officer nearly choked him to death during a traffic stop. Posted on 07/02/2008 12:10:57 PM PDT by LibWhacker
MOUNT JULIET, Tenn. - A Midstate man said a police officer nearly choked him to death during a traffic stop.
The incident was caught on tape.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating how Mount Juliet Cpl. Bill Cosby interacted with James Anders, Jr.
Cosby stopped the 26-year-old Wilson County man in April.
Cosby suspected Anders hid marijuana in his mouth. The officer used a vascular restraint technique to keep Anders from swallowing.
On the video recorded inside Cosby's patrol car, Cosby said he smelled marijuana and handcuffed Anders and his passenger.
The video also showed the officer putting his hands around Anders' neck. He applied pressure and told Anders to stick out his tongue. This happened for nearly two minutes before Anders lost consciousness.
Photographs released by Anders' attorney showed injuries he sustained when he fell to the pavement.
Cosby didn't find any marijuana in Ander's mouth. Anders passed a drug test the next day.
A small bag of pot was found in his car and Anders was arrested for simple possession and resisting arrest.
After the district attorney saw the video, the charges were dropped.
Anders is expected to file a lawsuit in federal court later this month.
Cosby is still on the job.
After viewing the tape, General Sessions Judge Barry Tatum dismissed all Cosby's cases. He called what Cosby did inexcusable and said Cosby is no longer welcome in his court. In essence, any tickets he writes now are meaningless. The judge will dismiss them.
Anders' attorney said there's no excuse for strangling a man helpless and handcuffed.
"Clearly his constitutional rights were violated. He was choked," said Garry Vandever, Anders' attorney.
Vandever said Anders is fine but he still upset over what happened.
Anders is expected to file a lawsuit in federal court later this month.
Andy Garrett was sworn in as the new police chief Monday night.
"I have viewed the tape. I wasn't on board when this happened," he said. "It is an incident that's been addressed internally through training and discipline with the police officer. Any further investigation that's going to be done by an outside agency will be referred to the city attorney," said Garrett, a 25-year Metro Police Department veteran who recently commanded the force's Central Precinct.
He succeeds former Mount Juliet Police Chief Ted Floyd who retired several months ago.
In a letter sent to the new police chief and obtained by NewsChannel 5, Tatum said he's "dismissing all cases Corporal Cosby has pending" in his court.
Tatum also indicated that he's "dismissing any (future) cases he attempts to bring."
Tatum said Cosby has "cast a permanent cloud over law enforcement and the judicial system."
"We trust that an officer has to have the type of demeanor that when someone is treating them badly, spitting on them, trying to hit them, that that officer will have restraint in his actions toward that person," said Wilson County General Sessions Court Judge Bob Hamilton.
Wonder how long it will take for the boot lickers to show up here and tell us all how the cop was completely justified....
But if you REALLY want to learn how to choke someone, you need to take lessons from the jailers in PG County, Maryland.
Probably not long.
Fire that son-of-a-b*tch and take away his pension.
Well, there goes the revenue stream. Not much reason to keep Cosby on the force unless there is some way to make sure his tickets only go before another judge.
So the Judge has prejudged all of Cosby's cases, not much of a judge.
The perp ususlly coughs up several little baggies of crack.
"We trust that an officer has to have the type of demeanor that when someone is treating them badly, spitting on them, trying to hit them, that that officer will have restraint in his actions toward that person," said Wilson County General Sessions Court Judge Bob Hamilton.
Cops are citizens too and should be able to defend themselves in the course of their duties.
swallowing drugs happens all the time and is usually the first place you look. it's evidence tampering and it's a felony in most places.
so go ahead and tell me that a little pot is no big deal. hindsight is 20/20. policing isn't pretty sometimes.
2 of the first 10 posts supporting police violence, in this case choking someone until he passed out. No big surprise.
Well, then the perp will die of an OD, his family will sue and win millions for wrongful death, but at least the cop did not choke him.
/sarcasm
It sounds like a technique that is useful and reasonable in some circumstances was used when it shouldn't have been. It didn't seem like the officer was being malicious, just foolish.
The video was just a clip, so it's hard to tell if the suspect was cooperating or not, so there might be more to this than is obvious, but it is really strange that the officers didn't do a better job of controlling the suspect for his own safety. There's seems to be no good reason for the suspect to have been allowed to fall and hit his head. They had him cuffed, and even if he wasn't cooperating, which is unclear, he wasn't actively resisting either.
The officers screwed up. What's not clear to me is how badly they screwed up.
Which two?
this is like tasing. it looks all scary, but when it comes down to it, it's a relatively safe exercise where the perp is fine 10 minutes later. but the point is, the cop had cause. that's all.
Another pig on a power trip. He must have been teased in grade school.
So now I’m a racist?
Talk about twisted logic...
Wonder how long it will take for the boot lickers to show up here
++++++++++++++++++++
Officer smelled drugs. There were drugs and it is common for drug runners to try to swallow drugs to hide evidence and to resist arrest. I’d like to see the rest of this officers record before I side with those ready to bash cops so readily. I’ll give you 10 to 1 odds the judge in this case takes drugs regularly. The fact that a judge rules one way or the other, these days, doesn’t mean much. For a judge to issue a blanket statement that the cop is unwelcome in his courtroom in the future is, in itself, suspect behavior from a judge who should form an opinion on the case before him. It appears to me that the Judge is reacting in an unfair and arbitrary manner. I’ll back the cop for now until I see his entire record that might give us more insight into his character and performance. I question the character of both the punk and the judge.
lol you beat me to it, the ‘LEO IS NEVER WRONG’ crowd should be along soon.
It should scare the devil out of other freepers to contemplate that even members of this forum support the actions of this officer, or other similar cases.
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