Thread by @ScottHech

HORROR IN TEXAS: "I have a 5 y/o little girl & a 4 y/o little boy. I've lost the rights to them since in jail." Kdee suffers mental health issues & seizures. Caged a year pretrial. Denied medication. Hogtied. Attempted suicide. Texas about to pass a law allowing more of this.

Kdee courageously shared her story w/ @TxJailProject. Wanted to be heard. *Content warning.* Last thing in the world Texas should be doing right now is passing a law to send more people to these torture chambers. "My name is Kdee. I've been here since way before COVID started."

"I'm sitting here in jail since August of last year. It's my first time ever being in trouble. I'm bipolar & I have seizures also. Been like that since the age of 5. They did not ask me any questions about that. I went to general population. I didn't get to see mental health."

"I need to be on a certain medication. I was having a hard time understanding what the process was. I was actually put into a hogtie. Put me in a holding cell for five days. Said that we were waiting for mental health. They never came. They gave me an arm band. Sent me back."

"I tried to hang myself inside the cell. I had tied a blanket around my neck. They took me to the mental health department. And they finally got me on a regimen of medication. I didn't get to see mental health until my attempt. It took them four months."

Even after the suicide attempt, she's been left to fend for herself. "They never came to see me to follow up on that. So I kind of had to deal with that with the girls. The girls kind of helped me out with feeling like that."

And they charge her, like everyone else caged pretrial in Texas, to get medical care. "Every time I go to medical, they were charging $20 to $25. When I would have a seizure, they charged me."

Kdee is convinced she got COVID. But Harris County Jail was so indifferent, they mixed up test results, & caged people positive w/ negative. “People that were testing positive. Were only holding them for 10 days. Releasing them back into general population w/o retesting them."

“Every time the nurse would come to the pod, we would ask. Finally they told us. At first, she's like, ‘Oh, you were positive.’ Then she was like, ‘Oh no, I'm sorry. Got the wrong person. You were negative.’ I did lose taste and smell. I did run a fever. I believe I did have it.”

"They had came and swabbed us, told us that everybody had tested negative, and then out of nowhere, girls in the pod were getting COVID. They started dropping out like flies. They were moving them quarantine."

More than 60% in Texas jails--40000--have not been convicted of a crime. Majority are caged bc they cannot afford bail. Yet racist Gov. Abbott, police, prosecutors want more to suffer. On verge of passing a law to significantly expand pretrial caging.

The Texas bail bill already passed the house. Now onto Senate. Would increase the number of people caged pretrial, make it impossible to pay bail for a significant additional number, strip judges of their power to release, end charitable bail funds. It's sociopathic.

Pretrial incarceration has become a potential death sentence, inflicting incalculable pain on Texas communities & families. Last thing in the world Texas should be doing right now is making pretrial caging worse. Sign here to tell Texas lawmakers to stop.actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-t…

Read back through this thread. These are words, terrors, fears of just one mother. Things were bad before COVID. COVID just made the cruelty in Texas jails more apparent. Visit SheddingLight.in to learn more about what ordinarily hidden state violence looks like.

Follow @TxJailProject for more on the current status of things. They forged the powerful relationships with people on the inside and have been creating a safe space to share their stories & also have been fighting for justice for them & their families.

https://twitter.com/TxJailProject/status/1390015877874176002?s=20