…equals an outrage waiting to happen.
My faith in and respect for law enforcement does increase, slowly, over time. But, it decreases rapidly right back to near-zero when stories like this one from Infowars involving a mentally handicapped teen get brought to my attention.
From the article:
Dayton police tasered, pepper-sprayed and beat a mentally handicapped teen [Jesse Kersey] and then charged him with assault. What did the disabled boy do to deserve this onslaught? The police officer [Officer Willie Hooper] “mistook” his speech impediment for a sign of “disrespect”.
As mentioned in this Courthouse News Service article, all charges against Jesse were dismissed. However, Officer Hooper, and another officer, John Howard, are named as co-defendants in a civil suit brought against the city by Jesse’s mother, Pamela Ford, for many torts including false arrest, assualt, battery, and civil conspiracy.
It’s bad enough when a mentally handicapped person is the victim of police brutality, as in this case. However, to be beaten up by the cops and then charged with assault on top of that? I can’t imagine what these maniacs with badges were thinking.
I’m glad the criminal court judge presiding over the case aganist Jesse had some sense. So in a rather rare move for this blog, I will commend the judge (unnamed in either the Infowars post or the Courthouse News Service story) for an excellent job of dispensing justice, by dismissing the obviously trumped-up charges against Jesse. I’m hoping the judge and jury responsible for the civil suit against the city of Dayton, Ohio, have the same good sense of justice.
I’m also hoping that Officers Hooper and Howard, and any other officers responsible for the initial incident unnamed by the sources linked above, find a new career completely removed from law enforcement. If we’re going to throw the book at common citizens who commit egregious acts of assault and false arrest, we need to do the same to cops who overstep their authority.
Of course they charged him with assault! He hit their fists with his face, beat on their nightsticks with the back of his head, and pummeled their knees with his balls and stomach. Then he committed malicious destruction of property by spewing his blood all over their uniforms.