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On June 27, 2014, David Stojcevski died in his jail cell in Macomb, Michigan. He was serving a thirty day sentence for failure to pay a $772 traffic ticket, however that jail stint became a life sentence when he died on the 16th day of incarceration.

Stojcevski had struggled with addictions and was being treated by a medical professional with drugs to counteract chemical withdrawals. However, the jail failed to place him in the proper care unit and he was given no treatment for his potentially life threatening withdrawals.

Furthermore, the jail ignored a court order which would have seen him released before his death occurred. In a lawsuit filed by his family the jail is accused of being indifferent to Davids medical needs.

Several medical and addiction experts have viewed jail footage and agree that the man was suffering from withdrawal symptoms of the multiple drugs he had been trying to kick with professional assistance. Without that help his body slowly deteriorated until the eventual deadly effects won out.

How does a man end up dead over a traffic ticket? This is unfathomable. It is bad enough that law enforcement wastes so much valuable energy and resources using traffic violations as a revenue strategy, but is a whole other thing when that paradigm results in the death of human beings. Was the state in such dire need to take $772 from this man that his life became forfeit when he could not appease his extortionists?

It is not just that the jailers failed to provide the man the proper care needed to continue living, but that he was even jailed at all, that we should be talking about. At what cost to society are we incarcerating people in order that the state can continue its piracy racket? At what cost to our humanity do we continue to allow these bad laws to exist that they might result in future misery and death?

The state is a cold-blooded monster. Systems take on their own lives, as well as the greed and envy we humans are susceptible to. Our system, overseen by merciless bureaucrats, has taken on the desire to grow as all living systems do. This desire trounces us beneath its cruel feet. It is so callous and flawed that it causes the death of human beings whose only real crimes were not to feed its endless appetite. We cannot regulate the police or the state. Accountability is a pipe dream. Until we stand up against monstrous systems of control and power in totality, the stain on our species conscious will only spread, like a blood puddle flowing from the gaping wound of our humanity.