Fatal Violence Erupts at Fulton County Jail - This Is Where They Want Trump
Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail is a terrible place.
Even without focusing on former President Donald Trump’s being booked there Aug. 24 for crimes related to questioning the integrity of the 2020 election, Fulton County Jail is a facility unworthy of a republic founded on Western values.
I recently wrote about how seven inmates have died in the jail this year and 15 last year. I need to correct that – there have been two more deaths, bringing this year’s total to nine.
Twenty-three-year-old Dayvion Devote Blake died following a Thursday stabbing incident, WAGA-TV reported. Three other inmates were hospitalized with injuries.
It was the fifth death in the jail in the month of August, the second this week. What’s more, 60 inmates died at the jail between 2009 and 2022, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
That’s right, 60.
On Tuesday, Samuel Lawrence, 34, was found unresponsive in his cell. After hospitalization he was pronounced dead. Just a few days earlier, Lawrence had sent a letter to a nearby federal court, pleading civil rights violations at the jail, according to WANF-TV.
“Can you please tell someone to check on me?” Lawrence said in a 12-page handwritten letter. “Get help. Get help, please. They’re hurting me in here.”
He complained of beatings from inmates and guards and being denied food and medical treatment, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“I don’t know how much more I can take,” Lawrence wrote in his August 22 filing. “I’m starving. I’m thirsty.”
While unconfirmed, other allegations made by Lawrence included guards providing him little or no protection from violence from other inmates and guards acting violently toward him when fear prompted him to refuse to return to his cell.
The U.S Department of Justice is investigating the Fulton County Jail, but its inquiries are limited to whether or not the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office is discriminating against inmates who show signs of mental illness.
Blake, killed in the Thursday stabbing, had been in custody since January on marijuana and cocaine charges and for a battery charge from another county, WAGA said. He had previous arrests related to reckless driving, receiving of stolen property and fleeing from and obstruction of law enforcement.
In December 2022, Lawrence was arrested on an arson charge, but after more than 200 days in jail, he still had not been formally charged, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said.
He was reported to have been suicidal.
Few expected Donald Trump to be incarcerated in Fulton County Jail; after all, what are the logistics of trying to jail someone with his own Secret Service detail?
Yet, bringing the former president into the orbit of the shameful Atlanta facility just focuses more attention on its horror.
While there is legitimate concern about how the incarceration establishment should deal with inmates with mental illness problems, there is a need for the Justice Department to expand its efforts to correct barbarian jailing practices.
Of course, some reveled at the idea of Trump being held at the Fulton County Jail. And no doubt, the squalor of alleged criminals in Atlanta brings to mind the political prisoners of Jan. 6 and the conditions in which some were reported to be.
And it deserves repeating that many inmates in a county jail are, in the eyes of the law, not guilty until admitting or proven otherwise.
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