Proud Boys leader seeks release from D.C. jail, alleging inhumane conditions
A national leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence, asked a judge on Monday to release him from the D.C. jail and place him on home confinement, citing what he described as inhumane conditions in the facility.
Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who has served 70 days of a five-month jail term, pleaded guilty in August to two crimes, including setting fire to a stolen Black Lives Matter banner during a tumultuous demonstration in Washington after the election defeat of former President Donald Trump.
Appearing in D.C. Superior Court via video, Tarrio, 37, and his attorney said the Miami resident has endured abuse from staff members, unsanitary conditions, poor food and a lack of medical care. The complaints echoed the findings of a surprise inspection of the facility last month by the U.S. Marshals Service, which listed “systemic failures” at the 45-year-old jail in Southeast Washington.
“I’ve been in jail before, but what I’ve seen here, I’ve never seen before,” Tarrio told Judge Jonathan Pittman. “It’s insane. It’s a gulag.”
At Monday’s hearing, a lawyer for the D.C. Department of Corrections disputed many of Tarrio’s assertions, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Courtney argued that Tarrio’s emergency motion for release, filed Nov. 9, was legally improper. Courtney said the correct course would be for Tarrio to file a lawsuit,
which is a more protracted process.
Pittman said he would issue a ruling this week, but on the bench Monday, he seemed to side with the government.
“It’s obviously distressing to hear of these conditions,” he said of the Marshals Service’s findings and Tarrio’s complaints. But the poor conditions are not unique to Tarrio, the judge noted. “What makes Mr. Tarrio different from all the other prisoners?” If he were allow to finish his sentence on home confinement,
“why isn’t everybody else?”
In the Nov. 9 motion, Tarrio’s lawyer, Lucas Dansie, said his client’s cell was flooded with foul toilet water that overflowed from an adjacent cell, while the water in Tarrio’s cell “remains shut off ... as retribution for some unknown act that [Tarrio] never committed.”
He said Tarrio’s “meals are literally thrown in his cell, cold and frequently inedible,” and his “requests for medical treatment have been completely ignored.”
Among other instances of mistreatment, the lawyer said, “a correctional officer slammed Mr. Tarrio against
the wall for no apparent reason, telling him that ‘you shouldn’t have done what you did,’ presumably referring to” the BLM bannerburning.
The surprise inspection by the Marshals Service, conducted Oct. 18 to Oct. 22, found that water in some parts of the facility “had been shut off for days” as punishment, creating an “overpowering” stench from “standing human sewage,” according to Lamont Ruffin, the acting marshal for U.S. District Court in Washington.
Meals that were supposed to be hot were “served cold and congealed”; some inmates had “observable injuries” for which no documentation was available; and “evidence of drug use was pervasive,” including the “widespread” odor of marijuana, Ruffin reported.
The Marshals Service and the D.C. government signed a legal document Nov. 9 in which they agreed to work together to improve conditions at the jail.