Just today I came across an article about a 37-year-old, mentally unstable homeless man getting beaten to death by Fullerton County Police. This situation is similar to the Rodney King case because the victim did not have the best background and was a victim of police brutality. The difference is that the victim is not living to tell the story of the police's brutality. Here's a link of the video footage of the beating and some other links on details of the trial and case.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku42PPzYEqs
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-1210-kelly-thomas-deadly-20131210,0,4849649.story#axzz2n7MpTG8C
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Kelly_Thomas
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-kelly-thomas-fight-20131204,0,159861.story#axzz2n7MpTG8C
After you posted this, I started searching about this topic and I found this article about five of the worst cases of police brutality to people with mental illnesses. I thought #2 was the most disturbing because it shows how little patience and care some policemen can have and their abuse of power.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/5-times-police-killed-people-mental-disabilities
I think more often than not the police do whatever they want and later hide behind their badge. Some of these cases sound like what we see happening in the concentration camps to the Jews by the SS. Makes me think that things haven't really changed as much as we try to pretend like they have.
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree with both Ina and Roxanne. I think some police officers have their act together but a majority of them abuse their authority everyday. Especially with the mentally disabled, it almost seems they are extremely inpatient with therm and have no time to deal with them.
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