More Than Broken
I'd like to paint a picture for you, and I'd like to see how you feel about it when I am done:
Imagine you are home with your spouse/significant other. You are in the lower level of the house and he is in the upper level. You are avoiding each other, because your partner has been a stranger to you over the past month, and in the past week he has done things you never imagined he would do. Some of those things are illegal, abusive, and coercive; and you are afraid of the person you love. You have not been coping well with things for the past few days and unfortunately you have backslid into some maladaptive behaviors of your own as a result, but you are not intending to stick around. You are very busy with full-time work and college classes, and although you have done some research on places to go to get away from the toxic situation at home, you have online mid-terms due tonight, so your escape plan has to wait. You have responsibilities, and those responsibilities don't care about your situation. They need your attention.
As you are preparing to study, you hear a loud "thud" come from upstairs. You go to the stairs and yell your partner's name. No response. Then you hear a sound like someone choking, a gasping and wheezing kind of choking. You fly up the stairs in a panic to find your partner, face down on the floor outside of the bathroom, skin turning a purplish blue. He is not moving, and that sound coming from his throat is getting weaker, quieter, more strained. You look in the bathroom and see some brown liquid spilled on the counter, see the syringe on the floor, and you know you don't have much time. You don't think about the possibility that there are other drugs in the house. You don't think about your own past and how it might be used to hurt you. In that moment, you don't think about what might happen to YOU, because SOMEONE YOU LOVE IS DYING IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES. You are only thinking about that, and that is the only thing that you SHOULD be thinking about.
You rush downstairs to find your phone, (hoping you have enough time) and run back up the stairs with it in hand, dialing 911 as you move. You crouch down beside your partner, the person you love more than anything, the person you will forgive for being a drug-crazed monster if he will just, PLEASE NOT DIE RIGHT NOW, and you try to wake him up as the phone rings. You shake him, slap his face, try to move him, but the body is dead weight, lifeless, unresponsive. The dispatcher answers and you tell her what is going on: "911, what's your emergency?" "It's my boyfriend," you say through tears, "he is overdosing and won't wake up." "Does he have a pulse?" they ask. You check for a pulse. You find none. You scream "NO! PLEASE, PLEASE, DON'T DO THIS, DON'T DIE!" The lady on the line tells you to try to calm down. "Ma'am, ma'am I need you to calm down and start chest compressions, do you know how?" "I was certified, but I can't remember right now," you choke out. She explains to you how to do it and you start pumping his chest, praying to whatever deity will listen to please save this person you love as you do. You push down on his chest for so long your arms are aching, but you don't stop. Then you check for a pulse, AND IT IS THERE! You keep pumping for 7 minutes, keeping your partner's heart working until the paramedics arrive and take over. You watch as they inject him with Narcan...once...twice...three times...he won't come back to consciousness and they can't keep his heart going, so they cut off his clothing and paddle him. He still won't stabilize. A police officer gently pulls you outside, and you realize as he does this that he does not want you to see your partner die. This hits you like a brick wall, because you just felt a pulse, a pulse that YOU created with your own hands, and that pulse gave you hope that he would be okay. But now you are outside your home with an officer, and he is asking you what your partner was using. You try to remember, try to think back on the blur the last three days have been.
