Some may find it shocking or appalling, but having to use force is sometimes necessary and acceptable in facilities holding inmates. It isn’t abuse, torture, or a violation of rights. That is, it isn’t as […]
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Recent Posts
- Use of Force in Corrections
Some may find it shocking or appalling, but having to use force is sometimes necessary and acceptable in facilities holding inmates. It isn’t abuse, torture, or a violation of rights. That is, it isn’t as long as policy and procedures are strictly followed. While the policy examples provided here are only applicable to Navy/Marine Corps Corrections, the concepts presented do exist in most, if not all, manuals and SOPs for Corrections facilities in the US.“Staff personnel must avoid use of force where the assigned responsibilities can be effectively discharged without its use. If security cannot be accomplished without the use of force, personnel will use the minimum amount of force necessary to control the situation.” (SECNAV 1640.1 Corrections Manual)The American Correctional Association publishes standards for county jails, and meeting those standards leads to accreditation for the facility under the ACA; similar standards and accreditation programs exist by other nationally recognized bodies as well. One of ACA’s mandatory requirements is for written policy and procedures, and staff training on Restrictions on Use of Force:1-CORE-2B-01 (Mandatory) (Ref. 4-ALDF-2B-01)The use of physical force is restricted to instances of justifiable self-defense, protection of others, protection of property, and prevention of escapes, and then only as a last resort and in accordance with appropriate statutory authority. In no event is physical force used as punishment.Facility records and logs, incident reports, and training records are used as indicators of compliance. Corrections Officers must consider many factors before deciding to use force. Some include the safety of other staff and inmates, prevention of loss of life or injury to other staff or inmates, prisoner welfare, and SOP for priorities of force.Priority of Force usually starts with giving the inmate an order. An order in this case is almost always verbal. When it is given, the Corrections Officer’s tone, volume, body language, and other cues must clearly articulate that they aren’t asking or suggesting—the order is a lawful, authoritative demand. If that order is not followed, a show of force may become necessary. Often this show of force is to call for additional staff, but that may not always be possible or timely. Show of force can also include unholstering and making ready a less lethal weapon like a taser, baton, or OC spray. This is where situational awareness, training, and knowledge of SOP become very important. First, the officer must be trained and certified in the use of the less lethal tool they are preparing to make use of. They must also understand that the simple act of making that device/tool ready and presenting it as a “threat” to reinforce the given order may escalate the situation. Most importantly, the CO must remember that SHOW of force does not always lead to or require USE of force.“Use of physical force is restricted to instances of justifiable self-defense, protection of others, protection of property, prevention of escapes, and to maintain or regain control, then only as a last resort…when use of force is necessary, it will be exercised according to priorities of force and limited to the minimum degree necessary under the particular circumstances.” (SECNAV 1640.1 Corrections Manual) Use of physical force doesn’t have to and may not necessarily involve the use of less lethal tools. Soft and Hard hand techniques are also use of force methods for self-defense, protection, and regaining control. The situation must dictate which hand technique is used, based on the likelihood of it being effective. That’s because hand techniques aren’t without risk. Soft hand techniques can greatly increase the possibility of injury to the officer; Hard hand techniques can increase the possibility of injury to the inmate and the officer. This is one reason that less lethal tools, most notably tasers and OC spray, are frequently used and deemed necessary in the corrections environment—when deployed appropriately, they are nearly always effective and limit the likelihood of injury to both the officer and inmate. Yes, getting tased causes pain, but rarely results in serious injury; hand techniques, on the other hand, often result in sprains, bruising, and even fractures. Most taser devices also have a capability known as “drive stun” or “dry taser” that involves holding the cartridge contacts directly against the body rather than deploying the electrodes. Drive stun causes localized pain without incapacitating and is usually considered a lesser use of force than firing/deploying a taser weapon. Less lethal control should only be performed by officers that are trained and certified to use the tool. The ACA has another mandatory standard regarding this: Weapons Training 1-CORE-7B-06 (Mandatory) (Ref. 4-ALDF-7B-15)All personnel authorized to use firearms and less-lethal weapons must demonstrate competency in their use at least annually. Training includes decontamination procedures for individuals exposed to chemical agents.ACA states that this protocol should be reflected in written policy and procedure, job descriptions, training curriculum, and training record forms and formats. Indicators of compliance include personnel records and training records. U.S. Marines participate in oleoresin capsicum spray training with the Provost Marshal’s Office, Marine Corps Air Station, Futenma, November 7, 2006. After being sprayed, the Marines must go through a series of obstacles, fighting off assailants with hand techniques, batons, and ultimately taking an offender into custody to complete the course. Most agencies will not allow an officer to carry a less lethal tool that the officer isn’t certified to use. In the field and patrol environment, many departmental policies require that an individual be assessed by EMS or other medical providers after the use of a less lethal tool, to ensure there are no complications or injuries resulting from that use. The same should hold true in the corrections setting, with in-house medical staff performing an assessment of the inmate. Finally, incident reporting should always be required where priority/use of force occurs. Some agencies may have separate reporting requirements, depending on what type of physical force was required, but all should have an incident reporting system that allows corrections officers to document the situation and what physical force methods were utilized. Those reports …
- Abuse of Domestic Violence Protection Orders
An ex parte protection order can have long lasting repercussions for the accused, even if it is eventually proven that the charges were false or otherwise do not rise to the level of necessity for an emergency protection order.
