"[T]he gov't has successfully protected another young person from the harm of marijuana."

[Lucille]

Is FLA the worst state for police and prison abuse? It seems like it, though it's hard to keep track. They all seem to be trying to out-do one another.

Balko: “More effort was spent cleaning the floor around the youth than attending to his welfare.”

Florida teen is arrested for small amount of pot, sustains a head injury after an incident with the guards, suffers a stroke, and dies in his jail cell.

...Eric Perez, who was detained after being arrested with a small amount of marijuana, died in the early morning hours of July 9 after spending most of the prior night hallucinating, vomiting, soiling himself and seeking help from guards who ignored him. The grand jury’s report, issued Friday, said Eric had been dead for an hour before lockup corrections officers noticed he had passed away. An officer stationed outside his cell had checked on him every 10 minutes without noticing his death.

“The only attempt to seek an outside medical opinion during the entire episode was two phone calls to the head nurse that went unanswered during the night,” the report, called a presentment, said. “The officers’ response to Mr. Perez’s hallucinations, instability and cries of pain were to simply observe him as he lay on the floor vomiting and defecating in his underwear. More effort was spent cleaning the floor around the youth than attending to his welfare.”...

The head injury apparently happened after an incident between Perez and some guards that the report calls “horseplay.” It isn’t clear from the report if the jury came to that conclusion from surveillance video, or if that’s how the guards described the incident. The important thing here is that the government has successfully protected another young person from the harm of marijuana. Perez will never smoke pot again.