Posted on 08/18/2010 10:10:45 AM PDT by Fundamentally Fair
For 22 years, Anthony DeHerrera wore his law-enforcement uniform with pride.
The last thing the Pueblo sheriff's deputy ever thought he would have to do is spend a year and a half seeking justice on behalf of his son who was beaten by Denver Police officers.
He wants them to pay for what the videotape of their actions shows.
"If they were Joe Q citizens, they would be in jail," he says.
He says that what drives him are the memories of the sounds that came over the cell phone his son held that night
SNIP
A video was taken on the police department's own High Activity Location Observation surveillance system, released publicly last week, captures Michael as he made a telephone call to his father at 12:14 a.m. that night.
Then the video shows Sparks approaching Michael, tackling him to the ground and then repeatedly beating him with a department-issued sap, a piece of metal wrapped in leather. The officer then roughly picks him up and puts him in the back of a squad car, slamming the door on his shin.
But the night of the telephone call, the father knew none of this. He didn't even know where to go to check on his son. He only had his law-enforcement instincts and the knowledge that his son was in deep trouble.
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
The father called that Denver officer and learned his son had been arrested for resisting arrest and had been sent to Denver Health Medical Center. The charge was later dropped.
"Your son got a little road rash on his nose," he recalls the officer telling him.
Here's the road rash:
I’m missing something here. The kid was admittedly drunk. Why the aggression by the cops?
I have a question about bad cop behavior in general. Is it mostly urban law enforcement that perpetrates such atrocities on the public or do rural sheriff deputies act equally poorly?
I need to advise that I make a distinction between rural area sheriff depts and urban or metro area sheriff depts. Having grown up in a rural area that is now overrun with urban cockroaches, I make a very big distinction between the two.
Michael's father, Anthony DeHerrera, said he could hear the altercation for seven minutes through the phone's open line.
"The last thing I heard is, 'We have to get rid of the phone, they're recording us.' And then the phone went dead," he said.
Isn’t it interesting how a change in perspective can expand awareness? My, my.
I used to work in downtown Denver. The last thing I ever wanted to do is call the police. For anything.
The family hired lawyers, and received a $17,500 settlement.
Watch the video, and then defend the cops actions. The cops were out of control thugs, there are not excuses and they and their union should be fired.
I've generally noticed two things:
1) Rural departments in general, whether county sheriff or municipality, tend to avoid this sort of thing. Probably because rural areas tend to offer less ability for bad cops to hide in the weeds, so to speak.
2) Sheriff's departments tend to have less of this sort of thing going on. Probably has to do with the fact that in most counties, the sheriff faces elections, and if the deputies did this sort of thing, and it didn't get dealt with, the sheriff would pay for it at the polls. The rumour in my county is that the sheriff has told the deputies not to even give out traffic tickets for routine stuff, so as to not hurt his re-election chances.
Maybe they didn't get to shoot a dog that night.
wow, just peachy. Now what is this about NOT video taping cops. The ONLY protection you have against rogue cops is the public eye on them. They shouldn't be ashamed of anything they do on duty unless it's beating the cr#p out of a weakling or girl, planting dope, faking disability in order to up their pensions, getting blow jobs from hookers for protection payment or just ripping off drug dealers.
In fact video taping cops helps the good cops.
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I saw the video on the news. That kid is going to own them.
I didn’t know cops still carried those flapjack(I think that’s what they are called) things. Archaic intermediate weapon in my opinion.
as opposed to this county where they are revenue desparate and ticketing profusely...
I would have to see the whole video, before I could even have a chance at a ball park observation here.
This may have been a decent kid. It appears he didn’t have a criminal record. Did he act out here? Did the officers feel the need to send a message.
If the officers did think a message needed to be sent, this wasn’t the way to go about it.
My first inclination is to support the officers. Sadly, that is a position that can’t always be sustained. In this instance, it appears there is a real problem here.
Public employees SHOULD NOT be able to form unions.
Here is a conflict of interest. The good of the public is not served by defending officers who have beaten a suspect.
This kid should have been taken into custody without incident. I’d have to see the video to fully understand why he wasn’t.
Either there is something I’m not seeing here, or the officer seriously screwed up. If they did, they abused this young man under color of authority.
We see this sort of thing over and over. It appears there needs to be a re-education of officers. If there is a problem, we’ll back you when you try to get things back under control. If you abuse your authority, we’ll help put you behind bars for a long time.
Officers, I want to support you. Please make it possible for me to do so. Beating kids around the head for no reason (if that’s what took place here), is no way to gain my or the public’s at large support.
Funny how that works. Usually a perp getting a little “stick time” doesn’t raise such a ruckus. (The cops must have crapped their pants when they found out they picked the wrong citizen to tune up).
It looks like whoever was running the camera was also covering up for them. At the moment that the kid is taken to the ground, the camera pans back to show a broad view of traffic with only faint detail of the arrest. Zooming back in once things looked safe again, the camera still captured enough detail of abusive behavior to where the cop should have been fired.
There is no way you can have a positive relationship with someone who is sanctioned to lie to you but will arrest you for the same.
They ALL suck! Someday these wonderful people will be coming for our guns, and the folks who disagree that they all suck will change their minds.
Ah... blackjack.
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