the next on the whistle blowers john kerry, also talks with a manual. lewis, who blew the whistle on the handling of prisons and personnel during the covered pandemic. do stay with our to international bye a. the coded in government's responses to cope. it will continue to be a subjective debate for a very long time. did the virus come from a lab? was it a biological weapon? did it leap from an animal to a human? these are all questions that will likely never have a clear answer to. but what do we do know, is that for leadership at all levels of government and in the private sector resulted in the unnecessary illnesses and depths of an untold number of people. and there were very few places where the situation was worse then in prisons. i'm john

kerry. ok, welcome to the whistle blowers, news . 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 in my personal writings, i regularly discussed the situation in american prisons and jails, which is in many cases 3rd world. the united nations has named the us practice of using solitary confinement as a punishment, for example, to be a form of torture. that's not our topic today today, our topic centers around very poor management of prisons management that is so poor that the lives of both prisoners and staff members was put at risk. and rather than admit to a mistake, many prison and jail administrators simply double down and refuse to admit that they were wrong in the way that they handled the covet pandemic. today we're going to tell you about a human disaster that unfolded in dallas, texas, and about a single detention officer who stood up to administrators and blew the whistle as

loudly as he could. they were joined today by emmanuel lewis. he is a detention service officer at the suzanne li, case detention facility of the loose stair at justice center in dallas, texas. it was emmanuel lewis who brought a class action lawsuit against the dallas county sheriff, alleging the sheriff allowed conditions in the county jail, but promoted the spread of coven 19. and put the officers at extreme risk. emmanuel, thanks for being with us for so happy to have you. thank you for having me, john. the us media were replying with articles about the rapids spread of code 19 through the us prison system at every level that is federal, state, and local. throughout the pandemic, prison or death spiked and many prisoners who were considered to be a low threat were eventually released to serve the remainder of their prison sentences at home. but prison employees were not so lucky they had to remain on the

job. and as more and more of them got sick, the ones who weren't had to work double and triple shifts further exposing them to the virus. emmanuel, take us back to the start of the coven pandemic. what was the initial response by prison administrators and the sheriff to the outbreak? yeah, initially we are a lot of incarcerate and getting sick and also workers were getting sick and the initial response is there, there was no response. we weren't given mask, we weren't given sanitizers, were even told, don't put on any mask because it might suit the inmates the incarcerated. they also did not have any mass. there was no father of our safety and the incarcerated safety. i can recall a lady being forced to go into a tags that was quarantined. that means they had the co would virus. and she was

worried about her for young kids. and that she had her home and she started crying and knowing that she might bring that home to her little kids. many detention officers were forced to work 16 hours shift for 5 or even 6 consecutive days at a time. but again, they were often exposed to the cupboard virus, which was raging through the prison and jail systems in dallas detention officer. portia bookman was one example. she didn't want to work these long ships, but she was forced to and then 19 days after being forced onto the schedule, she died of cove it. she was just 36 years old, 5 days earlier, detention officer, darren finney also died of cove and leaving 2 young children behind. what was the response from administrators went intention, officers began dying. what did they do to protect your health? there was no response. we kept on having to do these mandated days and we were

warning them and telling them that we could not do it and that more people are going to get infected. more people were gonna get sick at the jail. there's a lot of incarcerated that over stay there time. they're supposed to be out, and yet they get lost in the system and they don't get out in time. we had one gentleman who was in their past his time for 5 years without even going to court. the good lord. several detention officers told the media in dallas that they had been forced and intimidated by the sheriff into working 5 consecutive days of 16 hours ships at a time. one became so exhausted that he crashed his car on his way home after the 4th day. and he was almost killed, a doctor then recommended that all detention officers have at least 12 consecutive hours of rest between ships. but that never happened. and in fact,