- Avoiding Process Service
A process server protects and fulfills your rights by doing what the court has ordered and the law requires to protect you
- Drones: Flying Cameras
Drone technology offers a relatively new, yet powerful capability to help overcome the challenge of balancing observation and secrecy.
- Hayden Mayberry: Looking at the Discovery Site
Echo 7 Foxtrot Private Investigations and Secrets True Crime visited the location where Hayden Mayberry’s body was discovered 10 weeks after he went missing. We’ve released video footage from that trip to give listeners more perspective and information about the location where Hayden was found. The sheriff’s office has ruled Hayden’s death a suicide by hanging and he apparently used a woman’s belt and a small tree to do this. Many suspicious things about Hayden going missing and then being found in this small wooded area have come up and are covered in recent episodes of Secrets True Crime Podcast. https://youtu.be/KJcJvR-Mp1Y
- Missing & Murdered: 41 Souls
From Secrets True Crime Podcast and Echo 7 Foxtrot Investigations: an overview of many of the missing and murdered of northwest Alabama’s Warrior River Basin that have been reported to us over the last year. The list includes victims from 1948 to 2020, and gives perspective of the vast number of unsolved cases in the region. https://youtu.be/7DZmTX_DBls The following cases are covered, along with the date the victim died or went missing: Willadean Sixteen Picket, missing presumed dead. 11/1948 Paula Conner, murdered. 1/18/1980 David Martin & John McHan (some sources spell it McGhan), missing presumed dead. 8/29/1983Rebecca Ferguson, missing presumed dead. 9/16/1988Carrie Lawson, missing presumed dead. 9/11/1991Larry Blevins, missing presumed dead. 12/8/1994James McAnnally, murdered. 7/26/1999Bridgette Bonham, deceased. 12/2004Destiny Aldridge, murdered. 10/28/2008Corey Smith, missing. 6/18/2009Tabitha Franklin, missing presumed dead. 8/14/2009Erik Ruiz, missing. 1/13/2011James Lowe, missing. 8/5/2011Adam Myers, murdered. 9/1/2013James Wall, missing. 2/25/2015Eric Cates & Gypsy, murdered. 3/21/2015Andrew Setliff, missing. 8/7/2015Nicholas Hawkins, murdered. 2/16/2016Terry Roberts, murdered. 5/26/2016Randy Hicks, deceased. 7/4/2016Janell Massey, missing. 9/2/2016Dustin Turner & Jennifer Phillips, murdered. 10/1/2016Justin Denny, deceased. 11/5/2016Mickey Kilgore, murdered. 11/20/2017Dustin Alexander, murdered. 6/20/2017Jessica Hamby, missing. 1/2/2018Amy Hunter, murdered. 2/2/2018Denton Hill, missing presumed dead. 2/23/2018Maxine Bieberbach, missing. 3/6/2018Terrell Sanford, deceased. 5/15/2018Jonathan Andrews, deceased. 1/19/2019Jeremy Thompson, missing presumed dead. 6/7/2019Lonnie Taylor, missing. 10/26/2019Matthew Quinn, murdered. 10/31/2019Drake Stephens, murdered. 11/2019Hayden Mayberry, deceased. 2/3/2020Nolan Watson, missing. 3/8/2020Robert Leith, deceased. 7/17/2020CJ Wilkinson, missing. 7/29/2020
- Preparing for COVID-19
I’ve seen many statements and posts on social media like this one. I wanted to address some of the points and “facts” being presented. This is not intended to cause panic, but to educate. Data on COVID-19 is still vastly incomplete and there are many unknowns as a result, but it is clear that it is capable of spreading widely (more on that below). The mortality rate—the number of deaths resulting from infection—does appear to be relatively low and more applicable to people with diminished immune systems (pre-existing conditions, elderly). It still warrants attention, however, as even a 1% mortality rate is a lot of people if the virus is capable and allowed to spread unchecked. Every Election Year Has A Disease “Every election year has a disease.” I assume this comment is focused on US Presidential elections, since there are technically elections every year. This statement ignores a lot. There are viral outbreaks around the world constantly. For example, the image targets 2008 with Avian influenza, but that disease was spreading in 2004, just as the SARS outbreak in China was being contained (after it started BEFORE the 2004 election year). Viral hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola have had multiple outbreaks and sparked concerns in many years, both before and after 2014. Diseases don’t vote, and don’t target the global population when there is a presidential election in the US. Any correlation between disease and an election is a result of media attention—the diseases are always out there. This statement is based on faulty cause and effect logic and is meant to make you focus on facts that don’t matter. Coronavirus Has A Contagion Factor of 2 “#Coronavirus has a contagion factor of 2.” The average number of people that an infected person will likely pass the disease to is actually referred to as R0, or more frequently R0 or R-naught. R-naught reflects the epidemic potential of the agent that causes the disease. R-naught is used to predict the likely number of new infections that will “grow” from those currently