Letter Advising Congress of George Miller’s Retaliatory Conduct and Abuse of Power

November 23, 2012 by hwcbruce 0 Comments

February 3, 2012

Via E-Mail and Facsimile

All House  and Senate Education Committee Members

            Re: H.R. 1381 and S.2020: Seclusion and Restraint In Schools

Dear Members of the House and Senate Education Committee,

This is my third submission to this Congressional Committee in three years. My comments have been in response to a series of proposed bills (the latest being H.R. 1381 and S. 2020) which would federally regulate the use of restraint and seclusion in every school throughout the United States.

My comments to you have focused mainly on the illegality of this legislation. These comments have not been warmly received by Congressman George Miller, the National Disability Rights Network (“NDRN”), or the regional Protection and Advocacy (“P&A”) offices.  These are taxpayer-funded groups of advocacy attorneys who depend on the ignorance of long-settled law to achieve legislative success.  My company’s timely dissemination of the law has been instrumental in derailing similar NDRN and P&A political and legislative efforts at the state level throughout the United States.  Both NDRN and P&A have a history of retaliatory conduct toward me for my ongoing disagreements with them on matters of restraint policy (Cease and Desist letter attached).

My first submission to the House Committee was dated February 17, 2009 and was emailed to, then, Chairman George Miller. The Committee had directed the GAO to prepare a report highlighting restraint deaths at schools which was all but complete before I made my first submission to Chairman Miller.  Within several weeks, I was visited by a GAO investigator in my office.  The Investigator told me he was sent on short notice to look into the circumstances of a 10 year old fatality which occurred at a treatment center.  The center had a training services agreement with my company, Handle With Care (“HWC”).  I informed him that the matter had been fully investigated by the Lancaster County DA and the Pennsylvania State Police a decade before his visit and that my company, our methods and our training program were completely and unequivocally exonerated In the DA’s report.  We were never sued by the family and we were not involved in any settlement.  That did not prevent the GAO from expanding its report on schools to include treatment centers. The name of the report was changed at the last minute to include “Treatment Centers” in its title; ostensibly to provide cover for a report that was originally to be limited in its scope to schools.  This was the only incident involving a treatment center in the report.  Its addition did nothing to improve your understanding of the issue, and was only added for the purpose of dissuading me from further participation in the process.  It also received the distinction of being listed #1 in the list of ten train wrecks that the GAO earnestly paraded before the House Committee.

I made an immediate request in writing to the U.S. Inspector General dated April 8, 2009, (attached), asking for an investigation into Congressman Miller (and the GAO) for abuse of authority, namely, his misuse of an instrument of the Federal Government (the GAO) to intimidate, punish and silence an American citizen and taxpayer for exercising my right to free speech before his Committee. The outcome of the IG’s investigation was predictable. It went nowhere.

My second submission to you and Congressman Miller was dated June 22, 2011. On this occasion and just eight hours after Congressman Miller received my second submission, I received an unexpected request for a phone interview from Jennifer Gollan, a reporter for the Bay Citizen; a newspaper not-so-coincidentally located in Congressman Miller’s District.  Ms. Gollan presented me with a slew of defamatory and factually false accusations and statements which she was about to publish in the Bay Citizen and The New York Times about my training program’s safety record and about me personally.  I told Ms. Gollan that the allegations she was about to publish were false.  See Comment 1; Comment 2; Comment 3; Letter to the Bay Citizen Editor. She boasted to me that the purpose of her article was to pressure the San Francisco Unified School District into terminating its training services agreement with my company.  Ms. Gollan followed her first article with a follow-up article a week later in which she “reported” on the negative responses and statements that were made to her by various School Board members and whose judgments were based entirely on her false claims and allegations.  I requested a second investigation by the IG into the conduct of Congressman Miller, NDRN and the Bay Citizen in this second episode.   I was directed by the IG to the House Ethics Committee.  A letter was sent by me to the Ethics Committee.  It went nowhere.

Today, I am submitting my third round of comments to you and Congressman Miller concerning the illegality of proposed bills H.R. 1381 and S.2020.  Given his history, the Congressman will likely notify NDRN and P&A that I submitted this latest round of comments and give them a green light for another round of abuse and harassment.