the officer involved in the crash was told that if he wouldn't work the 16 hour shifts, then he wouldn't work period. so what happens then? the threats continued. and we weren't even allowed to have time off to go to the doctors to see if we were infected to see if we had cove it, they did not take our temperatures, they did not test us. people were afraid to say, you know, they had toby because their time, we're not even a be approved off and you get threatened to be written up. can you expand on that a little bit? what were the actual punishments? what was the fall out that you had to endure? a lot of it you get threaten with right ups and you get threatened with losing your job all the time that you do not do what they want to do, even if it's a violation of the labor law, even though you know that you cannot do your job in there's tank in these tanks,

there's up to 64 incarcerated. there's only supposed to be $48.00 folks in there. and what they do is these tanks lot were built for minimum security. what they do is they throw the medium security and their maximum security the in there, and they behavioral observation in there. and you're in there exhausted and not able to do your job and manage a tank with so many people you made a comment to the dallas media that i think is very important. you said this quote, the inmates aren't getting quality care if they're in a fight, they're not getting quality response time. that's not good for their safety. they're not getting cleaning supplies, they need, they're not getting to go to court when they need to on quote, to me, that sounds like the entire system was falling apart. was it rectified in an appropriate manner and what was the response from the administration?

and there was no response, we were short staff, 160 officers, and that means you know, you can't feed correctly. you can't watch the medications correctly when the nurse comes in, you can get them in court. a lot of the services out, you know, sanitation, you know, getting them uh, you know, boxers and you know, pants. uh, it's just uh, created a really on just unfair system. and what they were also doing is they were using some of the immigrants to do a lot of the cleaning. so you'd have a, a tank going to quantity co would, and they would just shift these incarcerated around. and then they would have immigrants come in and clean up the theses clean up the fuel clean up the mats that they don't change often enough. and which is great in this environment where everyone was getting infected were there any depths among prisoners?

we know that there were death, certainly among staff. what about the prisoners a year before i spoke up a year before all these best starting to happen because i was known that this was going to happen. and then we started to have some debts and they didn't release this information right away. we had to find out later as we're speaking with a manual lewis, a detention service officer at the dallas jail, louis had the courage during the cubby pen demik to grab the bull by the horns and lead a federal lawsuit alleging that administrators put the lives of staff and prisoners at risk for no apparent reason resulting in multiple death. we're going to ask him about that last week when we come back, stay to the. 2 2 2 2 2 2 the

position i would suggest in belgrade was suggesting that we send americans and the bridges on the drain and put on your bill is us. one of them of move dining probably. now, now about seeing that it's done, or when you see it, all the owners will tell you that it will save you from esl classes in the middle. if it is what i need to file a post post and this was always does. in this one is not as a guide, you know, so or sit emotional around noon. it may be, you know, a lot less radioactive. the something is active uranium, but still it's radioactive. it has toxins that the kid killed the laptop. you want me to go and see what he's of us here. again, let's see the echo seats. the boeing good. i don't know those image mold was suggesting we pharma fell great. the web bill. call us

what they were just the church. there's no end in sight over how you're going to continue to destroy the or it's just the case for them most. most of the people i tried to go to the gym, but i'm certainly not ready to fight russia. this is also absurd. this is the 3rd world lunacy re washington, as for so the funder lion likes to say, we have the tools while we just start with stability and business deals, which allow me something living on that we have fairly quick propaganda. you know a price here in new york. i think we don't know the aftermath any time that you're not allowed to ask questions, you should ask all of the questions. the more questions ask the better. the answer is will be the

1941 with the nazis health relation, ultra nationalists. the u. astonishes the claim, the independent state of croatia. shortly off, the seizing power. they build the scene of us concentration camp a place associated with the was the trustees committed in yugoslavia during we'll go to use dash is use the cam system to isolate and exterminate subs, roma, jews, and other non catholic minorities and political opponents of the fascist regime. conditions in the scene of us come with her renders the gods tortured to arise and the prisoners. they sent them a consultation temps. so most of them died. it was incredible genocide. the