You haven't slept in those three days. That Friday you got home from work and fell asleep on the couch for an hour...you hadn't been sleeping much because your partner had been on a meth-binge all week, and his behavior while high was too disruptive to sleep through. You woke up after about an hour and your partner was smoking meth on the other side of the couch with some people you didn't know. They offered it to you. You were about to say no, but then you reconsidered. There were things that you and your partner had planned for the weekend, but your partner had chosen to prioritize drugs over those things, and with a feeling of defeat you decided that if you couldn't beat him, you'd join him. At least if you were high maybe things wouldn't be so unbearable, right? Not like earlier in the week when your partner had slammed you against a wall and told you that you were worthless and no good and that he wished you'd die. You definitely didn't want to feel the way you felt that day ever again...but if he was high again, there was no telling what he might do. Maybe the meth would help get you through the weekend so you could figure out where to go. That's how you were thinking when you took the pipe. What happened after that, you can't be sure. Time moved differently, things felt like a dream, whole chunks of time were lost. You know you did more drugs over the weekend, mostly to get rid of the meth high (which you really didn't like), but you don't remember details of what and when. So when you are asked what your partner took that night, you list off a guess of what you think he's been doing those three days: meth, cocaine, and heroin. As you are telling the officer this, the EMTs bring your partner out on a stretcher, barely clothed, and load him into the ambulance. You ask them if he is going to be alright and they say they don't know. You ask if you can go with them and they say you cannot ride in the ambulance but are welcome to come to the hospital. Then the doors slam and they are gone, sirens wailing. You break down, thinking of the blue color of his skin, the sound of the paddles, the way he looked slumped on the floor when you found him, how his eyes had rolled into the back of his head, and then you pray that it wasn't the last time you see your love alive.
The officer then leads you back into the house, silent now as you sob and try to think about what you need to go to the hospital. You realize, however, when you get inside, that there are police everywhere. Uniformed officers, detectives, at least five of them are in your home looking around. They start bombarding you with questions before you can even blink. You don't remember what you say to them, only that you want them to leave you alone so you can get to the hospital. They tell you they will let you go if you help them figure out where he got the drugs. You are sleep-deprived, traumatized, and intimidated by the number of armed men in your home... and you want to get to the hospital, so you start talking, making things up, things that will hopefully make enough sense for you to be able to leave and get to your partner's side.
But that never happens. Instead, you go to jail.
Your partner lives. He asks about you in the hospital the next day and the cops are there and tell him that you are in jail for what happened. "But didn't she save my life?" he asks. They won't answer him. The nurse comes in the room and he asks her, "Would I have died if she hadn't called?" "Yes. You are on a Narcan drip right now. We have tried to take you off of it several times, but you lose consciousness again almost immediately and we have to put you back on it. The only reason you are alive is because she kept your heart beating with chest compressions until the paramedics arrived. They almost lost you themselves. You are very lucky she was there and called 911. Very lucky." Your partner is shocked, ashamed, and devastated...because what no one knows is that he did it intentionally. He wanted to die.
You rot in jail for six months. You were already on parole, had worked hard to do well and change your life since your earlier struggles, but they don't see that, only the brief relapse and supposed "bad" you are accused of doing. And even though the Good Samaritan Law is supposed to protect you from being charged when you call 911, or from being revoked on your probation as well, apparently you are an exception. Your probation is revoked after six months, but you get time served. The administrative law judge seems to think you did the right thing and should not sit anymore time. You have not been charged by the police who arrested you that night, so you get released from jail six months later and you get back to living your life.
During the next eighteen months, you kick ass at life. You get back into school and make the Dean's List 3 semesters in a row. You get a great-paying job and quickly begin to advance there. You rebuild your credit and get approved to buy a house. You have your son and your partner's daughter on the weekends.You are still with your partner, you gave him another chance after he proved he could stay sober for six months. Unfortunately, he still struggles with his addiction and mental health issues, but he is making an effort to keep moving forward, so you continue to support him.
Now imagine one day while you're at work you get a message from a family member asking you if you are in some kind of trouble with the law. You say no, you just saw your parole agent yesterday and all was well. The family member says you should check CCAP. So you do. And you see that you are being charged with a drug felony from when your partner overdosed nearly two years earlier and you saved his life. You are being charged like you were his drug dealer, a thought so absolutely ludicrous you almost laugh out loud as you read it.
