Teen Beat to death at boot camp, captured on Video

[GregFL]

Teenager lost his chance to finish turnaround
A teenager sentenced to boot camp was thriving at school, respectful at work, and - before the joyride - finally on track.


By ABBIE VANSICKLE and ALEX LEARY
Published February 12, 2006

St Petersburg Times
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


PANAMA CITY - Martin Lee Anderson struggled at school, so his parents sent him to the Emerald Bay Academy, a school that specializes in underperforming kids.

Martin thrived. He excelled at math. He won a leadership award. He bested his classmates at chess.

"He was a well-liked young man," principal Joe Bullock said. "He did not create problems or disruptions in class."

But just as everything finally seemed to be going right, Martin's young life fell apart.

Martin was charged with grand theft after he and a few friends took his grandmother's car on a joyride.

On Jan. 5, the 14-year-old Panama City teen collapsed during his first day at a boot camp run by the Bay County Sheriff's Office and the state Department of Juvenile Justice. He died at a Pensacola hospital.

Martin's death has brought attention to Juvenile Justice's boot camps and provided critics a prime example of what they consider the system's failings.

Last week, two legislators claimed that a video of Martin's final hours shows several drill instructors beating him in the boot camp's yard. The tape, which has not yet been made available to the public or Martin's family, so infuriated state Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, that he compared it to the Rodney King beating.

That comparison angered Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen, who called the legislators "loose cannons" who had done nothing but "add fuel to an already volatile situation."

* * *

Martin was born to Rober t Anderson and Gina Jones on Jan. 15, 1991. He lived in a tidy yellow house with green trim on Seventh Street with his mother and his sister, 13-year-old Startavia. His father and other family lived nearby.

Martin grew into a lanky teen who loved basketball, Archie comic books and Xbox. He never lacked for friends and was a leader among the neighborhood youth and at school. He wanted to play basketball and go to college, his parents say. He told his father he would like to drive a truck.

A poster of rapper Lil' Wayne is taped to his bedroom door. A phone next to his bunk bed still has his voice on the answering machine. A framed letter from a class assignment in November sits near one wall.

"I am like a shining star in the world," it reads in his tight, small cursive.

Martin begged his mother to let him get a part-time job at a Burger King in a convenience store on 23rd Street. He had wanted to earn extra money for shoes, a cell phone and to buy pizza and hot wings, she said. She relented, letting him work a few days a week.

"He worked harder than I've ever seen any 14-year-old do," said co-worker Debra Adams, 40. Martin often worked the early morning shift on weekends, something a less responsible teen couldn't have handled, she said. He regularly started those shifts between 7 and 8 a.m., she said.

He treated customers and employees with respect, addressing them as "Miss" and "Mister."

The idea of Martin acting up at the boot camp doesn't sit right with Adams. "I just can't see why they would have to restrain Martin," she said.

"He might have made one mistake, but he didn't deserve to die," she said.

That mistake was swiping his grandmother's car in June during church. While she sat near the front of the sanctuary, Martin, his sister and several friends slipped out of church and drove off. Their escapade ended when the car struck a pole.

Several months later, Martin broke his court-imposed curfew, and a judge ordered him to a boot camp, Jones said.

The family chose the local boot camp because it was only a few minutes' drive from their home. Shortly before he started his assignment, Martin and his mother met with a drill instructor. That's when Jones began to get a bad feeling, she said.

The instructor accused her son of being a gang member, she said.

"He said, "When you come in my house, you're on my rules,"' recalled Jones, 36.

On the day she dropped him off at the camp, they shared a final embrace. "He said, "I love you,' and the way he said it, he knew something,"' Jones said.

The next time she saw Martin, he was in the hospital. Blood was running from his nose, and it looked broken, she said. His body had swollen so much that the 140-pound boy looked about 300 pounds, his father said.

Jones said the family wanted to donate his organs, but they were told they were too damaged.

"Certainly, the family believes there was trauma," said the family's attorney, Benjamin Crump of Tallahassee.

Just what happened in the hours Martin spent at the boot camp, a single-story brick compound enclosed in a razor-wire topped fence, isn't yet clear.

Typically, a new arrival undergoes an evaluation by a nurse, a physical fitness assessment and an introduction to behavioral expectations by drill instructors, according to sheriff's spokeswoman Ruth Sasser. Some drill instructors are sworn law enforcement officers, she said, but it's not a requirement for the job. The exercise requirements and procedures are nothing out of the ordinary, Sasser said.