infected in an ideal scenario—like putting one infected person in a room with 10 unvaccinated people. R-naught is entirely situation dependent and is affected by many things including the agent (virus, bacteria) and society/cultural factors like population density, life expectancy, socioeconomic conditions, climate, and nutrition. Because R-naught can change due to those factors, it is always given as a range. When R-naught is less than 1, the agent will die out since less than 1 new person is infected by every person with the disease. SARS is a good example. SARS was originally assessed an R-naught around 2.75, but with containment efforts it dropped to below 1 in many places. Disease R-naught Ebola (2014) 1.51 to 2.53 H1N1 Influenza (2009) 1.46 to 1.48 Seasonal Influenza 2 to 3 Measles 12 to 18 MERS ~1 Polio 5 to 7 SARS <1 to 2.75 Smallpox 5 to 7 COVID-19 1.4 to 4.08 Highly infectious diseases like measles are usually described with exceedingly high R-naught values. Measles’ R-naught ranges from 12 to 18, meaning a single person could pass the disease on to 12-18 others. This indicates that a single case of measles should be treated as a true health crisis emergency, even if a population base has a high percentage of the population vaccinated because the potential exists for the disease to spread rapidly. That said, everyone should realize that the published R-naught value for measles was calculated based on conditions that aren’t likely relevant today: 1912-1928 US data yields R-naught of 12.5; 1944-1979 England/Wales data yields R-naught of 13.7-18.0. The effective rate of secondary infection (termed “R”) for measles in a country like the US today–accounting for some of those mitigating factors–would not be as high though because in that “ideal scenario” of 10 people in a room with a person infected with measles, the infection could be passed to less than 1 of the 10 (0.85, based on 91.5% of the US population being vaccinated, assuming 100% of vaccinations took), ergo the effective R of measles in the US would be less than 1 in that scenario. Because there is no vaccine or known prior immunity to COVID-19, we can’t justify modifying the current R-naught calculations for the US population to produce an R range. Additionally, there are problems with some of the US and worldwide data at this point that hinder calculation of R-naught for COVID-19—largely due to under testing and potential for inaccurate reporting. That said, initial calculations put the R-naught for COVID-19 between 1.4 and 4.08; based on US-only data in the last week, COVID-19’s R-naught in the US is currently around 1.74 to 2.96*, meaning a single person could pass the disease on to roughly 2 or 3 additional people through a single, limited contact exchange. Coronavirus Has A Cure Rate of 99.7% “#Coronavirus has a cure rate of 99.7% for those under 50 it infects.” To be clear, there is no cure for COVID-19, and therefore no “cure rate.” There is a recovery rate, which reflects the number of confirmed infections that recover from symptoms and, as far as we know now, reach a point where they can no long spread the disease. We do not have enough data at this point to say that recovery equates to immunity to re-infection. Since this entire statement is based on a non-existent “cure rate,” there’s not much more to address, but I do want to point out the mortality rate, which does appear to be lower for healthy individuals under 50 years old. The current mortality rate in the US alone is 4.17%. 34% of the US population is 50 or older, so 111.2M people. At 4.17% mortality, that’s potential for 4.6M deaths if the R-naught is not lowered through containment, isolation, or other measures (like washing hands). Coronavirus Spread Is Leveling Off “#Coronavirus spread is leveling off.” I’m not sure where this is coming from. There have been thousands of new cases every day worldwide …
- Using an LEL Detector to Debunk an Accidental Fire
In this video, we tackle a theory going around that Eric Cates accidentally started the fire that engulfed his truck in flames and ultimately killed him in March 2015 behind Empire School in Empire, AL.
- Indigent Defense Investigations
What many lay people don’t realize is that the law also allows for other expenses associated with defending an indigent client, above and beyond the attorney’s fee. This includes expenses for private investigators and expert witnesses that work on the case.
- Missing: Lonnie Taylor
Lonnie Taylor was reported missing by his family on OCTOBER 26, 2019. Lonnie lived at Elderly Village in Jasper, AL off Old Birmingham Hwy. He was last seen there on October 22 at 8 pm. There is currently a $1000 reward being offered by The Jasper Housing Authority for any information that leads to Lonnie being found. He is a white male, approximately 6 ft tall and 180 pounds. He has gray hair and a lazy left eye. If you have ANY information about Lonnie, please contact the Jasper Police Department at (205) 221-2121 or you can call our confidential tip line at (205) 282-0740.