I'm not afraid to offend anyone by this. There are numerous examples of this sort of brutality on the internet. It's unspeakable and I am without words.

What I want to do is make the government afraid of the people and not the way it is now. How?

Destiny

single incidents are hard to rally anyone's outrage. after all, the nice policeman who dragged that young woman downtown was only trying to get her to shut up. these types of incidents are getting more and more. resistance will be called for soon.

It's unfortunate, but from a legal standpoint, she is probably going to lose... She will undoubtedly make a due process claim along with several torts - assault and battery, for example... If she can overcome the sheriff's immunity whether it is qualifed or sovereign, her case will undergo a Matthew's balancing. At that time, her due process interests in not being strip searched will be weighed against the governmental interests of keeping the police safe and controling the detainee.

Lawyerkid1 finds it depressing that due process is a question and not an answer.

Good evening, LawyerKid, and thank you for that analysis.

I concur that the woman has meritorious claims of both assault and battery. She also has some grounds for claims of defamation.

As you rightly point out, the obvious first line of defense in the response would be a claim of sovereign immunity, although this by no means is guaranteed of success; otherwise, self-insurance pools constructed by groups of municipalities and other local sovereigns would have little reason to exist. Moreover, if Stark County has traditional insurance, I would not want to be the county commissioner who opens the letter containing next year's insurance premium bill. One of the lesser-known but surprisingly effective deterrents to municipal officials and county commissioners overseeing (or not overseeing) their underlings doing foolish things over and over again is the occasional, lowly underwriter who climbs down the throat of the insurance account executive for not ensuring that his clients had proper risk management procedures in place to keep these kinds of things from ever happening.

I should note that, in Ohio, most counties participate in self-insurance pools. If Stark County is in one, the pain to the pool of settlement in a case like this is going to be rather awful, and Stark County may find itself without a whole lot of friends in the aftermath of the pool's blood-letting.

Anyway, back on point, the plaintiff has an array of claims, of course, and you note this. The problem for the sheriff is not in whether or not, despite clear merit, the aggrieved party gets her own day in court; his real problem (aside from not getting re-elected) is the potential intervention of the State of Ohio and possibly even the Justice Department. If the county settles with her, he can be, at least to some extent, assured that counsel for the county will see to it that the settlement agreement includes as much silence on her part as possible. Paying her a handsome amount of money would for the county include no admission of wrongdoing and would be money well-spent for protection from her active participation in a case where the motions to dismiss on grounds of sovereign or other immunity would have no weight. This would be especially true if the DoJ were to get involved, which it could—at least, theoretically—on representations of federal civil rights violations, despite a lack of diversity, as was the same case in the Rodney King beating.

She doesn't have to win at trial; and, in fact, a good lawyer would brutalize the county sheriff in the media until the county's lawyers got serious about not going to court, even though they might win dismissal about five minutes after the clerk of courts had stamped the pleadings.

Moreover—and I may be miscalculating federal statute of limitation with regard to this matter—protracting the pre-trial process would be in her attorney's best interest because that would allow for enough time to get the Bush Administration's DoJ civil rights lawyers replaced by what might be some bloodhounds for a new Administration's DoJ looking to score early kills to signal the law enforcement community in general that there's a new marshal in the land watching the old sheriffs.

I do hope this case generates quite a bit of attention, and that's why I'm highlighting it here at The Dark Wraith Forums and other properties of Dark Wraith Publishing: the more media exposure this gets, the more pressure will come to bear not on the sheriff, but upon those facilities of state and federal government to solve this matter before it goes from egregious torts to something far more worrisome to Empire.

The Dark Wraith would hope, though, that Empire will ignore these kinds of everyday outrages until they become something more than grist for the mill of incensed social critics.

There is NO excuse for victimizing victims.

Regarding Destiny:

William Wallace: Sons of Scotland! I am William Wallace.

Second Soldier: William Wallace is seven feet tall!

William Wallace: Yes, I've heard. Kills men by the hundreds. And if HE were here, he'd consume the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse.

[Scottish army laughs]

William Wallace: I AM William Wallace! And I see a whole army of my country men, here, in defiance of tyranny. You've come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight?

