Incarceration Nation: The Rise of a Prison-Industrial Complex

by Andrew Bosworth

July 27, 2007

http://www.populistamerica.com/incarceration_nation_the_rise_of_a_prison_industrial_complex

"I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator"

-Mother Jones

Consider this disturbing fact: the United States now has the world's highest incarceration rate outside of North Korea. Out of 1,000 people, more Americans are behind bars than anywhere in the world except in Kim Jong-Il's Neo-Stalinist state. The US has a higher incarceration rate than China , Russia, Iran, Zimbabwe and Burma - countries American politicians often berate for their human rights violations.

Well over two million Americans are behind bars. Let us agree that violent criminals and sex offenders should be in jail, but most Americans are not aware that over one million people spend year after year in prison for non-violent and petty offenses: small-time drug dealing, street hustling, prostitution, bouncing checks and even writing graffiti. Texas, with its boot-in-your-butt criminal justice system, is now attempting to incarcerate people who get drunk at bars - even if they are not disturbing the peace and intend to take a taxi home.

Somewhere along the line, the Lone Star State becomes the Lock-Down State: Rodney Hulin, a 16 year old in Texas, was caught setting a dumpster on fire and sentenced to 8 years in an adult prison. Despite pleading to be removed to another section, prison officials found no reason to extract him from the general population (despite Rodney's official pleas). He was then repeatedly raped and infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS. He ended the nightmare by hanging himself in his cell.

Even "progressive" states like California are eager to lock up the hapless and the marginal. Billy Ochoa, for example, is serving 326 years in a "SUPERMAX" (super maximum security) prison for welfare fraud. Billy is an addict, an inept burglar, and not-very-good trafficker of food stamps. Under California's "three strikes and your out" law, he is locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day.

Arguably, continuously lowering the bar for what it takes to be jailed threatens the liberty of all Americans. And having one million non-violent offenders in prison (often for absurdly long periods) makes it that much easier, in the near future, for the return of debtors' prisons and dissident detention centers. This approach to locking up everyone possible undermines both the liberal emphasis on personal liberty and the conservative emphasis on small government.

At this pace, the US is in danger of witnessing the development of a kind of "gulag" to jail the entire lumpenproletariat, the flotsam of society, a population that cuts across racial lines to include the men and women who never seem to break free of the tentacle-like criminal justice system. Women, actually, are now the fastest growing prison population, and many of them are young mothers with babies.

Of course, we'll never know how many prisoners are even guilty. They have been locked up through mass "plea bargaining" agreements. Originally conceived a the exception to the rule, plea bargaining has become a conveyor belt for prisons, running against the grain of the Fifth Amendment's right to a fair trial and, more specifically, to the US Constitution, Article III, Section 2: "The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury."

While might be a time and a place for plea bargaining, it has become a scam in which prisons are basically guaranteed a minimum flow of prisoners.

Here's the deal: Plead guilty to a lesser crime (to something you might not have done) and go to jail for 3 years - or risk a trial and the chance of doing 15 years. It's a no-brainer.

The Founding Fathers would be rolling in their graves even faster than they already are if they knew that prisons are now lucrative corporations. These "McJails" receive money from government on a per-prisoner, per-day basis.

No doubt, had the framers of the Constitution imagined that future Americans could descend to such depths they would have banned the commercialization of prisons outright.

Not surprisingly, the executives of these for-profit prisons sponsor "tough-on-crime" legislation and even line the pockets of politicians who back "mandatory sentencing" laws. For-profit prisons even get to write new mandatory sentencing laws to guarantee the raw material (the rabble of society) for an emerging prison-industrial complex.

In a Great Leap Backward, American politicians have also repealed two federal laws (the Hawes Cooper Act and the Ashurst-Sumner Act) that virtually outlawed prison labor, making it a felony to move prison-made goods across state boundaries. Stamping state license plates for cars was generally acceptable, but these Acts tried to end the leasing out of prisoners to private companies - they tried to eliminate prison-plantations and "factories with fences."

In the 1970s, a Supreme Court Justice, Warren Burger, proselytized for more leeway as to what kinds of "projects" prisoners could work on. Before too long, Congress amended the laws, and by 1990 it was permissible for prisoners to produce products entering the stream of interstate commerce.

Many of the largest corporations in America have taken advantage of prison labor in what might be called "Operation Sweatshop."

Amazingly, on http://www.correctionscorp.com/ there is a separate section for "investors."

