WHY WAS MY NEIGHBOR JUST GASSED? (2024) By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

It’s Nov 11, 2024, 10:52 am. My neighbor here at Red Onion State Prison’s D-3 solitary confinement cellblock was just tear gassed for the most absurd reason. Which is typical here, where white guards don’t use force because they NEED TO but because they WANT TO – and they look for any pretext, or none at all to justify these gratuitous assaults on a defenseless, predominantly Black prisoner population.

I was alerted to the situation when I heard a sergeant Rosenbaum at my neighbor’s door telling him take a piece of paper off his light. There was no obstruction of view nor visibility inside his cell. Then came the pretext for the force.

He was ordered to submit to being put on ‘strip cell,’ that is, he was to be put in an empty cell with no clothes except boxers. He didn’t NOT cooperate – instead his responses throughout the entire exchange consisted of such statements as he had paper on the light “because there was poison gas coming from the light.” It was apparent that mental health staff not violence was the most appropriate (and humane) response if any to the situation. But of course no one from mental health was summoned.

Instead, the notoriously racist and abusive Lt Joshua Massingill was called to the cell, bringing with him a 12.5 ounce canister of mace. This being the same Massingill who I’ve written about assaulting numerous Blacks and calling them racist names. Needless to say, my neighbor is Black.

Only too eager to assault someone, Massingill gave my neighbor an immediate ultimatum, submit to strip cell or gas would be utilized. As my neighbor continued to talk incoherently Massingill gassed him.

I stood watching this flagrant abuse of force internally raging. That he had a piece of paper on his light was no reason to gas him. He was no threat nor was the piece of paper. It was just a pretext to assault a defenseless man for nothing.

Actually, covering one’s light is legally justified here at Red Onion where the cells remain constantly illuminated, which is illegal, by the way. As the federal courts have stated, “there is no legitimate penological justification for requiring inmates to suffer physical and psychological harm by living in constant illumination. This practice is unconstitutional.” (1)

Then when they brought him out of the cell blinded and choking from the gas, the guards tried to put my neighbor under a hot water shower as a pretended decontamination. All know that water, hot water in particular, does not decontaminate anyone of gas, but rather it reactivates and enhances the burning of the gas.

This was actually admitted to me by a Captain Ingram on Oct 20, 2023 on his body camera at Virginia’s Sussex 1 State Prison. He revealed that Va’s guards are trained to use milk to decontaminate one of gas not water, because, as said, water reactivates the gas and makes it burn more. Ingram is a chemical weapons instructor at the Va prison system’s guard training academy. Yet, nowhere in the Va prison system are there any decontamination facilities – so while gas is used almost daily at prisons like Red Onion, prisoners are NEVER actually decontaminated. The courts have held that failing to decontaminate a prisoner after gas exposure is also unconstitutional. (2)

Worse still is these weapons are particularly dangerous although officials attempt to play down their lethality. As I have written various times, tear gas, OC gas, etc are chemical weapons much like chlorine gas, that have been banned from use in war under international law, because of their torturous and dangerous effects. (3) This while the manufacturers of these weapons constantly enhance and upgrade their effects with little to no regulation making them even more torturous and harmful, while operating under the false cover of these weapons being non-lethal and ‘mild’ alternatives to other weapons.

I have witnessed and reported on numerous prisoners who’ve suffered and died as a result of these agents. (4) Yet they’re used readily and with little to no justification as just happened to my neighbor, as they’re placed in he hands of racist abusers like Massingill and Red Onion guards who obviously can’t be trusted to wield the absolute power given them over defenseless, even mentally disabled, people like my neighbor.

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!

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Endnotes:

1. Keenan v. Hall, 83 F. 3d 1083, 1090 (9th Cir. 1996)

2. Williams v. Benjamin, 77 F. 3d 756 (4th Cir. 1996)

3. Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, “Amerika Uses Military Grade Chemical Weapons on Prisoners That It Bombs Syria For Using in Civil War” (2018), http://rashidmod.com/?p=2580

4. Ibid.