2013/11/22

“You just took over three years of my life.”

NEW YORK — A young teenager spent three years in the infamously violent Rikers Island prison complex without ever being convicted of a crime, according to RT.

Kalief Browder was on his way home from school on May 14, 2010.

He never expected his life to be ruined at that very moment.

It happened when a cop approached him and placed him under arrest.

Kalief had no idea why he was being arrested and when he asked, the cop claimed it was because he “stole a back pack.”

Three years after being locked in a prison without any conviction, it would come to light that Kalief never stole anything, and was most likely scooped up from the street by police to fill a vacant prison cell and meet arrest quotas for the day.

Kalief had no way to get out, and he was eventually transferred to Rikers Island.

The charges of theft were eventually dropped, without explanation, on June 2013.

“No apology, no nothing,” Browder said about his release to local WABC.

“They just said, ‘Oh, case dismissed. Don’t worry about nothing.’ What do you mean, ‘Don’t worry about nothing?’ You just took over three years of my life.”

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After two years into his unlawful kidnapping and imprisonment, police told Browder they would release him if he pleaded guilty and admitted to stealing.

He did not take the deal because he did not want to falsely admit guilt for a crime he never committed.

It could be that cops knew they had arrested an innocent boy the whole time, and offered him this “plea deal” so that they could have an “official” confession from him, giving the appearance that the original arrest was justified.

But the story gets much worse.

While inside Rikers Island, Kalief was consistently beaten, starved, assaulted, and psychologically tortured by guards to the point that he had suicidal mental health issues afterwards.

Rikers Island has become notorious for having a large percentage of rape, torture, and self-mutilation.

Raw video footage from the prison shows a guard joining with other inmates as they circled around Kalief and pummeled him while he was on the ground.

A guard is seen among gang members beating and kicking Kalief.

Another clip shows a guard suddenly tackling Kalief to the ground and beating him while he was handcuffed.

He was also denied meals, left malnourished in a cell.

They also forced him to spend more than 400 days in solitary confinement, not knowing whether he’d ever get to see his family and friends in the light of day again.

The officers also would not allow Kalief to continue his education, forcing him into a state of total ignorance and isolation from the outside world.

What started out as a typical day walking home from school, all led up to this — and all because a police officer apparently wanted to meet an arrest quota.

During those three years that Kalief was being isolated and tortured, we guess this police officer was living comfortably, eating home cooked meals,  sleeping in a warm bed, collecting his paychecks from the government in exchange for his participation in the prison industrial complex. Perhaps he loved all those times when his friends would thank him for being a “protector.”

Did he ever stop and think about what was happening to the innocent boy he locked up?

“We need someone to be held accountable,” Kalief’s lawyer told the Huffington Post.

“This can’t just go unnoticed. To the extent that Kalief can be financially compensated — although it’s not going to get those years back for him — it may give him a chance to succeed,” he added.

UPDATE (6-7-2015)

We are shocked and sad to report that Kalief took his own life this weekend.

The pain and anguish he was feeling after being kidnapped randomly and trapped in a prison, isolated from his friends and family, with no hope of escape — perhaps nobody can comprehend what that must have felt like.

This is Kalief’s story:

Below is the footage of Kalief when he was still alive, speaking out about the police who kidnapped him: