Grief has no closure.
As we see the national mourning for George Floyd play out on our television screens, there are also people here who continue to mourn their loved and lost friends and neighbors who have also had their lives grabbed abruptly through no fault of their own.
Blanca Puga, for example, still grieves for her friend's husband who was shot down in cold blood inside her home as his wife - her friend - watched
helplessly.
The killer, a dangerous inmate who overpowered a lone guard, slashed his throat with a handmade shank, stole his weapon, and then swam across a resaca to steal a car to make his escape.
That was three years ago but to Puga, it seems like only yesterday. In fact, it was three years ago, on June 8, 2017 when and Maria Mercedes Cancino and Mario Martinez were visiting her at her home on Fruitdale Street when his life was ruthlessly taken before their horrified eyes.
Cancino and Puga have been demanding justice since, with no answer in sight.
The widow sued Cameron County, its Sheriff Omar Lucio and corrections officer Antonio Tella in federal court, on behalf herself and the estate of her late husband Mario.
Cancino, represented by Brownsville attorney Ed Stapleton, said in the lawsuit that due to a staffing shortage Tella was the only officer assigned to drive inmate Michael Diaz Garcia from the Cameron County Detention Center to a dental clinic in Brownsville on that day in 2017.
Diaz Garcia made his move in the clinic parking lot. He wriggled free from his shackles and slashed at Tella’s neck with a homemade shank, grabbed Tella’s Glock .40-caliber pistol and fled, according to the lawsuit and media reports.
When Martinez tried to reason with the desperate convict, he shot him dead. Martinez died on the floor as the inmate took off and was later shot dead in San Benito as he tried to flee in the man's car.As Martinez bled to death, Garcia forced Cancino at gunpoint into Julian Puga’s room. Julian Puga, Blanca Puga's son and a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, gave Garcia the keys to his mother’s car, according to the complaint.
The month before the incident, Lucio told The Brownsville Herald that over the preceding three years his department had lost 45 deputies and 302 detention officers. Due to the understaffing, Cancino said in her lawsuit, Lucio disregarded his department’s policy of transporting dangerous inmates with two jailers.
Cancino and Julian Puga say in the lawsuit that they still need therapy as they are suffering from severe emotional distress from the killing.
They sought punitive damages, claiming the county and Lucio violated their 14th Amendment due process right to be free from “state created danger,” and the sheriff’s department had an informal inmate-transport policy that endangered the public.
Incredibly, a court found that the sheriff's department was not liable for the man's death and the widow and Puga's son have appealed the decision.
"I'm a very passive person who loves peace and believes in authority and laws and knows how to follow the rules and walk the line but with all this going on with George Floyd it has just lit a fire under me and I will be silent no more," Puga wrote.
Where, she asks, is the outrage about Martinez's life? It's a sad fact that it has been shoved under the rug by the county and the powers that be. Can you equate one life with another?
Three years later, Puga and Maria Cancino strive for justice. Will it ever come?
19 comments:
What the he'll does all of this have to do with George Floyd?
What the he'll does all of this have to do with George Floyd??
OMAR LUCIO has to go. Retire him already. Ese vato ya vivio! Out to pasture!
Puga has no political power. Next.
Most cops are good cops. They're good people who get up and go to work and most of them want to do good. But there are a few who are a problem. But the systemic issue is, the few are often protected and allowed to continue. And there needs to be real accountability built in.
This is a lawsuit for Cameron county for lack of law enforcement supervision with prisoners.
Don't give up Blanca Puga
There was too much to take in at first. Too many videos of people getting beaten by police, too many city streets and public squares blurry with tear gas, too many fires and victims and officials and cities and storefronts to keep track of.
It seemed at first that despite the size and scope of this uprising, some variant of the usual defeated amnesia might set in; people would settle into a familiar haze of horror, resignation, anger, and impotence. Drag themselves through one week into the next one, move on.
But if Trump has perfected the politics of distraction, making it impossible to dwell on any single infraction by providing fresh abuses daily, these protests have somehow—despite or maybe because of the proliferation of shocking, unwarranted violence—done the opposite. They keep focusing Americans’ numb and unexercised attention on the problem.
Over and over and over, with each new video, the point no one in power much wants to admit gets driven home: The police are out of control.
Omar Lucio will not win reelection. You read it here first!
No dice:City deems riverfront project unfeasible
The only feasible projects here are bike trails, street maintance and other city required fixin' remain UNFEASIBLE!!!
Cities from New York to Los Angeles consider changes to police funding, and others are banning chokeholds.
Y AQUI QUE???? WE'VE HAD A LOT OF PD KILLINGS HERE AND NOBODY SAYS ANYTHING - WHY?
A viral video showed a woman in a Phoenix convenience store slap another woman, who is white, for berating her with racist language and grabbing her.
The video shows the white woman in a gas station convenience store telling a customer checking out at the cash register, identified in the post as Karina Rodriguez, that she wasn't welcome in the store and needed to "go back to your country."
LOCAL COCOS SHOULD SEE THIS VIDEO BUNCH OF KISS ASS COCOS...
Alumni Voices: Guadalupe Regional launches junior board of directors
HOPE THEY'RE NOT GRINGO WAITERS FROM DALLAS!!!
As @MolaReports, state lawmakers now want to make calls like that a possible hate crime. pic.twitter.com/a5ZvwVAxM6
"All I could think of was the police arriving and throwing him to the ground and putting him in a chokehold,"
He added that the woman knew exactly what to say to get police to respond. In the video, the woman can be heard saying, "There is an African American man, I am in Central Park, he is recording me and threatening myself and my dog."
"She was going to tap into a deep, deep dark vein of racism, of racial bias that runs through this country … and has for centuries,"
It could have resulted on another choke hold or knee on the neck type assault by the cops...
city manager bird dog bernal is an idiot, (small town mentality-la villa/ falfurrias comes to mind-places he has worked at) letting that riverfront project take a walk, so he makes the decision and not the city commission, mayor and city commissioners sin huevos where the hell are all of you at? This could be a huge plus for the City of Brownsville ay but no we dont want that we prefer a titan project or other scheme where the city losses money. bola de pendejoooossss. Oh well back top the drawing board.
Some of the culture at BPD neads change as per commander Dietric but if you don't have the balls to change them then what,you guys are afraid of your own subordinates fking sad!!!
Not all the police are bad.
We live on the border, there's cartel moving drugs through the RGV, drug traffickers with weapons, what would this place look like without the police?
Sure, reform the police for more accountability overall, but let's not pretend the world is better off without them. Look at the hellhole Matamoros has become, and we're three steps away. I wish we had more cops, everytime some dumbass speeds down the highway weaving in and out at 100mph there's never a cop around to stop him.
Mr. Martinez died because there are real criminals and killers here in the RGV and the problem was too few police guarding the bad guy.
Huh, this article is about someone who wants someone else to pay for their doctor visit? Garcia being killed was justice enough! As for the lack of personnel at county jail, that is lucio' fault and the fault of the State for not being harder on enforcing regulations by the State. Puga, sue the State!
Just do away with law enforcement the worthless DA Judges etc. no worry then the lawyers will have to go also. Back to the past when things were really good for the brown skins. Oh wait, this is brown skin on brown skin.
We have a racist at: June 11, 2020 at 5:03 AM call the military or run to the nearest bunker!
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