"Corrections Corporation of America is the nation's largest owner and operator of privatized correctional and detention facilities and one of the largest prison operators in the United States, behind only the federal government and three states" (Corrections Corporation of America).

Thus, the "tough on crime" propaganda masks a profit motive. Naturally, no politician can say that "my campaign was paid for by corporate lock-downs" or "I help run prison sweatshops." Representatives in Congress -

mostly the "Big Government" Republicans but also many "Nanny-State" Democrats - are becoming the new goons in an emerging for-profit police state.

Call your broker.

Death Squad in Delaware: The Case of the Murdered Marine by William Norman Grigg He survived Iraq, only to suffer Death By Government in the "Land of the Free": Sgt. Derek J. Hale, USMC, ret. ~ RIP Delaware was the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. It may be the first state to be afflicted with a fully operational death squad – unless a civil lawsuit filed on Friday against the murders of Derek J. Hale results in criminal charges and a complete lustration (in the Eastern European sense of the term) of Delaware's law enforcement establishment. Hale, a retired Marine Sergeant who served two tours in Iraq and was decorated before his combat-related medical discharge in January 2006, was murdered by a heavily armed 8–12-member undercover police team in Wilmington, Delaware last November 6. He had come to Wilmington from his home in Manassas, Virginia to participate in a Toys for Tots event. Derek was house-sitting for a friend on the day he was murdered. Sandra Lopez, the ex-wife of Derek's friend, arrived with an 11-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter just shortly before the police showed up. After helping Sandra and her children remove some of their personal belongings, Derek was sitting placidly on the front step, clad in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, when an unmarked police car and a blacked-out SUV arrived and disgorged their murderous cargo. Unknown to Derek, he had been under police surveillance as part of a ginned-up investigation into the Pagan Motorcycle Club, which he had joined several months before; the Pagans sponsored the “Toys for Tots Run” that had brought Derek to Delaware. As with any biker club, the Pagans probably included some disreputable people in their ranks. Derek was emphatically not one of them. In addition to his honorable military service (albeit in a consummately dishonorable war), Derek's personal background was antiseptically clean. He had a concealed carry permit in Virginia, which would not have been issued to him if he'd been convicted of a felony, a narcotics or domestic violence charge, or had any record of substance abuse or mental illness. On the day he was killed, Derek had been under both physical and electronic (and, according to the civil complaint, illegal) surveillance. Police personnel who observed him knew that his behavior was completely innocuous. And despite the fact that he had done nothing to warrant such treatment, he was considered an “un-indicted co-conspirator” in a purported narcotics ring run by the Pagans. The police vehicles screeched to a halt in front of the house shortly after 4:00 p.m. They ordered Lopez and her children away from Derek – who, predictably, had risen to his feet by this time – and then ordered him to remove his hands from his the pockets of his sweatshirt. Less than a second later – according to several eyewitnesses at the scene – Derek was hit with a taser blast that knocked him sideways and sent him into convulsions. His right hand involuntarily shot out of its pocket, clenching spasmodically. “Not in front of the kids,” Derek gasped, as he tried to force his body to cooperate. “Get the kids out of here.” The officers continued to order Derek to put up his hands; he was physically unable to comply. So they tased him again. This time he was driven to his side and vomited into a nearby flower bed. Howard Mixon, a contractor who had been working nearby, couldn't abide the spectacle. “That's not necessary!” he bellowed at the assailants. “That's overkill! That's overkill!” At this point, one of the heroes in blue (or, in this case, black) swaggered over to Mixon and snarled, “I'll f*****g show you overkill!” Having heroically shut up an unarmed civilian, the officer turned his attention back to Derek – who was being tased yet again. “I'm trying to get my hands out,” Derek exclaimed, desperately trying to make his tortured and traumatized body obey his will. Horrified, his friend Sandra screamed at the officers: “He is trying to get his hands out, he cannot get his hands out!” Having established that Derek – an innocent man who had survived two tours of duty in Iraq – was defenseless, one of Wilmington's Finest closed in for the kill. Lt. William Brown of the Wilmington Police Department, who was close enough to seize and handcuff the helpless victim, instead shot him in the chest at point-blank range, tearing apart his vitals with three .40-caliber rounds. He did this after Derek had said, repeatedly and explicitly, that he was trying to cooperate. He did this despite the fact that witnesses on the scene had confirmed that Derek was trying to cooperate. He did this in front of a traumatized mother and two horrified children. Why was this done? According to Sgt. Steven Elliot of the WPD, Brown slaughtered Derek Hale because he “feared for the safety of his fellow officers and believed that the suspect was in a position to pose an imminent threat.” That subjective belief was sufficient justification to use “deadly force,” according to Sgt. Elliot. The “position” Derek was in, remember, was that of wallowing helplessly in his own vomit, trying to