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Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Thursday 4 July 2013

St Louis Prison guards 'forced inmates to have gladiator-style fights with other prisoners for entertainment' -


St Louis Prison guards 'forced inmates to have gladiator-style fights with other prisoners for entertainment' - 



Inmates in St Louis have revealed that they were forced to fight each other in order to entertain prison guards.
Now thirty inmates want to join the existing group of eight who have filed a federal lawsuit against the prison guards at the Medium Security Institution on Hall Street as they claim they were baited into fighting one another for their keeper's amusement.
Five guards were named in the suit and they were said to be the ones who forced inmates to fight in 'gladiator-style combat'.

The Fox 2 News reports that the lawsuit came out of a city investigation into inmate abuse.

One victim: Former inmate Derrick Rodgers is one of the growing group of convicted criminals who is now suing the city for $150million

In one instance, an unidentified inmate was seen leaving another prisoner's cell with his clothes completely shredded and in tatters.
'Individuals who were put in solitary confinement were not supposed to have contact with any other inmate but what was happening was the guards were actually taking inmates out of the cells, placing them in cells with other inmates, and forcing them to fight each other,' attorney Daniel Brown told CBS St. Louis.
The civil rights lawsuit against the city  was filed last year asking for $150million in punitive damages based on the claims of eight men who either have been released from the Medium Security Institution- known as 'the Workhouse'- or who are still serving out their sentences.
The list has grown dramatically, however, but the city does not feel it adds any weight to the claims.
'From when he first got in there he was telling me he was doing fights and stuff like that,' LaDonna Pitchfort, whose son Frankie Edwards is serving a sentence in the prison.
The suit names two former guards- Dexter Brinson and Elvis Howard- who have since been suspended, and the other three guards are only identified by their last names as the inmates do not know their first names.
That has not deterred Mr Brown and his clients, who feel they have evidence on their side.
'We know that that is not true of course because we got the video and at the end of the day, once jurors see that video, I think they’ll be with us,' Mr Brown told CBS.


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The United States Department of State spent $630G to boost Facebook 'likes' -


The United States Department of State spent $630G to boost Facebook 'likes' - 



The State Department spent more than $630,000 on advertising campaigns to boost the number of Facebook "likes" for the agency's pages on the website, according to a report released by the agency's inspector general.
Between 2011 and March 2013, the agency's Bureau of International Information Programs used the funds on advertising to increase the number of fans for each of its four Facebook pages from 100,000 to more than 2 million, according to the May report.
The program was initiated after the bureau expanded the agency's presence on social media by setting up Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and blogs targeted at foreign audiences, the report states.
The report found that many employees in the bureau were critical of the advertising campaigns and felt that the agency was "buying fans" who may have once clicked on an ad but have never engaged further.
Defenders of the initiative argued that advertising was needed to increase visibility because of the difficulty of finding a Facebook page using the website's general search tool, according to the report.
The inspector general's report recommends that the State Department bureau reduce spending by focusing its advertising on specific public diplomacy goals and not on raising the number of Facebook "likes" on the agency's pages.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at Wednesday's daily press briefing with reporters that the agency currently spends $36,000 a year on the Facebook outreach program.
Psaki said the initiative continues to target "a broad range" of people "living internationally" and that the bureau behind the program is working to implement inspector general’s recommendations.
"We take the valuable feedback of the [Office of Inspector General] seriously, and we’re committed to addressing the recommendations and the concerned outline – concerns outlined in this assessment," Psaki told reporters.


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