Soldier: Against that? No, we will run, and we will live.

William Wallace: Aye, fight and you may die; run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!

...

[last movie lines]

William Wallace: [voiceover] In the Year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland - starving and outnumbered - charged the fields of Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets; they fought like Scotsmen... and won their freedom.

...

("won their freedom" ...well, for a while... *sigh* It took a very long time, and many repeated efforts, for the Scots to finally shed British rule.)

A history timeline.

Oh, and by the way, I should note that this particular county seems to have a history of taking clothes off females.

From an article at American Chronicle
via
CantonRep.com comes this story:

On May 18, 2007, three girls aged 14, 15 and 16 arrived at the Multi-County Juvenile Attention Center for an arraignment following charges of "criminal trespass on a public sidewalk". Instead of going before a judge the girls were informed by a court worker that the case would be over if they agreed to 20 hours of community service, to attend school regularly and take a 15 minute tour of the Attention Center. Unbeknownst to the girl´s parents, who waited downstairs for the tour to be over, the girls were taken upstairs and strip-searched while guards made disparaging remarks. There was no reason for the strip search as the girls were not under arrest or about to be confined and they had been through a metal detector and searched upon entering the building. Sheriff Swanson confirms that an investigation is underway, but states no conclusions have been reached.

The gall of authoritarian #%@&s:

Two British girls were sent to an orphanage for 30 hours and strip searched after their mother became ill during a holiday in the US.

Gemma Bray, 15, and her 13-year-old sister Katie also had their clothes taken off them and were asked if they had been abused or were suicidal.

Their mother Yvonne Bray of Appledore, Devon, says their human rights were infringed by the authorities.

She was hospitalised with pneumonia during a trip to New York.

Parents claim daughters strip-searched:

Controversy is brewing at a southern Ohio vocational school over accusations a teacher strip-searched nearly two dozen girls because of allegations someone stole a credit card and money.

Perhaps some may be justified, but there are just too many articles on strip searching girls

and women.

As others have said, there is more and more of this being done under the heading "keeping the police and prisoner safe". This might get them off on the strip search, but SIX hours naked? No phone, no doc and taken to booking without being given jail pajamas even?
Yeah, I think the country fund is going to be a bit bottom of the barrel after this settles. I posted this again elsewhere for a different viewer "market" btw. Ohio, huh?
I damn near got strip searched there a lifetime ago when I was 14....for giving a cop lip; guess it hasn't changed much except for worse.

Good evening, Mr Wraith.

Terribly sorry to inform you, but you're way off base here.
These things are quite commonplace. The only matter that could be considered even slightly extraordinary is the fact that is was caught on video.

The probation department in Lea County, New Mexico, ran a prostitution ring for a number of years.
My sister-in-law was a part of the class action suit against them, that went to the New Mexico Supreme Court.
As a part of the suit, it came out that the person, located in Roswell, that was the responsible party for actually making the payment to the insurance company for the Lea County jail, had been pocketing the money for the three years prior.
One year after the suit was settled, 19 of the 22 women who were a part of the suit were dead, including my sister-in-law.

Now, if those dumb-ass rednecks in Lovington can think of such a thing, consider how much more widespread such a thing must surely be.

As I said, this matter is commonplace. The only thing even in the slightest bit extraordinary is that the film somehow got out. In the future, they will be more careful, I assure you.

Get over it. Accept it.
That's simply the way of the world.
It's called "Law and Order."
It's for the good of the nation.

Good evening, Progressive Traditionalist.

When I returned to the civilian world, I went to a big city to live. Over the next few decades, I saw—indeed, I was the victim of—all manner of police brutality, intimidation, violence, fear-mongering, and, yes, domestic terrorism. Although I was white, I was dirt poor; in some times, I was nothing other than a street person.

I watched gang-bangers beat, rob, and nearly kill people; then I'd see the cops come and do their number on the victims. I learned not to call the cops. They're just another gang: they've got their colors, their culture, and their weapons. They also have the drooling acquiescence of the courts, the politicians, and the wealthy power brokers of the city.

