John Kristoffer Larsgard – Consistent Sabotage
Dear Reader,
At the risk of putting this Norwegian citizen at greater
risk of harm than he already is exposed to in Arizona state prison, let us look
more closely at what we know since his prison sentence began. I would like to
tie this to what is happening now, however, in part due to its urgency. See,
“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate,” as Paul Newman put it in the
film, Cool Hand Luke. Kris has
sought to argue, since he was first placed in the Navajo County Jail, that he
required medical attention – care, treatment and medicines he did not receive.
He has, since, also sought to argue that his sentence was excessive. He has
tried to study the law and has written his own motions (in English) to achieve re-hearing.
Meanwhile, both prison administrators and medical care authorities have
consistently sabotaged both his physical and mental well-being for no other
purpose than to disrupt and ‘route’ his efforts, causing them to come to
nothing. You can try to draw another conclusion from what I write here, but it
is hard to argue that every prisoner is treated in this way. Sure, no one is
perfect, but no one deserves to be treated as Kris has been in the time between
September 24, 2011 and today.
Let’s start with this month, January, 2016. Kris was seen by
a medical professional who confirmed on January 12th that Kris
should be kept on the pain and anti-seizure medications he has been taking,
including methadone. You know methadone is habit-forming, similar to heroin and
is used to treat heroin addicts? Apparently, methadone helps Kris with the
constant pain he has experienced since the “spinal cord injury of 2013” which
occurred in Arizona prison. The professional also recommends updated imaging of
the cervical and thoracic spine and recommends he see a neurologist. Other
suggestions for possible spinal cord care were encouraged in the letter report.
Yet, on January 19th, he is brought from the
detention unit he was in to an observation room where he is confronted by the
nurse who earlier sabotaged his care in April of 2015 at another prison,
Florence prison. The prison had discontinued two of his medications and he had
complained, which was why she was seeing him. She indicated she had
discontinued the two medications because she ‘did not believe they were
appropriate treatment’ for him. She also said she was discontinuing methadone
because “you just want drugs.” (Note the Catch-22.) Kris states that he tried
calmly to tell her that the drugs were actually helping him function and
without them he was in excruciating pain. The nurse then tells him that this is
“decided” and that Kris will have to learn to ‘function without drugs for
pain.’ She indicates they will (again) send him to a pain management specialist.
Kris says he just saw a pain management specialist who suggested the
medications be continued. The nurse indicates that that appointment was
irrelevant – because she had not been the one who requested it.
The nurse emphasizes again that she will not give him any
medications for pain and adds, “But you can grieve my decision because I know
you like to file grievances and lawsuits.” The nurse then continues, stating
that she will be removing Kris’s wheelchair. Reader, his walker was already
removed from him on December 1, 2015 – why? Because he was being sent into a
detention unit, similar to solitary, which has nothing to do with a person’s
need to, well, actually walk around their room, if at all possible. The nurse
then suggests he ‘learn to walk’ and insinuates that Kris did not have a spinal
cord injury when, in actual fact, all the professionals involved in his surgery
in 2013, as well as the one who wrote the letter one week earlier, recognize
that he does. Kris then realizes that the nurse has had no intention of
treating him by arranging this ‘appointment.’
Kris tells her that when he has a walker, he uses it, and he
also needs a wheelchair – so he can go more than a few yards at a time. He
mentions that he knows he will need that because he has a court appearance
within about a month, a case he has managed to get some assistance with to
file. The nurse insists that (despite the fact that Kris will continue to be in
the custody of the state at all times), he cannot keep his wheelchair, and will
have to figure out how to manage to get to court and appear there without it.
As she tells him, to the following effect, ‘I’m just not going to allow you to
believe and portray that you have an injury to people when it’s not true and
hurts my colleagues.’ Kris begins to check out – I mean, he begins to lose
control, is crying, is having flashbacks of being on the floor for three weeks
at Yuma prison, and finally some other prison administrators arrive. Kris in
the wheelchair has been slammed back against the wall, you see. He is worried
about his neck as a result. Another medical nurse arrives, who presses on his
neck, supposedly to prove that no new injury has just occurred. Kris is then
seen by a psychology associate and returned to his cell.
What you have just read makes as much sense as Lewis
Carroll’s Jabberwocky: “’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble
in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves and the mome raths outgrabe. ‘Beware
the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the
Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.’” Well, reader, should we go
on? Into the heart of going crazy?
