There’s really nothing special about this tweet from a woman named Kathleen Landerkin. I have friends and relatives who might tweet the same sentiments, if they were, you know, vulgar, uncivil clods. They aren’t, fortunately: I don’t consort with vulgar, uncivil clods. However, the tweet above is significant, because Ms. Landerkin is the current Correctional Training Facility (CTF) Deputy Warden at the Department of Corrections in the District of Columbia, and thus assists in overseeing day to day operations, inmate transportation, and case management at the D.C. Jail. The D.C. Jail is where Donald Trump supporting participants in the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol are being kept.
Landerkin has been wildly vocal abut her hatred of al things related to Donald Trump, especially his supporters, and has been tweeting rants and nasty messages about those she creatively calls “deplorables” for years. One of the more provocative comments was this one, from 2018:
Why should anyone care? Well, she has power over the January 6 inmates, and this degree of hostility, which could be fairly called demented, calls into legitimate question her ability to do her job fairly. Or does it? Literally dozens of over-heated tweets were uncovered by an enterprising social media sleuth, so Landerkin took down her account…but not before he reduced them to a video.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is, to the tune of “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” (I just re-watched “The Sound of Music,” which Steven Spielberg is considering as his next musical triumph—I’m joshing—and as usual, the damn song kept me awake all night):
How do you solve a problem like Landerkin?
What do you do when jailers won’t shut up?
How can you fix a person like Landerkin?
Whose brains are so lacking they wouldn’t fill a cup?
Many a thing you know you’d like to tell her
Many a thing she ought to understand
But considering what she tweets
Including what she deletes
What’s going to work but cutting off her hand?
Oh, how do you solve a problem like Landerkin?
Is there a choice but making sure she’s canned?
I really wanted to do the whole song—I have some great rhymes for “Landerkin”—but it would be self-indulgent.
I promise I’ll curb the song parodies after the holidays.
Ethics Alarms 
This should be enough for those held without bail to be transferred from that hell hole. She obviously has some serious problems and appears psychologically unfit for the position. In my capacity as a college administrator I have worked with three wardens at three different medium security prisons and each would have fired her for those comments.
Her comments remind me of what might be uttered by the female warden in the Jason Stathem film Death Race 2000.
Yeah, except from what I’ve seen, many of the judges these defendants come before are almost equally Trump Deranged, and they don’t seem to see much wrong with stripping the civil rights from ‘insurrectionists’.
Add that to many folks also trying to ensuring these folks are not able to raise money for their own defense. They really need a mass change of venue. I’m not sure where to, but one can hope there is a place these folks can get a fair trial. D.C. doesn’t strike me as that place.
Perhaps we should require her to go to “sensitivity training?” With the bent of the current administration, that solution would seem to be appropriate.
Then again, under the current definition of “sensitivity,” that would probably prompt her to throw the whole lot of rioters into the hole for the duration. She’s already been held in contempt of Judge Royce Lamberth’s court for abusing the rioter’s rights.
She seems incredibly stupid and biased. Perhaps we’ll get lucky had she’ll have one of the prisoners launder money for her. No way she would notice a large poster on the wall…
Extra credit for the Shawshank Redemption allusion!
I just read a horrific article about abuse at an Australian Catholic orphanage. I thus may be jaded, but the warden needs to go. Abuse of people in custody is such a cancer on society, that guards and staff don’t get the benefit of the doubt.
She literally said fuck her prisoners (though fuck itself was used metaphorically). That is not someone we can trust with the humane care of others. Accepting the job of prison warden means forfeiting your right to run your mouth on political matters.
There is a bit of a dilemma, because zero tolerance in a high stress job means only lunatics will accept the job. Yet certain behavior can’t be tolerated. Broadcasting you animosity to your prisoners in public is not the kind of split second decision that deserves deference.
We need outside air to keep those in custody safe. When the guards voluntarily threw their filth out the window, we ignore at our peril.
Also
I love your well thought out parodies, don’t stop!!!
As for Kathleen Landerkin; you can’t fix people like Landerkin, she is a political hack and an internet troll trying to incite rhetorical “riot”. With her level of hate, the best thing to do would be for her employer to shift her duties so she has absolutely no contact with any of the January 6th inmates, aka political prisoners.
It pays to remember that the head of an internet troll, like Landerkin, resides in their “safe place” which is tucked nicely behind their own balloon knot where the sun doesn’t shine. Kathleen Landerkin is clearly Trump deranged. Donald Trump has been living rent free in the obsessed minds of the Trump deranged since 2016 and unless you are a professional psychologist conducting one-on-one sessions with the deranged you can’t deprogram (fix) what the TDS cult has programmed with their brainwashing propaganda.