I have decided that all future assaults on me and my company will be in full public view and witnessed first-hand by every one of Congressman Miller’s colleagues in the House of Representatives and Senate.  If you believe in a citizen’s right to submit comments to you without fear of reprisal or harassment, I respectfully ask you to take Congressman Miller aside and tell him so.[1]

Sincerely,

Bruce Chapman

Individually and President of HWC

cc: U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Inspector General, Chair of House Ethics Committee, Darrell Issa, NDRN, P&A (all 50 States), Editor Bay Citizen, Editor WSMV

[1] All of the documents between Bruce Chapman and HWC and Congressman Miller, the House Ethics Committee, the GAO, and the Bay Citizen are available at http://www.brucechapman.com.

ADVERSARIES, BRUCE CHAPMAN, HANDLE WITH CARE
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Perspectives from a Martial Artist: Bullying Part 2 – Bullies and Victims Heal and Transform With Martial Arts

November 22, 2012 by hwcbruce 1 Comment

Placing a youngster who has been bullied in a martial art program makes perfect sense. Becoming mentally and physically stronger while learning how to defend yourself = personal empowerment. (Go ahead…kick sand in my face, again!)

On the other hand, placing a bully in a martial art program seems like a complete recipe for disaster on its face. Why on earth would you want to make him feel any stronger or provide him with any more capability to cause damage, right?

In my experience, a bully does what he (or she) does precisely because he does not feel very confident or powerful inside or very respected by those outside of himself. What may begin as an isolated incident can quickly become a routine pattern of behavior once it is experienced as a satisfying, if temporary, exercise in personal and social empowerment. Unfortunately this process comes at a considerable emotional cost to the bully. Making someone else experience the isolation and pain of your subjugation just to escape your own pain and isolation requires a numbing of your capacity for empathy and respect for the feelings of another.

To be a successful martial artist you are required to show respect for others every single moment you are in class or you will not make it very far. A traditional program’s structure and adherence to discipline and protocol places the bully in a situation where he must subjugate himself to the authority of another (the Instructor) in order to drink from the well of power caused by learning how to focus and direct the energy generated from good technique. The amazing thing about the effect of martial arts on the psyche is that it provides exactly the same medicine for both bully and victim alike. If you are cocky and aggressive, the effect is to turn your thermostat down over time. If you are timid and shy, it will turn your thermostat up. If you practice long enough and hard enough, you eventually achieve internal balance and a peaceful mind.

Over time, what may begin as an entirely superficial demonstration of respect just to satisfy the expectations of the Instructor can become deeply internalized. Respect is eventually experienced as empathy when bullies stand in line side by side with victims.

BULLYING, MARTIAL ARTS

Perspectives: Bullying Part 1 and How to Stop it

November 22, 2012 by hwcbruce 0 Comments

If you’ve ever been bullied, raise your hand. As one of the original “hippies” in high school, I was jumped by four kids and had my two front teeth knocked out for being different. On another occasion I was jumped from behind while using a urinal. (He gave me a sincere and totally unexpected apology a couple years later). A third guy started a fight with me in front of a hundred other students lounging out on the lawn at lunch. At least he didn’t jump me from behind. I hit him with a solid front kick in the bladder with my boot. He quit. If you’re keeping score, my high school record was: 1 win and 2 losses growing up.

Then there was Lloyd. Lloyd was a very sweet special ed kid who was systematically tortured in grammar and middle school. There is no other word to describe what Lloyd went through. His beating was entirely emotional. My most disturbing memory is of Lloyd being swooped on by an entire pack of middle school predators who ran at him in waves; agitating him, tormenting him and then running away laughing as he frenetically tried to chase them away. I’ll never forget the look on his face. The most cowardly thing I ever did was to watch this feeding frenzy – never raising a hand or even a voice to help him. I’ll regret it until the day I die.

During the decade that I had my karate school, many of the kids were being bullied and enrolled to gain the confidence and social skills they needed to handle it. To this day, I consider the work that I did with those kids the most important thing I did as a martial artist.

So, how can we stop bullying?

