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Saturday, April 14, 2012

Marland Anderson (Sledge Hammer) Tazed To Death By LAPD


According to the LA Times, “Porn Actor Is Dead After Clash With LAPD Officers.” A clash…? From what I’ve read and heard, this sounds much more like murder, not a “clash.” Of course most media outlets won’t tell the true story. God forbid we accuse the LAPD of fucking up. For the record, I never knew Marland Anderson (aka Sledge Hammer), and have only started communicating with his girlfriend, Alexa, today. However, from what I can tell, the LAPD REALLY screwed this one up.

 (Oh, and I know this may seem like a minor detail, but “Porn Actor” is not an accurate way to describe an individual who works in pornography. “Porn Performer” would be more accurate. I did not know this until a good friend made me aware of this a couple of months ago.)

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what happened, you can read the REAL story (rather than the crap that the LA Times published) here http://www.lukeisback.com/

This was a man with a mental illness, not a criminal. There needs to be more communication between mental health professionals and law enforcement. Cops are NOT mental health professionals! I don’t understand why only cops show up to this sort of emergency- why isn’t there a therapist on staff? If Alexa called 911 regarding a mental health issue, WHY WHY WHY were there NO mental health professionals present? Why were there cops using force with an innocent man? Why did they need to taze him 6 times!? Oh…and why the hell did it take them TWO hours to get him to a hospital?

As both a therapist and a sex-worker advocate, I am disgusting by how this case was handled. What Marland actually needed was an ambulance to bring him to a hospital so that he could receive the care that he needed. A person with mental illness should be treated with respect and care, just as any other individual with an illness would be treated.

It breaks my heart to think of what Marland must have been thinking in those moments. I have struggled with horrible bouts of insomnia in the past, and after being awake for 4 days, I thought I was losing my mind. This is not a fun place to be, and I was fortunate enough to receive proper medical care. Shouldn’t everyone be able to receive the same? He told the police that he was “very tired and scared.” This doesn’t sound like a man who was out to hurt anyone, except for perhaps himself. This was a man who needed help.

So here’s my question- now what? Will the LAPD be held accountable? Will this make headline news? Marland worked as a porn performer. If he had worked as a politician, would this be making headline news? Absofuckinglutely. I don’t want to make this article about sex worker rights, but it’s something to consider. Do stigmatized members of our society receive the same respect as other individuals do? No they don’t, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.

Okay, and here’s another thing- Monica Foster, I have never met you, but you’re an idiot. When I read your blog, my brain cells die off quicker than usual. It pains me to read some of your crap, but I guess I’m addicted to the pain. Much like Shelley Lubben’s garbage/anti-porn propaganda, I just can’t tear myself away.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with these two women, they two former-porn performers turned anti-pornography nut jobs. Shelley Lubben recently made a memorial video, showcasing the various performers who died at the hands of the porn industry. Except wait…that’s not the truth. Most of the performers died of causes that can’t even logically be tied to the porn industry. Some of the performers died due to suicide and substance abuse issues, but can we blame that on the porn industry? Correlation does not equal causation. What don’t people understand about that?

My job as a therapist can be stressful at times, so if I go and off myself, will people start to blame the field of psychology for my death? Other performers in this video died in car accidents and due to heart problems. Why is Shelley Lubben trying to relate these deaths to the porn industry? It doesn’t even make sense. One of the performers actually died from an asthma attack, can someone PLEASE tell me how that could be related to the porn industry? Another from brain cancer. Does pornography cause cancer? Give me a break.

This isn’t a memorial, it’s just another way to push her anti-porn agenda. You can see the “memorial” video here:


As I’ve said before, Shelley Lubben claims to want to help porn performers, but all that she does is label them, stigmatize them, and try to speak for them. Ok, now back to the other idiot that I mentioned.

Today Monica Foster tweeted the following:
Details of the today's death of black male pornstar Sledge Hammer #rip #teamgod #teamjesus #GetOutPornValleyNow

Ok, so let me get this straight, are these anti-porn activists SERIOUSLY  going to try and blame the porn industry for Marland’s death? If Marland had “gotten out of porn valley,” would his mental health issues magically vanish? No! Once again…GIVE ME A BREAK!
Ugh, idiocy everywhere I turn. Whatever, I’m off to put on my pink wig and head to NYC for the Sybarite Awards. Cheers.
Xo
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RIP

                                           

11 comments:

  1. My headline: Beloved Performer Sledge Hammer Tazed to Death Yet Idiot Pariah Monica Foster Still Breathes

    Monica claims there is a vast conspiracy afoot. You see, according to her, the porn industry sets out to kill performers before they can turn up HIV+ and give porn a bad name. They aim to do this directly, or indirectly, by purposely driving them to suicide. LAPD is in on the conspiracy -- which, according to Monica, also involves the Illuminati, reptilians, the KKK, Israeli Intelligence, shape-shifters and satanists. The one thing they all have in common, Foster says, is that they want to silence her because she knows the truth.

    Foster also asserts that her secret wish is to have the power of invisibility, so she can sneak into the homes of her enemies and kill their children. She is scum.

