Antonio French, a St. Louis blogger, in a post today noted the difference between the way rich white socialite Paris Hilton was treated by our justice system, and the treatment received by Lavonda Kimble of St. Louis, who was young, black, poor, and because of the way she was treated by the judicial system, dead.
Mr. French wrote:
One woman — young, white and wealthy — is sentenced to serve 45 days in jail for probation violation. After serving only three days of her sentence, she complains about a tummy ache and is set free to serve the remainder of her sentence in her mansion.
Another woman — young, black and poor — is arrested for a traffic warrant and even after her boyfriend posts bond, she remains in jail. When she has an asthma attack in her cell, she receives substandard medical care and dies that night.
PARIS HILTON
Oh come on, you knew it was going to happen didn't you? You knew there was no way that poor li'l rich girl Paris Hilton was going to have to serve out her time in the slammer.
Barely five days after she arrived at the Los Angeles County jail, she's back in her By Sue Hutchison
Mercury News
San Jose Mercury News
Article Launched:06/07/2007 10:42:20 AM PDT Barbie Dream House for the remaining 40 days of her sentence, sporting an electronic monitoring bracelet (Gucci?). Reports are that she had some sort of medical condition which prompted her early release. At this point, it's anyone's guess what it is. Dandruff? An unattractive rash from the chafing of her prison-issue jumpsuit?
We know she didn't contract anything from her cell-mate because she didn't have one. The Associated Press reports that her jail accommodations were in the "special needs" division which is separate from the other un-pedicured miscreants. (Can you even imagine Paris' "special needs" in jail? Just the shampoos alone boggle the mind.)
Home-confinement chez Hilton is pretty plush punishment for violating probation, as Paris did when she was caught twice early this year boppin' around in her Bentley despite having had her license suspended for alcohol-fueled reckless driving. As her clubbin' buddy Britney would say, "Oops! I did it again!"
Considering all the other injustices and crises in the world such as, oh, the continued mayhem in Iraq, global warming and the alarming failure of so many of our public schools, it seems awfully frivolous to give a rat's posterior about the trials of an airhead celebutante. Why waste the energy?
Maybe it's because the Hilton-irritant seems like something that should be very manageable. She's a blond mosquito who so needs to be swatted. How many times have you seen that ridiculous commercial of her making love to a cheeseburger and thought, "Can't we at least throw this bimbo in jail?'`
Of course, there are legions of Paris' fans who think she's being treated unfairly. These are the same people she insulted on her Web site by posting a get-out-of-jail-free petition that claims her lasting gift to humanity is bringing glamour and excitement into their otherwise `mundane lives.'
I don't get it. My first reaction when I saw that petition was, "You know what would brighten up my mundane life? Send Paris to Gitmo!"
Yet, apparently, she got a gazillion signatures on that thing.
So, in a world turned upside down by celebrity obsession - and Paris is a celebrity mainly for being a beautiful, rich do-nothing - it makes twisted sense that she would get off with mansion-arrest.
There was one moment during this fiasco when our gal Paris had a chance to actually learn something and impart it to her fans. She showed promise when she was interviewed on the red carpet at the MTV awards, just before her incarceration, and said she was ready to be strong, do the right thing and serve her time like a good little inmate.
Now she's probably getting her electronic bracelet fitted with diamond studs while she has a margarita out on the sun deck.
Who knows, maybe she'll end up having Scooter Libby over for a pre-jail spa day, if he goes to jail at all. Paris can give him tips on how to avoid that sort of inconvenience.
LAVONDA KIMBLE
Barriers, blunders blamed in death
By Heather Ratcliffe
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Jun. 07 2007
ST. LOUIS — A delay in letting paramedics into the city jail and "substandard"
emergency care by staff there may have doomed an inmate who suffered an asthma
attack, according to a blistering report by the fire department.
One of the paramedics who treated LaVonda Kimble early April 11 wrote of
commonly encountering delays and apathy on calls to the St. Louis Justice
Center, at 200 South Tucker Boulevard.
And autopsy findings obtained Wednesday showed no trace of the drug that jail
nurses said they repeatedly administered to ease Kimble's breathing.