What would drive you crazy – or anger you to the point of
being made crazy? Having an extremely serious injury, caused and exacerbated by
those in control of you, people who not only decided intentionally to permit
you to suffer with it, but also made it impossible for you to get well or get
better – and who would also make it impossible for you to make your case, that
you did not belong there or, at the least, required consistent medical care and
pain management? And what if you thought you were in a new ‘home’ but they kept
moving you around? What if, every time they moved you, you were not permitted
to keep almost anything you had managed to acquire? This would include things
such as paper, notes, books, research, your own writing? What if you were moved
sometimes in the middle of the night, awoken and told to prepare to be taken to
a new location, a new cell? What if you were told you could bring nothing with
you? And everything you were working on in order to make your case was, as a
result consistently taken from you? What
if, when you asked for those items, you were told they were “lost”?
Let us descend to another level of the hell that Kris has
managed, to date, to survive in the Arizona prison system – how, you say? By
reviewing his transfer record of course. It’s in black and white. Granted, some
of those transfers are related to his need for medical attention, but, as his
mother puts it, “I know that many of the moves were because he had such
torturing pain. Then they would move him to isolation and say it was
psychiatric. At one point, he got psychiatric medications from a psychiatrist,
but these were not for Kris – they gave him terrible nightmares.” Liv
continues, “And in one case a health worker took Kris for a talk. He said to
Kris, ‘But how do you feel’. Kris said the pain and spasms were so bad that it
would be better to die. The worker said ‘You are not allowed to say anything
like that. I will have to start a disciplinary case again you for saying that.’
And they did – they made a disciplinary case out of that, put Kris in isolation
– of course in pain without medications. This is just an example of how they
operate.”
So what does the Arizona prison
system think is the reasonable care of a human being, a Norwegian who drove
wrongly down the wrong street, tried to turn around and leave and instead,
scared some kids and got his nose broken by a local bully? The following year,
the local prosecutor got a special award for his efforts to enhance community
safety and security.* (*See earlier blog posts in this series for more
information.)
With his nose broken, Kris was jailed in Navajo County jail,
beginning on the afternoon of September 24, 2011 in Winslow. His bail was set
to $1 million dollars for that alleged crime so he was effectively trapped.
Seven months later he was transferred to the Arizona state prison ‘reception’
facility at Alhambra. And here begins the dramatic, incredible and
heart-breaking list of his transfers to date.
Transferred May 10,
May 21, June 20, July 16, July 20, October 28, 2012
On May 10th, 2012, Kris was transferred to
Lewis-Stiner prison, then on May 21 to Lewis-Bachman, on June 20 to
Yuma-Cibola, on July 16 to Yuma, CMU, on the 20th back to Yuma
Cibola, and on October 28, 2012 to Yuma CMU, the isolation unit.
This October 28th transfer to the Yuma CMU unit was
because, as Liv puts it, he was, on October 25th suddenly attacked
from the back by an unknown person who kicked his head causing him to fall
down. He was in such pain, but the doctors would not prescribe pain medication.
He was therefore sent to isolation without medications. Liv believes this
attack was arranged for by the health care provider at the time, who was miffed
at Kris’s repeated ‘Health Need Requests,’ written and submitted by Kris.
It was at this point that Kris had the seizure that resulted
in his falling backwards in his cell on December 3, 2012. One deputy warden
told Liv they could see how much pain he was in after this and told the medical
administration – who did nothing.
Transferred December
19 & 26, 2012
Finally, on December 19th he was transferred to
Tucson – Rincon unit, a medical unit where they claimed he was faking being
ill. This month he was in ‘mental health watch,’ which meant Kris could not
possess any writing instrument, and therefore could not write complaints and
requests for care he wished to write.
Finally, on December 26th he was transferred to
Tucson – Winchester. On December 30th 2012, Liv got her first phone
call from Kris in which he told her he was very ill. While at Winchester, he
was unable to walk and had little feeling in his left hand and side. As a
result, some inmates there borrowed a wheelchair and helped take care of him
themselves.
Transferred January
1, February 6, 2013
Finally, on January 1st, 2013 he was – literally -
dragged to medical care. He was given a CT scan and sent immediately to the
University of Arizona Medical Center for emergency surgery. After surgery he
was guarded in the hospital during post-operative recovery. There he was
threatened with violence by one guard monitoring him after Kris, while trying
to re-adjust himself in bed, bumped the TV remote control the guard had left
there, causing the channel to change while the guard watched TV.
On February 6, 2013, he was released from the hospital and
transferred to Tucson prison’s health unit.
Transferred May 9,
May 10, May 14, 2013
Then, in May, 2013, he was transferred 3 times, from Tucson
prison’s Whetstone unit to the Rincon health unit and then to the Rincon
psychiatric unit, a unit reserved for the seriously ill psychiatric prisoners,
also not Kris and not a medical unit.
