That poor woman. I can hardly imagine the trauma of such an experience, to be raped and then abused so badly by her own government.

I can understand paperwork snafus happen, but you'd think any half decent police force and DA would release her under the circumstances, get her address, and issue a court summons later.

And the idea that the jail doctor can deny a person medical service when they're incarcerated... what a horrible notion. A refusal from a pharmacist in the free world is bad enough, but when you're in jail, after having been raped, and have no other option?

Outrageous!

Heads should roll over this.

... for about a quarter (keep the change).

From the St. Petes Times: "Debbie Carter, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Office, which runs the jail, said she couldn't comment on the situation because medical information is private. But she said medical service policies are set by Armor Correctional Health Services, which contracts with the jail."

Obviously what happened to this poor woman is appalling, and I do hope she sues, rejecting all settlements so there is a day in court resulting in a public record. (Truth is that she's probably already in the process of settling. No doubt the Tampa PD and the corrections company is throwing money at her right now.)

But this brings to the fore the further degredation of our civil liberties at the hands of privitization of public arenas. Really, the City of Tampa has no jurisdiction over it's own jails? Really, public laws promote and public funds are spent to send people to a black hole covered by corporate policies instead of civil laws? Think about the implications of that.

Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if the vendor has indemnity written into it's contract.

I would encourage people to examine who is given what is effectively a letter of marque by their counties, states, etc., which allows corporate governance of civil rights. Hell, residents of Tampa should consider pushing a suit against this vendor for making tax payers liable and raising the county insurance costs.

This is actually a very big deal with huge ramifications related to those of the legal ambiguities surrounding private contractors in Iraq. Privatization doesn't just save taxpayer money: it throws away wide swaths of the public arena and the civil laws which cover it in favor of corporate policy.

As an officer in a medium sized police department, I can say that it is within officer discretion to check anyone we come into contact with for warrants. In our system (I don't know how Tampa's works) you don't just randomly find out that someone has a warrant--you have to actively have them checked through the state and national computer system. You then have to have the warrant confirmed before arresting a subject.

It would be unthinkable for me to check a victim of a crime, particularly a victim of a violent crime (even if s/he were known to me to be a frequent suspect in criminal activity) for warrants at the moment of crisis. At that moment, arresting that person is not my primary responsibility, helping them is.

If it somehow came to my attention that they had a possible warrant, unless the warrant was for a violent felony that demanded immediate attention, I would notify a supervisor and advise the person that they had a warrant out there that they needed to take care of. An old warrant for owed fines would certainly fall under that category for me. It would in no way be as urgent as the victim's current situation.

Now if a supervisor for whatever reason ordered me to arrest them for the warrant, I would have to do it, but you can be sure that all documentation would show clearly who gave the order. Even then, there is leeway on how the arrest was handled. The person can be released on a copy of the charges, or a judge contacted to make an emergency bail determination.

If the Tampa police department and jail has a standard operating procedure (SOP) that is so rigid that officers have no choice but to 1) check all victims for warrants and 2) confirm and serve the warrants no matter what the circumstances and 3) jail the person once the warrant is served with no other alternatives, then the people working in those departments are trapped within a system of inflexible rules. The departments that produced and enforced those rules should be held severely accountable, and hopefully the SOP changed to allow more use of officer or supervisor discretion.

If the decision to treat the victim so inhumanely was a personal use of officer and supervisor discretion and they had other options under the SOP, I hope they are held personally liable both on the job and in court.

No victim should face such treatment.

And thus should STILL be dismissed from her job. It is plain obvious that they are now using that whole "jail worker was not permitted to give medication to inmate" BS to sweep this under a rug. It's an attempt to cover their tracks and to allow said zealot or zealots in that system continue to force their religious beliefs on others for detrimental reasons. The jail worker's conduct should still be aggresively and thoroughly investigated and he/she should still be dismissed.

It takes a certain mindset to:

1) make a bunch of unpaid parking tickets more important than investigating an A felony and getting medical attention for a victim of violence, and

2) set up your jail health care system so that EC is not immediately and automatically available to every female inmate who requests it.

This is Tampa, folks - home of the piously cruel, the sociopathic believers, the bush voters.

I am quite sure that in this case the system worked precisely as it was designed to: a female who had sex was punished.

The only thing that will get through to them is a multi-BILLION dollar lawsuit that literally shuts the city down.

I wish I were a lawyer. I'd take the case for free.