"It's very typical of any boot camp," she said.

That may be the problem, said Barreiro.

* * *

Boot camps arose in the mid 1980s as tough-on-crime attitudes swept national politics. In 1987, as Florida prisons began to overflow, then-Gov. Bob Martinez signed a bill creating the camps. The first one opened in Manatee County in 1993. Boys in blue prison uniforms ran obstacle courses, marched in the sun and shouted chants.

"I used to live a life of crime. Now I'm doing boot camp time," one went.

But critics arose almost immediately, wondering if the flashy salutes, shiny shoes and dozens of push-ups in the dirt could reform young criminals. One scoffed that all it would produce was a "well-conditioned mugger."

By 1995, lawmakers were revisiting the idea in light of poor performance reports. One study found three out of four recruits at the Manatee camp were re-arrested within a year of release. Another study in 1998 found 87 percent of graduates from Broward County's now-defunct camp had been re-arrested. Today, five boot camps exist in Bay, Manatee, Martin, Pinellas and Polk counties, serving 197 youths. They must stay for at least four months, but most stay six.

Barreiro has emerged as the most vocal critic, arguing that camps are failures built on intimidation and abuse. One of his central points is that recent reforms in Florida calling for less aggressive tactics with youthful offenders did not apply to boot camps.

"The DJJ has known for years that boot camps didn't have to meet the same standards," he said. "Why does it take a death to show that's a problem?"

Barreiro called for their end after Martin's death in January but it was not until the video became known that his cause took hold, drawing national media attention.

"They are dangerous, they don't change behavior and they cost a lot of money," he said.

There has been one other death at a Florida camp. In 1998, 16-year-old Chad Franza hanged himself at the Polk County facility. His parents won settlements from the county, the Department of Juvenile Justice and the camp's private health care provider.

Though advocates still back the camps, additional research and recidivism studies aid Barreiro. The Department of Juvenile Justice's records show that 62 percent of graduates are re-arrested, a rate experts call high.

"They're simply not effective," said Aaron McNeese, a Florida State University dean who has studied boot camps. "Everybody equates boot camp with getting tough. Whether it works or not, it looks good."

Backed by the video, Barreiro heads with confidence into Wednesday's meeting of the House Criminal Justice Appropriations Committee. He scheduled a workshop to discuss the camps and whether they deserve continued funding.

It promises to be a heated meeting. One former sheriff, Pinellas' Everett Rice, is now a lawmaker on the committee. Stressing he had not seen the video, Rice said, "I don't think we should throw everything out just because of one incident. I think they have been successful programs."

Perhaps a greater obstacle is Barreiro's counterpart in the Senate, Stephen Wise of Jacksonville, who has said he supports the programs.

"Every once in a while something happens," Wise said recently. "It happens in prisons. It happens in real life, too. It's a shame. We just have to make sure we try to fix it."

* * *

Jones is tortured by the thought of her son's final hours. The day she took him to the boot camp, his face looked as if he had been crying, she said.

She told him she had been crying, too.

It was okay to cry, she said, and promised they would see each other again soon.

[Antigen]

Here's what I posted in another thread on the topic.

This is the narrow topic that first smacked me upside the head and made me want to go looking for fellow Straight, Incorporated vets in the first place.

In 98, when Brother Jeb first took office as governor of Florida, I had already heard of Batty Sembler, I just had no idea she was affiliated in any way w/ Str8. In the spring of that year, Brother Jeb came out w/ his plan for Florids, the crown jewel of which was the promise of $100k in funding for juvenile rehab.

THAT got my attention! I knew Büsh and Reagan were virtually synonymous terms in the political lexicon. And I remembered hearing about Nancy Reagan's visit to St. Pete str8. And, as hard as I had tried to forget or to not notice, I never could manage to get all the Just Say No propaganda out of my mind.

And now we come full circle. This is what he promised. You Neocon psychophants please take note. This is what Brother Jeb promised you. You were damned fools to not look under the hood then. Please wake the hell up and take a closer look at that pig in a poke.

http://www.myflorida.com/myflorida/gove ... 05-02.html

After all, who wouldn't prefer Middle Earth, unless they've been corrupted by a Ring of Power?
Jeff Elkins; Tolkien's Libertarian Vision

http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... m=9#172633

May your days be joyously challenging and your words artfully true.
--Ginger Warbis

[Antigen]

On 2006-02-12 01:51:00, GregFL wrote:

It promises to be a heated meeting. One former sheriff, Pinellas' Everett Rice, is now a lawmaker on the committee. Stressing he had not seen the video, Rice said, "I don't think we should throw everything out just because of one incident. I think they have been successful programs."

