Posted on 05/03/2004 10:52:30 AM PDT by Veracious Poet
PORTLAND, Ore. - The city of Portland has agreed to pay $145,000 to an elderly blind woman after police pepper-sprayed and shocked her with a stun gun.
The altercation began as an attempt to remove shrubs and appliances from 71-year-old Eunice Crowder's yard, and ended with police citing her for harassment and disobeying an order.
This week, the city agreed to settle her excessive force lawsuit out of federal court, a month after a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge dismissed the violations against her.
"This case goes to show that police misconduct and excessive force can happen to anybody outside the mainstream," said Ernest Warren Jr., Crowder's lawyer. "It does not have to be an African American; it can be someone who is elderly and white."
The Portland City Council approved the settlement, based on a review by the city's risk management division that indicated "there is risk the City may be found liable."
The June 9, 2003, incident began when Ed Marihart, a city employee, showed up at Crowder's home. He served her with an administrative search warrant to remove an accumulation of trash and debris.
According to Crowder and her lawyer, the woman told him she was blind and hard of hearing, and asked him to read the entire warrant to her, but he refused. She said he placed it in her hands, walked outside and ordered others to start removing items from her yard.
The city denies that the woman asked Marihart to read the warrant and maintains that Marihart explained to her why he was there.
The woman followed the city employee outside. She was concerned that he and his co-workers had removed a family heirloom, a 90-year-old red toy wagon with rhododendrons in it. She asked to enter a trailer, where items from her yard were being placed, to feel around for the wagon.
Marihart told her she couldn't enter the trailer and said the wagon was not inside. He then called police.
When Portland Officers Robert Miller and Eric Zajac arrived at the house, Crowder acknowledged she had one foot on the curb and one foot on the bumper of the trailer. She felt someone step on her foot and asked, "Who are you?"
Moments later, she felt someone strike her in the head, which dislodged her prosthetic right eye from its socket, and was knocked to the ground, she claimed in her lawsuit.
Officers said Crowder ignored their commands not to climb into the trailer and tried to bite Miller's hand.
They acknowledged she was "pushed onto the dirt next to the sidewalk," according to the city's legal brief filed in court.
While on the ground, Crowder asked the officer what he thought he was doing and kicked Miller. She said the officer kicked her back, then pepper-sprayed her in her eyes.
"While she's still on the ground, on her stomach, they tased her in the back and in the breast," her lawyer said.
Police said they pepper-sprayed Crowder after she refused to stop kicking them. They admit that Crowder's prosthetic eye fell out at some point, and that Zajac stunned Crowder with a Taser, an electric stun gun, twice in the lower back and once in the upper back after ordering her to stop fighting and resisting.
Warren said the city's argument is bogus. He said, "To kick the crap out of old folks seems a little bit much to me in the name of law enforcement,"
Then my question: Are you suggesting that the police force a civilian to help her move, or what? (paraphrased, but of course that's what I was saying)
Then you say "I'm sorry, I thought I was communicating with an astute, intelligent person...not just another bot."
Well sheesh! I'm sorry if a simple question befuddles you so!
Were done...
Yeah, we are, right after you get that last word in we both know you're going to post, which, of course, will have nothing to do with answering my original question, it will simply be another tired retread like: Take that 47, you jackboot licker, or, 47, you statist, you'll never understand, or, there's obviously no use wasting my time on you. (IOW, much like your last post to me) At any rate....
Happy FReeping! :D
" there is risk the City may be found liable."
Risk? How about certainty?
How can you possibly fault the Portland police department with lack of proper on-duty protocol in these types of situations when they've had so many more important politically correct agenda items on their docket?
I recall an article in the late 1990s about the Portland Police Chief [I'm not sure if he's still the chief], whose daughter was a lesbian [Portland has the highest known lesbian resident rate in the U.S.], was concerned with ensuring that cross-dressers would be given a specially registered card that would note them as an officially recognized cross-dresser. Hence, that would keep them out of trouble whenever they used bathrooms targeted for folks of the opposite sex.
You know, with all of the diversity training + sensititivity training for how to respond to cross-dressers these days + additional urgent items like that, then other matters like dealing with highly calibered elderly folks just doesn't make the basic training cut.
I assume you mean "too fast"... hehehe ;)
Does it matter though? Is this the way we deal with angry, blind 71 year old women (or men for that matter) in America now?
I think it matters...
999 out of 1000 times that people get "beat up" by the police, the person was violent, drunk, and forcing the issue. This could be the 1000th. (And I would be the first to applaud throwing the bad cops in jail.
as an aside, this happened in Portland, Or. A liberal town in a liberal state... I am not terribly bothered by them getting taken for a wad of cash...
That post was worth repeating.
A 70 year old would have known a time when she was taught and found exactly that; the LEO's did "protect and serve". Would she have believed or expected (especially in her blindness) that for putting one foot on the bumper of a "forbidden" vehicle her introduction to a policeman would have been to have been knocked in the head hard enough to dilodge an eye?
I am gaining even greater disrespect for even the family of LEO's who defend this kind of action for whatever manufactured reason.
There are often officers (I only hope more often) who do not participate in the current trend. Many have now left the force (read that "been forced out") because they do not qualify for this new kind of "bravery" (some of whom I know).
More often they are like the Sherrif's deputy I saw ignore two out of state young and black speeders doing 87 miles an hour on route 85 in VA to "take" an old white lady doing 79 (or whatever)in clear, bright weather with very, very little traffic. After all, the young black might have been from the Bronx and been a problem stop... Why risk his life "to make things safe"? She was speeding, too.
Guess what that old lady (and I) will teach to the younger members of our families? Respect? That they protect or serve? That they live for the power? That the county through which that highway goes needs the revenue generated by all the force they put on that road to supplement what they cannot get in taxes? That the reason most of the tickets given are to truckers or females, preferably white is because (fill in the blanks) while more of the drivers on that road are male.
A current joke for that road (and roads like it) used when someone speeds past is, "that must be the Sherrif's (wife, son, cousin etc.)" Disrespect? You bet. Earned and deserved disrespect. It would be totally inconsistent with reality to teach my progeny anything more than a wary vigilence over any action involving any law enforcement entity or agent. Certainly I could not, in good conscience teach them to trust first as children 70 years ago were taught.
If we teach our youngsters that respect is earned we can no longer exempt law enforcement agents.
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