Main image via NearSay , Pink Fong
If you’ve ever been stuck in a place where the same music plays on repeat for hours before, you can understand how frustrating and annoying it is… now imagine being forced to listen to it loudly for hours.
At least four prisoners in an Oklahoma jail were recently forced to listen to the viral children’s song “Baby Shark” for hours on repeat on loud volume with their hands cuffed!
The two jail staff and their supervisor who were responsible for this act, have now been charged with misdemeanour cruelty, corporal punishment to an inmate and conspiracy after the investigators found out about at least five incidents that took place in November and December.
The inmates were reportedly handcuffed and standing in an empty visitation room with the song playing up to two hours with the volume cranked up repeatedly.
“It was unfortunate that I could not find a felony statute to fit this fact scenario,” said Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater. “I would have preferred filing a felony on this behaviour.”
The former employee and supervisor at the jail are 21-years-old Gregory Cornell Butler Jr and Christian Charles Miles carried out the mistreatment and 50-year-old Christopher Raymond Hendershott was accused of being aware of the incident and not putting a stop to it.
One of the employees told investigators that the song was “said to be a joke between Miles and Butler” but Oklahoma County district attorney David Prater said that the act was “conjointly, willfully and wrongfully” in a “cruel or inhuman manner”.
The district attorney said that putting “Baby Shark” on repeat put “undue emotional stress on the inmates who were most likely already suffering” from being handcuffed to the wall.
The two employees have since resigned during the internal investigation and the supervisor reportedly retired.
“We don’t tolerate it,” Sheriff P.D. Taylor said. “We always did an excellent job policing ourselves.”
The iconic song that starts with “Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo” has been the favourite of children everywhere and parents’ nightmare worldwide, and has been previously used to deter homeless people from sleeping outside an event center.
Are you a fan of the song or does it give you nightmares too? Whatever it is, just don’t use it for misdemeanour acts!
Info via The New York Times , South China Morning Post
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