COURAGEOUS VIRGINIA GUARDS BEAT CRIPPLED PRISONERS (2024) By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

Walter Kissee is confined to a wheelchair. He can’t walk. His disability was caused by having a huge chunk of his leg ripped out by a prison attack dog on April 13, 2024 at Virginia’s River North Correctional (sic!) Center. Guards set a dog loose on him after they’d beaten him and left him lying defenseless, blinded by mace, and restrained in handcuffs and shackles.

He very nearly lost his leg due to infection caused by denied treatment when he was transferred to Va’s Red Onion State Prison.

On Oct 16, 2024 Walter was moved from general population to solitary confinement at Red Onion because he protested a cell move. At Red Onion prisoners are made to kneel on bare concrete surfaces when placed into or brought out of cells in solitary. It is a measure meant to compel submissiveness and to humiliate prisoners, but done under the guise of security precaution.

In the solitary cell guards demanded that Walter get out of his wheelchair and kneel on the floor. He protested that he had a “no-kneel” pass from the medical department due to his leg injury, which exempted him from the kneeling procedure. The guards told him they didn’t care about his pass and he was going to kneel.

When he persisted that he COULD NOT kneel and they were supposed to honor his medical pass, the guards snatched him out if his wheelchair, slammed him face-first to the floor, and proceeded to beat him – a crippled man who couldn’t walk.

This is a common practice at Red Onion – the beatings of prisoners who for medical reasons can’t kneel on bare concrete surfaces.

It was done to Demetreus Wallace. He was beaten twice in a matter if minutes on Nov 25, 2023. The first time because he merely looked at a white female sergeant, Terri Smith, as he was being held between two guards with his hands cuffed behind his back and leg shackled. He was taken to solitary confinement where he was ordered to kneel in the doorway of the cell.

He explained that he couldn’t kneel and had a medical “no-kneel” pass, due to having a rod in his leg which was surgically implanted to repair the bone that been shattered from a gunshot. In response the guards slammed him face first to the floor while calling him racist names.

They proceeded to hog tie and carry him through the prison by the chains of his shackles and handcuffs to an isolation cell into the medical department, so he couldn’t communicate with others or the outside.

It goes without saying that the very point of these “no-kneel” passes being issued by the medical department, is to have the guards NOT try to compel the prisoner to kneel, for medical reasons. And it is a well-established principle of constitutional law that guards cannot interfere with or override a prisoner’s prescribed medical care. (1) But to these courageous guards who are always primed to assault a prisoner, especially when the prisoner is outnumbered and defenseless, that he can’t kneel for whatever reason is beside the point. To them a “no-kneel” pass means they have yet another flimsy pretext to beat a prisoner.

This is the daily reality of people’s loved ones who are confined in Va’s remote supermax prisons Red Onion and Wallens Ridge. It is another reason these secret sites of racism and abuse hidden away into the far Southwestern corner of Va need to be close down.

Dare to Struggle Dar to Win!

All Power to the People!

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Endnotes:

1. Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976)