  • Elementary schools need to begin identifying children who are socially predatory and intervene before the damage is done. While there is an emotional cost for the victim and the bully alike, kids like Lloyd should never have to suffer that long and that hard because adults are turning a blind eye to it.
  • Most schools are currently suspending both kids engaged in a fight. If it is mutual, that’s appropriate. However, when one of the kids is clearly the victim of bullying, he is being victimized twice; once by the bully and, again, by school authorities who lack the intestinal fortitude to make a judgment.
  • Assault and battery is against the law. Schools need to start filing criminal complaints against middle and high school students who seriously assault other kids or teachers. If the same kid assaults another kid in the mall on a Saturday, he’ll be charged for it. Being on school property shouldn’t mean a free pass from assault charges.

Finally, parents need to be honest with themselves about the conduct of their progeny and stop making excuses or covering for them. Take the time to help your kids develop empathy early and a real sense of responsibility for speaking up when another kid is being victimized.

BULLYING, MARTIAL ARTS

Letter to NDRN Clarifying the Record

August 10, 2011 by hwcbruce 0 Comments

It has come to my attention that falsehoods are being circulated.  I am posting my letter to NDRN to universally clarify the record and make people aware of the truth, namely:

  • Since its founding in 1984, HWC has never been implicated in a restraint fatality or catastrophic injury
  • HWC has never been sued nor has HWC ever settled a law suit resulting from a restraint fatality or catastrophic injury.

Anyone saying otherwise is lying.

*****************************************

August 4, 2011

TO: National Disabilities Rights Network

The following has come to our attention:

  1. NDRN has made at least one surreptitious attempt to gain access to HWC’s proprietary training materials. Any request made by NDRN to a HWC client agency for our proprietary materials, using the cover of your federally funded attorney conglomerate, will constitute harassment, duress and intimidation for the purpose of interfering in our relationship with that client. Had this agency cooperated with NDRN’s request, the agency would have been in breach of its contract with HWC.
  2. NDRN has chronically misrepresented HWC’s safety record to the media and others.

To ensure that NDRN (and others) can be a more credible informant moving forward, please consider this fair notice to you of the following facts:

  1. With respect to “KidsPeace”; the Lancaster County Pennsylvania District Attorney and his consultant, Dr. Michael Baden, considered one of the top forensic experts in the world, completely and unequivocally cleared HWC, the holding method we teach and HWC’s safety protocols. Dr. Baden personally approved our holding method for use in New York State after witnessing a demonstration of the method and the safety protocols which I engineered to prevent positional asphyxia.
  2. With respect to “Chad”; according to the Medical Examiner this death was the result of a choke hold. HWC does not teach a choke hold.  The fact that it occurred on the grounds of a HWC client agency is a coincidence and no other conclusions concerning HWC can be drawn from these facts.
  3. Since its founding in 1984, HWC has never been implicated in a restraint fatality or catastrophic injury
  4. HWC has never been sued nor has HWC ever settled a law suit resulting from a restraint fatality or catastrophic injury.
  5. HWC has always taught and promoted a “least restrictive” philosophy and restraint policy in our programming. HWC was created by me within the context and practice of community psychiatry, specifically, on the acute inpatient unit of Hall Mercer. Hall Mercer was one of the first Community Mental Health Centers established under the 1966 Mental Health Act which, as you know, emptied the State Hospital systems and sent patients back to their families and communities where they belong. HWC does not need tutoring by NDRN on a ‘least restrictive’ mindset. We were creating it in milieus decades before there was an NDRN.
  6. HWC programming is in compliance with all relevant Federal, State and local laws and regulations.
  7. HWC possesses the only physical technique ever granted a Patent in the history of the U.S. Patent Office (“Apparatus and Method for Safely Maintaining a Restraining Hold on a Patient”). I hold 9 U.S. Patents which were granted for the PRT® and for SoftCircle client protection components.
  8. I have personally trained tens of thousands of people including police and correctional officers, university-based academics, nurses, physicians, rehabilitation therapists, child abuse and neglect investigators, nursery school teachers and other accomplished professionals working across virtually every segment of health and human services.
  9. I have been “qualified” to offer expert testimony on use-of- force and physical restraint in civil cases and criminal prosecutions in multiple jurisdictions throughout the United States. I help indicate and/or convict staff who abuse or use excessive force with consumers.
  10. Parody cannot be used to impugn someone’s character. Knowingly attributing statements made by a character in a skit to the actor, himself, is defamation.

In summary, there are no questions as to the safety or efficacy of HWC restraining technology and programming. There is no question as to my qualifications as use-of-force and physical restraint expert.

