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Man claims brutality in Norman Park (Georgia) arrest (Axe To Grind Alert!)
The Moultrie Observer ^ | 08/08/2010 | Alan Mauldin

Posted on 08/08/2010 7:16:06 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour

NORMAN PARK — Video of a loitering arrest by Norman Park police shows two officers violently slamming a man against a car.

Tarius Jackson, 29, said the arrest occurred after he told the first officer to approach, whom he identified as Police Chief Justin Rutherford, that he did not have his wallet.

“I wasn’t resisting or anything,” Jackson said. “It seems like they were trying to make me fight them back, but I wouldn’t fight them.”

The officer who took him to Colquitt County Jail taunted him on the way about how they overpowered him, Jackson said.

The video shows Jackson sitting outside a convenience store and leaning against the wall while smoking. He is with several other people, but the officer walks by the others and directly to Jackson.

Jackson said he had been helping out in the store moving boxes and had just gone outside for a smoke break at the time the officers drove up.

In the video, Jackson stands up and puts his hand behind his back. There was no sound with the video, of which Jackson had a disc copy.

Jackson said Rutherford asked him for identification, and when he said he did not have his wallet on him was ordered to put his hands behind his back.

When he put his hands behind his back, he said, he felt his wallet was in his back pocket and he pulled out his identification.

At about this time on the video a second officer approaches Jackson from his right side and both of them grab Jackson, pull him forward and slam his face and upper body onto the hood of a truck in the parking lot.

Rutherford did not return a call for comment Friday.

A store employee who did not wish to be named due to fear of retaliation by police said that store customers have been harassed by Norman Park officers.

One is a 70-year-old man who for decades has sat in his car in the parking lot while drinking his morning coffee, the employee said. The store has asked police to allow its customers to smoke in the parking lot.

The employee said that the truck on which officers slammed Jackson had a large dent in the hood from the force.

Jackson was charged last week with loitering and disorderly conduct. A criminal search for Georgia and Mississippi, from where Jackson said he moved, did not reveauk a prior criminal history for him.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Government; US: Georgia
KEYWORDS: brutality; donutwatch

1 posted on 08/08/2010 7:16:08 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
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To: The Magical Mischief Tour

But did they make him “squeal like a pig”?


2 posted on 08/08/2010 7:19:31 PM PDT by BnBlFlag (Deo Vindice/Semper Fidelis "Ya gotta saddle up your boys; Ya gotta draw a hard line")
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To: The Magical Mischief Tour

He should just be happy they didn’t taze him or perhaps shoot him for lying to them.


3 posted on 08/08/2010 7:20:21 PM PDT by driftdiver (I could eat it raw, but why do that when I have a fire.)
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To: The Magical Mischief Tour
Sounds to me like the police are the ones breaking the law here. If the owner has told the cops that folks can hang out and smoke on the property and drink coffee while sitting in their car. It seems to me its the cops who are breaking the law, by harassing people and customers who are on private property with the full wish and consent of the owner.
4 posted on 08/08/2010 7:26:57 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
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To: The Magical Mischief Tour

Beatings and abuse used to be common before the mid or late 1970s. The feds and lawsuits stopped a lot of that stuff.


5 posted on 08/08/2010 7:28:16 PM PDT by ansel12 (Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush")
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To: ansel12

They didn’t stop near enough, it seems.


6 posted on 08/08/2010 7:32:29 PM PDT by Jubal Harshaw
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To: The Magical Mischief Tour

Any links to the video ?


7 posted on 08/08/2010 7:42:13 PM PDT by Squantos (Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet)
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To: Jubal Harshaw

But it used to be routine and more brutal, and more open for the people that they did not like.

Imagine being in headquarters with the air conditioning going, secretaries trying to work, and a couple of detectives in suits are beating two handcuffed prisoners, and other cops throwing in kicks as they walk by with folders in their hands.

Imagine a similar scene at headquarters when an innocent is beaten so badly by a gang of uniformed cops that one of them calls the young man’s mother to tell her to get him to a hospital and that he will testify for her if she wants him to.

Imagine seeing your busted up friend get out of a police car and find out that they had picked him up, drove a few blocks beat him up and then let him go.

Imagine waiting as your friends business is being rousted and then when the cops leave, learn that your friends had been watching through a hole when someone walked in and tossed something behind a counter, when he left the friends found the drugs and got rid of them, just in time for the raid that you had been watching.

Imagine being in the holding tank and watching as guys were taken to the rubber room for questioning, and then returning very badly beaten, at least one that I saw, beaten so badly that his survival seemed in question since we could not get him concious.

Cops used to do what they wanted because there was no outside threat, that changed eventually in the late 70s, Houston cops beat up an army vet so bad that even the jail refused to accept him, so the cops took him to their on duty sleeping hideout on the bayou, and tossed him into the river, he did not survive, and five cops were fired and a watch dog group started.


8 posted on 08/08/2010 8:02:11 PM PDT by ansel12 (Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush")
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To: ansel12

Those days and more worse than those days are coming. We have peaked. Glory days are past. The dark age is descending.


