RoR: Forum

Reed,

The cold in the "freezer" is applied on a randomized schedule, designed to cause maximum pain and fear without (usually) killing or maiming the prisoner.

Exposure at -30C means hypothermia and frostbite within 30 minutes. Hypothermia induces a listless sleepy state in you that will become comalike if not reversed. For these two reasons, it defies belief that you were waking yourself up every hour to exercise while exposed to severe cold like that. In fact, the exercise would do you no good at that point because at -30C you're losing heat faster than you can generate it.

Then there's the small matter of the mechanics of chilling even a small cell to -30C and warming it back up repeatedly. The cell would have to literally be designed and constructed as a refrigerator to: [1] Remove and restore that much heat repeatedly, [2] prevent the cell from disintegrating from the constant expansion and contraction, and [3] insulate the rest of the jail from such severe freezing. So we're not talking about some concrete box. It would be a major engineering project that the Monmouth police department could neither afford nor hide.

The refrigerated freezer cell is an urban legend. Actual freezer cells are simply unheated spaces of confinement that allow the outside weather to do the work of making a prisoner miserable.

But don't let the facts get in the way of your quest for victimhood, Reed. If the Christians aren't out to get you, then it's the police. Just because they're tall tales doesn't mean they aren't entertaining.

Andy

Post 21

Sunday, October 16, 2005 - 3:17am

Well stated, Clarence.

Andy

Post 22

Sunday, October 16, 2005 - 10:37am

Andy,

The freezer cell was cooled by the direct air flow from a central air-conditioner originally specified to cool the entire Monmouth County jail at the height of summer. In December 1999, when I was confined there, the giant air-conditioner was run at full power with all its output going to a handful of freezer cells.

Next thing, you will invent some "legitimate" reason to run the jail's central air-conditioner during a cold snap in December, when the puddles outdoors froze and the rest of the jail was heated by its central furnace.

As for your bullshit about death from hypothermia in 30 minutes, in Poland I've known survivors of the Siberian Gulag who survived more than a month at -30 C every winter for five years. You simply have no knowledge behind your pretentious guesswork.

Post 23

Sunday, October 16, 2005 - 3:52pm

Reed,

Keep digging the hole deeper. So now the Monmouth lock-up had zoned A/C for each of its cells so the sheriff could pick which ones to heat and which ones to cool, right? And this air-conditioning was so powerful that it could chill a space in an otherwise heated building down by 80F or 90F at a snap? Moreover, to get an A/C system to produce cold as extreme as -30C (and I don't think it's even possible with a conventional commercial system a government facility would have), the air would have to be recirculated through it to keep removing the remaining heat. So in addition to special zoning, these "freezer" cells would have to have custom air ducts running back into the A/C unit. I'd think the sheet metal workers would have scratched their heads at that one. And that brings up another thing. Any building of more than 10,000 square feet is going to have more than one A/C unit and they would not be tied into each other.

Even if the Monmouth sheriff somehow secretly had a special A/C system installed that clearly had no purpose other than to chill a few cells, that still leaves the problem of the constant expansion and contraction from short cycle swings of 80 degrees or more would still crack and crumble the concrete walls of these cells and make them unusable after a few years.

As for surviving exposure to -30C (-22F) without warm clothing, you're going to the hospital with hypothermia and frostbite. Your gulag prisoner example fails because it's apples and oranges. You claim to have worn nothing but a single layer of indoor clothing, and you were barefoot to boot. Most important you did have a hat, and loss of heat through the head is biggest cause of hypothermia. The Soviet gulags in the Kolyma and the Far North sent their prisoners out into the Arctic cold (as severe as -60C) to do logging with jackets, hats, mittens, and boots. The prisoners were allowed to have fires out in the field, and they were brought back to shelter at night in barracks that had stoves for heating.

Any more tall tales?

Andy

Post 24

Sunday, October 16, 2005 - 4:08pm

By the way, Reed, where did you get your information on how the Monmouth county sheriff made his torture chamber work? Who told you that he was diverting the cooling power of the entire building's A/C system into your cell? How did you know it was -30C in your cell? (All I know is that when it's cold it's damn cold.) And if someone was willing to give you, the subject of the sheriff's torture, all this information, that person is probably telling others. So how has the Monmouth county sheriff kept his torture chamber a secret?

Andy

Post 25

Sunday, October 16, 2005 - 9:58pm

Andy,

On the one hand, on this thread you write that you have no objection to torturing an innocent prisoner - by sleep deprivation, by freezing cold, and by withholding of medicine for extreme pain - in order to coerce a false plea bargain.

On the other hand, on another discussion thread you assert that

"opposition to creating human embryos for the purpose of harvesting their organs and tissues is hardly a reprehensible position. In fact, it's the only decent position a person can take."

Even if, for the sake of protecting a thing that isn't and never was conscious, you kill an actual, conscious and thinking human person.