Now, go back to the beginning of this story...read those first few paragraphs again, up until the part where you find out that you are going to jail, not knowing if the person you love, that you tried to save, is alive or dead. Imagine nearly two years later, sitting in front of your computer at work with a entirely different life, with tears streaming down your face as the mental tape of those terrifying, gut-wrenching, traumatic moments replays inside your head over and over and over again. Imagine the way it must feel...knowing that you will have to relive those moments a thousand times between now and when they decide if you are guilty or innocent of a crime. And imagine that you will have to endure this because, ultimately, in a moment of crisis, when there was a choice to be made in a matter of life or death, you did the right thing. You didn't leave. You didn't hide a body. You didn't think "what will happen to ME if I call 911 and stay and try to save him?" You simply acted like a good human being would and you did everything in your power to save a a person's life. And now, two years after the fact, you are being punished for it. With no explanation from the State, no reason given for the delay, after you have moved on with your life and even spent months in therapy processing that night and putting it behind you, you get to relive it all. Imagine how that must feel.
Trauma is a complex thing. But one thing that happens when a person experiences a traumatic event is something called hyper-memory. Hyper-memory is what makes that event stick in your mind like it was caught on camera. You may not remember what you were doing in the hours before the event, or what happened in the hours after, but every second of that trauma is vividly and accurately captured in your mind in this phenomenon of hyper-memory. It is what causes flashbacks in war veterans and rape victims. It is what leads to nightmares and sleep disorders. It is what causes trauma to manifest itself in a person's body and cause involuntary physical responses to things like touch or smell or a song on the radio. Sometimes that hyper-memory is so pervasive that your psyche must repress it in its entirety in order to keep you alive. That is how repressed memory happens. Your mind knows that you cannot physically or mentally survive the memory any longer, and it buries it. I wish that I could will that repression into happening when it comes to this situation...but it's not a voluntary thing. Apparently my psyche thinks I can handle this tape playing on repeat for the next several months. And dear God, I hope I am up to the challenge. But I feel beyond broken by this. I feel...hopeless.
This weekend, I watched the movie "Just Mercy," and if you haven't seen it, you need to, because it will show you how broken our system truly is. The actors in it talked about hopelessness at the end. They said that hopelessness is the enemy of justice, and that hope allows us to push forward even when the truth is distorted by those in power. I am hanging on to that when that tape starts to play in my head...
Feeling hopeless is not a natural feeling for an optimist, but this situation causes me much distress on a deeper level, far deeper than a personal one. I may feel broken by all of this, but in comparison to the bigger picture, I am the least broken of all the elements at play. Today my son asked me why anyone would want to put someone on trial or in jail after that person saved another person's life. And so I got to break down the criminal "justice" system in a way a ten year old can understand, so that he can make sense of why his mom is going through this process. I told him that the criminal justice system has several parts. There are the legislators who make the laws. There are the police who enforce the laws. There are the courts with their prosecuting lawyers who decide on if the law was broken and how it should be dealt with, and defense lawyers who protect the rights of the people accused of a crime and fight for them. And there are the jails and prisons that carry out the decisions of the courts. And EVERY SINGLE PART IS BROKEN.
Let's start with the legislators making the laws. This is where it all begins, because we elect people who are either uneducated or not properly educated and then those people make laws based on personal feelings and opinions instead of based on relevant evidence-based studies, science, medicine, facts, and statistics. The War on Drugs (which I have discussed at length in other blog posts) is the best example of this, but surely not the only one. We have known for decades that alcoholism and addiction are a brain disease. The entire medical community and scientific community have proven this to be true. All of the evidence validates their findings, and the conditions can be readily found in any copy of the DSM-V, the official manual for diagnosis of brain disorders/diseases. But, instead of looking at the facts and science and determining that alcoholism and addiction should be addressed by the medical community like all other diseases (and like most other countries do), a handful of legislators decided that they know better than the experts (a common thinking error in our populace, it seems) and that addicts and alcoholics are just bad people; and that drugs (and alcohol, once upon a time) should be made illegal so that these bad people can be properly punished and dealt with. So they started making laws that would allow them to do that. Once they started making laws and people who used drugs and alcohol were considered criminals, this caused a devastating and widespread ripple effect that caused the general public to also ignore science and facts and view people who did drugs or alcohol as bad people deserving of punishment, rather than sick people in need of treatment. With public opinion then in their favor, lawmakers continued this punitive approach for decades, effectively making us the country with the most laws on the books and the highest incarceration rates on the planet (which costs us taxpayers a ton of money while yielding no positive results, by the way).
