Bettersten Wade’s search for her adult son ended when she discovered that an officer had run him over — and without telling her, authorities buried him in a pauper’s field.
Bettersten Wade’s search for her adult son ended when she discovered that an officer had run him over — and without telling her, authorities buried him in a pauper’s field.
Look, not even getting into the cause of his death, it's extremely fucked up that they didn't attempt to contact family of the deceased after he died, and even covered it up and had it from his mother after she approached them for information.
You can say it was his own fault all you want, but that changes nothing about how atrocious they handled the whole thing.
What a shitty investigator. It took the new one less than a week to figure it out. I can't see how this could have possibly happened for any reason other than malice or gross incompetence. Either way both the original investigator and the rest of the department need to be looked into.
Every time I hear about (more) police violence, I just get stuck thinking about the number of times I've been assaulted by patients as a healthcare worker and how I was still required to put their safety above my own if at all possible...including the one that was twice my weight and tried to strangle me.
The decision to call the police was difficult for Bettersten. She did not trust them. In 2019, her 62-year-old brother died after a Jackson officer slammed him to the ground. The officer was convicted of manslaughter but is appealing.
Two of her family, wow. Now, I don't know what the environment is like there, but the son was crossing a highway at night on meth. This one could be.. I'm not sure of the word.. no bad behavior? Accident? But the lack of identification and contact is absolutely absurd.
Darnella Frazier is the woman who recorded George Floyd's murder. Her uncle was also killed by police. Recently a man was released and awarded several hundred thousand dollars after spending over a decade in prison for a crime he didn't commit. After release, he was shot and killed by police. The police are a street gang, legitimized by capital in exchange for capital's occasionally being allowed to direct the police's constant stream of violence.
This behavior is cowardly and disgusting. There’s no excuse.
Also, I didn’t realize we still had “pauper’s fields.” The repeated use of the word “pauper” in this article makes me really uncomfortable. I’m not from the south, so maybe it’s a regional thing? But that term strikes me as antiquated and dehumanizing.
Just curious what word would you use? Those without wealth or status have always been dehumanized regardless of the terms used for them.
As for right or wrong, pauper's fields will always be a thing as long as there are poor and indigent people. Have you ever wondered what happens to the homeless when they die? Many end up unified in death. So there is no way to inform family if they ever have any.
I believe that it is much more common to cremate unclaimed deceased then bury them these days. Even still the ashes are not carefully interred, but just spread out on a common site.
That makes sense, and I totally understand the utility of having municipal graves for unclaimed remains. I guess I would just call them that: unclaimed or unrepresented remains. I’m not saying “pauper” is inherently bigoted or anything, it just took me by surprise and struck me as a dehumanizing label that fits better in Medieval England. I don’t think we would call someone a pauper to their face in 2023, so I’m not sure why we’d use it to refer to their remains.
I don't think their issue is with the practice, just the term used. It's like saying "poor people cemetery", kinda distasteful sounding. They could just call it something else with less stigma attached than the term "pauper", like calling it a public graveyard. Or just use the older term "potter's field".