Woman Left in Cell for 4 Days Without Water, Food, Toilet or a Bed

Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville at 4:41 AM on March 13, 2008.

I would say it's unbelievable, but, of course, it's totally, depressingly believable. For four days, Adriana Torres-Flores, a 38-year-old undocumented immigrant who has been in the US for 19 years, was locked in a 9x10 holding cell in Arkansas, where she had no sustenance but her own urine and slept on the floor using her shoe as a pillow.

A bailiff had apparently forgotten that he placed Ms. Torres-Flores, a mother of three, in the cell last Thursday, and simply left her in the empty courthouse, in Fayetteville, over the weekend, said the chief deputy of the Washington County Sheriff's Department, Jay Cantrell. A snowstorm meant that there were far fewer people than usual working at the courthouse on Friday.

"He just flat forgot about her," Mr. Cantrell said, adding that the bailiff, Jarrod Hankins, had been placed on administrative leave, having been on the job a few months. "It was just a horrible mistake," Mr. Cantrell said.

Gee, ya think? I don't know if Mr. Hankins will have enough time to ponder his "mistake" while he's on administrative leave. I'm pretty sure firing him would give him enough time to reflect on the precise scope of his "mistake," though. But I guess that's just crazytalk when he didn't leave a real person in that cell for four days--just an undocumented brown woman.

Torres-Flores was taken to the hospital after she was found lying on the floor of the cell and is now at home recovering. Cantrell says that there will be an investigation, but assures "there was no malicious intent. The whole thing is terrible." Why, yes. It really, really is. But not so terrible that anyone should be jumping to crazy conclusions like his gross negligence makes Hankins unfit for his job, I guess. That needs to be determined by an investigation.

"Everybody is backing away from it as fast as they can," [Torres-Flores' immigration lawyer Roy Petty] said. "Frankly, that's how they treat Hispanics down here. They treat Hispanics like cattle, like less than human."

...In Little Rock, Rita Sklar, executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Arkansas, said the organization was very concerned.,/blockquote>

"There certainly have been a lot of problems in that corner of the state, in terms of police treatment of Latinos and bigoted statements by government officials," Ms. Sklar said. "We're looking into the general problem in northwest Arkansas of racial profiling and abuse of power."

And of dumb shits who totally forget they've left a woman in a fucking holding cell for four goddamned days and the callous wankers who make excuses for them, like he didn't mean to do it; it's not like he hated her--he was just totally indifferent to her existence!

Grr.

Tagged as: police brutality, prison

Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.