It's actually fucked-up that I totally forgot about this until writing this post. I find that my brain tries to erase a lot of the shit I've been through and block it out.

I'm a serial litigant and I should have sued. You have a one year statute of limitation on most torts here in Illinois, so I've blown past that, but on federal constitutional violations the SoL is 2 years, so I could still sue for that and get relief. I'll have to think about it since I am very weary and litigation takes literally years, and often more than a decade. I'm years into litigation with the same police dept. right now about another constitutional violation and it is just 100-page motions each way every month and it gets very tiring. Millions of dollars of lawyer fees just to avoid paying $10K settlement on a case they have already lost.

I absolutely understand - I'm sorry of the situation you are in, I'm certain it's exhausting, and it shouldn't be on you.

I'm way out of my depth, but maybe you could reach out to victim's advocacy groups (you might very well have already!) to get some measure of support and guidance. As you mentionned, the SoL is limiting for your case, and it could be a good idea to see if you could file something and delay it until the other litigation is done. Again - I'm as out of my depth as can be.

Also - just a thought - maybe you could reach out to news outlets or legal oriented content producers (Legal Eagle, Attorney Tom and the likes). The story you told here is harrowing and most journalists would jump on it right away, which could possibly be helpful, but it adds a lot to your plate.

Wish you all the best going forward.

Thank you.

You also reminded me that I never heard back from any of the misconduct investigations I started against the various officers. I will FOIA now and update. There was one incident where I was walking out of jail and two officers from another jurisdiction, operating outside of their legal authority, cuffed me up, without any arrest warrant and put me in jail and I was held for over three years on that one alone. I want to see what the reports on that one say. I also filed one against the sheriff as I found an old law which says it is a crime if the sheriff does not provide detainees with three hot meals a day, and yet we only got one a day. It is literally a crime. But how do you report a police officer committing a crime? It is practically impossible, especially when he is the guy in charge.

I’m curious, with so much time in jail and so much ongoing litigation, how do you make money to cover food & shelter? Do you have children or do you find this activism gets in the way of that kind of lifestyle?

I don't. I get my food from food pantries, and a friend has given me temporary shelter. Luckily I have no children, which is a huge blessing I thought about often during my decade locked up. I would have hated to leave children behind, especially as jail visits can often be close to non-existent and the phones were too expensive and too difficult to access.

are you saying that "well cooked" food means "hot meal"?

That is my interpretation, essentially. We were given no cooked food for two of the three meals. One was peanut butter and two slices of bread, and the other was a slice of cold meat and two slices of bread. While you could say that the bread was "well cooked", that clearly isn't the intention of the law.