overcome the cumulative effects of three completely unjustified Taser attacks. When asked by the Wilmington News Journal last week if Hale had ever threatened the officers – remember, there were at least 8 and as many as 12 of them – Elliot replied: “In a sense, [he threatened the officers] when he did not comply with their commands.” He wasn't given a chance to comply: He was hit with the first Taser strike less than a second after he was commanded to remove his hands from his pockets, and then two more in rapid succession. The killing took roughly three minutes. As is always the case when agents of the State murder an innocent person, the WPD immediately went into cover-up mode. The initial account of the police murder claimed that Derek had “struggled with undercover Wilmington vice officers”; that “struggle,” of course, referred to Derek's involuntary reaction to multiple, unjustified Taser strikes. The account likewise mentioned that police recovered “two items that were considered weapons” from Derek's body. Neither was a firearm. One was a container of pepper spray. The other was a switchblade knife. Both were most likely planted on the murder victim: The police on the scene had pepper spray, and Derek's stepbrother, Missouri resident Jason Singleton, insists that Derek never carried a switchblade. “The last time I saw Derek,” Jason told the News Journal, “he had a small Swiss Army knife. I've never seen Derek with anything like a switchblade.” Within hours, the WPD began to fabricate a back-story to justify Derek's murder. Several Delware State Police officers – identified in the suit (.pdf) as “Lt. [Patrick] Ogden, Sgt. Randall Hunt, and other individual DSP [personnel]” contacted the police in Masassas, Virginia and informed him that Derek had been charged with drug trafficking two days before he was murdered. This was untrue. But because it was said by someone invested with the majestic power of the State, it was accepted as true, and cited in a sworn affidavit to secure a warrant to search Derek's home. Conducting this spurious search – which was, remember, play-acting in the service of a cover story – meant shoving aside Derek's grieving widow, Elaine, and her two shattered children, who had just lost their stepfather. Nothing of material consequence was found, but a useful bit of embroidery was added to the cover story. Less than two weeks earlier, Derek and Elaine had celebrated their first anniversary. The Delaware State Police officer is guilty of misprision of perjury, as are the officials who collaborated in this deception. And it's entirely likely that the Virginia State Police had guilty knowledge as well. Last November 21, in an attempt to pre-empt public outrage, the highest officials of the Delaware State Police issued a press release in conjunction with their counterparts from Virginia. The statement is a work of unalloyed mendacity. “Hale resisted arrest and was shot and killed by Wilmington Police on November 6, 2006,” lied the signatories with reference to the claim that he "resisted." “Hale was at the center of a long term narcotics trafficking investigation which is still ongoing.” As we've seen, Hale did not resist arrest, as everyone on the scene knew. And he was not at the “center” of any investigation; before his posthumous promotion to “un-indicted co-conspirator,” he was merely a “person of interest” because of his affiliation with a motorcycle club. Most critically, the statement – which bears the august imprimatur of both the Delaware and Virginia State Police departments, remember – asserts: “Both [State Police] Superintendents have confirmed that there was never any false information exchanged by either agency in the investigation of Derek J. Hale, or transmitted between the agencies in order to obtain the search warrant.” This was another lie. “Delaware State Police spokesperson Sgt. Melissa Zebley conceded last week that no arrest warrant for Hale was ever issued,” reported the News Journal on March 22. Three days after Hale was murdered, police arrested 12 members of the Pagans Motorcycle Club on various drug and weapons charges, but identified Hale at that point only as a “person of interest.” Last Friday (May 23), the Rutherford Institute – one of the precious few nominally conservative activist groups that gives half a damn about individual liberty – and a private law firm in Virginia filed a civil rights lawsuit against several Delaware law enforcement and political officials on behalf of Derek's widow and parents. They really should consider including key officials from the Virginia State Police in the suit, as well. Those who persist in fetishizing local police – who are, at this point, merely local franchises of a unitary, militarized, Homeland Security apparatus – should ponder this atrocity long and hard. They should contemplate not only the inexplicable eagerness of Lt. William Brown to kill a helpless, paralyzed pseudo-suspect, but also the practiced ease with which the police establishments of two states collaborated in confecting a fiction to cover up that crime. According to the lawsuit, Lt. Brown, Derek's murderer, “has violated the constitutional rights of others in the past through the improper use of deadly force and has coached other WPD officers on how to lie about and/or justify the improper use of deadly force.” Rather than being cashiered, Brown was promoted – just as one would expect of any other dishonest, cowardly thug in the service of any other Third World death squad. Derek J. Hale survived two tours of duty in Iraq, a country teeming with Pentagon-trained death squads, only to be murdered by their home-grown equivalent. March 29, 2007 William Norman Grigg [send him mail] writes the Pro Libertate blog. Copyright © 2007 William Norman Grigg William Norman Grigg Archives

