Posted on 05/02/2015 8:24:12 AM PDT by lowbridge
The evolving narrative in Baltimore received a new wrinkle today when all 6 officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray were arrested and charged, to varying degrees, with murder.
The driver of the police van in which Gray sustained the injuries that ultimately led to his death faces the most jail-time, however.
Caesar Goodson is being charged with “second-degree ‘depraved heart murder.” He is the only officer involved in the incident to receive the charge.
However, a source close to the Goodson family has said that the officer repeatedly insisted that his fellow officers in the van restrain Gray—pleas that went unheeded.
This, ultimately, led to Gray’s death; medical examiners recently announced that he died from head injuries suffered while in transit. Prisoners are supposed to be restrained in order to protect against unnecessary rattling which, as in this case, can lead to serious injury.
The unnamed source and friend of the Goodson family spoke to Daily Mail UK:
“When he became irate Caesar called in and said ‘you have got to restrain him.’ That’s on the audio,” he said.
“They did, they restrained his legs. But when they did that they still should have put him in the seat belt.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ijreview.com ...
Yeah. That does not surprise me.
It just dawned on me today that the combination of the other prisoner’s comments and the driver saying Gray needs to be restrained meant Gray was being rowdy. Why? Logic says he was trying to get the door open and escape. The other prisoner thought “injure himself” but that does not make as much sense as trying to escape.
I hadn’t heard of that. Interesting.
Where is this April 09 policy coming from?
I’d say the risk is a lot less if a number of police officers go back there.
And this is worse than a Brinks truck. Brinks trucks do not contain cargo that can kill you.
And okay, so the department policy says a prisoner must be restrained, and they failed to do that. That sounds like a violation of department policy as opposed to murder.
Furthermore, if a person is behaving is such a manner that makes it dangerous for you to attempt to restrain them, what do you do?
What if a person you are required to restrain is behaving like a complete lunatic and bites you on the arm and has AIDS because he is an intravenous drug user, and now you have AIDS because you tried to put them in a seat belt?
What do you do?
Did those police and that driver have access to head restraints that would prevent such attacks, and if so, were they successfully able to apply those restraints in such a way as to prevent those attacks thus allowing them to restrain Gray safely in a seat belt as per policy?
I don’t know. A person’s behavior can present all sorts of problems to that person’s safety as well as the safety of people around them.
I am looking real hard for murder and intent to kill here, and I am having a real hard time finding it.
Have to wonder if the black cops will turn on the white ones? Driver is a black man.
HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!!!
Do you really think people should be thrown into the back of a truck with no restraints?
-->"Freddie Gray not the first to come out of Baltimore police van with serious injuries"
Not that the Baltimore PD isn't extremely dysfunctional (along with the rest of the city) but Baltimore's PD seems to have done this as a matter of routine for a long time (maybe even generations of POs?), without previous fatalities. (That we know of.)
So there is a case against Golf-1 and HRC for their active denial of aid to the beleaguered Americans at Benghazi.
Depraved indifference.
According to Goodson’s Facebook page (now taken down), he was a fan of the American’s Against the Republican Party group. Let’s see how his fellow Democrats treat him now.
You call for backup before you open the door. Letting someone get injured, or die, in the back of the van is a come.
Isn’t the bigger problem not the restraints, but the lack of care or concern once the ‘suspect’ was asking for medical attention and none were called for. This suspect was in their ‘custody’ they assumed full responsibility once he was taken by them.
I saw or heard the April 9th date on an interview and I cannot remember who was interviewing or who was being interviewed. It may have been on the Mark Levin show or it may have been on a news clip online.
At least one will speak up, but not in the way you mean. The driver is in deep trouble. That leaves the other five. One of them will certainly take a deal, all charges dropped in turn for testimony against the others.
Gray was a well known showboat. He’d go limp, scream and yell for doctors or lawyers once cops would cuff him. All an effort to attract attention in hopes it could be used against the arresting officers later. It’s not a stretch at all to assume he was performing a self “tune up” as “proof” for an excessive force suit.
I know it’s being said now that he was under the influence of heroin and pot. No one will care about the pot, but the heroin, if true, will play a HUGE roll in the case.
I agree it is not murder even if it was a break with policy, regardless of when the policy was enacted. Every police officer in that district ought to strike. They ought to just not show up for a week in protest of that one. Mobs of thieves and vandals are not the only ones who can protest.
Unless there have been other fatalities as a result of unrestrained rides in a police van, it should be hard to show that the driver could have thought that ride was likely to kill someone. As far as I know, this is the first time I know of someone dying by breaking their neck while riding in the back of a van.
That’s interesting about Gray being a well known showboat.
“Trying to figure out the story. If he called to get someone to restrain this guy, then it seems like he would have been helping the other officer and could have restrained him.”
I imagine that the driver is required to remain in the cab.
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