Just when I thought Florida could not possibly surprise me with anything
as awful as the Trayvon Martin travesty of justice; I come across this
story that left me speechless. This poor man appears to have been
arrested for having a stroke while being Black.

I also wonder at the title of the article. The use of the word "inmate"
to try and minimize the awfulness of what really happened? He was a man
having a stroke and he was arrested and left to die on the floor of a
jail cell because the officers assumed he was just a trouble maker
instead of someone having a medical emergency; Not a goddamned "inmate".
Why did the arresting officers not recognize obvious stroke symptoms?
Why was he arrested instead of given medical care at the scene of the
accident? And in Florida? Accidents caused by medical emergencies are
not that uncommon down here with the millions of retirees driving around.

Allen Daniel Hicks Sr., 51, was found stopped in his car on the
side of Interstate 275 by a sheriff's deputy and a Florida Highway
Patrol trooper the morning of May 11, 2012. Passers-by had called 911
after they saw Hicks' Chevy Cavalier swerving west into a guardrail,
records of the incident show.

Speaking incoherently and unable to move his left arm, Hicks was
arrested on a charge of obstructing a law enforcement officer when he
did not respond to commands to exit his car. Just after noon, he was
booked into the Orient Road Jail.

Hicks did not receive a medical screening, but was put in a cell
where he lay facedown on the floor or tried to crawl using the one
working side of his body. On the night of May 12, soaked in his own
urine, his brain choked of blood, he was at last taken to Tampa General
Hospital and diagnosed with an ischemic stroke. He slipped into a coma
and died within three months.

This is simply outrageous! There are two systems in this country and
until such time as this is addressed we cannot move forward as a
society. To continue to pretend that we are somehow a "post racial"
society is non-productive and absurd. I'm sure there will be people
right here on this site that will somehow try and excuse the behavior or
pretend it would have happened had he been a White guy. The same people
that just can't understand why Black folks are bit angry at the
treatment they receive in our "post racial" society.

Lunsford noted that he "did not detect the odor of any alcoholic
beverages" on Hicks and that he was "behaving in an erratic state … when
asked for his driver's license he picked up the lid to the center
console and dropped it closed." Hicks continued to claw at the console
until Guzman reached inside it for him and retrieved his wallet.

Lunsford and Guzman became worried when Hicks did not obey commands
to show his hands and exit the car. Seeing that Hicks' left hand was
drooping into the side pocket of the driver's door, the officers pulled
their handguns.

Hicks still acted befuddled, saying to Lunsford, "that's a
9-millimeter semiautomatic gun that you have," the report states. After
ascertaining Hicks was unarmed, Lunsford and Guzman pulled him out of
the car through the passenger door and handcuffed him.

Florida is rapidly becoming a third world police state whose blood lust
and fever for slave labor has made it dangerous to be poor or Black or
female or anything other than old and White and male. I wish I had an
answer but until such time as we start a conversation I don't see one
coming anytime soon. But yeah, just an "inmate" so nothing to see here,
move along. Victimized first by law enforcement, medical staff and
finally by the newspaper after death. What have we become?

http://tinyurl.com/obtxjl8