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THE TRANSFORMING OF CIVILIAN POLICE AGENCIES INTO PARAMILITARY ORGANIZATIONS

By Jim R. Schwiesow

May 8, 2007

I truly value the mail that I receive from the old timers of law enforcement; they are a unique group of individuals. I used to love the profession and the people in it. When I entered into the profession 48 years ago it was a long suffering and put upon fraternity. The pay was rotten, the benefits nil, and appreciation seemed to be non-existent. Yet the people who filled the ranks were more dedicated and professional at that time than any other group of people in this nation.

Unfortunately I was a witness to a steady and progressive decline in the profession during the years that I was active in the law enforcement community. Ironically as the pay, benefits and other perks increased the professionalism seemed to decrease proportionally. And it seemed that every individual overblown local politician wanted a piece of the control over the internal affairs of the law enforcement agencies within their districts. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, civilian review boards and civil service boards came into being, and somewhat later there were unions to contend with. Then the government with its LEAA grants came upon the scene and law enforcement administrators gave away what little remained of their control of their agencies to the feds in exchange for the funds that tight fisted local politicos had, through the years, consistently and steadfastly refused to adequately provide.

Next, police professionals with law enforcement savvy who had progressed through the ranks were being passed over for administrative jobs, and agency or department heads were being selected by search committees, city councils and city administrators from college graduates with business or administration degrees. These over-educated and experience deficient administrators had no feel for the profession and not an ounce of the common sense and wisdom that police regulars acquire through long-time service.

They were simply bean counters that ingratiated themselves with the local politicians by kissing their behinds. These new honchos hired grant writers and other civilians to go after more federal money, and thereby assured that their agencies would be forever bound to a dictatorial federal control. What they could and could not do in regard to hiring and firing, setting internal policies, and a host of other heretofore-autonomous prerogatives was now regulated by the fine print in the federal contracts that had been accepted in order to receive federal funding. The contracts were long term and binding, there was no backing out unless local governments were willing to pay back huge sums of money, and they were not so disposed or inclined.

Whereas a job well done by competent professionals used to be the best public relations tool that the law enforcement fraternity possessed, the new yuppie commanders now felt the need to implement public relations programs to sell their agencies to the public.

Soon we had Officer Friendlys, McGruffs and Crime Pups everywhere. Community relation’s officers met with various civic and social groups to establish a warm and fuzzy feeling between law enforcement and the community. There were also programs to stroke the media. News conferences were regularly scheduled to share sensitive information on departmental activities. Soon it was necessary to satiate a newfound public desire for a blow-by-blow account of agency investigations and other activities.

Ingratiating the agency with the media seemed to be more important than acquiring public backing by dedicated professional work. It used to be that actions spoke louder than words, but that seems to be no longer the case. And of course this was also another way to tap into federal money, and get back some of the taxes that had been forcibly extracted from local taxpayers. The feds were more than willing to pony up more of the taxpayers’ own money to support these public relations programs and to firm up their takeover of the heretofore exclusive rights of local law enforcement agencies.

The local politicians, who had control over law enforcement agency budgets, were becoming aware of these so called new found revenues and began salivating like Pavlov’s dogs at the thought of tapping into the federal largesse of taxpayer monies. Soon law enforcement agencies, large and small, were crowding around the federal trough like hogs on a feeding frenzy. Local politicians made the acquisition of law enforcement grant monies a quest. Sheriff's and chiefs were pressured to bring in more and more federal dollars. If they were reluctant the politicians put the pressure on them by campaigning against them in local elections by suggesting that they were responsible for heavy local taxation by not bellying up to the federal trough. The people who are always, it seems, gullible when it come to taxes, ate it up. I doubt that they ever gave a thought to the fact that the money came from their own pockets whether it was funneled through the feds or through the local government. The prevalent thought was hallelujah; we’re getting free money!

