An update on the founder & Director of the Us Too Advocacy Group, who has now spent 117 days in custody at Surrey Pretrial Services Centre (SPSC) due to false allegations made against him. June 1st will mark the start of his 5th month in custody, and he has lost 45 pounds to date during his incarceration. <\/p>\n
While some of the weight loss can be attributed to his poor physical & mental health while incarcerated, the inescapable fact remains that he is unable to eat solid food, due to his dentures being broken.<\/p>\n
The background: our Director was incarcerated at North Fraser Pretrial Centre (NFPC) from mid-June to October 1st, 2021, on a frivolous breach issued by his then-CSO supervisor. In August, due to NFPC\u2019s ongoing refusal to provide him with denture adhesive, his dentures fell out of his mouth onto the floor, and broke. <\/p>\n
As it turns out, SPSC is no better at providing denture adhesive than NFPC. Our Director has asked to be provided with denture adhesive through SPSC\u2019s Healthcare unit (run by the PHSA, Provincial Health Services Authority) but has been told to order – and pay – for the product through the facility\u2019s Canteen program instead. Notwithstanding the fact that every single product available through Canteen is sold at grossly inflated prices that are at least double (and in some cases triple) the true market value of the product – our Director still cannot obtain the adhesive, due to every Canteen order form coming back marked \u201cNot in Stock\u201d or \u201cUnavailable\u201d! <\/p>\n
Yes folks, that\u2019s just ONE of the many infuriating dichotomies that inmates at remand centres face on a daily basis.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the real kicker though: upon his arrival at SPSC on February 1st 2022, our Director almost immediately filed a request to have new dentures provided to him at no cost, since his dentures were broken due to negligence on NFPC\u2019s part when our Director was in their custody in 2021. After meetings with the Deputy Warden at SPSC, our Director finally received confirmation in late April 2022 that he would indeed receive new dentures at no cost to him, and that the replacement had been approved by the Administration at SPSC. Subsequent to this approval, our Director was taken to a denturist outside the SPSC for a consultation (which should have meant a subsequent visit to have a mold cast). Unbeknownst to our Director, however, SPSC then attempted to get NFPC to pay for the new dentures – and NFPC flatly refused, even though they had written documentation from our Director from August 2021 detailing the reason for the breakage of his dentures. Even more baffling is that both remand centres are fully funded by the B.C. Provincial Government; therefore, neither NFPC nor SPSC would be \u2018out of pocket\u2019 by paying for our Director\u2019s new dentures. <\/p>\n
Strangely enough, our Director could obtain all the methadone he wants, at no cost, if he so desired (to assist with his anxiety and disordered sleep), yet he is unable to obtain new dentures, which would give him the ability to fulfill one of the most basic survival needs that the rest of us take for granted – eating. <\/p>\n
As of this writing, our Director still has ill-fitting, painful, broken dentures; still cannot eat; and continues to exacerbate his poor physical & mental health by losing more and more weight; SPSC has suddenly implemented a brand-new \u2018policy\u2019 stating that broken dentures are not their responsibility; and the Healthcare unit at SPSC (run by the PHSA, remember) has now advised our Director that new dentures will not be provided – despite approval being given by the SPSC Administration themselves, and despite the breakage of the dentures having occurred at NFPC, through their own negligence, while our Director was \u201cin their custody – in their care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, guards at SPSC regularly accuse our Director of \u2018being on a hunger strike\u2019 and threaten him with getting moved to a segregated unit where his food intake will be \u2018monitored.\u2019 The guards also regularly tell our Director that he should just go onto SPSC\u2019s \u2018soft diet.\u2019 Appropriately, our Director\u2019s response to this asinine comment is to give the guard a verbal smack upside the head, by pointing out that he cannot eat due to NFPC\u2019s negligence, so why should he let them off the legal & moral hook by agreeing to slurp pur\u00e9ed food?
\n(And lest you think that SPSC\u2019s soft diet consists of nice individual dollops of individually-pur\u00e9ed foods, like a hospital\u2019s soft diet – it doesn\u2019t. SPSC\u2019s soft diet means that an inmate\u2019s entire meal – protein, carbohydrate, and vegetable – is dumped into a single blender, pur\u00e9ed into a disgusting slop, and given to the inmate. Yes folks, I can hear you retching from here). <\/p>\n
Appalled?? Join our fight! Post this article to all of your social media accounts (please credit the Media Director, Us Too Advocacy Group), and contact:<\/p>\n
Surrey Pretrial Services Centre
\n604-599-4110
\nAsk to speak with Deputy Warden Bobrownik<\/p>\n
PHSA
\nPatient Care Quality Office – Complaints
\nhttp:\/\/www.phsa.ca\/about\/accountability\/patient-experience\/feedback-form<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An update on the founder & Director of the Us Too Advocacy Group, who has now spent 117 days in custody at Surrey Pretrial Services Centre (SPSC) due to false allegations made against him. June 1st will mark the start of his 5th month in custody, and he has lost 45 pounds to date during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-need"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ustooadvocacy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/download-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustooadvocacy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustooadvocacy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustooadvocacy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustooadvocacy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustooadvocacy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ustooadvocacy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustooadvocacy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustooadvocacy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustooadvocacy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustooadvocacy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}