Perhaps a greater obstacle is Barreiro's counterpart in the Senate, Stephen Wise of Jacksonville, who has said he supports the programs.

"Every once in a while something happens," Wise said recently. "It happens in prisons. It happens in real life, too. It's a shame. We just have to make sure we try to fix it."

Ok, who are these turkeys and who wants to lay odds on the degree of seperation between them and between each of them and spooky CIA/DFAF type ppl?

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
--Author: Sir William Drummond

[Antigen]

Well that didn't take long! First hit from google on '"Everet Rice" dfaf' turned up a quote from and a link to this:

MCTFT, Betty Sembler and Sheriff Rice The Multijurisdictional Counterdrug Task Force Training Office (MCTFT) trains law enforcement and military personnel in state, federal and local governments in America, and police and military officials in other countries throughout the entire world in combating the War on Drugs. The MCTFT is run by the US military through its mighty fighting agent--The Florida National Guard! Prominent on its advisory board is Betty Sembler, President, Drug Free America Foundation, James T. Moore, Commissioner, FDLE (Florida's state police), who has already teamed-up with Betty on at least one initiative and who is on the advisory board for DFAF, Mr. James McDonough, Director, Office Drug Control State of Florida who also sits on the Advisory Board of DFAF, Major General Ronald O. Harrison, Adjutant General of Florida (their national guard) and Sheriff Everett S. Rice, Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. The chairman of the advisory board is Captain Donald R. Martin, head of the training academy for the Virginia State Police. (The Virginia State Police has been a big financial supporter of the Straight-linked PANDAA organization.) MCTFT is headquartered at St. Petersburg College which was just a junior college when the agency was first located near Betty. In by-gone days we at the Oakton Institute have been openly critical of the US government's decision to host a federal program with international reach at a mere junior college. There is good reason to believe that that decision had been influenced because of MCTFT's ties to to America's First Family of the War on Drugs, Mel and Betty Sembler. In 2001 Florida state Senator Donald C. Sullivan (formerly secretary of Straight Foundation) proposed a bill to make Saint Petersburg Junior College a full-fledged university which subsequently it has become. Charlie Crist who is now Florida's attorney general played a role in the renaming too. It is now Saint Petersburg College and University Center. See more here.

http://thestraights.com/articles/bradbury-suit.htm

Who was that other guy? Oh yeah, Stephen Wise, Senator from Jacksonville. Who wants to bet he ran on the Green Party ticket?  

If you believe that people cannot be trusted to govern themselves,
then can they be trusted to govern others?
 
--Thomas Jefferson

[Antigen]

Shaw nuff, once ya get past the disinfo spam at the top of the list, you find this:

http://listserv.admin.usf.edu/listserv/ ... ws&P=20780

Sender: "USF-News List for announcements concerning the USF Community."

Hmm... There goes USF again! Isn't that where both A-Start and the Teen Screen are based?

...Comments: Debbie Sembler ...

"Appropriations - Subcommittee on Article V Implementation and Judiciary
Senator Rod Smith (Gainesville), Chair
Senator Dave Aronberg (Greenacres)
Senator Mike Haridopolos (Melbourne)
Senator J. Alex Villalobos (Miami)
Senator Stephen Wise (Jacksonville)

Well now, I guess she should keep contact with him, huh? More ya look the curioser it gets, don't it?

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
--Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father and inventor

[001010]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/02/17/bootc ... index.html

Friday, February 17, 2006; Posted: 2:47 p.m. EST (19:47 GMT)

Gina Jones, the mother of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson, says her son "didn't even have a chance."

 PANAMA CITY, Florida (CNN) -- Florida authorities released a videotape Friday showing officers at a state-run juvenile boot camp restraining a teenager, who collapsed.

Martin Lee Anderson, 14, died hours later and his family is blaming the state. They claim Anderson was choked, kicked and beaten by boot camp staffers.

"Martin didn't even have a chance," said the boy's mother, Gina Jones. "They picked on him so much 'til they murdered him."