9 posted on 08/08/2010 8:05:53 PM PDT by RachelFaith (2010 is going to be a 100 seat Tsunami - Unless the GOP Senate ruins it all...)
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To: RachelFaith

Armed citizens and cameras everywhere, and huge amounts of oversight kind of makes your scenario unlikely

I think that things are better as far as police brutality, it’s just that we get to see the stuff now days, so it seems like it is more common.

There was a time when traveling in America was a little like traveling through Mexico, you never knew how the local law enforcement would react to you, or treat you, they could do most anything, and they did.


10 posted on 08/08/2010 8:12:39 PM PDT by ansel12 (Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush")
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To: ansel12
ansell - you saw these things??
11 posted on 08/08/2010 8:24:12 PM PDT by warsaw44
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To: warsaw44

Yes except for the murder and the beating of the innocent, when the cop volunteered to testify against the other cops, that was my little brother that had gone to the store to pick up something and the cops had mistook him for someone else.

With some effort I can remember many stories of cops and their actions. Something that I learned as a young man was that middle class people respected the cops, but that if you dug a little deeper and listened closely, you learned that they also feared them, and that many of them had stories of family members that had been beaten or roughed up, cop theft has always been common for instance.

If you spent a few years in the restaurant business, and I imagine other businesses, you would find that people don’t just give things to cops because they like them, there are certain unspoken rules, or at least cops imply there are, like a quick response in exchange for all that free food you give them.


12 posted on 08/08/2010 8:36:26 PM PDT by ansel12 (Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush")
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To: ansel12
I think that things are better as far as police brutality, it's just that we get to see the stuff now days, so it seems like it is more common.

I think that's the first post I've seen on FR claiming that police are more well behaved now than in previous generations. You say on your homepage that you are a "sheepdog". What do you do that makes you a sheepdog?

13 posted on 08/08/2010 8:57:13 PM PDT by Ken H
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To: Ken H

I have always protected the weak from bullies, I was born that way, from social situations, to bar fights, to gang violence to cocktail party bullies, I don’t like wolves that feed on the gentle folk.


14 posted on 08/08/2010 9:05:42 PM PDT by ansel12 (Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush")
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To: ansel12
I thought you meant you are in the military or law enforcement. Are you?
15 posted on 08/08/2010 9:12:00 PM PDT by Ken H
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To: Ken H

I have been in the military a couple of times, the most dangerous sheepdog work that I have always done has been alone, without the state behind me, and almost always unarmed.

Being in uniform, being armed to the teeth with guns,radios and a partner, having a strong union, drawing a good paycheck and having an 8 hour workday does not necessarily mean that someone is a sheepdog, in fact they are probably in the minority of cops, cops probably have as many or more wolves, and many that are just unionized employees collecting a check.


16 posted on 08/08/2010 9:25:09 PM PDT by ansel12 (Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush")
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To: Ken H

I think that we can assume that very few sheepdogs are in the police or else the corruption and brutality would be extremely rare.

When we watch a gaggle of cops just ignore abuses that they just watched, or that listen as corruption and criminality is being discussed openly in front of them, as we see over and over as they discuss how to cover something up while on film, we know that no sheep dogs are in that group, and we also know that not many sheep dogs can be scattered through out that department.

Most police criminality and abuse is done openly inside the blue wall, and when it is discovered by outsiders, we usually learn that the group supports the wrong doer and tries to minimize any penalty. That means that potential cop sheepdogs are either kept out, or are broken quickly by the group.

Police go along to get along.

Soldiering attracts a lot of sheepdogs though.


17 posted on 08/08/2010 9:41:50 PM PDT by ansel12 (Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush")
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To: ansel12

“Jackson said Rutherford asked him for identification, and when he said he did not have his wallet on him was ordered to put his hands behind his back.

“When he put his hands behind his back, he said, he felt his wallet was in his back pocket and he pulled out his identification.”

Isn’t this obvious? He said he didn’t have a wallet, but then started pulling something out of his back pocket. Were the policemen supposed to let him pull a gun on them without reacting???


18 posted on 08/09/2010 2:06:41 AM PDT by JTR1888
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To: JTR1888
"Jackson said he had been helping out in the store moving boxes and had just gone outside for a smoke break at the time the officers drove up."

"At about this time on the video a second officer approaches Jackson from his right side and both of them grab Jackson, pull him forward and slam his face and upper body onto the hood of a truck in the parking lot.
Rutherford did not return a call for comment Friday.
A store employee who did not wish to be named due to fear of retaliation by police said that store customers have been harassed by Norman Park officers.
One is a 70-year-old man who for decades has sat in his car in the parking lot while drinking his morning coffee, the employee said. The store has asked police to allow its customers to smoke in the parking lot.
The employee said that the truck on which officers slammed Jackson had a large dent in the hood from the force.
Jackson was charged last week with loitering and disorderly conduct."

The store itself is afraid of them, the cops have been harassing customers and now this, this is a case of thugs out of control, I remember this kind of thing from the 60s, when cops would decide who was allowed to be where, usually it was done by what the local business men wanted, no blacks, no long haired young men, etc.

I don't know if the details of the story are true, but for the story as described, then why that level of violence for what appears to be nothing, why formal charges for nothing? Is this the way you want the cops asserting domination over us?

19 posted on 08/09/2010 10:02:43 AM PDT by ansel12 (Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush")
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