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Lost and alone Saturday, Mar 15, 2008 By Doug Thompson Forget the lack of food, water or a toilet. Imagine being locked up alone for four days. There's a reason solitary confinement's the ultimate punishment in prisons. Even a hardened criminal in solitary knows a plate of food will be shoved through a slot regularly, though. There's that daily assurance that somebody's out there. They haven't forgotten you. You haven't been left to die. Adriana Torres-Flores didn't have that. She was left in a Washington County holding cell by accident from Thursday until Monday. For all she knew, she was never getting out and would never see her three children again. So I recognize, dimly, the horrors involved. With those horrors in mind, I don't believe that Torres-Flores' treatment was made more likely by her national origin, her ethnic background or immigration status. I also don't believe that any of those factors make this blunder any less terrible to the people in the sheriff's office. Not everybody agrees with me: "Frankly, that's how they treat Hispanics down here. They treat Hispanics like cattle, like less than human," Roy Petty, Torres-Flores' immigration attorney, told the New York Times about his client's ordeal. Locking somebody up in a cell for four days and forgetting her isn't typical treatment of anything, even of cattle. Use the most cynical interpretation here. Locking somebody up for almost 100 hours could easily have killed her. Suppose Torres-Flores had been diabetic. Screams, if they can be heard at all, can be heard whether they're in English or Spanish. It is simply not believable that people heard Torres-Flores and ignored both her and their self-interest, much less their humanity. It's equally unbelievable to think they intentionally locked her somewhere she couldn't be heard and abandoned her. It's very believable that a camera has been installed to monitor the cell and a light put on to show when somebody's in the cell - wherever she came from. Andres Chao of the Mexican consulate in Little Rock described the sheriff's 30-day suspension of the bailiff who forgot Torres-Flores as "unacceptable." I understand his indignation but don't agree with it. The evidence points to a terrible, freakish accident here, not deliberate abuse of a Mexican national. Firing the bailiff won't help make Torres-Flores whole or make the same terrible mistake less likely to happen again. That's what the light and the camera are for. Nobody's life should depend on one person's memory. Sacrificing the bailiff would have been much safer politically. Sheriff Tim Helder's decision to suspend this deputy without transferring or firing him shows his confidence that prejudice or cruelty played no part. The bailiff must be aware he won't have another chance if he ever makes a mistake like this again. On the other side of this particular case, claims by some that Torres-Flores "won the lottery" and will get rich at county taxpayer expense are both callous and wrong. In a country where people have sued for millions for not having enough good sense to properly use a ladder, Torres-Flores' ordeal is something altogether different and more severe. She earned every penny she's likely to get. At some point, she would have traded all she had or would ever get to be let out of that cell. According to news reports, Torres-Flores has lived in the country illegally for 19 years. She was charged with selling illegally copied DVDs and CDs at a flea market. So what? That doesn't make the harm done to her - nor her right to compensation - any less. All these factors do is put some serious legal bargaining leverage on the county's side in the settlement negotiations, to be callous about it. She's worse off for being in the country illegally, not better. The person in that holding cell could have been the mother or the child of any of us. Torres-Flores suffered for finding the pit any one of us could have fallen into. She deserves some compensation. If this can be settled by dropping the charges against her and giving her the legal right to stay in this country where she's lived already for 19 years, then the price is a small one. --------- Doug Thompson is a Fayetteville-based reporter and columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and the Morning News. His e-mail address is dthompson@arkansasnews.com. |
