American sheriffs seem to have a thing for getting their hands around poor families necks and squeezing and the Federal Communications Commission has been sitting on their hands watching for the past decade or so....
Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission closed the window for public comment on the “Wright Petition,” which seeks to cap the steep rates telecommunications companies charge for interstate calls made from prison.
The petition is named for Martha Wright, a grandmother in Northeast, D.C., who with a group of family members filed suit in response to the outrageous cost of calls to talk to her incarcerated grandson.
I could share the facts and figures on just how much of a jacking occurs with each call prisoner family members make, but let’s just put this way, the prison phone telecoms, and the local and state governments that profit, have grandma in the corner of the ring and are unequivocally beating the crap out of her for being foolish enough for try to keep the grandkid in touch with daddy. I’ve sat with grown men and watched as they have broken down in tears when they talk about the cost and impact these calls have on their families.
The FCC could have acted a decade ago, when this issue was kicked to their agency by a federal judge. The image I had in my mind when a group us went to meet with the FCC on this issue was that the petition was molding, on a block of ice, in a desk drawer, buried in recycling paper somewhere.
Why is this happening? Kickbacks. Straight up hand under the table, shadow tax, old Jim Crow poll tax, kickbacks. The local and state governments, think sheriffs, hell go ahead, allow yourself to stereotype and think Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane, bidding out the contracts to the telecommunication companies that offer not the best rates, but the highest kickback to pad their budgets.
So as a I read the comments in the docket it made sense that conservative, liberal, disability rights, media rights, even big telecommunication companies, and dozens and dozens of prisoners and their families wrote in comments arguing and pleading for action by the FCC. Who is on the other side raining down havoc on millions of families every year? Sheriffs.
Specifically the National Sheriff’s Association can’t imagine, can't believe, that people are upset by this.
To make matters worse, Sheriff Larry Amerson, the president of the National Sheriff Association, appears to have a thing for roughing up a handcuffed kid, when he made the mistake of visiting Amerson's jail on an educational trip. Video below the fold.
Sheriff Larry Amerson in action above. (he was cleared of wrong doing by a federal judge.)
And we wonder why Sheriffs don’t want prisoners to have contact with their families.
Read some of the comments from the docket
“My dad was the closest thing to me and I haven’t laid eyes on him since 1991 right before I came to prison, and now it’s too late… My father could never visit me in this cage because it would tear him apart to see me like this, and he was never much of a writer, so that left us phone calls spaced apart by years ‘cause we just couldn’t afford them.”- Christopher Abrams, Saguaro Correctional Center, Eloy, Arizona
“Due to the prices, bad connections, and dropped phone calls, this phone system helped destroy my marriage and cripple my family. In a time that my family needed me the most, to hear my reassuring voice and comfort that only the phone system could give. The phone system let me and my family down with all its outrageous prices my wife could not afford to keep up with life’s needs…” - Paul Gorden, location unknown
Will the FCC side with the tens of thousands of individuals and groups from across the political spectrum that have called for them to take action or are they going to continue to backup a bunch of bully sheriffs who have their hands deep into the pockets of working families?