Banged-Up Abroad Brit Takes On Terror Cop
Former Phoenix rave promoter turned acclaimed motivational speaker and civil liberties activist Shaun Attwood paid tribute to National Geographic this week, after the media group devoted an episode of their expats-in-overseas-prisons documentary to his experiences in the notorious US jail of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The Manchester born author moved to Phoenix, Arizona in the 90s and became a stockbroker before becoming involved in Phoenix’s rave scene and ecstasy scene which he ended up virtually controlling alongside Mafia hitman Sammy “The Bull” Gravano. Jailed in 2002, he ended up one of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s prisons where he began writing a blog detailing the brutalities and injustices implicit in Arpaio’s notorious regime.
Speaking in detail on the program he recalled having to routinely eat moldy and rotten food ‘so food poisoning was common’.
“There’s hundreds of guys sharing needles and tattoo instruments. It was rife with disease . . . AIDS, TB. We’d get these skin infections and bedsores that itch and bleed. The place was a living hell,” he also recounted, “How am I gonna survive? I’m not a tough guy,” he added, on his first period of incarceration.
Serving 5 years of his 10 year sentence he was deported to the UK where he nowadays works as a motivational speaker visiting schools to warn children of the dangers of becoming involved in drugs. Thanking the program makers profusely he nevertheless vowed to continue challenging the Sheriff, even after receiving death threats following the show’s transmission (just four from Arpaio loyalists, which isn’t bad out of over 1000 messages, almost universal support’, he bravely noted.
“The activism doesn’t stop here. Arpaio is still in power, and there’s work to be done,” he vowed.
“The episode has planted a seed in the US conscience that evil things are going on in his jail system. The episode posted a statistic on the screen: 62 inmates died in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jails from 2003-2007.
Arpaio is motivated by power and money. Look where he gets his political contributions: the prison industries. His jail is a conveyor belt feeding the prison system human beings reduced to commodities – the prison gets $50,000 per year of taxpayers’ money per prisoner. Most of them are non-violent drug offenders. Many are mentally ill. Vulnerable people who get no education or rehabilitation because the prison wants them to come right back to keep the money rolling in. As shown in the emails, this corrupt system is traumatising American society to its core.”
“Exposing Arpaio continues. Over the next six months, the episode is being televised to over 50 million viewers in 36 countries, ranging from India to all of Europe. I’ve finally realised the dream I set 10 years ago when I first picked up that golf pencil in the maximum-security Madison Street jail, hoping to show the world what really goes on in there.”
https://www.recallarpaio.com (‘We believe Sheriff Arpaio has violated our trust and our dignity as citizens because too many people have suffered as a result of Sheriff Arpaio’s abusive practices and policies.
We believe business owners should not be unfairly harassed, workers unlawfully detained and families unjustly torn apart from raids that have nothing to do with public safety.
We believe too many law suits have been filed and too many lives have been lost.
We believe our children deserve a Sheriff that respects families, respects immigrants and respects Latinos.
We believe the Sheriff should respect, defend and protect the rights guaranteed under the US Constitution because no one – not even a Sheriff – is above the law . . .”
Jonty Skrufff: https://twitter.com/djjontyskrufff