What You Want

Darren Rainey, a schizophrenic man in Florida has been boiled to death.  The prison guards though, are not going to be charged. The prosecutor says that there is not enough evidence, even though his skin was sloughing off when examined.  This is the Miami-Dade State Attorney, Katherine Fernandez Rundle.

According to various articles, the temperature of the water was estimated to be 160 degrees (F), and he was screaming for two hours before dying.  But he died due to “undiagnosed heart disease”.  I have a question for you: don’t you think that being boiled alive would affect your heart? I mean, I’m not a doctor or anything like that, but the stresses of BEING BOILED ALIVE seem like they would be a contributing factor to heart failure. Perhaps being tortured for two hours might have something to do with your organ finally failing, after beating harder and harder because of the massive amounts of adrenaline going through you.  

But what do I know? I’m just an angry crustacean.

The problem is that this is not the first time that people have died at the hands of authorities.  If you Google it, you will find hundreds of similar stories.  Someone is mentally ill and is in prison/jail.  The people in charge do something to torture that person and that person dies.  And then, once dead? Meh. Who cares?

Who cares that these people should have been cared for, rather than tortured? They were poor or disadvantaged, so they don’t matter, right? If they mattered, then wouldn’t the killers – no, the murderers – be charged?

But you don’t care, really, do you?

Now you, the one that does care, what are the next steps? How do you make sure that Katherine Fernandez Rundle prosecutes the people who tortured Darren Rainey for two hours? How do you make sure that she is punished for not following through?

See, I’ve been looking.  I don’t see anything where people are protesting his death. I can’t find references to her office being flooded with calls letting her know that this should not be happening. I don’t see reports of people camping out in front of her office to let her see the people that her indifference is hurting.  I don’t see a campaign to get her removed from her office.  

And I can’t do it, either, can I? I’m just an angry crustacean.  

Thing is, I wonder if this is what people want.  There is no incentive to be nice to prisoners. And there is a very specific type of person out there that enjoys being cruel to people who cannot fight back.  There are people that enjoy bullying others – especially when they are ‘justified’ in doing so because the other person deserves it.  If they hadn’t committed a crime of some sort, they would not deserve to be punished, would they?  

And so there is a cycle that goes on and on.  People are arrested, and put in some sort of confinement. And if there is a sadistic bastard watching, then that person now has a victim.  And it’s inevitable that if they have an opportunity, they will take it.

So how do you change it? I don’t know.  I’m just an angry crustacean.  

Maybe it’s a training issue. You train people in authority to be more compassionate and empathetic.  But can you train people to be empathetic, if they already are bullies and authoritarian?

Maybe it’s a compassion or empathy issue.  Perhaps there needs to be a way to find more empathetic people for the jobs.  But would there be an expense to test to see what kind of personality is applying for these positions?  Would it matter? There is a top-down mentality here, so that the people in charge of the people in charge are going to set an example.  If that example is that bullying is fine, then it means that these types of jobs will always attract authoritarian personalities.  

Here’s the question though: What do you want?

Do you want people to be tortured to death? Do you enjoy knowing that if a person is picked up for anything, that they are susceptible to the absolute worst behavior? You must because no matter now many stories are out there, there is nothing else happening.  

So there you go – that’s the answer.  You must enjoy it.  

But what do I know? I’m just an angry crustacean.

• MS