NDRN enjoys no special status which would exempt NDRN (or others) from following the law in its treatment of me and HWC. Please feel free to contact me to fact check any statements you intend to make about me or HWC prior to making them.

This letter is written without prejudice to HWC’s rights, all of which are hereby expressly reserved.

Sincerely,

Bruce Chapman, President

Handle With Care

www.handlewithcare.com

ADVERSARIES, BRUCE CHAPMAN, HANDLE WITH CARE, LEGAL, PRONE RESTRAINT
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Do Right, Fear No One. Always – A Poem by Mother Teresa

August 1, 2011 by hwcbruce 0 Comments

Mother Teresa’s AnywayPoem

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered; Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.

[Inscribed on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta]

WORDS TO LIVE BY

Bay Citizen Shows Lack of Integrity

July 21, 2011 by hwcbruce 0 Comments

It’s common knowledge that Newspapers have fallen on some hard times, but we never thought the as reputable paper would resort to manufacturing News Stories  using fictional skits as factual support. 

On June 24, 2011 we provided the Bay Citizen with a reminder of some very basic journalistic and legal principles:

First — a parody with no basis in reality cannot provide support for a statement that is supposed to be factual. 

Second –  a parody is characterized by “ironic inversion”.  If a person is acting and is i.e.  playing a homophobe for the purpose of ridiculing homophobes, a statement to the effect that the actor playing the homophobe was a homophobe would be without factual foundation.

Third – in the law, parody cannot be used to support a factual statement concerning a person’s life history, his beliefs or anything else for that matter as the statement would based on a fanciful skit that has no basis in reality.  In otherwords, a person playing a frog on stage does not support the statement that the person is a frog in real life.

Fourth – the definition of acting when playing a role means to temporarily take on the persona or character of another.  Therefore, if a person is acting, the person is temporarily portraying someone other than him/herself.  Therefore as a matter of law, statements made in the performance of a role while playing the part of another is imputed to the character being portrayed, not the person actually portraying the character.

PART II of JOURNALISM 101 Tutorial:

 Based on the above simple premises, we informed the Bay Citizen newspaper that  a particular video they wanted to use as a factual basis for a statement was a parody in  which Mr. Chapman is acting (i.e. playing the character of another).  As was explained to the Bay Citizen:

 The character portrayed in the video was a parody that made fun of violent homophobes in order to highlight the evil of homophobia. I am no more guilty of making slurs than is Max Adler, the actor portraying the bully in Glee, who torments Chris Colfer’s gay character; prompting “Kurt” to change schools in the story line. I am certain Chris understands that Max is acting.

As in Glee, the character in the video is  based in fantasy, not fact and was part of a  larger acting production that when seen in context “no reasonable person would believe the video to be interpreted as stating actual facts.” 

 Despite the above detailed explanation of acting and parody, Bay Citizen reporter Jennifer Gollan somehow still could not understand the distinction.

ADVERSARIES, LEGAL
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My response Bay Citizen Reporter Jennifer Gollan

July 10, 2011 by hwcbruce 0 Comments

My response Bay Citizen Reporter Jennifer Gollan’s , Schools Struggle with Protocols for Restraining Unruly Students

Editor,

Ms. Gollan requested an interview with me after explaining that she was writing an article about the general issue of restraint. She claimed she was interviewing all of the national vendors that teach crisis intervention. As the final product shows, she had no intention of writing a general article. It was nothing more than a pretense to write an attack piece on Handle With Care (“HWC”) and Bruce Chapman. She later boasted that her actual purpose was to disrupt HWC’s relationships with the Bay area schools that are teaching HWC and to dissuade other schools from doing business with us and states her intention in her article.

Ms. Gollan’s request for an interview came exactly 8 hours after I submitted comments to the United States Congress and Congressman George Miller, concerning pending federal legislation that, if enacted, will violate every teacher’s legal right and legal duty to protect children under your care and supervision. George Miller received my submission by email at approximately 9 AM Pacific. I was contacted by Ms. Gollan at 5 PM. I allege to you that Miller is now using Ms. Gollan, the New York Times and the Bay Citizen to smear and discredit me.

The reason is simple; I have been instrumental in derailing legislative efforts by the “restraint-free movement” in multiple States and jurisdictions, most recently, in Florida, Oregon and Colorado. In both submissions to Congress, I cite a constellation of Federal laws, Federal Administrative case law and the laws of all fifty States, including California.

