And there it is.
Posted on 09/20/2017 9:07:49 AM PDT by Morgana
A young man with Down syndrome was killed by three cops for wanting to watch a movie—cops claim that suing them sets a bad precedent.
The three cops facing a wrongful-death suit in connection with the homicide of a young man with Down syndrome are claiming that they shouldn’t be sued because if the case goes forward, it could set a bad precedent. Apparently, holding police officers accountable for escalating unnecessary force to the point of killing a non-violent, unarmed man with Down syndrome could send a message to other officers that violence against those with disabilities is unwelcome.
The attorney for officers Richard Rochford, Scott Jewell and James Harris argued this week that the case against his clients over the death of Ethan Saylor should not move forward. Daniel Karp claimed that the deputies, his clients, could not have expected that the “minimal force” they used would have led to his death.
To allow the case to go forward would set a bad precedent, he continued, establishing that the officers shouldn’t have been allowed to even touch Saylor, according to the Frederick News-Post.
Saylor, a 26-year-old with Down syndrome, was at a movie theater with a health care aide watching “Zero Dark Thirty” in January 2013. The movie had finished, but Saylor didn’t want to leave the theater after the film ended, hoping to watch it again.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefreethoughtproject.com ...
My grandfather, rest his soul, often said government can screw up a steel ball with a rubber hammer.
Why are they not under the jail yet? People like that should be thrown in solitary for the rest of their miserable lives.
Even if they had a right to arrest him, debatable, there is no question that they had no right to kill him by crushing his larynx. It is incredible that no criminal charges were made.
My older son has a degree in Law Enforcement and got some experience in the field before he went into the Marines.
he says there are two types of people in police work: those who are looking for an opportunity to do good, an those who are looking for an excuse to do bad.
Why should that even have to be a hypothetical? The answer is no, they didn't have to do that at all.
I agree wholeheartedly.
We must be stuck in the 60s
Crushing the man’s trachea is not “minimal force.”
Yeah, what a stupid retard, huh?
I believe the reason he was dragged from his seat, manhandled to the ground and had his trachea crushed was because he said ‘f*** you’ to the first officer responding...
And there it is.
Officers who are found to be operating within the parameters of their jobs should not be liable for civil suits. The victim had an advocate in the local prosecutor, who was unable to obtain a criminal indictment, much less a conviction.
They obviously feel this was not “justice”, so they are trying to use the civil court to get “justice”, when a grand jury has already decided that “justice” should mean the officers are not punished.
Now, the officers were not working as city employees at the time, it seems, they were employed by the theater. That may make a difference, although suing the theater would be more appropriate, with the theater then being able to sue the employees if the theater thinks the employees did their job incorrectly.
On a broader note, why do we think that a “non-violent” person has an absolute right to maintain an illegal position without any physical altercation? If a person sits in the middle of the street, do you expect officers should not touch them if his mother is coming?
It is perfectly reasonable to pick someone up if they are engaged in civil disobedience, and sitting in a seat in a theater that you are not entitled to is that (unless this theater was being sold out for the movie, the theater was STUPID, and obviously should have let the kid watch again for free). The patrons who had tickets to the next showing were all being held hostage by this child’s actions.
It is of course a tragedy that a simple hold-down move turned deadly. Sometimes, actions that have no expectation of harm end up causing harm, and we don’t sue people everytime a perfectly normal and legal action ends up unexpectedly causing harm.
How do you know?
I doubt it, but again, we don’t know all the facts, and a jury acquited them - after supposedly weighing all the evidence.
The fact is, unfortunately, this was an incidental injury. Damaged trachea is not a normal consequence of typical police confrontations, so in all likelihood it was accidental.
I’m guessing at worst manslaughter.
This isn’t to say perhaps they were beyond reason, as was the owner, but actually criminal? Maybe, maybe not.
OTOH, if there really were 3 guards (not acting as police BTW) over him - why? 3 people seems like overkill to confront this man.
God bless his family for their terrible loss.
Agree whole-heartedly.
BTW, he is technically not a “child”, but a man.
It really is a shame, either way. The owner I think should’ve had more compassion.
Police reaction was grossly inappropriate to the purported crime. Police do not have the authority to summarily execute anyone they feel is disobeying orders. Time was, even violent armed offenders were talked down and otherwise every attempt at nonlethal deescalation and capture was attempted. Now it’s a matter of seemingly minutes, obey or be blown away. I’m shocked that anyone even remotely conservative considers this appropriate, for anybody. I suggest that such individuals reconsider their self-classification. You’re not conservative, you’re authoritarian and you’re the reason why leftists think conservatives are Nazis.
More than just "wanting to watch a movie", I'm afraid. When your ticket is over and you won't leave, it's trespassing. Did he need killing? Of course not! Were the cops totally wrong? Maybe.
when I was in college I worked for (---) as essentially a groundskeeper. There was a time that a group of mentally handicapped individuals were brought through the park for a tour. One of them, a man with Down Syndrome, started by sitting down and defusing to move, and escalated to screaming, crying, writhely, stomping, -- just tantrum behavior in general. It was disconcerting and obviously somewhat threatening for other people around, as he was getting quite violent in terms of slamming himself and objects around -- I was afraid he would attack the attendant. His attendant saw me cleaning a ditch or something and asked ME to help get him into their van. I called security instead, of course I wasn't going to so much as lay a finger on the guy, and kept onlookers back ao much as I could, and multiple attendants were practically holding him down by the arms and legs, and since they were preoccupied with him, some of the other handicapped people were starting to wander further and further away. By the time the cops arrived, the man had calmed down on his own and went quietly back to the van. The whole incident lasted about half an hour.
If he had maintained that level of hysterics when the police arrived, I can't imagine how it would have ended without them having to forcibly remove him. It's easy for your heart to go out upon reading about a handicapped man dying just trying to watch a movie but having witnessed a such an incident first hand, I can see how, tragic as the result was, the actions of the cops could be justified.
Hey, if you can charge an epileptic with assaulting someone because they touched someone during a seizure, killing a retard for wanting to watch a movie a second time is a problem all of the sudden?
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