Tag: juvenile hall

Hundreds of young San Franciscans and their supporters rallied on the steps of City Hall Tuesday as a majority of the Board of Supervisors prepared to introduce legislation at the board meeting to require the closure of San Francisco’s Juvenile Hall by December 2021.

The mother who filed judicial recall notices against Contra Costa Judges Fannin, Hardie and Haight has been threatened in an attempt to silence her. The week she filed the notices, when she visited with her daughter in CPS (Child Protective Services) care, she was forced to accept a mandatory police escort. She was humiliated; her small daughter was terrified. The mother said she will never forget her daughter’s terrified face – and the gut-wrenching feeling of power being abused.

In 1984, in San Diego, I was born to two parents with mental health problems. My parents put myself and my siblings through severe neglect, sexual abuse, physical and verbal abuse. I am the oldest of six children. My dad was a Vietnam vet. At age 12 I broke away from my parents and turned myself over to Child Protective Services thinking they could help and were the only answer.

Judge Thomas Maddock, Juvenile Delinquency Court, Superior Court of California, Contra Costa County, labeled 14-year-old Lauryn G. “a danger to society” as he convicted her and took her immediately into custody without even the opportunity to hug her mother goodbye. Join the protest Tuesday, May 19, 8 a.m., Wakefield Taylor Courthouse steps, 725 Court St., Martinez.

George Orwell’s book titled “1984” was about a police state that controlled every aspect of life, including thinking, enforced by the “Thought Police.” This book comes to mind when I hear of the new Step Down Program CDCR is implementing. Its components are not new. California has had and still has programs like this in juvenile facilities as an attempt – which is often successful – to reprogram the youth’s mind to become controlled and subservient to the police state. Submit your comments on the Security Threat Group/Step Down Program regulations by 5 p.m. on April 3 to m_STGRegulation@cdcr.ca.gov by email or 916-324-6075 by fax.

I say this is torture: Being held in this solitary confinement cage where I can stand in the middle of the floor, extend my arms, and touch both walls. For the last 34 years, 23 hours a day is by definition torture. They say it is because of my political education, affiliation with the Angola 3 – Shaka, King and Chairman Hooks – and my ties to the Black Panther Party.

Imagine you were framed again by prison gang officers using a tattoo you got as a child and a symbol in a birthday card to “validate” you as a “prison gang associate” and label you “worst of the worst” and placed in segregation in a Security Housing Unit, or SHU, for years on end. That is what happened to my childhood best friend and husband, Robbie Riva.