The restraint-free lobbyists who operate in California and throughout the United States will apparently stoop to anything necessary to prevent me from circulating this position paper because they have absolutely no answer to it. When you have been as effective as I have been in derailing this dishonest movement – organized by people with no discernable expertise on the subject of restraint – you can expect retaliation..

Ms. Gollan’s personal attack is deliberately misleading and potentially libelous. She uses my lack of academic credentials in an attempt to discredit HWC. Did she mention that I told her I was forced to quit school to raise my 9 month old son by myself? I will let my personal history and the integrity of my life’s work speak for itself.

She also lists a fatality in Pennsylvania in 1999 that was thoroughly investigated by the Lancaster County District Attorney and the Pennsylvania State Police. In the official DA report, HWC was found faultless and I was praised for my participation in the investigation. We were never sued by the family of the deceased nor were we involved in the settlement. The agency, which was held entirely responsible for this fatality, originally named HWC in a “cross complaint” as a tactical maneuver to keep me from testifying on behalf of the family at trial. They were entirely at fault in the matter and dropped the cross complaint as soon as they settled with the family.

I am particularly outraged by Gollan’s insinuation that I am a homophobe, which she bases on a comedic parody that was at one time posted on Youtube by the skit’s director and producer. The clip is rough footage of a comedic skit in which I am clearly acting. The clear intention of my performance in the clip was to parody the idiocy of homophobia. The character is dressed in a oversized lumberjack shirt and is wearing an ear-muffed ski hat emblazoned with the word “Mental” in bright gold letters. The producer added the sound of clucking chickens in the final cut. Anyone who could possibly construe anything else from this skit is a bigger idiot than the character I was portraying. As I told Ms. Gollan, I marched in one of Philadelphia’s earliest Gay Rights parades in the summer of 1973. I am as proud of that now as I was then and at a time when few straight men were willing to be so outspoken and supportive on the subject. Ms. Gollan ought to be ashamed of herself.

This is not the first time I have been abused by Congressman Miller. He abused his congressional authority by using an instrument of the Federal Government to try to harass and silence me for submitting an identical position paper to his Subcommittee two years ago. In return, I triggered an investigation of his actions by the United States Inspector General’s Office. Touche’.

So, to be absolutely clear, to Congressman Miller, Ms. Gollan, National Disabilities Rights Advocates, et al, I say, I have no intention of backing off or ceasing my efforts to inform teachers of their legal rights and duties. There is no level you can stoop to stop me. To everyone else I say, with unethical character assasins like Miller and Ms. Gollan mad at me, I must be doing something right.

Click here for my personal letter to Jennifer Gollan.

Bruce Chapman, President
Handle With Care
www.handlewithcare.com
www.brucechapman.com

ADVERSARIES, BRUCE CHAPMAN, PRONE RESTRAINT
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Bruce Chapman’s Blog

March 5, 2011 by hwcbruce 0 Comments

Bruce is a use of force expert, inventor, author and outspoken advocate for the ethical and lawful management of aggression and suicide. He is the President and Founder of Handle With Care® Behavior Management System®, Inc. (HWC), Plus Defensive Tactics System™ and SoftCircle™ Client Protection Products.

BRUCE CHAPMAN, HANDLE WITH CARE
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Comments to Congress

March 16, 2010 by hwcbruce 0 Comments

Bruce Chapman’s and Handle With Care’s comments to the House Education Subcommittee; 2009.

The Committee Chaired by Congressman Miller (D) from San Francisco, was contemplating legislation that would unlawfully and arbitrarily limit the right to self defense and the use of restraint by teachers in schools.

 Document is copyrighted in 2010 to HWC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to disseminate with attribution, non-commercially and no derivatives.

BRUCE CHAPMAN, HANDLE WITH CARE, LEGAL, PRONE RESTRAINT, PUBLICATIONS, Uncategorized
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It’s My Dime

March 16, 2010 by hwcbruce 0 Comments

An editorial series lampooning the “restraint free” movement first appearing in Youth Today, 2003.  Featuring unsolicited commentary by Bruce Chapman.

BRUCE CHAPMAN, HANDLE WITH CARE, PRONE RESTRAINT
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