Since true police professionals were in many cases no longer in charge of law enforcement agencies, and given the fact that police administrators had been frozen out of the hiring and firing process by restrictive civil service statutes, civilian boards, union grievance policies, and the continual meddling of county boards, city councils, and city administrators there began to be a noticeable decline in the quality of many of the rank and file. Professionalism slipped perceptively. To many it was now simply a job and little thought was given to the principles that had been so important to the officers of the past. Officers punched in and punched out of their shifts like factory workers. Many others were disgusted with the change in the profession and simply left the ranks and found their way to other vocations. The pursuit of benefits, wages and early retirement programs occupied the minds of those who stayed. They were being converted to a blue-collar worker’s mentality, and they saw the old ethics and the dedication of their predecessors as being tantamount to slavery to the profession. To be absolutely fair I have to concede that some of the slippage was tied to the general deterioration of society itself and to the newfound commitment to moral relevancy in the nation. Whatever the case, law enforcement officers were now ripe for an indoctrination that would transform them into tools of the federal bureaucracy.

The truth is that peace officers in the old days did not need fancy public relations programs to gain the confidence of the people who they served. The people understood that they were there to help them and to stand for them against those who would do them harm. They instinctively knew by the demeanor of their peace officers that their sole desire was to ensure that others would not violate the person, the property or the families of those for whom they were responsible. Peace officers in those days wanted the people of their communities to be free from tyranny. The last thing on their mind was to enforce tyranny upon the people whose interests they represented. They were of the people and for the people. We have come a million miles from those days and all of it in the wrong direction.

Rather than acting as servants of the people too many law enforcement officers in this day and age have become willing tools of a system that despotically oppresses freedom, and forces upon the people thousands of dictatorial decrees. The government bureaucracy that has seized absolute power in the country has also seized control of the law enforcement agencies of the land. And the rank and file thereof is used as soldier enforcers much in the way that the mafia used its soldiers to enforce the tyrannies of that order, coldly, cruelly, without conscience and with an iron fist. Law enforcement agencies all too often now employ brutal tactics in their service to the state. Please notice that I said service to the state, law enforcement officers no longer serve the people. Read on for an example of the corruption of a once fine fraternity.

In November a medically discharged United States Marine, Sergeant Derek Hale, was cold bloodedly murdered by a police undercover squad in Wilmington Delaware. The decorated veteran had traveled to Wilmington to participate in a Toys For Tots event, and while in the city he was also doing a favor for a friend by house sitting. He was thus involved and sitting on the front stoop minding his own business when a police death squad screeched up and in proper Gestapo fashion first tortured him mercilessly with multiple hits from a taser gun as he tried desperately to comply with shouted commands to put up his hands, and then executed him by pumping three .40 caliber bullets point blank into his chest. In a matter of minutes an unarmed man, who had committed no crime and who had served his country honorably in wartime, lay dead. Killed not by an enemy combatant but by a domestic death squad comprised of law enforcement officers who were carrying out the dictates of a totally depraved system. In order to understand the absolute viciousness and inhumanity of these police agents I urge readers to use the link provided for the full story. Death Squad in Delaware.

Recently, Greg Evensen, a NewsWithViews.com columnist has written an article Will you Stand, Fight, Hide or Surrender? In which, he candidly and accurately describes the utterly putrid state of the nation and the lateness of the hour. Greg is offering solutions. Something that we see very little of in our wanders through the many written articles in regard to the present corruptness of the nation.

We have a situation from which extrication is difficult. It will take courage, and Greg has courage. I have not met Greg personally, but I have corresponded with him a number of times. He is a former peace officer, and one of the old timers that I wrote about at the beginning of this article. He is a believing Christian, and we are friends and fellow travelers. And he is right in all that he has written.

© 2007 - Jim R. Schwiesow - All Rights Reserved

WELCOME TO THE CORRUPTIONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.

If you are a Duxbury, Mass cop and write a bad check, you are fired; if though, you are one of a number corrupt Stoughton cops who: steal gas, violate 42 USC s.408 for Social Security numbers, falsely arrest veterans, kidnap people out of their homes, refuse to accept completed gun license applications, extort money from citizens, PLEAD THE FIFTH AFTER ARRESTING VICTIMS, practice law while on duty as a cop and a host of other thing we will never know about because the victims are afraid to come forward and the media is afraid to report on this, YOU KEEP YOUR JOB IN STOUGHTON!

