Police Officers Behaving Badly and the McAdam Lawsuit Settlement

If you just read the City of Ludington Daily News, you are vaguely familiar with a legal suit filed against some local law enforcement agents by Joseph McAdam.  The only information they have ever divulged is that it concerns a civil right violation and tasering.  Actually, this lawsuit involved the repeated tasering of a Ludington citizen on the streets of Ludington in 2009 by a Ludington policeman and County deputies, followed by the repeated tasering of the same man when he was handcuffed to a hospital bed at Memorial Medical Center. 

 

According to the suit and the deposition of the Ludington cop, who is now a county deputy, and the others involved, the citizen's only 'crime' was to inobtrusively record a traffic stop involving his mother made by another Ludington cop and to not get back on his bed he was cuffed to at the hospital.  He was never charged with a crime nor was any crime noted when the lawmen decided to tackle, tase, and arrest him.  Photography is not a crime.

 

Chances are, the City Council will accept the settlement that's offered rather than seeing this come to trial, as a trial can sometimes lead to more facts getting out that show the police officers erred dramatically in this case.  I dare them to not settle this case, and have it go to trial, particularly if they wish to clear their police department's good name and believe they can win this case.

So as the Ludington City Council decides on whether to settle the McAdam's federal lawsuit or to fight it in court, a lot of cases of police brutality and inappropriate activity is popping up all over.  Whether it be the culture of modern police to use guerilla tactics before humane tact, and to protect and defend their own co-workers over the people they are sworn to serve, the result looks to be a growing police state with little regard shown for fulfilling the primary duties the people hire them to do. 

 

Here are a couple of incidents that come from the Chicago area that have landed in the news lately.  Particularly heinous is the fact that these officers of the law are still working at their jobs, despite the unlawful activities they have done, and that they are even defended by their fellow officers.  Being a conscientious police officer nowadays just gets you fired, so what's left when those people are released?  What amounts in some areas as little more than an organized gang.  We see this in recent stories from Detroit, we also see it here in northern Illinois.

 

 

Dana Holmes was booked for DUI at the LaSalle County jail in Illinois last May, and claims in a federal lawsuit that she was illegally strip searched by three men and a woman. Video of the incident shows Holmes being tackled to the floor and carried into a padded jail cell where she is aggressively stripped and left naked. Holmes says at the time she was afraid the officers might come back in and rape her. One of the deputies throws a blanket in the cell a few minutes later. The cops claim Holmes was combative.

Holmes’ lawyer, Terry Ekl, now says five other women have come forward with complaints about illegal searches at the LaSalle County jail. Ekl says every part of Holmes’ strip search was illegal—he says state law permits strip searches only of persons suspected of having weapons or drugs and that they can only be done by officers of the same sex.

Watch video of the arrest and jailhouse search below. The search begins around the 3:00 mark.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/10/08/womans-lawsuit-over-aggressive-ja...

Now, a separate lawsuit against the Skokie Police Department in Illinois was filed by a Chicago woman, Cassandra Feuerstein, alleging the use of excessive force after her DUI arrest. Surveillance video shows the 110-pound woman talking to an officer off-screen, then walking out of the cell, followed by two cops, and about 30 seconds later being thrown head first toward a concrete bench in her cell, causing bleeding. Feuerstein’s lawyer says she required reconstructive surgery and a titanium plate in her cheek. Cops claimed she wasn’t looking into the camera during processing and tried to charge her with resisting arrest. The state’s attorney dropped those charges and Feuerstein copped a guilty plea to the DUI.

 

Her attorney says she’s suing because charges weren’t pressed against the officers involved. Watch a short clip of the surveillance video with Feuerstein's attorney narrating here, or the raw surveillance video, which includes an angle showing her allegedly resisting while having her photo taken, below. Feuerstein walks out of the cell about 1:20 in:

http://reason.com/blog/2013/10/10/surveillance-video-shows-cop-hurl...

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WE are in a POLICE STATE. This country is a failure and the powers that be are only able to force other to do what they want because now people see them for what they are.

Isolated incidences of police violence are to be expected, these don't move us into a police state.  But incidences that seem to be increasing in regularity, and increasingly are tolerated by the police superiors and the public body the agency serves, does indicate that the police are overstepping their directives, which will only get worse without reform.  Leading to a police state mentality, which several areas of our nation are moving into as we speak. 

Omg, did anyone notice that huge pool of blood she lost in this needless display of force? She's scarred and face damaged for life now! All for a DUI?

Hey, don't screw with the law, they have no constraints. Seems the only safety concerns are for themselves. Just follow the orders, you Lemmon, or is it Sheeple?

Yeah, and I also noticed the violence of the throw by the officer of this woman into the concrete ledge that led to that pool and his apathy thereafter.  If this wasn't a uniformed officer that did this, who has no power or right to do that, he would be serving hard time and getting personally sued for this assault. 

As it is, he continues to work, without any sort of admonishment from his superiors.  The bald guy and others who came to her aid must be commended for their actions, but will likely just face repercussions if they testify against their fellow officer in the civil proceedings. 

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