nazi's. kinda like pissing off grammar nazxi's for fun .

 

[Pericles]

He's lucky to be alive. Another 24 hours and he probably would have been a statistical "suicide"...

At least the Navy will let you out after 3 days, and give you bread and water - or so I've heard.

 

[KCIndy]

Obviously, our "heros" in the DEA did us all a big favor by stepping in and arresting this guy before he could become an even greater menace to society.

Here's an excerpt from a second news story about the DEA's little "oopsy!" of a mistake:



http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/loc...hite-Powdery-Substance-in-Cell-149596435.html

The 24-year old UCSD engineering student was left in the cell for five days without food or water, seemingly forgotten by the federal authorities who detained him.

He was one of seven people detained after a Drug Enforcement Administration ecstasy raid in University City on April 21, according to a DEA statement.

"The individual was at the house by his own admission," the DEA confirmed Monday.

During the raid, authorities confiscated ecstasy, marijuana, prescription medication, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and a white powdery substance that was described as a synthetic hallucinogen. They also seized numerous weapons including a Russian rifle, handguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

"Seven suspects were brought back to county detention." One was released, but "accidentally left in one of the cells," a statement from the DEA read.

The defendants were brought back to the DEA office after the raid and processed. The suspects were moved around the five cells at the detention facility during the proceeding. None were strip or body cavity searched, the DEA stated.

A law enforcement source told NBC 7 that the student was handcuffed and held in a room no larger than the average bathroom.

Sources say a worker at the DEA discovered the man by chance about five days later after hearing strange noises coming from the holding cells.

Any successful lawsuit filed against the DEA creeps should be paid out of the creeps' own pocket. Why punish the taxpayers? These guys ought to be on the hook for this near-fatal f***up for the rest of their lives if convicted, and if that means selling their personal vehicles, homes, and cashing in their retirement funds to make restitution, so much the better.

 

[John F Kennedy III]

It's gross incompetence. Heads need to roll.

Yes they do. The jury better give this guy every dime he sues for.

 

[KCIndy]

Additional thought:

April 20th was a Friday. How much does anyone want to bet that the DEA creeps were a little too anxious to take off for the weekend?

Maybe they were running late for their own little clique's parties involving mind altering drugs.

 

[noneedtoaggress]

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/01/man-abandoned-dea-cell-steps-forward/

Days crawled by. No food. No water. No bathroom. He remembers biting his eyeglasses and using the broken shards to scrawl a note onto his left arm.

“Sorry Mom,” he tried to write.

He also tried to commit suicide with the shards (hence the perforated esophagus) and even swallowed them.

 

[dannno]

a lot of people smoke weed in UCSD. the first place i lived at, 3 of my housemates smoked weed.

and even more people do at SDSU..

I think at my school, another UC, of the people I knew, at least 80% smoked semi-regularly and 95%+ at some time or another.

 

[dannno]

i tried weed 2-3 times.. but i never really understand why people smoke it. makes my mouth dry, makes me dizzy and want to sleep, makes me a little bit disoriented.

Because it makes food taste 10 times better, it makes music sound 10 times better, it is relaxing, it is euphoric, it makes you feel good, it makes you laugh....


A lot of this is very dependent on the type of strain, the quality of the bud, your mood, your energy levels, how much you have and how you ingest it.

 

[lib3rtarian]

This guy with sue the DEA and the DEA will payout whatever - using OUR tax money. What a perfect set-up the government has whether they win or lose, we bear the brunt.

 

[giovannile07]

Is that in the story?

It's also in the video posted on the link.

 

[RonRules]

I hope he comes to the San Diego Ron Paul Rally.

 

[idiom]

Life Ruined?

He has it made. $$$$$$$$$$

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Life Ruined?

He has it made. $$$$$$$$$$

It is far from certain that he would win. My arrest was totally wrongful, the charges were dropped, the whole thing was outrageous, but I never sued, because my sense is that I would almost certainly lose, and plus my lawyer told me that, too. This man's case is much better: more days, health problems resulted, and my goons were being petty and vindictive, punishing me by ignoring me because I was refusing to talk to them, his had no reason whatsoever as far as we know. Then again, who knows? He might have slighted them somehow, said something insulting in the arrest process, for instance, and they decided he needed to be taught a lesson. That's how these people think. Anyway, his case is better, but how much better? The best thing he has going for him is that it became national news for some reason (this story was on the front page of the local newspaper here), so the goons will likely just settle out of court to avoid more embarrassment. Heaven forbid these noble heroes ever be embarrassed.

Regardless, it's the inhumanity, the barbarism, of the system that incidents like this bring to the fore. Whether it results in some money for this man or not doesn't change the barbarism. Many others are similarly violated and abused but will get no pay out. He should not have had to go through something like this. It's just wrong. It's just sick. It should make every decent person infuriated. I would feel ashamed to live in a society that operates in such a manner, that perpetrates such atrocities on a daily basis, but I can hold my head high because I am fighting the system, doing what I can to smash the cell that held him into rubble.

 

[Lucille]

Will Grigg: The Everyday Evil of America’s Torture State

After his arrest he spent four hours handcuffed in a cell before being questioned. One of the agents who questioned Chong described him as someone who was "in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Following the interrogation, the student was told that he would be released and provided with paperwork to sign. He was then handcuffed and put into a five-by-ten-foot detention cell, where he was held for five days in conditions that qualify as torture under any rational reading of either domestic or international law.

The DEA’s story was that Chong was simply "forgotten." A likelier explanation is that he was ignored, or even singled out for deliberate abuse. Chong shouted and screamed for help, kicking against the heavy door of his cell. Although his hands were cuffed, he managed to tear a small fragment from his jacket, which he shoved under the door in an effort to get the attention of his jailers.

Since Chong had no difficulty hearing conversations and other sounds outside his cell, there’s no reason to doubt that his pleas were heard, and simply disregarded.

Exactly. Lots more examples of the torture of Americans by the US Police State at the link.

"Criminal means, once tolerated, are soon preferred," warned Edmund Burke, a maxim abundantly vindicated by the near-ubiquity of torture as a law enforcement tactic in contemporary America.

Related Will Grigg: The Triumph of the Torture State