I watched whores getting their mouths full of on-duty cop dick; I watched young black men get beaten shitless by maniacs with badges; I watched dumb hicks get thrown around, maced, chopped with nightsticks, and hauled into police cruisers by their hair. I watched stupid, mouthy bitches get slammed onto car roofs, and I once saw a retarded man moments before police pumped dozens of bullets into him.

I did stand-up comedy in a seamy upstairs bar where the drunk college kids would stagger out to get their chops busted by police. I saw a night when a curfew had been imposed, so the police fired tear gas into rooming houses: when the people came baling out, the cops beat them, handcuffed them, and arrested them for curfew violations.

I saw a downtown Fourth of July celebration turn into the madness of anarchy when police shot tear gas at clusters of people while their fellow officers on horseback charged the crowds, inducing sheer terror.

I was in an anti-Reagan protest where Reagan's thug squads came up and busted a sign over a feminist demonstrator's skull, and then I watched while the metro police did their number on her as she stood there bleeding: "Well, it looks to me like you're the one who started this, and we can't protect you if you're going to incite to riot." She was lucky to get away without being arrested; she was also lucky the cops didn't just let the Reagan sickos loose on her.

I was watching an airshow when a group of demonstrators unfurled a sign that read: "War is not a game for children to see!" Within a split second, dozens of sheriff's deputies, some with snarling German shepherd dogs, came from out of nowhere and started arresting people. When I started taking pictures, one of the badge-wielding thugs came at me with his dog acting like it wanted to rip me limb from limb. My brother calmly walked up to one of the police sergeants overseeing the madness and asked him why the demonstrators were being arrested. When told that they were "blocking the view," my brother said that he could see the view just fine. That nearly got him a beating. I told him not to try to reason with animals. He said he hadn't been talking to the dog; I told him I wasn't referring to the dog; he said, "I know."

At a radical poet's concert in the park, I saw a whole line of tow trucks called by police to come and tow the audience members' cars away from legal parking spots.

On a bitter Midwestern winter night, when I had no place to live but my car, I was dragged out by cops who proceeded to throw my belongings all over the place. My clothes, my blankets, my books. Everything. All while one of them held me pinned at the hood of my car with a night stick at my throat; then they left.

You know what one of them said to me as he was getting back in his cruiser? He said, "Have a nice night, sir."

Don't lecture me about police brutality through the ages as if you know more than I do about Hell.

It's home to me.

The Dark Wraith invites others to become radicalized the way I did.

The principle argument I have with the William Wallace approach to dealing with Authority is that it will get you killed.

The good revolutionary has a duty to not get caught. And getting killed is definitely a form of getting caught.

But agreed, this kind of behavior has been, is, and likely will continue to be typical of police, and more so of the police state.

Too bad there isn't a public database of who the Officers and their Bosses are and where they live. After all, they know where to find us. I would think if their particulars became common knowledge it might elicit a little restraint.

Good evening, kelley b.

Well, yes, that death thing has always been something of a deterrent to action. Having read about far too many heroes of history becoming dead as the preferred means of burnishing their credentials, I have always tried to work out Plan B and Plan C before proceeding too far with Plan A and its attendant dirt nap.

I do favor the idea of publicizing the names and addresses of law enforcement officers, although that could lead to the real bad guys using the information to harm them. An alternative I suggested years ago in a public forum was a citizens' force that would be specifically tasked, with full arrest, detention, and investigative powers, to dealing with criminal behavior by law enforcement officials. I was roundly condemned and reminded of "internal affairs" and "citizens' review" boards that were already in existence, which I dismissed with more than a small degree of disdain in my rebuttal.

The very idea, then as now, of actually making police live in fear of criminal charges that could result from their "official" acts was simply appalling. As I learned more about the law—and especially, as I learned more about the theory of law—I came to grasp that it is virtually unthinkable in most advanced societies to fully cabin enforcement of law within the criminal law, itself. It can be done, but it requires some fairly serious reconstruction of institutional frames of reference and statutory products, particularly within procedural law.