I was going to take the other side of this. Jonathan Turley often covers these issues with professors in state schools. As much as I think they are scum, they still have free speech to be an idiot. However, this is more than tweets. Per the article:
Inmates in the D.C. prison are being transferred to other prisons after the U.S. Marshals Service found “evidence of systemic failures” and unacceptable living conditions. The USMS found human rights being violated by the prison, such as guards that punitively withheld food and water from inmates, inmates that stood in human sewage because the toilets were clogged, and guards that have assaulted inmates.
In addition, Greene has described the conditions of the prison as ““unusually cruel,” saying that inmates have been denied access to their attorneys, have been denied haircuts or razors to shave for months, and have not been given proper medical treatment when they needed it. When Greene tried to access the prison post-1/6, Deputy Warden Kathleen Landerkin denied Greene and fellow congressional staff access. Before 1/6, there was never an issue with congressional staff accessing the facility.
Verdict: Fired effective immediately and a full investigation to her personal actions with judicial action pressed against her and anyone involved.
Additional verdict: civil rights lawsuits, which will probably settle really high after 2024.
Do remember, though, that Greene is hardly an objective commentator.
True, my point would have been fine with just the first paragraph.
Even Col. Burton C. Andrus, the jailer of the top Nazi defendants at Nuremberg, who had every reason to hate his charges, wasn’t like this. Michael Ironside portrayed him in 2000’s Nuremberg as a bullying, borderline sadistic warden who barks at defendants to shut up, personally strips some of them of their military insignia to intimidate them, and later not only presides at the hangings, but tips his helmet each time a prisoner is executed, but none of that was true.
Law enforcement, and that includes corrections, needs to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. It needs to be, in the words of Fred Dalton Thompson’s DA Arthur Branch, “cold-blooded and blind and even-handed.” I think that even goes double for corrections because their charges are completely at their mercy. Their job is to keep their charges confined and disciplined, but also safe. I know, I know, a lot of us police procedural fans cheer or even snicker when a cop warns a suspect he is interrogating about the brutal homosexual rapes that await him in prison if he doesn’t start cooperating. The fact is that most of us consider the convicted and even the accused to be lousy people who do lousy things and deserve whatever happens to them as a result, including rape by a lifer or a beating by a CO whose wife burned the toast that morning.
The thing is, a lot of us balk at letting others be placed in the absolute power of those who have expressed absolute hostility to them for whatever reason, and we should balk. You’d raise an eyebrow at a female corrections officer who posted things about how all men are rapists and the ones she oversees are just the stupid ones who got caught. You’d do a double take if a white guard posted something about all blacks being criminals and he wishes he could dump those he guards on a cattle boat and send them all back to Africa. You’d say turning Antifa arrestees over to some CO who tweeted that those who disliked this country should be launched on a one-way trip into space would be a terrible idea. You’d be right. If something did happen in any of those circumstances there would immediately be a question of was it deliberate and all eyes would go right to these loudmouths before they would go anywhere else.
There is no reason why these folks should be treated any different.
Michael Ironside played a bullying, borderline sadistic historical figure? I’m shocked!
P.S., to read Col. Andrus’ biography he sounds like someone who acted like a bully because his own record as a soldier was less than impressive. He served stateside in WWI, spent most of his time between the wars as an instructor or administrator, then stayed stateside in WW2 until the beginning of 1944, when he finally went to Europe and served mostly as a liaison officer and “combat observer.” OK, not every man in WW2 was an Easy Company paratrooper or John Basilone-type marine, but it seems like he just never really got into actual battle, which raises the question of was he a coward who avoided it, or did the higher-ups believe his talents lay elsewhere?
Steve wrote, “There is no reason why these folks should be treated any different.”
I totally agree but there is compelling reason to respect their civil rights: For all but a few of them they haven’t been convicted of anything, yet. They are being held without bail awaiting trial. That, in addition to this warden’s despicable conduct, should horrify even the staunchest civil libertarian. Why doesn’t it? Most of these people are charged with misdemeanor trespass crimes. Yet, the bail reformers remain oddly silent. Why is that?
jvb
If you have to ask that last question you haven’t been paying attention, and I know you have. I agree with you 100%, and this despicable behavior could well result in appeals down the line.
Yep. Trumpsters are evil incarnate and need to be annihilated.
jvb
Bingo.
Aren’t all criminals entitled to be released without bail pending trial? Isn’t there a George Soros funded prosecutor in D.C? Aren’t jails supposed to be depopulated? I’m confused.
Bail reform and all those other nifty-galifty progressive ideas go out the window when Trump adherents or accused white supremacists are concerned. For them it’s no bail and Spandau.
Ha. This was clever.
Suggested edit, January 6th, 2021 (end of 1st paragraph).
Thank you—fixed. I’ve made that mistake so often most readers don’t even notice any more.
This woman is a standard issue Democrat. If Trump runs again, I’m afraid I’ll be forced to not vote for him because it will put wind in the sails of these Democrats and they will be insufferable for another four years, much as I would love to have Trump’s policies back in place. These Democrats have become their own poison pill.
Gratzie.