Tag: Potty Watch

This is a glimpse into torture by prison staff, using any means available, of which solitary confinement at Pelican Bay State Prison in California is only a reflection of the inhumane treatment and clear U.S. constitutional violations of our First, Fifth, Eighth and 14th Amendment rights that prisoners in solitary everywhere are subjected to.

The Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement wrote 40 supplemental demands to detail what prisoners are entitled to and need to have re-instated. In responding to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitaion’s response to our 40 supplemental demands, I would like to get into the actual details of what the CDCr is and is not saying in response to prisoners.

This is a short update from the four principle SHU reps here at Pelican Bay State Prison to inform you that Mr. Michael Stainer kept his word and arrived here on Sept. 25 and 26 with Mr. Ralph Diaz and Mr. George Giurbino. We went through all 40 supplemental demands as well as some aspects of the step-down program, where we also gave them written suggestions on loading up each step with real meaningful incentives.

I am very familiar with the serious medical issues involved with the long term and short term care of these SHU patients in solitary confinement that are both very deleterious to human health and not very visible to people who are not insiders and familiar with this environment at PBSP. Many of these issues have not penetrated the ongoing public discussion of the ongoing and created health care consequences of solitary confinement in the SHU at PBSP.

In response to CDCR’s failure to meet our 2011 Five Core Demands, the PBSP-SHU Short Corridor Representatives respectfully present this notice of, and basis for, our individualized, collectively agreed upon decision to resume our nonviolent peaceful protest action on July 8, 2013. The upcoming peaceful protest will be a combined hunger strike-work stoppage action. Once initiated, this protest will continue indefinitely – until all Five Core Demands are fully met.

During those four days in the CSW cell, Perez was made to defecate in a bucket in public, while still in restraints. The staff members – aka the Green Wall Gang – would cut the tape off and pull down his pants and boxer shorts as they shouted obscene comments and laughter. No contraband was ever produced.

For the past 20 years PBSP has been allowed to get away from giving us the mandated minimum 12 hours of visits per week. One of our demands: re-open D facility visiting room so we and our families can have the four-hour visits mandated by CCR Title 15, Sec. 3172.2 (a).

Just when it seems like things can’t get any worse, a new California Prison system practice comes to our attention that is shocking and humiliating. It's a practice called “contraband watch,” or “potty watch” by people inside, in which a prisoner’s excrement is examined for items perceived to be “contraband.”

The historic prisoner hunger strike led by 11 now “shrunken” but alive Pelican Bay Prison inmates advocating human rights, peace and justice continues at several prisons, according to officials, prisoners’ families and prisoner attorney Marilyn McMahon. Hunger strikers' families and supporters will rally in Sacramento again Monday, noon-4 p.m.