Alternative title: Bloomberg Is a Terrorist.

If you or anyone you know thinks Mike Bloomberg is anything less than a malicious scumbag with blood on his hands, let me introduce you to or remind you of Kalief Browder. Browder was a sixteen year old boy who was imprisoned for three years without trial, tortured, and driven to suicide all based on a false accusation of stealing a backpack. (This lost soul is far from the only person beaten, tortured, killed, driven to suicide, or left to die from neglect in New York City jails during Bloomberg's reign; this was par for the course.)

Jennifer Gonnerman wrote about Kalief Browder's arrest, detention, abuse, and eventual release in the New Yorker several years ago. One more black kid was swept up in Bloomberg's Stop and Frisk terrorism. Her work is well worth the read, so I'll only excerpt this description from Kalief about one of his first days in jail:

"Browder told me that, one night soon after he arrived, a group of guards lined him and several other inmates up against a wall, trying to figure out who had been responsible for an earlier fight. “They’re talking to us about why did we jump these guys,” he said. “And as they’re talking they’re punching us one by one.” Browder said that he had nothing to do with the fight, but still the officers beat him; the other inmates endured much worse. “Their noses were leaking, their faces were bloody, their eyes were swollen,” he said. Afterward, the officers gave the teens a choice: go to the medical clinic or go back to bed. But they made it clear that, if the inmates went to the clinic and told the medical staff what had happened, they would write up charges against them, and get them sent to solitary confinement. “I just told them I’ll act like nothing happened,” Browder said. “So they didn’t send us to the clinic; they didn’t write anything up; they just sent us back.” The Department of Correction refused to respond to these allegations, or to answer any questions about Browder’s stay on Rikers."

Again, I'll reiterate that this was the norm, and not just the abuse; an under-funded legal system, with too much red tape and not enough compassion, is designed to delay and delay and delay, until incarcerated kids like Kalief Browder, fed up waiting for trials (that almost never actually occur), plead guilty just to move on with their lives and get prison over with, even though they maintain their innocence. Full article here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-law

Sure, the case attracted a lot of attention, and I do recall Bill de Blasio getting frothed up during his tenure and making some attempt at reform. That should make everything right, white liberals may say! Shortly after, Gonnerman wrote a piece simply called Kalief Browder, 1993-2005.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/kalief-browder-1993-2015

One more life lost because Mike Bloomberg established and enabled terrorism in New York City.

May Kalief rest in peace.