In simple observation, this manifests itself as virtually blanket immunity of law enforcement personnel when it comes to criminal wrongdoing against specific citizens. Oddly, this immunity does not extend to crimes of corruption or other wrongs against the broader society, although considerable corruption still, to this day, goes unpunished even though there have been marginally more prosecutions of law enforcement personnel on corruption charges in the past decade or so than there were in earlier times.

The lack of emphasis upon the citizen as individual in constitutional republics like ours leads to this disturbing lack of concern when individuals are wronged by officers of the court, be they police, judges, or juries.

As I noted above, this could be changed, but it would require extraordinary changes in the very statutory framework of our laws and, indeed, a veritable re-thinking of what the so-called "rule of law" means. Certainly, the law enforcement community, the courts, the legislatures, and the chief executive officers of the several states and of the Union, itself, have absolutely no incentive whatsoever to engage that process and will not until and unless the consequence in rebellion cannot be ignored or crushed with state violence.

Most people, even when shocked or themselves aggrieved, wish only for the status quo to remain and would share with the officials and governing institutions of the society the opinion that the rebels should be silenced.

Such is the price of liberty: the People may choose to be as unfree as they like.

The Dark Wraith is just depressing himself by intellectualizing, tonight.

Depressing indeed, but perhaps this is the reason so many embrace Plan A when they can take a large cohort of their oppressors to the Netherworld with them.

Unfortunately the really evil people in this world take advantage of that, too.

Depression I suspect is an indulgence we can not afford if we really want to change things.

Plans B and C take a lot more thought, and likely but strangely hurt more and longer than Plan A, but are the only ones that have a chance of changing things here on the sunlit earth.

Wow. I've lived in my car, hell, I've lived in conditions where I gave copious thanks that I at least had a sleeping bag, much less a car. Sat through the Sallie's 1/2 hour sermon so that I could quit drooling and tuck into that stale bread and watery beans. For damned near a year. Try throwing batts of fiberglass insulation for 10 hours, walk the 3 miles back to the Salvation Army,(the only place the cops would let you sleep outside) and then crawl unwashed into that sleeping bag. When I got a job at the pipeyards unscrewing caps off of 8/10/12" pipes and scrubbing the rust off the threads, I had my mind right, lemme tell ya. Though the 1/2" of graphite I wore like a mask and gloves didn't come off very easily with cold water. Thanks be to Zeus, I was young and naive, but just hip enough to know that things could be worse. I try to explain that to youngsters today; Things can always be worse.

Ok, I got sidetracked there. My point is that I too have lived in seamier climes. I have been extremely fortunate, reading these comments, because I've seen far more good than bad from law enforcement. Yessir/Nosir as my only retorts has surely kept my hair from being parted with a nightstick, I have no doubt. I have a vivid recall of the unbelievable way that the left was corralled by the NY officials during the Rep. Convention in '04, and the heavy handed abuses rained down on innocents. It's just never happened to me, so maybe that explains my disconnect.

My question is, will the police in this country follow the examples of less democratic societies, and follow the directives of government in tamping down all rebellion in the US? As it stands now, the police are firmly stuck in the lower middle class strata, so economic turbulence affects them as much as us. Somehow I don't see the entire police force helping reenact the English response to the Irish potato famine, which was basically, "If we allow them to eat the products that are grown in Ireland that we now ship around the world, it will be detrimental to global economics. Terribly sorry." I think that quite a few will see that they are only suppressing themselves. I still have no answer as to why the police in places like Burma, in a similar situation, eagerly do the opposite of what I propose.

I reckon I'm just fishing for a logical reason for the inevitable police lines facing against the masses. Why, when they suffer alongside us elsewise? I am aware of the cynical stance of old timers who've seen too much depravity from very normal looking people, so that everyone looks like a crack-smoking child rapist to them.

Now I've confused myself. An easy task.

That is probably one of the worst analogies ever posted here. I really, truly had something in mind...damned if I know, now.

Truth is, more child rapists probably wear Old Spice than smoke crack.

Just sayin', 'cause I'm a cynical old timer whose seen too much depravity from very normal looking people. That and the banality of real evil.

