Thread: Illegal dies in Police Custody

This makes me sick. The Mexican Consulate accusing the police for his treatment because he was illegal is too much. If they had ever seen someone going through cocaine psychosis then they would know that the person becomes super strong and it is very difficult to subdue them. In fact many officers have been on compensation due to injuries sustained while trying to subdue them.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/ne ... 515420.htm


PALM BEACH COUNTY
Migrant's death in custody raises questionsAn undocumented Mexican migrant who died in police custody in Palm Beach County went unidentified for four weeks.
BY JOHN LANTIGUA
Palm Beach Post
GREENACRES - On Oct. 8, between 10:30 and 11 p.m., in the Greenacres police holding cell, a tile setter named Armando Ibarra stopped breathing.

Right at that moment, Ibarra, a Mexican immigrant, also started to slip silently through a crack in the legal system.

For the next month, he virtually didn't exist.

His pulse revived briefly by emergency technicians, Ibarra was rushed to Wellington Regional Medical Center, where his heart failed twice more and he was hooked to a ventilator.

He was pronounced dead at 3:02 p.m. the next day.

By that time, doctors knew that Ibarra had suffered from cocaine delirium.

What they didn't know was his true identity.

Like many undocumented workers who fear deportation if caught, Ibarra never used his real name in contact with U.S. officialdom.

To heighten that confusion, when police could find no identification on Ibarra, they created yet another fictitious name for booking purposes.

His corpse was in legal limbo.

It took his family a month to find out what had happened.

GRAVE SUSPICIONS

That he died in police custody after being forcibly subdued has not been made public until now.

Those facts have created grave suspicions among his relatives. An attorney for the family insists police may have caused Ibarra's death, through the use of a Taser stun gun or otherwise, and then tried to conceal it.

''Maybe they had this prisoner die on them, and they figured they had a Mexican immigrant on their hands who had no family around and no one would come looking for him,'' says attorney John DeLeon, who also represents the Mexican consulate in Miami. ``Maybe they tried to cover it up, sweep it under the rug. Maybe that's why they made up a name.''

Police strenuously deny that.

Two internal investigations by Greenacres Police and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office have found no wrongdoing, either before or after his death.

Police say it is the unwarranted fear that undocumented individuals have of local authorities that creates the sort of confusion and suspicion present in the Ibarra case.

The Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office is still investigating. And the Mexican Consulate is eagerly awaiting those findings. One of the first things investigators will find is an unusual number of identities for one person.

Arrest records show that during the 13 years since he came to Florida from the Mexican state of Guanajuato, Ibarra had various run-ins with the law.

They were mostly minor traffic violations, although in 2002 he was arrested on charges of cocaine possession and DUI.

According to fingerprint records, Ibarra had been detained under the last names Rodríguez, García, Hernández, Parra and Abrara. His real name -- never.

''Why he did that, I don't know,'' says Teri Barbera, spokesperson for the sheriff's office. ``Maybe he knew how to play the system, or maybe it had to do with the fact he was undocumented. People think if they give us their right name, we're going to deport them. Well, that isn't our job. We don't do that. It would be much better if they carried ID, opened bank accounts and established identities here.''

MAKING A NAME

But Ibarra wasn't the only one to fabricate names. On the day he died, Greenacres Police made up yet another one for him.

According to police and local residents, on the warm Sunday night he was arrested, the bulky five-feet-seven, 215-pound Ibarra had lost control. He had stripped to blue boxer shorts, was sweating profusely, screaming that he was on fire, and tried to batter his way into at least two homes at the Pickwick Park Mobile Home Park, where he lived. Police stunned him four times with a Taser to subdue him.

His worn, brown leather wallet was found in his discarded jeans nearby. It contained mostly long-distance calling cards but no identification, police say.

Ibarra's sister, Rosa Isela Rodriguez, 28, of Port St. Lucie, does not believe that. She says her brother possessed a Mexican government identification card issued by the consulate in Miami. The consulate has confirmed that Ibarra was issued such a credential in his true name on June 17, 2005

Enough with the BS. The dude was a crack head and OD'ed. Happens all the time. Doesn't matter where he was or who he was. Jail, in his house. When you take too mush dope you die. He chose to do what he did . No ones fault but his own. Don't want to die don't take DOPE. The police didn't make him take DOPE he chose to. End of story !!!!!!!!!!!!

My comment to those people would be how many legals died under the same circumstances and only the first few incidents got media attention as they did not know why tasering them killed them. After that it rarely made the news and if it did it was a small article near the back of the local section.
They should look at how many illegals do drugs and then they ship more back.

And a one...and a two....I am playing my violin now...

We should tell Mexico that they may consider complaining or suing the PD for excessive force just as soon as they pay up the hospital bills submitted by hospitals like Dallas Parkland for all the free care Mexican citizens have been receiving. Until then, SHUT THE HELL UP AND KEEP YOUR DAMNED CITIZENS ON YOUR SIDE OF THE BORDER! If they're where they're supposed to be and not on our side of the border, the chances that they will be killed by Americans, accidentally or otherwise, is about zero.