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Lawyers Using Databases To Grab Clients
bc90021 writes "It seems that lawyers are using jail-house email lists to send potential clients letters offering their services. One couple, on finding their son who'd been missing for two days, '...was astonished that deputies failed to call them when their son was arrested -- though contact and medical information was in the young man's wallet -- yet managed to inform people who wanted his business.'"
Contact your local bar association. Ask for their lawyer referral service.
This gets you lawyers that are reasonably reputable, and often the referral service will have a deal worked out so that the initial consultation isn't going to empty your bank account.
In California, statute 5150 enables them to put anybody into a mental facilty against their will for 72 hours for observation. This is NOT the same as an arrest. Arrested people go to jail. Committed people go to mental institutions. This kid was in a mental institution. Unfortunately, I beleive the legal requirements for locking somebody up for mental illness are much less stringent then for being criminals -- pretty much just the cop's judgement. They don't have a case for "false arrest" unless he was actually charged with a crime.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Yeah, and you apparently missed the part of the article that said the whole reason why he was picked up by the County Mounty was because he was behaving erratically.
Personally, this frightens me. As someone who is diabetic, I sure as hell would WANT my loved ones to be contacted if I was sitting in jail without insulin or my other meds. If I'm in diabetic ketoacidosis, I may be unable to think clearly and not communicate properly, and I certainly would look and act fall-down "drunk". I certainly would be in need of medical attention, and the sooner the better.
Two lessons need to be learned here. First, the Sheriff probably needs to send some of their officers to school and teach them that not everybody who acts drunk belongs in a detox cell -- there are serious, life-threatening medical conditions that can cause a person to act oddly. This having taken place at an Indian casino in "hick" Riverside County dosen't shock me at all.
Secondly, and this is a lesson everybody who has a medical condition that can result in this sort of thing needs to know: THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A MEDICALERT BRACELET OR NECKLACE. Carrying a card in your wallet with your information on it IS NO HELP, because law enforcement and/or paramedics will often not look in a wallet.. hell, in some places, they are specifically instructed NOT TO because if money is missing the agency may be held liable. But, even a back-country sheriff is going to know enough about that little silver bracelet to at least call the number on it. I highly suspect that if this kid had a MedicAlert necklace or bracelet, he would have been transported to the hospital in the back of an ambulance, not to jail in the back of a squad car.
For me, just having the necklace that said "Diabetic" on the back has already resulted in my life being saved once. And the paramedics who found me didn't even have to call a phone number: they knew the second they found me and my MedicAlert necklace exactly what needed to be done. That's not "rooting around in your medical file".. that's telling emergency personell what they need to know to save your life.
Could be illegal to do this....In a number of state, i.e. South Carolina and New York, it is illegal to use any public records (such as arrest records, property titles, mortgage records, etc.) for the purpose of solicitation.
Someone should check the states where these sharks are swimming to see if those states have such restrictions.... then the will need their own lawyers.
They are slowly being sorted and distributed either back to their country or origin/capture after no longer being deemed a direct threat.
Unfortunately, that was not the case with Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent. After being arrested (but not charged) while changing planes at JFK, US officials deported him to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for over a year. It is not unreasonable to hold the US government complicit in this torture.
Not true either. John Walker Lindh never went to Guantanamo.
I was actually thinking of Jose Padilla, who was held without trial or charge in a military brig for over a year, after being arrested at Chicago O'Hare. What happened to his due process?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.