You seem to have forgotten your old school chum. Remember, I sat behind you in Cynical old Farts-201?

I don't know about the child rapists, but I know for sure that there are plenty of crack pipes still smelling of Old Spice.

Here is a story to warm the cockles of your heart (not):

Caught On Tape:

A Florida sheriff's deputy is on unpaid leave after dumping a quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair.

Here's the story.

Here's the video.

I couldn't get the vid to work. WTF is going on?

Trog, I don't know WTF is wrong. It works for me.

Here is the news item from CNN on youtube. (2:15)

My sincere apologies, Moody Blue; I meant the dumping, not the video. Thank you for the new link.

Trog,

The deputy didn't believe he was quadriplegic. Here's more on the wheelchair dumping story...

Sheriff apologizes, but disabled man wants deputy charged.

From Tampa Bay Online:

An apology from Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee came Wednesday with a promise to investigate a jail deputy who dumped a disabled man out of a wheelchair and the supervisors who did nothing to intervene.

The man, Brian Sterner, said an apology is a good start - but he also wants the deputy charged with a felony for battery of a disabled person. [snip]

An internal affairs investigation is reviewing the actions of [deputy Charlette] Marshall-Jones and three of her supervisors: Cpl. Steve Dickey, 45, Cpl. Decondra Williams, 36, and Sgt. Gary Hinson, 51. Marshall-Jones was suspended without pay, and the supervisors were suspended with pay.

Gee, who had apologized to Sterner's attorney a day earlier, issued a written statement of regret.

"I am personally embarrassed and shocked by the horrific treatment Mr. Sterner received," Gee said. "I cannot and will not even try to offer an explanation for what is seen on the video."

Gee said the incident was not caused by a lack of training. Marshall-Jones has 22 years on the job.

"It represents aberrant behavior that is totally out of context with policies, practices and standards of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office," he said.

"I offer my personal apology to Mr. Sterner for the treatment that he received while being processed through Central Booking," Gee said. [snip]

I'm beginning to think that we're keeping our troops in Iraq until they become so completely crazy and anesthetized to violence that the powers that be can use them on us without fearing mutiny. (most police are ex-military)

When what happened in Burma comes to the US, it will already be too late. Now is the time for speaking truth to power. Later will be too late.

The only question: will power listen?

Unfortunately, I doubt it.

Good morning, SB Gypsum.

Of course you are right about the Burma thing; I do realize that Fascism arrives on tiny little baby steps.

Whether on purpose or not, we are indeed scrambling the brains of a huge chunk of our youth in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Medical advances in the field have enabled formerly lost causes who in 1967 might've ate a bullet for a pain-pill from his buddy are now back home with 2/3 of the brainpan still in place. The overwhelming mood I caught from reading about these cases was RAGE. Many of the men are home now with an extremely pissed off attitude. I've met one who's leg was shattered...he's not exactly 'pal around' material, according to his family. I sat at the kitchen table and witnessed him yelling at his son over very minor things. Okay, I'm not much of a disciplinarian my own self, but it was obvious to me, and confirmed later, that the wife and parents were a little ashamed for him. I know for sure I wouldn't have the patience these people have, and his son can't understand (@5yo) what's wrong. Once this guy's benefits run out, I don't wanna be around him as he faces a $10.00 an hour existence. And he's relatively lucky; His leg knitted up pretty damned well for the damage. I have no idea what it will be like for so many suffering from brain injuries. I truly wish there was a God that could ease their souls. Or at least transfer all the battle damage to the warmongers.

EDIT: added later.

I hadn't thought about the fact that a lot of police are ex-military. Now that's just fucking scary.

Another school shooting at N. Ill. University in Dekalb. That's the 4th in less than two weeks. How hard would it be to stay in the locked classroom while awaiting word on the gunman's locale/denouement? As opposed to jumping out the window or out the door and "Feets, don' fail me now!-leaving any weak/sickly behind to die like dogs.

DW, we would understand completely if you said the hell with it, and returned to Greed Central. The aroma of urine wafting amidst the adrenaline in the morning doesn't smell like victory. Just another symptom of the disease.

Ok, I lied.