welcome back to the whistle blowers. i'm john kerry onto were speaking with emmanuel lewis, a detention service officer from dallas, texas, who believe it was still against the sheriff's department handling of jail facilities and personnel during the cupboard pen demik emanuel, thanks again for being with us. thank you for having me. john. emanuel you testified in a federal class action lawsuit against the dallas county sheriff in 2020. i know whistle blowers, i know a lot of whistle blowers and i know a very, very few who are brave enough to take on their bosses in federal court. no less, while still serving under them. how did you come to the decision to take this action? did you do anything before going to court? did you make any internal complaints? yes, i made a lot of internal complaints and filed it all the way up and the only to be ignored. and then one day i saw

a flurry of activity that they were trying to do some cleaning of that. they were trying to bring in sanitation. they were trying to change some of that. and then i learned that there was a, a lawsuit going on between the management and incarcerated, and that there was no one speaking on behalf of the workers. so i saw this as an opportunity where i can get my input as lot of the solutions, as you know, john, it comes from the people that are on the ground that see the problems and can offer solutions. what was that response? when you went with the proposed solutions, where you at least entertain, did they at least listen to what you had to say or did they literally just ignore you? yeah, they literally ignored me and then they started to retaliate against me. i wasn't able to get my vacation time, and when i finally got my vacation time,

they told the fellow workers that i took time off that i wasn't approved. it was a divide and conquer kind of strategy. they would yell at me over the radio to make it look like i was doing something wrong. and we had a lieutenant mentioned that she didn't care about no, a, c, l, u, she didn't care about. no court see didn't care about any lawsuits. and she said this into the detail meeting were myself in about 40 to 50 other officers for good grief. you also filed a class action lawsuit in state court in which you made some very specific allegations. in part you said that the sheriff's policies put both officers and the incarcerated at extreme risk. there was no social distance thing in the jail. the 64 person pods were filled to capacity. there was poor hygiene and inadequate cleaning. there was no cove in testing for either staff or prisoners,

and those officers who did test positive had their workers compensation claims denied. in fact, one dallas county, human resources representative proudly declared that he was denying 99.9 percent of workers compensation claims related to coven. how in the world was this allowed to happen? what explanations did you and other detention officers receive? we'd receive any explanations. and the state joined against us and lot of it when your work or are incarcerated, there there's no where to go. if you have any kind of concerns, you can go up the chain and can command risk in to be retaliated against. and still at the end of the day, nothing gets done. and what happened, what i was working there, i became discolored. i never had all this discoloration before and

no, and now it was heart failure. so i was working at the jail with heart failure. oh my god, what a story. this is the federal judge who heard the case and who heard your testimony told you to let her know if you were punished or retaliated against in any way. after you appeared in her court, you had only been on the job for 7 months. at that point, so this was a huge risk for you and as it turned out, the sheriff's office did retaliate against you. tell us about that retaliation. yeah, a lot of the retaliation is just denying my time denying for me to go to the academy . because i was eligible to become a sure deputy trying to pay other workers and offers officers against me. they sent deputies to one of my neighbors. that was one of my support systems

to make it seem like i was doing something wrong. just a really abuse of power to make an example of me for me. i was able to get employment lawyer and all these things. a lot of these other workers like they don't know how to, you know, do some of these things. i know how to do so they're just trying to make the seem like a, you know, example. and when you go to try to get your, your claims. all your claims filed, the vendors that they use. it's just delayed delay and nothing gets resolved. and where are you now in the process? i currently have a employment case and that's scheduled for 2024. what was good about the state case? we got management to have to do their deposition. so we have a lot of those depositions. there's some other litigation going on with the female staff who, even though they weren't there 152030 years, they were told that they couldn't have the weekends off. no longer problems are put

to outsource, outsource legal council, which millions of millions of dollars are being spent on this. even the a c l. you said if you guys had just worked with us a little, we wouldn't have had to do some of this endless litigation. so besides the se, oh you case, your case is still ongoing. and state court of the state case was that was eventually dismissed. but the result of that state case was we were able to get the management the under deposition which they didn't want to get on the deposition. so we have this, these depositions, and i have that information. a lot of them. there's links to it on the, on the internet of these depositions where they, where they say they didn't prepare, they didn't know they didn't inform. that's what it says over and over on these depositions. and what's the status of the federal? so the one that the c o u is involved in the they see issue i'll say to what they