The reports were obtained with a court order by John Wallach, a lawyer
representing Kimble's family in considering a wrongful death lawsuit. He shared
them Wednesday with the Post-Dispatch.
"People don't generally die of an asthma attack when they go to the hospital,"
Wallach said. "I fully believe our evidence will show if she was treated
properly, she would have been fine."
Sam Simon, the city director of public safety, pledged to learn more about what
happened, and about the medical care provided under contract for more than $5
million a year by Correctional Medical Services. The Creve Coeur-based private
company has come under heavy criticism in Missouri and elsewhere for years.
Kimble, 30, the single mother of a 12-year-old child, wasn't supposed to be in
jail in the first place.
Her boyfriend had posted bond for her about 6:30 p.m. on April 10 in Bel-Nor,
which had a traffic warrant against her. That was about four hours after her
arrest by St. Louis police. But a release order went to the wrong jail, a
mistake that wasn't corrected until she was already dying.
Kimble fell ill about 10:20 p.m. According to jail records, she received three
separate treatments of Albuterol, a medication to ease breathing, before she
collapsed at 1:25 a.m.
Firefighters from nearby Engine Co. 2 arrived at 1:40 a.m. and began CPR. Medic
5 was five minutes behind, but spent seven or eight minutes thereafter waiting
to get in, according to a report by fire department paramedic Chastity Girolami.
The delay was "detrimental to the patient's outcome," Girolami wrote.
She said firefighters told her they had arrived to find nurses trying to
perform CPR by compressing Kimble's stomach instead of her chest.
Girolami noted that when medics asked a nurse if she had used an automatic
defibrillator to try to restore Kimble's heartbeat, "She just looked at us and
asked what we were talking about."
The jail care was "substandard at best," Girolami wrote in her report.
She also wrote that a corrections officer distracted paramedics with questions
about their ID numbers while they struggled to save Kimble's life; the medics
twice asked jailers to back off.
"She kept persisting and finally my partner informed the staff that this
patient was in cardiac arrest and basically dying, and they would have to
wait," Girolami wrote. "The staff was surprised at this. They didn't know the
patient was in cardiac arrest."
Kimble was rushed to St. Louis University Hospital, where she died at 2:44 a.m.
"This experience at the Justice Center was by far my worst," Girolami wrote.
She complained, "Every time I've been to the Justice Center, it takes 10 to 15
minutes to even get to the patient. There is never anyone to guide us and never
any sense of urgency."
Her report was one of a variety of documents Kimble's family has gathered in
preparation of a wrongful-death lawsuit.
The autopsy report shows that corrections officials asked for and got a special
toxicology test for Albuterol, and that none was detected.
Wallach said the medical examiner plans to send samples to an outside
laboratory for further testing.
"If, in fact, she was not given Albuterol, then the official records are
false," the lawyer said, "If that's the case, LaVonda's civil rights were
blatantly violated and it led to her death."
An internal investigation concluded, "There was no evidence that the Division
of Corrections violated any policies or procedures."
But Simon, the public safety director, said Wednesday there will be an
investigation to reconcile reports from the fire department, corrections
department and medical examiner.
"We need to conclude our investigation and determine what happened," Simon
said. "What I know is these are just allegations at this point."
Ken Fields, spokesman for Correctional Medical Services, said he could not
comment on a specific patient.
However, he insisted that the jail's medical staff is trained to properly
administer life support techniques, including CPR and use of automated external
defibrillators.
"Our services and equipment are in keeping with the standards of care in the
community," Fields said. "All nurses at CMS are licensed by the appropriate
entity and are qualified to provide the care they are asked to provide."
2 comments:
Wow.
That is so messed up.
So very messed up.
I feel this incident was just horrible and I believe the Corner and the Paramedics. But what you have to understand is it is the policy of the Correctional center to request identification from everyone that enters that center. Yet it shouldn't taken as long as it took to let the paramedics in to save this inmates life. I don't mean to be cruel by using the word inmate but when you are incarcarated you are considered a even if is for a short period of time. The fact remains the same what the medical staff did was just was blatant disreguard for human life. I feel everyone involved should be terminated especially the medical staff and the supervisors that were on duty and that person that their time asking questions about the Identification. Once everyone was identified the paramedics should've been given the okay to enter.
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