Frankly, your recent assertions lead me to believe that you don't have a single coherent ethical principle in what passes for your alleged mind.

Only you are capable of focusing your brain enough to think again. There would be no point for my in responding to your delusional ideations until that happens.

Post 26

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 5:32am

Reed,

On the one hand, on this thread you write that you have no objection to torturing an innocent prisoner - by sleep deprivation, by freezing cold, and by withholding of medicine for extreme pain - in order to coerce a false plea bargain.

I, of course, wrote no such thing. This is just another example of your willingness to falsify facts to justify whatever nuttiness you are promoting.

Andy

Post 27

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 7:51am

While I hold little agreement with much of what Andy says in many threads, his post#26 is completely accurate. Let's all deal in facts rather than hyperbole and speculation.

Post 28

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 1:25pm

Ethan,

In post 20 in this thread, Andy wrote approvingly of "the work of making a prisoner miserable." This is the customary police euphemism for torturing an innocent prisoner - by sleep deprivation, by freezing cold, and by withholding of medicine for extreme pain - in order to coerce a false plea bargain. I do not use euphemisms, and therefore I named the practices that the official euphemism refers to.

If Andy were to say that he in fact disapproves of "making a prisoner miserable," and that his use of this euphemism was an unintentional slip of the pen, then I would stand corrected. I do not expect this to happen. But if Andy were to surprise me by regaining a principled sense of ethics, I would be happy, as appropriate, to forgive or to apologize.

Post 29

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 1:39pm

Adam,

He most certainly did not write approvingly of the technique at all, He mearly mentioned how such a technique is accomplished via-a-vis your comment about freezer-cells.

Describing a technique used to torture someone is not an approval of that torture. It is just not in there. As such, I would hope you would appologise to Andy for your remark.

Ethan

(Edited by Ethan Dawe on 10/17, 1:42pm)

(Edited by Ethan Dawe on 10/17, 1:45pm)

Post 30

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 1:44pm

I don't think anyone on this thread condones torturing innocent people in order to obtain a false plea bargain. The controversy comes in when we talk about torturing guilty people in order to obtain life-saving information.

Post 31

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 2:33pm

He definitely didn't say it. What's that all about?

rde
Still trying to figure out what the eff a "Christianist" is.

Post 32

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 3:24pm

I don't know if this will help the current discussion, but there's one terrible mistake which conservatives and Objectivists nowadays seem to make on a routine basis: being perhaps arbitrarily arrested isn't the same thing as being duly convicted with full, legal proceedings. Even torture might be a proper response to crime -- as Lindsay and others have indicated, here and elsewhere -- but for anyone who cares about morality and justice, these "freezer cells," etc. should all be undertaken with open, honest, proper, full, legal proceedings. In the case of Abu Graib, Guantanomo Bay, and maybe Adam's Monmouth Jail, the people involved should have been considered innocent until proven guilty, and been treated as such.

Post 33

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 5:13pm

Laure,

I can't resist. You wrote:

I don't think anyone on this thread condones torturing innocent people...

How about torturing innocent readers?

//;-)

Michael

Post 34

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 5:35pm

Yes Michael, there does seem to be some torture of innocent readers going on. ;-)

Post 35

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 5:53pm

Ethan, Laure, Rich,

Whether or not I misread Andy when I read his comment as a euphemism for approval of "limited" torture is for him to say. So far he has only said "I didn't write it" - by which he may have meant only "I did not explicitly write it in those words." If he ever says that he condemns ALL deliberate and avoidable infliction of pain on ANY (presumably) innocent prisoner, then - and only then - would I owe him, and provide, an apology.

Post 36

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 9:21am

Oh, for heaven's sake, Adam. There's never going to be enough there for a smoking gun. He peaks out with the ultra- menacing:

Actual freezer cells are simply unheated spaces of confinement that allow the outside weather to do the work of making a prisoner miserable.

There's one thing that doesn't seemed to be addressed much in the discussion, and that is the various scenarios and legal situations that have to be looked at when looking at torture. Actually, there was a pretty good segment on NPR not a couple of days ago about this. There's a line between torture and "rigorous interrogation".

We know you're not allowed to torture anyone, and you can't military-style rigorously interrogate regular prisoners . The main issue at hand has to do with military law, Geneva conventions, etc. Abuses thereof. Line-stretching, etc.

rde
Do a web search on "Tucker Telephoning" if you want to see how the good 'ol boys used to do it down 'South...

Post 37

Wednesday, October 26, 2005 - 11:31am

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Post 38

Wednesday, October 26, 2005 - 11:45am

Luke,

This is what I get.

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:8SveZEgv1NEJ:www.lacoa2.org/35135ca.pdf+Tucker+telephoning&hl=en

Not quite sure what it has to do with torture though.

Jim

Post 39

Wednesday, October 26, 2005 - 2:46pm