The other thing that was wholly ignored by lawmakers when making new laws over the years were the studies and findings on what CAUSES things like addiction and crime, which is a pretty major factor to just ignore when people's lives and freedom are at stake. Causes of addiction usually relate to mental health problems or trauma history, causes of crime usually link back to addiction, trauma, mental illness, and poverty. And making new laws to punish people does not solve any of those problems, does not address crime or addiction at their roots, and actually makes all of the aforementioned issues bigger, worse, and more complex. And still, lawmakers are busily trying to incarcerate our country into compliance even though they know it doesn't work. Which then brings us to the question of why, why perpetuate a system that is not helping our people or our country? And the answer is that it IS helping some people...it's helping them get very rich. Do a little digging on the prison industrial complex, private prisons, etc, and you will see the massive amounts of money being made by keeping people in jails and prisons. You will also see that those people making money hand over fist off of human suffering are donating a lot of that money to politicians to ensure that new legislation keeps prison beds full and the green flowing unabated. Ignorance and misinformed choices have led to the creation of a greed monster that seemingly cannot be stopped. And those are just two pieces of the puzzle, the legislators and the institutions...I haven't even covered law enforcement and the courts. But here goes...
Law enforcement is an institution that is corrupt at its very core. This is because, as a condition of their employment, police swear to enforce all laws, including laws which are unjust and initiate violence and harassment on peaceful people. They pledge to suspend morality and logic in order to unquestioningly impose the will of those in power, and the will of those in power is rarely moral or ethical and is often characterized by self-interest. "The law is the means by which the powerful maintain their power." This is a quote by Karl Marx, and although I don't support all of his very controversial ideologies, this one rings quite true when you look at the big picture. The history of law enforcement is one full of racism, bigotry, violence, abuse of power, and hypocrisy through and through. There are countless instances of those in law enforcement breaking the very laws they are sworn to uphold and not being held accountable for it. There are innumerable cases of misconduct and poor judgment that have resulted in the loss of life/freedom of innocent people. And there are countless practices used by those in law enforcement to violate the rights of the people, practices which do nothing to serve and protect the public as they would like us all to believe. Take, for example, the methods used in questioning and interrogation, methods which include lying and threatening people and have led to more false confessions and wrongful convictions than can even be documented. It is proven that false confessions are not rare at all. More than a quarter of the 365 people exonerated by the Innocence Project in recent years had confessed to their alleged crimes, and that is because police combine psychological pressures, lies, and escape hatches that can easily cause an innocent person to admit to things they did not do. Those who are young, tired, stressed, addicted, or traumatized are particularly susceptible to these tactics, and are prone to doubting their own memories, which allows police to plant false memories and get them to make incriminating statements. There is also the way in which police manipulate suspects into saying things that are not true by using promises or threats, like promising to let someone go if they tell them what they want to hear (sound familiar?). They also prey on those who are particularly vulnerable and highly suggestible, people with poor memories (check!), high levels of anxiety (check!), low self-esteem (check!), and low assertiveness (check!); all traits that are heightened by sleep deprivation, fatigue, and intoxicated states (check! check! check!). Many of those who falsely confess are also people who are eager to help or please others (also check!). Finally, some of the most vulnerable people are those who suffer from mental illness. Mentally ill people possess a range of psychiatric symptoms that make them more easy to agree with, suggest, or confabulate false information. These symptoms include faulty reality monitoring, distorted perceptions and beliefs, an inability to distinguish fact from fantasy, proneness to feelings of guilt, heightened anxiety, mood disturbances, and a lack of self-control. These are all symptoms that I have experienced many times with my handful of diagnoses...and they have thus made me an easy target for a room full of cops more than once during my lifetime.
