I’m not sure why we’re not sure whether he was cuffed and/or locked up. I haven’t read the article, but surely that’s an element of the story so important the news reporters will focus on it.
But as far as how such a thing could happen, I’m not surprised. My sister went to the university health clinic sick with flu, and they sent her into an examination room to wait until someone could see her, then forgot her, locked the door and went home for the weekend. She spent the entire weekend locked in the examination room with the flu.
That is very different from had been released, remember he was still in hand cuffs.
Well according to Kim’s theory:
Chong was released, but refused to leave. Despite having a bag of meth on his person, he decided to be an ass and refuse to leave so they re-cuffed him and put him int the room to teach him not to disrespect tha’ D E A.
Have you ever met a single person in your life who would not only refuse to leave after being released when they were arrested in a “crack house”, but that had drugs on them?!? He was literally handed the biggest break possible, but refused to take it?
The alternative to not walking out is being cuffed and tossed in a room until he’s nearly dead of dehydration? Not, say, being escorted to the door and told to go? Sent to a police station for “disturbing the peace?” Finding new charges to slap on him? There’s a step missing here, and I would wager that after “you’re free to go” someone put him in there, still cuffed, to wait on release paperwork and the ball got dropped. That’s what this article claims (and mentions he tried to tear into the walls).
He’s apparently a pot smoker with some shitty friends, but even if he would have been a drug dealer, that still doesn’t matter - someone, and probably multiple someones, fucked up in a major fashion. They allegedly left someone locked in a room for 4 days with no food or water. The DEA apologized for their actions and paid for his medical treatment, which included days in the ICU. Doesn’t matter if that person is responsible for half the drug shipments into the US, I’m pretty sure that kind of treatment is still not acceptable, and they need to figure out how the occupant of a room can be ignored for days.
I work in the medical field, and get medical treatment at the same hospital. Once I happened to have a severe cold while at an orthopedics appointment. They put me in a room, and I was so sick and exhausted that I dozed off. An hour or so later, I awoke to find a shocked nurse looking at me. I’d been put in the wrong room and forgotten about. The doctor was furious; I still remember his eyes narrowing when he was told, and saying to her through gritted teeth, “Find out who did this.” Meanwhile I was saying it was fine, I’d gotten a nap, etc.
On the other side of things, as an employee I am expected to help keep track of patients even if they aren’t my direct responsibility. I know things are different when we’re talking about patients vs detainees who don’t want to be there, but all early indications point to procedures there being very flawed.
It sounds like what happened was that they intended to let him go home, put him in the cell as a temporary measure, and just forgot about him.
I find it astonishing that not one, but two people actually believe Chong somehow locked himself in the cell and deliberately dehydrated himself to near death. And that the DEA went along with his nefarious auto-dehydration scheme instead of saying “No, son, you can’t lock yourself in this cell. Get out of here before we find something to actually charge you with. How did you get this key, anyway?” And then apologize to him later.
Actually, one of the articles mentioned a perforated esophagus from swallowing glass shards.
But, really? While we don’t have all the facts, we know that the man claimed he was detained against his will, the DEA has apologized for their mistreatment of him and promised to review their proceedures, and there is NOT ONE SHRED OF EVIDENCE that he stayed as some sort of “protest” action. Where are you getting this shit?
You could…RTFA ALREADY! CNN has its own article up now.
He was handcuffed behind his back but managed to slip them in his front. This is hardly impossible.
I have no clue what kind of point you’re trying to make. This was an epic fuckup by the DEA, and they know it and have acknowledged it. All the involved parties claim events transpired pretty much as reported.
What’s your angle in trying to make this some kind of conspiracy on the part of the victim?
Yeah. I’m climbing on this bandwagon. Kimmy has made some claims that not even the DEA is backing up. Where’s the evidence?
He stated that he was cuffed behind but wiggled his hands to his front.
Tearing up walls is usually fairly even with both hands unrestrained. That he did so (tear up the walls) while allegedly cuffed is one more reason to question the veracity of the four-days-handcuffed allegation.
I particularly find his ability to scratch letters into his arm while cuffed to strain credulity. Perhaps he is a contortionist too.
Seemed that way to me, too, but I really try to shy away from the “pretty obvious,” particularly when it’s so easy to just ask you. Thank you for coming back and making it explicit, rather than “pretty obvious.” I really do appreciate it..
Just a reminder: you’re not here as a member of a jury, or of any other body tasked with fact-finding. You’re (presumably) here as a participant in a conversation.
Just curious: are you still comfortable with the inferences you’ve drawn?
They never said, “the events occurred as Chong described them.”
They did screw up. In an abundance of caution, they should have dropped him off at UCSD Hospital’s psych ward and said, “He’s your problem now,” although frankly, this was voluntary oppositional conduct, not a mental health decompensation.
Nobody wants to litigate that though, because it is a crap shoot. Bsdically, you get a bunch of shrinks rendering opinions and hope for the best.
Which is a shame, because you can’t drop off every misbehaving prisoner at the psych ward (shrinks cost a whole lot more than guards) and prisoners are given to acting out. So, instead, they’ll settle and running prisons (which we do need, however distasteful we find them) will become, structurally, even more expensive, as the cuttoff between “let him cry it out” versus “off to the psych ward” inches ever closer to typical misbehavior.
When I was much younger I was, shall we say, detained, in a local station house in NYC overnight and when I went to lay down to go to sleep there was a rather large bag of weed right next to my head. I called the cop over told him to get it out of there cause I wasn’t catching any hell for something I had no part of.
Moral of the story - if the cops don’t search people properly, they don’t find this type of stuff.