Here is an old one from Houston that always stuck in my craw, I remember “the hole”, it is where cops went to sleep in their cars and hang out, to avoid patrol.
“”Joe Campos Torres (December 20, 1953 - May 5, 1977) was a 23-year-old Vietnam Veteran who was beaten by several Houston police officers and subsequently died.
Torres had been arrested at a Houston bar for disorderly conduct. Six police officers took Torres to a spot called “The Hole” next to Buffalo Bayou and beat him.
The officers then took Torres to the city jail, who refused to process him due to his injuries. They were ordered to take him to Ben Taub General Hospital, but instead of doing so, the officers brought him back to the banks of Buffalo Bayou and pushed him into the water. Torres’s body was found two days later.””
Another Torres family loss: “”The Torres family grappled with tragedy again when Army Sgt. Jacob Molina was killed in a roadside bombing in Afghanistan on Tuesday. The 27-year-old soldier was the nephew of Joe Campos Torres, who died in one of the most notorious cases of police brutality in Houston’s history.
“No family deserves to go through what we’ve been through,” Sandra Torres said.
Molina never met his uncle, but he grew up hearing stories about him, and looking at pictures of him in uniform. His decision to join the Army was motivated in part by his uncle’s service, relatives say.
Joe Campos Torres was wearing his Army fatigues and combat boots when Houston police arrested him after a disturbance at an East End bar in May 1977.
He drowned after being severely beaten by officers and thrown into Buffalo Bayou. His body was found floating in the water a few days later.
The officers were convicted of negligent homicide and received probation of one year in state court. Federal charges resulted in prison sentences of a year and a day for civil rights violations, and a decade of probation for conspiracy.””
They murdered that guy and that was all the time they got?
Incredible.
You know those cops in Simi Valley wailed on Rodney King pretty bad, but they didn’t, you know, KILL him.
What the hell happened in this more recent story? How the hell do you beat a guy to death over not having a license plate? And even if he did “resist” how can 5 trained men and a dog! not be able to subdue one unarmed man without killing him?