Transferred June 22,
June 25, August 6, 2013
Kris’s next transfer occurred a bit over a month later, on
June 22nd, 2013, to Rincon SNU Unit M. There he was, according to his mother,
‘disappeared’ for three days. Later, he told his mother how they came in the
evening, stripped him naked and put him in an isolation cell. The walls and
floor had excrement and blood all over them. Kris asked for a blanket and was
given a rug covered with blood. The guard then said, “You are not worthy to
have anything else.” This was done, he was led to believe, according to Liv, as
a retaliation for his having spoken to the Norwegian reporter from VG, the Norwegian
newspaper, for a short interview on June 14, 2013.
On June 25th, 2013, Kris was transferred back to
the Tucson Rincon psychiatric unit, not an appropriate placement for him, where
he spent most of the summer. He was then transferred to Tucson’s Manzanita Unit
on August 6th, a medium-security prison designed to “help inmates
prepare themselves to rejoin the wider community.” There, he was kept for the
next 7 months, during which time he was to wear a large neck-body brace-girdle
he had gotten after his surgery. He was also supposed to be seen by a
neurologist and a pain specialist.
Transferred March 12,
March 12, March 12, March 12 & March 13 2014
After an assisting attorney filed a motion to secure Kris’s
re-examination, which was not happening, he was transferred on March 10, 2014
for a CT scan at the University of Arizona Medical Center. After that exam,
Corizon health personnel stated they had decided that Kris was now completely
well and did not need any medical care. They wished to send him to Yuma prison,
where his neck was broken in the first place. During one single day, while Kris
contemplated being returned to his former place of torturous ill treatment (the
three weeks on the floor place with no medical assistance or examination – see
Blog post 6), he was transferred to 4 different units in a period of 24 hours.
That was March 12, 2014. First, he was sent to Tucson’s Whetstone prison, then
to Tucson’s Complex Detention Unit, then back to Whetstone and then to the
Rincon psychiatric unit (which was inappropriate for him). These transfers were
effected in what is called in Norwegian a ‘glattcelle’ – a cage designed to
protect persons from hurting themselves or others - such as those which, in
February, 2014, were judged by the state of Norway to violate human rights. The
day after the 4 transfers, March 13, 2014, Kris was sent to the Tucson
Manzanita Detention Unit, a solitary style holding cell. Here he was kept for 5
days.
Transfers and
attempted transfer March 18, March 27, March 28, March 29, March 30, March 31,
2014
On March 18, 2014, the Arizona prison system tried to
transfer Kris to Yuma prison. Kris was chained onto a bus headed for Yuma. On
the bus, Kris had a seizure, in part due to having been taken off of his
medications. “Fortunately,” writes Liv, his mother, “the bus had rubber mats on
the floor.” The bus returned Kris to Manzanita where an ambulance was called.
Kris was then taken to the hospital in Tucson where he received necessary
medications and was then sent back to the detention unit at Manzanita prison.
It was just a few days later on March 27th that
they again came, early in the morning, to Kris and told him they were taking
him to a neurology appointment. Kris was then taken directly to Yuma prison
without any appointment.
As Liv says, “Yuma prison is like a death sentence for Kris.
They have just a small hospital and no medical unit. But since Corizon reported
him completely well and in no need of medications, he was being sent into a
no-treatment situation.”
Of course, things could not go well for Kris here, who
needed both medications and regular medical care. One day after arrival, he was
transferred to Yuma’s Dakota C unit, the next day to Yuma’s Dakota CLOS unit,
the next day, March 30th, 2014, to Yuma’s Dakota Isolation unit and
the next day to Yuma’s La Paz unit. Here, he managed to live in one room for 17
days in a row.
Transferred April 17,
May 2, October 18, November 3, December 25, December 26, 2014
On April 14, he was moved to Yuma’s Dakota unit again. Here,
he managed to live for 14 days in a row before being moved again to Yuma’s La
Paz unit. Here he managed to survive another 5 ½ months before being moved to
Yuma’s Dakota unit again, where he stayed until November 3, 2014 when he was
finally transferred away from Yuma, to Florence prison East unit.
But, sadly, it was at the Florence prison that the local
health providers (Corizon health) began their determined efforts to remove him –
again - from necessary pain medications and treatment, using persistent efforts
to sabotage his health, both physically and mentally. From Florence’s East unit
on November 3, he was transferred on December 25th to Florence’s
Kasson M unit. Then, back again on December 26 to the Florence East unit.
