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For Immediate Release: February 9, 2011                                   

Contact: Laura Thomas at (415) 283-6366 or Tommy McDonald (510) 229-5215

SF Mayor’s Hepatitis C Task Force Issues Recommendations for Fighting Epidemic, Including Supervised Injection Facilities (SIF)

SIF Allow People to Consume Their Drugs with Sterile Equipment in Presence of Medically-Trained Staff; Reduce HIV, Overdose Deaths and Public Drug Use, While Not Increasing Drug Use

SF Elected Officials Need to Embrace Science and Public Health Approach

The San Francisco Mayor’s Hepatitis C Task Force issued its report a few weeks ago, with strong recommendations for how San Francisco can better address the hepatitis C epidemic here. There are an estimated 12,000 people living with hepatitis C in San Francisco, most of whom do not know that they are infected. San Francisco has the opportunity to ensure that everyone knows their risk, knows their status, has access to hepatitis C treatment and support if they need it, and has the tools and information that they need to protect themselves from hepatitis C. One of those tools, as recommended by the Task Force, is a supervised injection site, where people could consume their drugs with sterile equipment in the presence of medicallytrained staff.

“Supervised injection facilities reduce HIV and overdose deaths without increasing drug use,” says Laura Thomas, deputy state director, San Francisco for the Drug Policy Alliance. “This has been done around the world and it has been proven to work effectively.”

Supervised injection facilities (SIFs) are operating in many countries around the world. They are not a new idea and the science has shown that they work. Insite, in Vancouver, British Columbia, has been extensively evaluated and has shown that a SIF can reduce public drug use, hepatitis C and HIV risk behaviors, overdoses, and other health problems, while not increasing crime or drug use.

In fact, Insite increased the number of people entering treatment for their problematic drug use. SIFs are a serious and well-researched approach to a significant problem. Politicians who are committed to reducing the harms that drugs create for our communities would be well served by paying attention to the evidence.

“San Francisco has led the way in dealing with HIV. The City needs to take these recommendations seriously and begin to address hepatitis C with the same courage and leadership it has shown for HIV,” Thomas added. “Politics can’t trump science in this case. There are too many lives on the line and here will be a serious price for slow learning curve.

“We need elected officials who are not afraid to do the right thing, and who are willing to put all of the options on the table as we fight the spread of hepatitis C and HIV.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 8, 2011

CONTACT: ACLU [1] Will Matthews, ACLU National at (212) 549-2582 or 2666; [email protected] [2] Sandra Hernandez, ACLU of Southern California at (213) 977-5252; [email protected]

ACLU Witnesses Brutal Beating Of Los Angeles County Jail Inmate By Sheriff’s Deputies

Attack Underscores Need For Systemic Reform And Decrease In Jail’s Population

LOS ANGELES - February 8 - The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Southern California (ACLU/SC) today condemned a recent brutal beating by two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies of a detainee at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, part of the county jail system.

The violent attack January 24 on James Parker, detained on a non-violent marijuana charge, was witnessed by ACLU/SC’s Esther Lim, who is assigned to monitor all county jails.

“We believe Mr. Parker’s beating is not an isolated incident,” said Hector Villagra, incoming Executive Director of the ACLU/SC. “Rather, it highlights the rampant violence that continues to plague the county’s jails, and demands court intervention to protect detainees from brutal attacks and retaliation. That the ACLU/SC monitor witnessed a brutal attack in plain sight is alarming and can only lead us to conclude detainees are subject to even greater cruelty when no one is looking.”

The beating was made public Monday in a sworn statement submitted in federal court by Lim, who watched through a glass window as deputies repeatedly punched, kneed and tasered Parker while he was lying motionless on the floor.

“Mr. Parker looked like he was a mannequin that was being used as a punching bag,” Lim says in her statement. “I thought he was knocked out, or perhaps even dead.”

Lim hit the glass divider hoping to get the deputies’ attention and stop the attack, but the officers continued to punch and taser Parker.

“Mr. Parker was not fighting with the deputies,” Lim says in her statement, adding he “was not trying to kick, hit or otherwise fight with the deputies.”

Yet deputies continued to order him to “stop resisting” and “stop fighting,” while simultaneously punching and kneeing his limp body repeatedly and tasering him multiple times.

The deputies then wrote in a jail log that Parker had been fighting and resisting, in complete contradiction to what the ACLU witnessed.

“This kind of brutal beating is unacceptable,” said Peter Eliasberg, ACLU/SC managing attorney. “We are also very concerned that shortly after the beating the sheriff’s department issued a log report contradicting what witnesses, including our monitor, saw. The report claims Parker was resisting and fighting with deputies. That is blatantly false.”

Parker now faces charges for allegedly assaulting the very deputies who beat him.

Lim’s statement, along with that of another witness to the beating, was filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, to bolster a motion the ACLU filed in November seeking a federal court order prohibiting jail deputies from retaliating against prisoners through violence or threats.

The ACLU first sued Los Angeles County and its sheriff on behalf of all detainees in the county’s jail system in 1975, charging the conditions of their confinement violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Many remedial orders have been issued over the years in the case, Rutherford v. Block. But the systemic problems plaguing the system have recently become so acute the ACLU in December asked U.S. District Court Judge Dean D. Pregerson to order a new trial in the case based on “an escalating crisis of deputy violence, abuse and inmate suicides” at Men’s Central Jail, another of the system’s facilities. The ACLU contends the problems plaguing the jail system can only be fixed by finding alternatives to incarceration like drug treatment and community-based programs for the low-level, non-violent offenders and detainees with serious mental illnesses that comprise the vast majority of the system’s population, and seeks to prove the jail’s population can be safely, rapidly and radically reduced with existing resources and at great savings to county taxpayers.

A report released by the ACLU in September painted a stark picture of unacceptable levels of violence in the jails, including reports of deputies beating handcuffed detainees, injuring some so badly that they ended up in intensive care. The report also showed retaliation against inmates to be an acute problem. Several prisoners have been severely punished for meeting with representatives of the ACLU, which is the court-appointed monitor of conditions inside L.A.'s county jails.

“The reign of terror we’re uncovering in the Los Angeles County jails is unmatched by any of the hyper-violent prisons and jails across the country we have investigated,” said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “The brutality there is so blatant and routine that the deputies carried out a vicious beating in full view of a court-appointed monitor. The court needs to take immediate action to ensure the protection of prisoners.”

A copy of the ACLU’s sworn statement, as well as that of the beating’s other witness, is available online at:

http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/declarations-esther-lim-and-christopher-brown-regarding-january-24-2011-beating-twi[4]

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