Delaware is the Secrecy State. You don’t have the right to know when cops, corrections officers, and/or entire agencies screw up to the max. Or let out their frustrations on people who get beaten just b/c they are there.
Enter the News-Journal, which at least is covering the prison story superbly. If little else. Here’s the latest outrage. Captured, BTW, on videotape.
Yes, the incompetence and indifference is outrageous. An inmate died when he didn’t have to die. Can you imagine a nurse wasting time seeking permission to make a 911 emergency call, but never finding anybody to grant permission?
But here’s what is all too common about this incident:
Unlike in many other states, cause of death information, autopsy reports, and police investigative files are not considered public records in Delaware. As a result, Delawareans often only learn what government agencies choose to tell them. Usually, the most the public learns about an inmate death is simply that they died.
I want you to go back and reread that last paragraph. By law, all of this information is kept from the general public. One of those laws being the so-called ‘Police Bill Of Rights’, which hides police abuses from the public. We know that a few inmates recently died at relatively young ages, and all we’ve been told is that there was nothing suspicious about their deaths. Tell me again why we should believe those assertions. I, for one, don’t.
The only reason we learned of this incident is due to a complaint filed with the State Board of Nursing, which is a public agency subject to FOIA.
Memo to legislators: There is no justification in keeping this information from the public. There is no justification for keeping malfeasance by public officials and public institutions from the, you know, public. Failing to address this policy is tantamount to aiding in cover-up after cover-up.
Change the laws.