Posted on 07/10/2002 3:24:39 PM PDT by truth-a-holic
By EUGENE TONG The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (July 10) - A black teenager who was slammed onto a car and punched by a white policeman during a videotaped arrest sued the city of Inglewood, four of its officers, Los Angeles County and three sheriff's deputies Wednesday.
The federal lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and alleges misconduct and violations of constitutional rights.
''We believe this is a seven-figure case,'' said his attorney John Sweeney.
The Inglewood Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said they had no comment.
Various law enforcement agencies have opened investigations into the arrest, and dozens of angry protesters descended on Inglewood City Hall on Tuesday, demanding an end to police brutality and the ouster of Officer Jeremy Morse.
Inglewood Mayor Roosevelt Dorn said the officer should be fired and charged with assault.
''I will not under any circumstances tolerate the type of conduct I observed in the videotape,'' Dorn said Tuesday. ''In my opinion the district attorney's office should act.''
Rep. Maxine Waters sent a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft demanding an investigation, and charged that the officer's treatment of the teenager was racially motivated.
Ashcroft said in a statement Wednesday that he was troubled by the tape. ''The events caught on videotape ... last weekend trouble me greatly, because they raise clear questions about whether that law enforcement mission was being served properly in Inglewood,'' Ashcroft said.
The FBI said it has opened a civil rights investigation. The Inglewood Police Department, the Los Angeles County sheriff and district attorney also are investigating.
Morse, a three-year veteran who was put on leave Monday with pay, could not be reached for comment. Calls to the president of the Inglewood Police Officers Association were not immediately returned.
The incident happened during a traffic stop Saturday afternoon near the Los Angeles airport.
A tourist's videotape showed Morse hoisting a handcuffed Jackson to his feet, slamming his body onto a car, then punching him in the face. Two other officers appear to intervene, with at least one trying to pull away the first officer's arm.
Police and sheriff's officials said the teen lunged at deputies and was combative, while the boy's father, the driver of the car that was stopped, said his son cooperated and Morse attacked without being provoked. The family's lawyer, Joe Hopkins, said the teen is developmentally disabled with no arrest record.
The teen was booked for investigation of assault on an officer; his father was cited for driving with a suspended license.
His attitude about race is not material. He is violent, and demonstrates an authority figure complex common to law enforcement types. He would do it to a white guy too. The code of silence and the comradery of cops is the problem. Many believe they are above the law. When is the last time you saw a cop follow the speed limit? We are a nation of law not men. One cannot ever break the law to enforce it. Ever.
Greedy b@stards! Why make the taxpayers pay for this one mans rage????? Why not take the mans house or car or first born??? Why make the taxpayers foot this bill.....this really sucks.
How do you know this? Perhaps he is just as likely to do this to one of his own race.
Using unsubstantiated, trite labels is not a characteristic of those who are "truth-a-holics."
No one thinks that a person in custody, and in hand-cuffs, ought to be beaten up. Just as with a prisoner of war, civilized protocol calls for a non-violent treatment. But just as with prisoners of war, there is sometimes a momentary lapse among those who have just been in the heat of battle with those now in captivity. And sometimes there are human lapses. It is not always easy to go from a desperate battle, to smiles and offers of smokes and drinks and warm, dry, bedding. Perhaps you will relate your own battlefield experiences, if you take exception to that statement.
According to the accounts that I have heard, the cop was wounded in the skirmish with this "victim," immediately before the successful cuffing. While the cop should be disciplined for his clear breach of protocol in continuing the violence, there is nothing in this incident which ought to justify enriching one who, immediately before he was inappropriately struck, was engaging in lawless conduct calcualted to provoke. It would be like awarding damages to a burglar who was shot breaking into one's bedroom, or the insane verdict in the Bronx against Bernard Goetz, some years back. The kid should not benefit because he provoked this assault. And the Officer should not have his career destroyed, because of an inappropriate punch. Discipline him, by all means. Do not destroy him.
Finally, it is a shame that Attorney General Ashcroft has allowed himself to get drawn into this local matter. Surely the proper parties to investigate and discipline the errant officer are in his own department. This should not be an FBI matter, and probably would not have been in the days when J. Edgar Hoover operated the Department with a firm hand, but a sense both of its importance in its proper fields and also on the limitations on the extent of what were its proper fields.
Sometimes the hardest thing for political office holders to learn is that they are not to use their power to solve every problem under the sun--only those actually entrusted to them. But that is at least as important a lesson as the one which tells officers to stop the violence, once the prisoner is pacified.
The only reason that this minor local abuse of a prisoner is getting this attention is because of the Leftist slant of the media. Otherwise, this would only be a page six story--if that--in the L.A. papers, and no where else. There was probably far more serious and grivous violence that same day in every large and medium sized city in America; but reporting it served no Leftwing purpose, so it went largely unnoticed.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
You have got to kidding, right?
oops.
Amen to that!
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