This...this reprehensible manipulation of vulnerable people sickens me, not only because I have been a victim of it, but because it has completely corrupted the entire justice system and made it not "just" at all. Without truth, there can be no justice, and the methods of modern day law enforcement seem to care nothing for the truth whatsoever. All they care about is making an arrest. That's why they will pull you over for things like having an air freshener hanging from your rear view mirror. This is especially true if they run your plates and see a criminal charge anywhere in your record, even one that's a decade old or more. This is also why being pulled over for "driving while black (DWB)" is a thing...and if you doubt it, just ask Tyler Perry. The cops have done it to him and he is one of the most recognizably famous black men in our country. And it's why so many people hate cops, because they have literally earned it with all of their petty, unnecessary targeting of people who are minding their own business. Harassing people who are not in the act of committing a crime is not preventing crime, making communities safer, or helping people in any way. There is a saying in our country that the law enforcement community would be wise to heed if they want to build a working relationship with the general public, and that saying is "live and let live."
True crime prevention starts at the root. It means addressing the causal factors and the systemic issues that create circumstances where crime looks like the best option or the only option. Modern law enforcement methods do nothing to tackle these issues, and are therefore a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.
Now, the final piece of the puzzle, the court system, which is so rife with dysfunction that it is difficult to even know where to begin. Let's start with the prosecutors, because they are the ones who decide which cases deserve to be prosecuted and which do not, and it is at that initial point in the court system where the dysfunction begins. When a prosecutor makes a decision about whether or not to try a case, he/she does so based on a review of the evidence. Unfortunately, once police in the field have decided on a narrative for whatever situation they are dealing with, they only collect evidence that supports that narrative, and they leave out whatever they come across that doesn't, which pollutes the entire process. Our system is built on an assumption of innocent until PROVEN guilty, but when you are presumed to be guilty from the very start, from the moment the police look at you or the moment the prosecutor reviews the "evidence" against you, that presumption dictates and alters the entire process. Next, we have the unconstitutional and unethical practice of plea bargaining. Prosecutors will do just about anything to get a defendant to take a plea bargain: they will lie, they will threaten, they will promise, and they will do these things just so that they don't have to actually do their job, which is to convince a jury that someone is guilty BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT. That is the right of every person accused of a crime in this country, and yet defendants who exercise that right are threatened with and often given stiffer penalties, simply for making the court system do what it was designed to do. Then there are the penalties, which in this country are just insane. There is absolutely NO REASON for addicts, mentally ill people, and petty, nonviolent people to be spending years and years in jails and prisons when that DOES NOTHING TO HELP ANYONE INVOLVED. It doesn't help the accused, it doesn't help the community, it doesn't help the taxpayers, it doesn't help the economy, etc, etc. The only people it helps are those getting rich off of it, and why would we want to perpetuate misery and dysfunction for their benefit?
The purpose of the criminal justice system is to maintain and restore social order. It is not fulfilling that purpose at all. It is creating greater inequities, deeper societal dysfunction, and it is wreaking havoc on the lives of millions of individuals and their families. I have been subjected to this destructive system of "justice" and, as a result, I have spent years of my life reading books, peer-reviewed journals, and numerous case studies on the subjects of addiction, trauma, mental illness, and the criminal justice process. All of these things are connected, and they must be addressed holistically in order to make any meaningful progress or change a reality. I am dedicating my life to making sure that happens. They can keep coming at me with bogus "crimes" as much as they want, they will NEVER stop me. I will not be silenced, I will not be intimidated, and I will not be defeated. And I will continue to speak my truth until the public shifts its views and creates change.
In the meantime, I hope everyone reading this is staying safe, healthy, and out of trouble. The recent news has had many overdose reports and several serious reports of police misconduct and excessive force resulting in death. These are scary times, and they don't seem to be improving. It's up to us to be the change. Remember that.
Also...
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE.
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