Transferred April 27,
2015
January, 2015 lead on to February, March and April. On April
27, 2015, Kris was transferred to the Eyman prison’s detention unit. This
transfer was brought about by Corizon health staff after stopping Kris’s pain
medications on April 21st. But why was he transferred? He had an
appointment with a pastor of the Norwegian Sjømannskirke (Seamen’s Church, with
worldwide locations, this pastor from the church in San Francisco), a meeting
that was approved and set up for the morning of April 27, 2015. When the pastor
arrived, Kris was not there – because he had been transferred away in the early
morning hours – in other words, in the middle of the night. This visit from a
representative of a Norwegian state organization, whose primary duty is to lend
comfort and support to Norwegians around the world, was intentionally sabotaged
by Arizona prison authorities.
Transferred May 20,
May 25, June 4, June 26, June 29 & July 6, 2015
From Eyman prison, he was transferred about one month later
to Lewis prison’s detention unit, and 5 days later to Lewis’s Stiner unit, then
11 days later to Lewis’s Buckley unit. This was on June 4, 2015. There, he was
able to call Liv, and told her he was warned by some prisoners that Corizon
staff had told lies about him – in order to make some prisoners take him and
hurt him. Liv felt lucky that Kris had
just recently been given the right to call her, which right had been denied for
about 5 months. Liv reported what Kris said to an attorney who assisted him and
contacted the prison, where Kris was sent into detention, which they felt was
an effort to save his life.
On June 26, he was sent to Lewis’s Bachman unit and 3 days
later back to Lewis prison’s Stiner unit C. Making it 4 transfers in about 4
weeks, he was transferred to Lewis prison’s Morey unit on July 6, 2015.
But let’s give the Arizona prison system a break here. They
were after all attempting, on July 1st, 2015, to respond to a major
prison riot uprising at the Kingman prison complex, where the prisoners were
not fighting each other but against inhuman prison conditions. As a result of
this uprising, a total of 2,404 inmates had to be moved quickly to some other
prison, so there was a lot of shuffling.
Transferred August
25, 2015
Kris managed to live in one place at Lewis prison for 6
weeks before being moved back to Tucson’s Manzanita unit on August 25, 2015.
Since November 28, 2015, Kris has been refused calls to his
mother. Since December 1, 2015, he has been held in Tucson’s Manzanita
Detention unit, similar to an isolation unit. On that day, his walker was from
taken from him by prison authorities.
***
And now, reader,
we’ve come full circle. Would you like to remind yourself where we are? Go to the top of this blog and start reading
it again. That’s where we are. Nowhere. Disappeared. Denied his medications and
the equipment he requires for physical exercise and mobility.
So why go through this listing of all of his transfers? It’s
all just facts, so what. There is nothing special about it. Yes, some transfers
occurred in order to provide better care for Kris, but many seem pointless or
cruel for someone with physical handicaps, handicaps brought on by and within
the prison system itself. The reason, from my perspective, to dwell on these is,
in part, to recall that, at almost all times, Kris was attempting to write and
challenge both his sentence and the condition of his treatment, care and
medication. At all times, these transfers removed all materials he had managed
to assemble while attempting to make these efforts and did not return them nor
let him keep them, regardless of how harmless those pieces of paper were,
regardless of how harmless those law books were that his mother bought for him,
regardless of how his notes were written by him and he had a right to keep
them. At no time was this permitted to occur, and the system of sabotage of
Kris’s efforts was effected easily enough – by walking around his human rights,
by transferring him repeatedly and consistently. By sabotage.
According to a general dictionary, sabotage is any willful underhanded
interference with a cause, an intentional undermining of a cause. It’s usually
found in the law of war, but perhaps we are in a war here. After all, synonym
verbs include: disable, vandalize and cripple, all things Kris has experienced
under the detention and at the very direction of Arizona prison authorities –
repeatedly and repeatedly.
Kris was, as a result of these conditions, unable to be
effective in reviewing and contributing to his own appeal, already taken and
denied despite serious problems in the district court’s record. We are also
talking about transcripts from that court disappeared, the denial of access to
transcripts, and files disappearing. We are possibly talking about serious
corruption here. Anyone interested?
***
In my next installment, I hope to discuss more fully the
Arizona prison system’s prisoner population, release possibilities and update
you on the new hell he will surely face as he prepares, hopefully, to go to
court on his own behalf to discuss his treatment and care, as well as his
sentence. In the meantime, I am requesting that more attorneys in prominent criminal
law practice and immigration practice in the federal district of Arizona and/or
9th Circuit Court of Appeals consider assisting Kris in his efforts.
These should include efforts to achieve early release under Arizona’s own
statute, “Release to deportation at one-half of sentence imposed,” ARS sec.
41-1601.14, designed to release inmates who are foreign born into the custody
of their native country. This should bring U.S. federal authorities and the
state of Norway into a discussion – and a capacity for action on Kris’s behalf -
due to the coordination needs for such a release to be effected.
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