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    1. WOW...the things you miss when you miss out on things.

      As the remaining moderator/co-founder of BPPA, AG, I am officially inviting you to become a regular contributor over there. At the very least, I'd love to repost this post over there, just in solidarity.

      I've never even heard of Sledge Hammer either, but his death at the hands of the LAPD says more about the abuse of police powers and the treatment of the porn industry peformers and other sex workers than anything.

      Oh..and as someone personally in deep with both Shelley Lubben and Monica Foster, I couldn't agree with your words more.

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    2. Anthony- Feel free to repost, I am in a rush to get to NYC right now but I will contact you later or tomorrow about working together. xo

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    3. Lubben and Foster are two nutjobs on so many levels that even mentioning them is a waste of time. They love the attention and it fuels their fragile egos.

      When everything comes out about what really happened last week to Sledge, I truly hope it clears him. The rumors about his being on drugs or having heart problems related to previous steroid use are mean-spirited attempts to explain away what might have happened. Just because most people that die from tasers are old, out of shape, on drugs, or have medical conditions does not equate to that always being the case.

      I'm not a tree-hugger that assumes the cops are always in the wrong or never have a reason to use force either. The whole incident needs to be looked at in great detail to find out how much of the official accounts are accurate, how much being stated by family is accurate, and whether or not alternatives might have saved his life.

      I can appreciate that some cop wouldn't want to go toe to toe with a guy as built as Sledge even when the performer was calm but the loss of life shouldn't be dismissed so easily as some have with their snotty comments like "he deserved it", "he was roid raging and the cops had no choice" or the dozens of others I've seen online.

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    4. Don- thank you for your reply. I think that you're absolutely right. I have heard so many terrible stories of police brutality lately, but I don't think that the cops are always wrong. However, this is an instance that warrants from serious investigation on the LAPD.

      The comments that I've seen, re: he deserved it, are disgusting. Some people have no respect for others. Marland has left behind a grieving girlfriend, friends, and family. They don't need to be subjected to people's uneducated and rude commentary.

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    5. You're welcome A.G. From my perspective, any time someone dies (rich or poor, white or black, or any of the other things that seem to change the way things are handled) at the hands of another, it needs to be looked at with a microscope. As we pay the salaries of the popo, they should understand this necessarily means a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking though my caveat would be that tossing out the baby with the bathwater (getting rid of tasering devices as Amnesty International demands if they are even half as good as some proclaim) seems too much.

      It could be that the devices are great and the needed training or protocols were not followed. It could be that the cops zapped him and then did something else like not get him medical help in time (one of the family allegations). I just think that a calm look at the details is needed for the possibility of something good coming from such a tragedy.

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  2. To blame the LAPD for the death of a huge muscular man who was mentally ill is unfair and irresponsible!! You ask why there was no mental health expert there to take Sledge hammer to the hospital...here is why....this is a man who is armed with a knife attempting to take his own life, his girlfriend called 911. The police show up and attempt to take him to a hospital before he can harm himself further, or harm anyone else. He goes beserk, and based on his photos, he is a big strong guy, he breaks out of his restraints. He is tazed by officers in an attempt to subdue him..not to kill him. He died a few days later in a hospital. Lets see if he was abusing drugs, or steroids, before you rush to judge some poor officer who was thrust into this because he responded to a 911 call. You want to damm to officer before the facts are in and say this poor guy needed help. He did need help but he flipped out and caused his own death by his actions..not criminal actions, because mental illness is not a crime, but he brought about his own demise by his aggressive mentally unstable interacions with everyone involved

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    1. I don't automatically believe what the media shoves down our throats but I also don't automatically believe a biased account by someone close to a person. Let the investigation take place and if the family/friends believe it was not accurate, they can finance one of their own before suing.

      Some of the facts not currently being disputed include that the guy was mentally unstable, extremely muscular, and carrying on in a dangerous fashion. If he broke a metal gurney in the ambulance, why should the EMTs have to worry if he'd break them next? Anderson and his family had a responsibility to seek medical help long before he got to this point but did not from the accounts posted on that porno gossip website. I can feel for their loss but a knee jerk reaction suggesting the officers murdered him does no one any good absent better forensic evidence in support of that conclusion.

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  3. A citizen died from the LAPD's use of a submission weapon. Either the tazer malfunctioned or it was negligence of the officer(s). Those are the facts. Given how many people die from being tazed, the previous condition excuse doesn't becomes weak with each death.

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    1. Police use tazers all the time and they rarely cause more than some discomfort. The Times reports that out of hundreds of thousands of uses, a few hundred people died. Most of the people that died had preexisting medical conditions or were on drugs. Compared to the number of deaths or permanent medical conditions brought on by police shooting out of control suspects, tazers are much safer.

      AdvocateGrrl, just because someone has a different opinion is no grounds for belittling them or questioning their sanity. The entire matter is not settled by a long shot so maybe reserving your judgment until a more balanced viewpoint surfaces is a wiser course of action.

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  4. Thank you. I was beginning to question the sanity of some of my readers. *phew*

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