A Glimpse At A World Of Zombies

Published: Feb 15, 2008

As callous and mean as the images of Brian Sterner being dumped onto the floor of a county jail were this week - and everyone on this planet now has seen the incident replayed over and over - that wasn't what got to me.

It was the other faces, the other people in the brief video, who went on about their lives as if Deputy Charlette Marshall-Jones was just dumping the trash, which in their minds might have been what was going on.

They might have been zombies, although I don't remember seeing zombies grinning like that one deputy was in the footage. Zombies, as I understand it, just plod along, doing their undeadish work without showing any emotion.

Since everything we do these days is apparently on somebody's camera somewhere, there is going to be, as they say, a full investigation. Sheriff David Gee, who had the good fortune of being out of town so he didn't have to face the media right off, has apologized.

He has said he will turn the whole mess over to the state attorney's office. Cameras do lie. They don't always tell the entire story. Maybe there is more to it than a deputy unceremoniously dumping a quadriplegic onto the floor of the Orient Road Jail while several others appeared to ignore or casually watch the incident.

For now, I can't help but focus on the bystanders: those deputies and workers who took it all in stride, who didn't step in and say, "Hey, what's going on here?"

It's Not My Job

It's bad enough we live in a nation where getting involved is too often not the thing to do. Sometimes I think that's why so many of us wander around with cords hanging from our ears, plugged into music so that we don't have to deal with the reality around us.

We spend chunks of our lives in the cocoons of our automobiles, windows up, stereos on, and the rest of the world is like a silent film outside.

On the other hand, we pay to have people deal with the real world. We expect law enforcement and fire rescue workers to be focused and responsible for what is going on around them. We trust doctors and airline pilots and anyone else who deals with our lives to be responsible and at least professional.

We expect someone like that would say, "Hey, this is wrong," and then do something about it.

Dumping Grounds

I suppose we gave up on our jails and prisons a long time ago. They have become, as Sterner literally found out, dumping grounds where apparently you are no more than human garbage.

I've been almost as guilty. Not too many days go by I don't get an envelope stuffed with pages of handwritten material from an inmate in Hillsborough County. The pages are filled with detailed references to that inmate's experiences in jail, along with the news that he has been unfairly charged.

When I get these I go back and check the records and usually find that the writer has been locked up for multiple reasons and generally for a string of violations.

I received one this week from an inmate who wrote that he is diabetic and went on to describe how his treatments have been messed up in jail, and he identified correctional workers and how they had abused him.

These are letters that are easy to dismiss, or at best taken to an editor to deal with it or not.

Then once again you look at that awful video, watch the zombies plod around the victim lying alone in a pile, and realize you have to do a better job.