did with that one is they drag it out for so long that there was incarcerated, are no longer in the jail. so it was dismissed without prejudice. so that one will be re filed at another point. you are 100 percent, right. emmanuel, were you the only one or did you find that your colleagues wanted to join you and all of this? uh yeah, since i was a class action suit, i was representative of the 1000 workers. so eventually there were folks i did want to join it, but going forward, people that wanted to make employment claims against the jail. a lot of times they could not find an appointment lawyer. the e o c was taken all these claims and they were also not doing anything. there was no union that was actively advocating for us. my attorneys went to the

union and said, hey, we'll work with you. we'll bear much of the costs. we have the resources. will you partner with us? a lot of times when there is a local union and outside union may come in because they don't want to step on toes . i reached out to some outside unions that were also very interested in helping us . but since there was a local union, they were not able to assist us. and lastly, i, i'd like to say about the solutions. the solutions are need advocates toward the jail media tour in the jail elected officials toward the jail management toward the jail. a lot of the people that are trying to make decisions on the j o, they were never inside the jail. the elected officials and management will get tired of touring the jail and they'll address on these issues. we need a monitor like over in mississippi and lot over in riker's and those jails learn from other states of what they're doing. so when i went to incarcerated with my

loved one or a worker has a problem, they can go to an independent monitor the f. b i has had to call being called in a lot. at our jail. there was over $700000.00 worth of commissary, which was stolen. and as you know, john commissary is very important at the jail. so the incarcerated, we're bringing these complaints to us and nothing was being done. we'd forward off the complaints and then they started blaming each other and thinking other people stole their id, sold their information, and was starting to steal the commissary the air quality at the jail is very bad. the mold is very bad. people when they go into the jail, they're not searched a lot of them as a worker going into the jail. and by 3 years in total that i've been there, i was never searched. so you're breathing in all this toxic air and there's

a lot of work is that made complaints about that as well. emmanuel lewis, thank you so much for joining us to. this is an important story. incredibly enlightening. i have said many times on this show that psychologists tell us that for reasons that are really not entirely clear whistle blowers have an unusually well defined sense of right and wrong form or define. then among the general public. for most whistle blowers, life is not shades of gray, it's black and white right and wrong. the situation in the dallas county jail was clearly wrong, staff and prisoners. a light were fortunate to have somebody like emmanuel lewis standing up for them. that's what was the blowing really, is all about. i'd like to thank you, manuel louis for joining us today and for telling his important story. and thanks to our viewers for being with us for another episode of the whistle blowers, i'm john to reaku. we'll see you next time

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word some formulas. what was the last it also need you to keep it to you that the it's the tivo moves do it all. well, does he put his 9 push the 6 of the, give him, what feel a do it, cuz he doesn't do those thousands of testimonies of crimes and the impunity of criminals. when you look on here, you know, wanted to do to speak of the did i tell you? yeah, for the good i see it or released upon me they decided to do, please don't just do because i was being yes. i was looked at the wound along the take a fresh look around his life. kaleidoscopic isn't just a shifted reality distortion by power to division with no real opinions. fixtures designed to simplify will confuse who really wants

a better wills. and is it just because it shows you few fractured images presented to this, but can you see through their illusion going underground? can the look forward to talking to you all that technology should work for people? a robot must obey the orders given by human beings, except we're so shorter is a conflict with the 1st law show you live in justification for should be very careful about personal intelligence at the point, obviously is too great. uh, trust rather than shit. the area, i mean with the artificial intelligence, we have somebody in the team and the

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at least 20 civilians are reported. they killed in gaza city as intense as really a tax focus on the northern part of the embattled enclave. or ron blames israel for a wave of air strikes on northern syria, which reportedly left more than 3 dozen people dead in the city of a level as the death toll from the moscow terror attack rises to 144. the western media focuses on the heavy handed arrest of the suspects . they look back at the notorious and torture of prisoners by the us themselves. at abu ghraib and a rod was subjected to relentless torsion dogs was sentenced. they stripped us naked except for shorts.