Extort $2000 from Stoughton Auto Mart and the jurors do NOT consider this a crime!

Submit complaints against Stoughton police, and the Norfolk Cty Asst. DA Mary Dacey-White will maliciously prosecute you even after she agreed to dismiss for lack of probable cause!

Judge Robert Sheiber refuses to enforce what the DA had agreed to as is his mandate by the Rules of Court Procedure and allows the malicious prosecution to go on for 7 more months.

Welcome to INSANITY CENTRAL.

I can't make this stuff up.

"Conduct unbecoming"???????????????

In Stoughton, this definition is left BLANK!!!!!!!!!!!

Guard uses Taser on man holding newborn

By JUAN A. LOZANO, Associated Press WriterTue Aug 14, 7:04 PM ET

In a confrontation captured on videotape, a hospital security guard fired a stun gun to stop a defiant father from taking home his newborn, sending both man and child crashing to the floor. Now William Lewis says his baby girl suffers from head trauma because she was dropped.

"I've got to wonder what kind of moron would Tase an adult holding a baby," said George Kirkham, a former police officer and criminologist at Florida State University. "It doesn't take rocket science to realize the baby is going to fall."

Lewis, 30, said the April 13 episode began after he and his wife felt mistreated by staff at the Woman's Hospital of Texas and they decided to leave. Hospital employees told him doctors would not allow it, but Lewis picked up the baby and strode to a bank of elevators.

The elevators would not move because wristband sensors on each baby shut them off if anyone takes an infant without permission.

Lewis, who gave the video to The Associated Press, said his daughter landed on her head, but it cannot be seen on the video. He said the baby continues to suffer ill effects from the fall.

"She shakes a lot and cries a lot," Lewis said, noting doctors have performed several MRIs on the child, Karla. "She's not real responsive. Something is definitely wrong with my daughter."

It was not clear whether the baby received any electrical jolt.

Child Protective Services has custody of the baby because of a history of domestic violence between Lewis and his wife, Jacqueline Gray. Agency spokeswoman Estella Olguin said the infant does not appear to be suffering any health problems from the fall.

David Boling, an off-duty Houston police officer working security at the hospital, and another security guard can be seen on the surveillance video arriving at the elevators and trying to talk with Lewis. Lewis appears agitated as he walks around the elevators holding his daughter in his right arm.

Within 40 seconds of arriving, Boling is holding the Taser. He walks around Lewis and whispers to the other guard, who moves to Lewis' right side.

About a minute later, Boling can be seen casually standing near Lewis, not looking in his direction, when he suddenly raises the Taser and fires it at Lewis, who was still holding his daughter.

Lewis drops to the floor. The other guard, who has not been identified, scoops up the baby and gives her to the child's mother, who was standing nearby in a hospital gown.

The guard then pulls Lewis to his feet with his arms locked behind him. Lewis' T-shirt has two holes under the left side of his chest where the Taser prongs hit him.

Lewis said he did not see the stun gun.

"My wife said `we want to leave' and then he just Tasered me," Lewis said. "He caused me to drop the child."

In a statement, the hospital said Lewis was hostile and uncooperative toward staff members who were trying to find out his relationship to the infant when they saw him trying to leave. Neither Lewis or Gray had indicated they wanted a discharge, according to the statement.

"Mr. Lewis became verbally abusive by using vulgar expletives. When Mr. Lewis' behavior became threatening, endangering the infant and employees, licensed law enforcement officers followed their professional standards to protect those involved," the statement said.

Lewis was arrested and charged with endangering a child. A grand jury in May declined to indict him on that charge, but charged him with retaliation, accusing him of making threats against Boling.

Lewis also has been charged with a second count of retaliation alleging he made a threatening call to Boling at his home.

Lewis denies both charges. He said he is considering suing the hospital but has not filed any legal papers.

Houston police spokesman Gabe Ortiz said the department did not investigate the officer's role, and he declined to elaborate. Boling did not immediately respond to a request for comment given to the police department.

Some 11,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies use Tasers, which some experts say are increasingly being used as a convenient labor-saving device to control uncooperative people.

"The Taser itself is a legitimate law-enforcement tool," said Kirkham, the criminologist. "The problem is the abusive use of them. They're supposed to be only used to protect yourself or another person from imminent aggression and physical harm. They're overused now."