The Bay County medical examiner ruled Thursday, however, that Anderson died January 6 from internal bleeding that resulted from sickle cell trait, which had not previously been diagnosed.

Sickle cell trait occurs when a person has one sickle cell gene. People with two of the abnormal genes have sickle cell anemia, which can lead to a variety of complications.

Anderson collapsed at the Bay County Sheriff's Office Boot Camp program on his first day there. He complained of having trouble breathing while running around a track as part of the entry process and collapsed. He died the next day.

The intake process at the facility is videotaped as a matter of policy.

The poor quality video -- which has no audio -- shows the teen and other youths doing push-ups before running around a small field. At times, uniformed officers pull some of the boys aside and place them against a wall, one by one.

Restrained against tree
Later, at least five uniformed officers appear to restrain a boy -- identified by his family as Anderson -- against a tree. A woman in a white coat, who appears to be a nurse, looks on for a few minutes before walking away.

The boy falls to the ground and the officers try, without success, to pull him up by his arms.

Later, Anderson is shown on the ground as the officers stand around him. It is not clear from the video what they are doing.

As they stand back, the boy is lying on the ground, limp. Staffers pull him up by his arms and try to get him to walk. Repeatedly, he takes a small step, then falls to his knees. His movements indicate he may be lapsing in and out of consciousness.

The boy finally collapses to the ground and the woman with the white coat appears to use a stethoscope before performing CPR as other officers look on or walk back and forth.

The incident on the video tape lasts for about 10 minutes before paramedics arrive and take the teenager away on a stretcher.

No bruises found
After viewing the video, medical examiner Charles Siebert said he did not consider the restraint measures used to be excessive.

"None of the physical contact I observed could have caused his death," he said. He added that his examination of the body found no evidence of any blunt force trauma or bruising.

Siebert added that trouble breathing is a sign of sickle cell trait, a condition which medical authorities say has no other symptoms. It would not have been caught by the screening done before Anderson entered the camp, he said.

After his findings, Siebert said, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement uncovered past incidents when Anderson became short of breath in basketball practice.

Anderson's family and supporters were skeptical of the medical examiner's findings and called for an independent investigation.

Family alleges teen was beaten
The boy's parents, lawyer and local politicians held a news conference after the video was released, accusing the officers of choking the boy and kicking him while he was ill.

"There is no justification for that," said the family's attorney, Darryl Parks. "These are grown men."

Gina Jones said authorities are trying to cover up the cause of her son's death. She said she couldn't watch the entire tape because it was too disturbing.

The sheriff's office said restraint measures were used on Anderson for being "uncooperative."

The FDLE has concluded its investigation into the incident and has given its evidence to the state attorney, who will determine whether charges will be filed.

A federal probe into whether Anderson's civil rights were violated by the use of excessive force is also under way, according to the U.S. attorney's office. The investigation was asked for by the boy's parents and local leaders.

Some want boot camps closed
After seeing the tape, Florida state Sen. Gary Siplin said he does not understand how the coroner reached his conclusion.

"We want the FDLE or the authorities to go and subdue and arrest those people who brutally beat, kicked and punched and choked Mr. Anderson, 14 years old," Siplin said.

Siplin and other African-Americans in and out of government want the boot camp facilities closed.

Florida operates five boot camps for troubled children as a substitute for prison.

Besides Anderson, two other black teens have died in boot camp custody, but Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said it is too early to call for the facilities to be closed.

"My heart goes out to the family," Bush said of Anderson's death. "This is the first time, I believe, that something like this has happened at a boot camp after many years.

"It's tragic, but to shut down the boot camps without having seen the investigation, with having seen what needs to be done, is a little premature."

[001010]

Of course they didn't find "proof"... what else is new? Wow.

[001010]

"My heart goes out to the family," Bush said of Anderson's death. "This is the first time, I believe, that something like this has happened at a boot camp after many years.

The first time in many years, he believes? Isn't that contradictory?  Regardless, does he not pay attention or does he just think that the entire US is blind?

[Antigen]

Who is it that was hawking Fussarium Oxysporum on the Hill most recently? Same sort of amnesea. Couldn't remember the trouble they had with that in Florida when they tried it and didn't seem to be acquainted with a single member of his own party who cared enough to clue them in.

...so lead me astray, turn on the boob tube I'm in the mood to obey...