Why was my neighbor just tear gassed? It’s November 11, 2024, 10:52am. My neighbor here in Red Onion State Prison, these three solitary confinement cell blocks, was just tear gassed for the most absurd reason, which is typical here, where White guards don’t use force because they need to, but rather because they want to. And they look for any pretext, or none at all, to justify these gratuitous assaults on the defenseless, predominantly Black, prisoner population.
I was alerted to the situation when I heard a Sergeant Rosenbaum at my neighbor’s door, telling him to take a piece of paper off his light. There was no obstruction of view, no visibility inside his cell. Then came the pretext for force. He was ordered to submit to being put on strip cell. That is, he would be put in an empty, unheated cell with no clothes except boxers. He did not cooperate. Instead, his responses throughout the entire exchange consisted of such statements that he had paper on his light, “because they was poison gas coming from the light.”
It was apparent that mental health staff, not violence, was the most appropriate and humane response, if any, to the situation. But of course, no one from mental health was summoned. Instead, the notoriously racist and abusive Lieutenant Joshua Mackengill [unclear] was called to the cell, bringing with them a 12.5 ounce canister of mace. This being the same Mackengill who I’ve written about assaulting numerous Blacks and calling them racist names. Needless to say, my neighbor is Black. Only too eager to assault someone, Mackengill gave my neighbor an immediate ultimatum: submit to strip cell or gas would be utilized.
As my neighbor continued to talk incoherently, Mackengill gassed him. I stood watching this flagrant abuse of force, internally reasoning [unclear] that he had a piece of paper on his light with no reason to gas him. He was no threat, nor was the piece of paper. It was just a pretext to assault a defenseless man for nothing. Actually, covering one’s light is legally justified here at Red Onion, where the cells remain constantly illuminated, which is illegal by the way. As the Federal Court was stated, quote, “There is no legitimate penological justification for requiring inmates to suffer physical and psychological harm by living in constant illumination. This practice is unconstitutional.” That comes from the case Keenan v. Hall, 83 F.3d 1083, 1996.
Then, when they brought him out of the cell, blinded and choking from the gas, the guards tried to put my neighbor under a hot water shower as a pretended decontamination. Although the water, hot water in particular, does not decontaminate anyone of gas, but rather it reactivates and enhances the burning of the gas. This was actually admitted to me by a Captain Ingram on October 30, 2023 on his body camera at Virginia Sussex I State Prison. He reveals that Virginia guards are trained to use milk to decontaminate one of gas, not water, because as said, water reactivates gas and makes it burn more.
Ingram is a chemical weapons instructor at Virginia Prison System’s Guard Training Academy, yet nowhere in the Virginia Prison System are there any decontamination facilities. So, while gas is used almost daily in prisons like Red Onion, prisoners are never actually decontaminated. The courts have upheld that failing to decontaminate a prisoner after gas exposure is also unconstitutional. See Williams versus Benjamin, 77 F.3d 756, Fourth Circuit, 1996.
Worse still is these weapons are particularly dangerous, although officials attempt to play down their lethality. As I’ve written various times, tear gas, OC gas, et cetera, are chemical weapons much like chlorine gas, that have been banned from use of war under international law because of their torturous and dangerous effects. This, while the manufacturers of these weapons constantly enhance and upgrade their effects with little to no regulation, making them even more torturous and harmful, while operating under the false cover of these weapons being non-lethal and mild alternatives to other weapons.
I have witnessed and reported on numerous prisoners who suffered and died as a result of these agents. This is used [unclear] and with little to no justification, that just happened to my neighbor. And they’re placed in the hands of racist abusers like Mackengill, the Red Onion guard who obviously can’t be trusted to wield the absolute power given him over defenseless, even mentally disabled people, like my neighbor. This is Kevin Rashid Johnson, coming to you from within America’s Gulag Archipelago. Dare to struggle, Dare to win.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
