"In Bay County, Florida, it's still 1963." Palm Beach Post's scathing editorial.

madfloridian

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Fri Oct-19-07 10:17 PM
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"In Bay County, Florida, it's still 1963." Palm Beach Post's scathing editorial.

This is a devastating editorial from the Palm Beach Post today. I know that the death of Martin Lee Anderson is under federal review now that the jury found the seven guards and nurse innocent. Maybe he will get some justice after all.

This editorial spares that county nothing at all.

In Bay County, it's still 1963

No one who observed the boisterous gloating in and outside of a Bay County courtroom last week would have thought that a child had died.

"We're on cloud nine," defense attorney Waylon Graham said, "and there's nothing sweeter than having eight not-guilty verdicts."

I was stunned at some of the statements they made. It is 2007, and some parts of this state are in the 50s and 60s in cultural mindset.

When Mr. Graham boasted after the jury's Oct. 12 verdict that he was going to party and "drink lots of alcohol and smoke a lot of big cigars," he clearly did not have in mind the 14-year-old boy whose death a year and a half earlier led him to court to defend a guard who had helped beat the teenager until he fell limp, into a coma and was placed on life support

Mr. Graham had a message for the governor after an all-white jury spent about an hour and a half deciding to acquit of manslaughter the seven guards who beat the black teenager at a juvenile boot camp and a nurse who stood by and watched the 40-minute attack: "I'd like to say to Charlie Crist: Put this in your pipe and smoke it."

In fact, Mr. Graham's message was aimed beyond the state's chief executive to, as he described during the trial, all outside "agitators" who dared meddle in his county. It was the same phrase white segregationists used in an effort to slur civil rights activists - especially from Northern states - in the 1960s. Its use was just as deliberate last week in small-town Bay County, where racial divisions and an influential network of good ol' hometown officials are on overt display.

Martin Lee Anderson was a 14 year old kid. He was beaten for over 30 minutes right after he went to boot camp...that same morning.

How small a town is Panama City? Just across the street from the courthouse where the guards and nurse are being tried sits the camp. Shut down like the rest in Florida after the video made national news, it sits abandoned, razor-wire gates rusty.

Tired of scenes of a boy collapsing and dragged upright again, I left and drove to where Martin lived. It is literally on the other side of the tracks, a scrubby street of ramshackle houses.

A few blocks over is the cemetery, the grass too high, fence sagging. He is there, flanked by stone angels, not a hero, not a monster, just gone.

What will the jury call what happened to Martin Lee Anderson? Sad comes to mind. And sorry. And wrong.

"Folks on both sides wore crosses around their necks..God was on their side"

The case is under federal review.

Federal Review Looms in Boot Camp Death

And a recent GAO review of all residential treatment centers showed some shocking facts. It is in pdf format.

Regarding Abuse and Death in Certain Programs for Troubled Youth

"We found thousands of allegations of abuse, some of which involved death, at residential treatment programs across the country and in American-owned and American-operated facilities abroad between the years 1990 and 2007. Allegations included reports of abuse and death recorded by state agencies and the Department of Health and Human Services, allegations detailed in pending civil and criminal cases with hundreds of plaintiffs, and claims of abuse and death that were posted on the Internet. For example, according to the most recent NCANDS data, during 2005 alone 33 states reported 1,619 staff members involved in incidents of abuse in residential programs."

Thanks to the Palm Beach Post for their editorial.